Or perhaps TFM misinterpreted the survey question: did they actually ask if people have ever, even once, cursed at their computers, or did they ask something vague like "Do you curse at your computer?" that people could just as easily interpret to mean, "Do you (regularly/as a habit) curse at your computer?"... TFM doesn't report the wording of the actual question.
It shows around 80 characters of the URL here, and includes both the beginning (before the first/) and the end (.html), ellipting the middle. I don't necessarily like that when compared to the greater width that was available in the status bar, but it's still not entirely useless.
The functionality still exists; it's just been relocated. The hover-over URL preview of a link is now overlaid over the right portion of the address bar. There's some logic to showing the URL in the same place you'd type one in...
I've had a Samsung Focus for a couple months now. (It's pretty damn nice, by the way; even MS bashers really ought to see one hands-on before writing off WP7 - you might be pleasantly surprised.) Overall, my data usage is only about 2/3 what it was on average with my previous phone, probably largely because I let it connect to WiFi when I'm at home (though most of my usage is when I'm out and about) rather than leaving it off all the time to preserve battery (old phone was almost 3 years old and battery life showed it).
I suspect the core issue here is probably threefold:
1. Misunderstanding AT&T's data usage reporting: The original user who wrote in to Paul Thurrot complaining of it to raise this stink was confused by AT&T's data usage reporting terminology, where all traffic is for some reason classified as "Sent" (i.e. the connection originated on the phone as opposed to an incoming text/call), and thought her phone was uploading massive amounts of data that were largely downloads.
2. New smartphone users not used to normal application data installation/usage spikes as they set up their phones and use them more: Thurrot (who publicized this issue and brought it to MS' attention) has been posting charts on his website of his monthly usage since switching from the iPhone. For the first couple months, his usage increased, then it dropped back down to roughly the average he'd been at before in the most recent month. My interpretation would be that once all the initial syncing/app downloads/playing with the new toy more phase is over, the data usage rate is no different.
3. A bug in large Marketplace downloads when on non-functioning WiFi connections: Some people have reported an issue, where when they are connected to WiFi, but that WiFi connection drops connection to the internet, Marketplace will sometimes fall back and download large (> 20 MB) packages over the 3G connection, when it's supposed to refuse to do so except over WiFi or USB. This is the one real bug that's been found so far in the mix. The rest really looks like user confusion rather than actual malfunction.
And how long were *those* supported? This will survive only until the sales figures demonstrate the pitiful penetration of Windows in the tablet market vs. iPad and Android, then written off (as were the RISC ports) as a bad investment of time/$$$.
Perhaps. I agree, at least, that the standard Windows UI, while great on PC hardware, is ill-suited to tablets and the like and will never make the same inroads in that market that iOS and Android are. I was just correcting the factually incorrect assertions of the parent post, not making any predictions about the likely impact of ARM support in Windows. I don't really know what the target market may end up being.
Without major app vendors jumping in with ARM ports of their x86 portfolios, this will be, like WinPhone 7, too-little-too-late.
Agreed on the need for substantial third-party vendor support for this to be meaningful. I disagree on WP7 being too-little-too-late though. It's actually quite impressive hands-on, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it start gaining marketshare once more people see it in person.
Office on ARM is a million times more important - for a start, that suggests you can open your documents on another new platform without having to worry about export filters and binary compatibility.
In the keynote, Microsoft demonstrated a recompiled-for-ARM Office 2010 running on their Windows-on-ARM demo systems.
It's just Windows CE.
Not at all. It's more akin to Windows NT for MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha chips. They demoed a full-blown version of Windows (Win8 back end with Win7 UI), not a forked, barebones mobile OS.
My setup is similar, though I went with OTA digital broadcast rather than cable. It works great. It also takes a do-it-yourself enthusiast to really set up in the entertainment center in a nice-looking, well-integrated manner. If they release a purpose-built STB based on that software, it'll be much more accessible to users who just want to plug a pretty black box into their TV and have it "just work." HP and Dell have failed to do it on the hardware side, so Microsoft is leveraging its Xbox experience to do it themselves.
From a geek perspective, I get why you'd say "why bother?", but from a market perspective, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to do this. Most consumers aren't going to build their own HTPC to do this. They just want a simple device that they can plug in and use. That's why "I'll just use WMC" isn't the first response everyone has on hearing of something like the Google TV box instead of "wow, that's cool!", and why all my non-techie friends are ridiculously impressed with my setup and have never seen anything like it before. Microsoft has needed to do this for a couple years now, and it's really a smart move if they can market it right. (That last bit has never been their greatest strength, though... as evidenced by all those non-techie friends not realizing that their computers already have the software I'm using built-in.)
