Over here the LifeHammer (and its copies) is popular. It's a small plastic hammer with a pointed metal head, purpose-designed for breaking windows when the car is under water. There was a Mythbusters episode on escaping from a submerged car; both the auto punch and lifehammer worked well to break a window. Note that both need to be used on the side or rear window! The windscreen is laminated and you'll only break the inside layer with these tools. Side windows are tempered and will shatter.
but I don't want to be in a road train inches in front of a semi when its tire calls it quits.
That doesn't make sense. Being in front of the semi, there's no way it'll hit you when its tire blows. If you're behind it, the computer will notice the semi slowing down and will brake accordingly. Speed matching and collision avoidance is in production cars today, and works well.
The only remaining hazard is tire debris. I think we'll see mandatory tire monitoring systems before we see automated roadtrains, which would mostly eliminate that hazard.
Brake failure needn't be a problem in a road train either: because the cars have very little separation, the speed difference will be small, the failing car will bump into the car in front (after giving a warning through the intervehicle communication system). The car in front can then help bring the failing car to a safe halt.
Going from your list it seems odd that you'd need floppy disks for all of those parts. I'd expect that after installing set A from floppy you'd have a basic system capable of reading a CD. The rest could then be installed from the CD.
The link at the end of the video is to the Microsoft Research website, where they explain most of what you see in the video. The 'bubbles' talked about in TFS don't appear there though.
Full screen apps? Oh no! I hate when an application provides a nonstandard UI. The screen shot shows that even the menu bar is gone, which I find unacceptable for everything except media playback.
Autosave, Versions and Resume on the other hand are fantastic and long overdue. It'll be interesting to see how they implement Autosave: the easy way would be to save every x minutes, the right way would be to create a transaction log and save every action (keystroke, mouse gesture), to make sure that when you crash, every action up to the moment of the crash is preserved.
I think the figures you have for the Shuttle are low. Endeavor cost $ 1.7B to build from spare components. That does not include the cost to acquire those components, and it assumes the design has been paid for already.
From Wikipedia: Roger Pielke has estimated that the Space Shuttle program has cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008. This works out to an average cost per flight of about US$1.5 billion.
What we see here is an attempt to maximise screen real estate. This is necessary on today's widescreen laptops and netbooks, but pointless for those who have a large monitor. For this reason, the UI should be user-configurable.
You're right, it's not a "(rare earth) element". Unfortunately, journalists and other Muggles tend to use the term as "rare (earth element)", applying it to any element that's not abundant.
Finally, here we have a standardised way of attaching menu items to a web page. No more JS or Flash "menus" inside a page, but something that can be made to have a consistent look and feel, and something that can be scripted from the OS. Until now we've had to make do with one macro language for the OS and its apps (QuicKeys) and another for use within the browser. Bring it on!
What I want is a combination of a large-capacity spinning drive and an SSD in a single housing that's no larger than current 2,5" drives. The SSD should be large enough for the OS + frequently-used apps and data.
The Seagate Momentus XT sort of offers this, but it uses its SSD as a disk cache, so there's no way to influence what gets put on the SSD. And 4 GB is too small: my Hibernation file alone is 4 GB. Also, it has some weird auto-sleep features that make life difficult when you put it in a Mac.
What I want is one physical box (so it'll fit in a laptop) that exposes two separate volumes so I can decide for myself what to put where. 500 GB RD [1] + 32 GB SSD would be sufficient.
1: Rotating Disk, to allow us to talk about spinning rust drives with as much brevity as 'SSD'.
I want a plugin that intercepts HTML5 or Flash video and opens it in VLC instead of the browser window.
For Flash video, this means it'll get played in by a player that performs decently (instead of the crappy Flash video we get in OSX browsers). And it means I get a decent UI to control playback, with real controls that listen to keyboard input and whose preferences can be modified, instead of the pathetic mouse-only 'controls' offered by Flash video code.
Neither TFA nor the project website contain decent images of the actual paper airplanes. What design did they choose, and how did they find a design that would work this well?