Ditto, except for the WiFi bit... I upgraded from an old WM6.5 phone and always left WiFi off there to preserve the battery. With the Focus, I tend to leave it on, so some of my usage has transferred over and I'm down around 500 MB/month rather than my previous 1-2 GB on average.
It should also be noted that AT&T's terminology on their data usage breakdown considers everything as "sent" regardless of the direction of data transfer, since the phone initiated the transaction (as opposed to an incoming text message or phone call). I suspect those 30-50 MB chunks of data "Sent" are most likely downloads, rather than uploads. I'm quite certain I haven't uploaded 458 MB so far in this billing cycle against zero downloads, even though all that usage shows as "Sent." They simply don't break it down into upload/download for you.
My guess would be that the user is probably using apps that pull more data than she realizes, and it's just normal usage.
I read his post not as implying actual conspiracy theories, but as saying that right-wing fear of Net Neutrality laws may be attributable, in part, to an overreaction to statements from Democrats that create a logical connection between Net Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine. Net Neutrality is innocuous, if controversial from a "do we really want more bureaucratic regulations?" perspective, while the Fairness Doctrine is, from the perspective of the right, a dangerous attack on the First Amendment. He's right in noting that such logical ties, if made by the Democrats, would serve only to inflame opposition: if those connections were real (I don't believe they are), then the Republicans should oppose it! I don't know what his sources were or if his quotes were accurate, but the post was implying that the public opinion battle is not helped by extreme-left rhetoric; that doesn't mean that the extreme-left rhetoric is actually true.
I was using hyperbolic language there, but while I agree that nudity alone need not always be sexual, and that non-nude advertising can be more so, in this context a "sex game" is clearly intended to arouse such desires.
No, because sex and violence are hardly comparable.
Normal people don't yearn to kill someone when they see a mangled body. Normal people do yearn to fuck someone when they see a naked body. There's a bit of a difference.
I'm not saying it's good to glorify violence or that sex is evil and violence is not, but pretending that they're analogous categories is just silly.
This is exactly right. DOE issued the following guidance to the national laboratories:
DOE personnel should not access the WikiLeaks or other public websites to view or download the publicized classified information. Doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks/systems.
There has been rumor the information is no longer classified since it is in the public domain. This is NOT true. Executive Order 13526, Section 1.1(4)(c) states “Classified Information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information.”
Despite the circumstances surrounding the WikiLeaks, you must continue to protect similar or identical information commensurate with the level of classification assigned pending a reclassification/declassification by an Original Classification Authority (OCA). To date, this has not occurred.
if the founding fathers were alive today, they would roll their eyes at you and say "will you just shut up and do what makes fiscal sense? the document we wrote is a solid foundation, not a piece of holy scripture you have to be a fundamentalist about"
Which is precisely why they included a means for amending the constitution. They recognized that times would change and the country would not be best served by keeping the document in exactly the same form. If the people would be best served by changing what powers Congress is allowed to exercise over them, that can be done. But the government isn't allowed to merely run slipshod over the freedoms of the people without any restrictions whatsoever.
As for what's really at question, I disagree: the problem is not that insurance is too expensive. The problem is that health care has become so damn expensive that you need insurance to begin with. Making us more dependent on insurance seems to me to be exacerbating the problem rather than solving it, but that's beside the point. There are approaches we could attempt that would really address that, but the debate over what approach is best isn't one that will be solved on/. anyway...
Look: car insurance is mandatory in the USA. If you understand the logic behind that, you understand why health insurance should be mandatory, and not some evil socialist plot to destroy America, blah blah blah, FUD and propaganda paid for by health corporations.
But it's not...
It is mandatory in most states for drivers to carry liability insurance when driving vehicles on public roads. But there's no federal mandate on the subject at all, and even in those states where it is mandatory, the mandate is directly tied to the operation of vehicles on public roadways and does not apply to all citizens. Anyone is free to not own a vehicle, or to own a vehicle and not drive it on the street, and need not carry insurance on it.
A few terrorists wonldn't be able to take over an airplane, not now that the passengers will fight back and the cockpit doors are reinforced. Preventing passengers from bringing things like nail clippers is just asinine.
Not only is that asinine, but it's probably counter-productive to continue to ban things like small pocket knives, given the previous statement about passengers fighting back.
As an AT&T customer who doesn't use iPhones, I'm convinced that the vast majority of the complaints are due to the iPhone's crap antenna. On both my old HP iPaq 614 and my new Samsung Focus, I've repeatedly looked down and seen 2 "bars" of service when iPhone users next to me are dropping calls. It's purely anecdotal experience, but the sheer volume of it is pretty convincing, from my perspective.
I do hope Verizon eventually gets the iPhone, for two reasons: First, it'll get a lot of the whiners off my network and give me even better data speeds, and second, it'll be endlessly amusing to see their reaction to Verizon Math.
There's another explanation: the owners of GM are pushing this for political reasons. Considering the rhetoric about making them make cleaner cars when the bailout occurred, it would be a conspiracy theory to NOT believe that the government had a hand in this.
Your first explanation of economies of scale not being applicable and GM taking a loss now to enable future profits is spot-on. This government conspiracy bit is not. GM told us what their strategy was way back in 2007 when they announced the Volt (in pre-government-bailout days): They want to get to where the vehicles aren't a pollution-emitting device so that they don't have to deal with all the EPA regulations. If they can displace the problem to electricity generation companies, that makes good business sense for them. They'll take a loss now to develop the technology that will benefit them later.
I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of their strategy succeeding to that extent: I think liquid fuels will remain the dominant energy source for vehicles for the foreseeable future, as they have major fundamental advantages (energy density, ease of refueling, infrastructure, etc.), especially given the significant improvements in engine efficiency that are being realized with new technologies (e.g. Ford's EcoBoost engines now; maybe things like HCCI and waste heat recovery systems in the future). But GM's big enough to pursue multiple technology paths at the same time, and it makes business sense for them to establish a leadership position in the EV market if there's a reasonable chance of it ever becoming profitable, even if it remains a niche market and doesn't displace the ICE as the dominant transportation power source.
The only reason IC engines are even competitive with the electric motor is because of the high energy density of the fuel carried on board. If you solve the energy storage problem for the electric motor, there is no way IC engines could compete. Not on efficiency, not on torque, not on emissions, not on noise pollution, nothing. You are held hostage by the fuel tank. Not the IC engine.
Of course, but that's been the case since the advent of horseless carriages, and shows no signs of changing any time soon...
They're not using the Stirling cycle because Stirling engines are very heavy (and have poor transient performance), and are thus a very poor choice for transportation applications.
They're one of several companies looking at opposed-piston (not simply a flat-four, but two pistons per cylinder) two-stroke engines (Achates Power is another significant venture-backed player), because the power-to-weight ratio advantages there are substantial, if issues with lubrication, cooling, and combustion quality can be solved well enough to bring them in line with conventional 4-stroke reciprocating engines in quality.
What possible application could this research be for?
If they're scientists rather than engineers, the obvious answer is, "Who cares?"... Perhaps the most distinguishing aspect of "science" is that it's a search for knowledge for its own sake, not tied to a practical application. Engineering research is generally tied to something practical. Scientific research need not be. That's not to say that scientists never take up research that has practical application, just that the mindset of a scientist is that the practical application isn't the ultimate goal: the knowledge itself is. If you're curious about dog-fur-shaking, research it. That's science.
That said, the dynamics of water droplets on fibrous materials probably aren't well understood, given that there are open questions about the dynamics of liquid films on some solid surfaces [1], and there are numerous applications that could be imagined there - filters, absorptive mats, perhaps new methods of creating sprays using some sort of shaking synthetic fibers, etc. If we only studied the questions for which the technological benefit was directly obvious, we'd still be in the pre-industrial era. I don't know if this particular study was well-designed or will provide useful information, but any knowledge has potential to prove valuable, often in areas not directly related to the question that was being studied initially. These studies may sound silly when explained superficially, but that doesn't mean they're worthless.
[1]The breakup and atomization of the shear-driven fuel film on an intake valve at cold start in a PFI gasoline engine, for example, depends on whether the film will separate from the valve surface when it reaches the corner, or flow around the corner and down the side. This is a relatively simple problem, geometrically, but the interplay of surface tension, viscosity, inertia, and the boundary with the air flow is something that current models really didn't handle at all until a year or two ago - the experimental side of the project is something that a couple of the MS students in my research group were working on while I was in grad school. Something as complicated as how the effect of the frequency of the oscillations of the underlying layer to which fibers are attached affects the behavior of droplets clinging to those fibers is more complex, and thus I would guess it's most likely not understood well at all at the level of being able to explain and model it in detail.