The cellphone provider would have to fly in a tight circle to serve a small area on the ground (otherwise you'd lose connection). This makes it impractical to serve a large area (you'd need too many aircraft).
Wifi is even more difficult, since the range of standard wifi is not enough.
Then Apple took ownership, trimmed it to three letters, and within months the word 'app' became synonymous with small widgets of code for smartphones.
Apple has been talking about 'applications' in preference to 'programs' for decades. 'App' has been a common abbreviation in the Macintosh world for years.
The Extension is based on a Firefox Add-on that parses HTML5 pages and replaces Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in so that the content can be played in the browser.
What we need is that add-on, but with calls to VLC instead of WMP. That would make the add-on multiplatform.
It may not be the politically correct thing to wish for, but I'll take anything that replaces crappy Flash video on the OS X version of Firefox.
If the original news articles were spidered before deletion, the information may still exist. I don't speak Chinese so I can't do much to try and find it though.
This is done to prevent you from driving up to the intersection at the posted limit without braking because you assume that the light will go green in time. If it's just you at the intersection that's not a problem, but when two people approach the intersection using the same assumption, mayhem ensues.
It's the other way round: you zap the car (which is connected to ground through its reasonably conductive tires). You build up a static charge through friction; getting out of the car is a good way to build up a nice static charge.
Some cars have grounding points in the doors (my previous car had them next to the interior door lock knobs). Use those, and you won't get zapped.
Laser cutters are useful for other types of work than 3D printers. A laser cutter is 2D. For my hobby (building scale models) a 2D cutter has limited value because most of the parts I need are in 3D.
I think you're not far from the truth. The museum is run by volunteers, and depends on donations for income. They operate on a shoestring budget; this particular build will have dedicated funding, though.
Over here the LifeHammer (and its copies) is popular. It's a small plastic hammer with a pointed metal head, purpose-designed for breaking windows when the car is under water. There was a Mythbusters episode on escaping from a submerged car; both the auto punch and lifehammer worked well to break a window. Note that both need to be used on the side or rear window! The windscreen is laminated and you'll only break the inside layer with these tools. Side windows are tempered and will shatter.
but I don't want to be in a road train inches in front of a semi when its tire calls it quits.
That doesn't make sense. Being in front of the semi, there's no way it'll hit you when its tire blows. If you're behind it, the computer will notice the semi slowing down and will brake accordingly. Speed matching and collision avoidance is in production cars today, and works well.
The only remaining hazard is tire debris. I think we'll see mandatory tire monitoring systems before we see automated roadtrains, which would mostly eliminate that hazard.
Brake failure needn't be a problem in a road train either: because the cars have very little separation, the speed difference will be small, the failing car will bump into the car in front (after giving a warning through the intervehicle communication system). The car in front can then help bring the failing car to a safe halt.
Total brake failure is very rare, though.
Going from your list it seems odd that you'd need floppy disks for all of those parts. I'd expect that after installing set A from floppy you'd have a basic system capable of reading a CD. The rest could then be installed from the CD.
The link at the end of the video is to the Microsoft Research website, where they explain most of what you see in the video. The 'bubbles' talked about in TFS don't appear there though.
Full screen apps? Oh no! I hate when an application provides a nonstandard UI. The screen shot shows that even the menu bar is gone, which I find unacceptable for everything except media playback.
Autosave, Versions and Resume on the other hand are fantastic and long overdue. It'll be interesting to see how they implement Autosave: the easy way would be to save every x minutes, the right way would be to create a transaction log and save every action (keystroke, mouse gesture), to make sure that when you crash, every action up to the moment of the crash is preserved.
I think the figures you have for the Shuttle are low. Endeavor cost $ 1.7B to build from spare components. That does not include the cost to acquire those components, and it assumes the design has been paid for already.
From Wikipedia: Roger Pielke has estimated that the Space Shuttle program has cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008. This works out to an average cost per flight of about US$1.5 billion.
What we see here is an attempt to maximise screen real estate. This is necessary on today's widescreen laptops and netbooks, but pointless for those who have a large monitor.
For this reason, the UI should be user-configurable.
Helium is not a rare earth element
You're right, it's not a "(rare earth) element". Unfortunately, journalists and other Muggles tend to use the term as "rare (earth element)", applying it to any element that's not abundant.
Finally, here we have a standardised way of attaching menu items to a web page. No more JS or Flash "menus" inside a page, but something that can be made to have a consistent look and feel, and something that can be scripted from the OS.
Until now we've had to make do with one macro language for the OS and its apps (QuicKeys) and another for use within the browser.
Bring it on!
Sure, if you have room for it that's the way to go. But there's a huge number of laptops out there that only have room for one drive.
What I want is a combination of a large-capacity spinning drive and an SSD in a single housing that's no larger than current 2,5" drives. The SSD should be large enough for the OS + frequently-used apps and data.
The Seagate Momentus XT sort of offers this, but it uses its SSD as a disk cache, so there's no way to influence what gets put on the SSD. And 4 GB is too small: my Hibernation file alone is 4 GB. Also, it has some weird auto-sleep features that make life difficult when you put it in a Mac.
What I want is one physical box (so it'll fit in a laptop) that exposes two separate volumes so I can decide for myself what to put where. 500 GB RD [1] + 32 GB SSD would be sufficient.
1: Rotating Disk, to allow us to talk about spinning rust drives with as much brevity as 'SSD'.
I want a plugin that intercepts HTML5 or Flash video and opens it in VLC instead of the browser window.
For Flash video, this means it'll get played in by a player that performs decently (instead of the crappy Flash video we get in OSX browsers). And it means I get a decent UI to control playback, with real controls that listen to keyboard input and whose preferences can be modified, instead of the pathetic mouse-only 'controls' offered by Flash video code.
Neither TFA nor the project website contain decent images of the actual paper airplanes. What design did they choose, and how did they find a design that would work this well?
The cellphone provider would have to fly in a tight circle to serve a small area on the ground (otherwise you'd lose connection). This makes it impractical to serve a large area (you'd need too many aircraft).
Wifi is even more difficult, since the range of standard wifi is not enough.
From TFS:
Then Apple took ownership, trimmed it to three letters, and within months the word 'app' became synonymous with small widgets of code for smartphones.
Apple has been talking about 'applications' in preference to 'programs' for decades. 'App' has been a common abbreviation in the Macintosh world for years.
From the link in TFS
The Extension is based on a Firefox Add-on that parses HTML5 pages and replaces Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in so that the content can be played in the browser.
What we need is that add-on, but with calls to VLC instead of WMP. That would make the add-on multiplatform.
It may not be the politically correct thing to wish for, but I'll take anything that replaces crappy Flash video on the OS X version of Firefox.
Gamers are more likely to be young men, who are already much more accident-prone than the average. Did the studies take this into acount?
The old discussion system (D1) is still available and works correctly.
If the original news articles were spidered before deletion, the information may still exist. I don't speak Chinese so I can't do much to try and find it though.
this article has more info incl 2 images.
This is done to prevent you from driving up to the intersection at the posted limit without braking because you assume that the light will go green in time. If it's just you at the intersection that's not a problem, but when two people approach the intersection using the same assumption, mayhem ensues.
It's the other way round: you zap the car (which is connected to ground through its reasonably conductive tires). You build up a static charge through friction; getting out of the car is a good way to build up a nice static charge.
Some cars have grounding points in the doors (my previous car had them next to the interior door lock knobs). Use those, and you won't get zapped.
Laser cutters are useful for other types of work than 3D printers. A laser cutter is 2D. For my hobby (building scale models) a 2D cutter has limited value because most of the parts I need are in 3D.
the lobes for business.
If that were the case, it would be sufficient to break the article into two pages. >2 serves no purpose other than ad revenue.
I think you're not far from the truth. The museum is run by volunteers, and depends on donations for income. They operate on a shoestring budget; this particular build will have dedicated funding, though.