I don't quite follow how a redesigned menu/toolbar system that is intended to reduce the clutter of unused, everpresent toolbar button "features" is evidence of nonfunctional bloat? I'm not saying you have to like the new interface, but how does it argue against the statement you're replying to?
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps TFM misinterpreted the survey question: did they actually ask if people have ever, even once, cursed at their computers, or did they ask something vague like "Do you curse at your computer?" that people could just as easily interpret to mean, "Do you (regularly/as a habit) curse at your computer?" ... TFM doesn't report the wording of the actual question.
It shows around 80 characters of the URL here, and includes both the beginning (before the first /) and the end (.html), ellipting the middle. I don't necessarily like that when compared to the greater width that was available in the status bar, but it's still not entirely useless.
The functionality still exists; it's just been relocated. The hover-over URL preview of a link is now overlaid over the right portion of the address bar. There's some logic to showing the URL in the same place you'd type one in ...
I've had a Samsung Focus for a couple months now. (It's pretty damn nice, by the way; even MS bashers really ought to see one hands-on before writing off WP7 - you might be pleasantly surprised.) Overall, my data usage is only about 2/3 what it was on average with my previous phone, probably largely because I let it connect to WiFi when I'm at home (though most of my usage is when I'm out and about) rather than leaving it off all the time to preserve battery (old phone was almost 3 years old and battery life showed it).
I suspect the core issue here is probably threefold:
1. Misunderstanding AT&T's data usage reporting: The original user who wrote in to Paul Thurrot complaining of it to raise this stink was confused by AT&T's data usage reporting terminology, where all traffic is for some reason classified as "Sent" (i.e. the connection originated on the phone as opposed to an incoming text/call), and thought her phone was uploading massive amounts of data that were largely downloads.
2. New smartphone users not used to normal application data installation/usage spikes as they set up their phones and use them more: Thurrot (who publicized this issue and brought it to MS' attention) has been posting charts on his website of his monthly usage since switching from the iPhone. For the first couple months, his usage increased, then it dropped back down to roughly the average he'd been at before in the most recent month. My interpretation would be that once all the initial syncing/app downloads/playing with the new toy more phase is over, the data usage rate is no different.
3. A bug in large Marketplace downloads when on non-functioning WiFi connections: Some people have reported an issue, where when they are connected to WiFi, but that WiFi connection drops connection to the internet, Marketplace will sometimes fall back and download large (> 20 MB) packages over the 3G connection, when it's supposed to refuse to do so except over WiFi or USB. This is the one real bug that's been found so far in the mix. The rest really looks like user confusion rather than actual malfunction.
And how long were *those* supported? This will survive only until the sales figures demonstrate the pitiful penetration of Windows in the tablet market vs. iPad and Android, then written off (as were the RISC ports) as a bad investment of time/$$$.
Perhaps. I agree, at least, that the standard Windows UI, while great on PC hardware, is ill-suited to tablets and the like and will never make the same inroads in that market that iOS and Android are. I was just correcting the factually incorrect assertions of the parent post, not making any predictions about the likely impact of ARM support in Windows. I don't really know what the target market may end up being.
Without major app vendors jumping in with ARM ports of their x86 portfolios, this will be, like WinPhone 7, too-little-too-late.
Agreed on the need for substantial third-party vendor support for this to be meaningful. I disagree on WP7 being too-little-too-late though. It's actually quite impressive hands-on, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it start gaining marketshare once more people see it in person.
Windows on ARM? That doesn't matter.
Office on ARM is a million times more important - for a start, that suggests you can open your documents on another new platform without having to worry about export filters and binary compatibility.
In the keynote, Microsoft demonstrated a recompiled-for-ARM Office 2010 running on their Windows-on-ARM demo systems.
It's just Windows CE.
Not at all. It's more akin to Windows NT for MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha chips. They demoed a full-blown version of Windows (Win8 back end with Win7 UI), not a forked, barebones mobile OS.
My setup is similar, though I went with OTA digital broadcast rather than cable. It works great. It also takes a do-it-yourself enthusiast to really set up in the entertainment center in a nice-looking, well-integrated manner. If they release a purpose-built STB based on that software, it'll be much more accessible to users who just want to plug a pretty black box into their TV and have it "just work." HP and Dell have failed to do it on the hardware side, so Microsoft is leveraging its Xbox experience to do it themselves.
From a geek perspective, I get why you'd say "why bother?", but from a market perspective, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to do this. Most consumers aren't going to build their own HTPC to do this. They just want a simple device that they can plug in and use. That's why "I'll just use WMC" isn't the first response everyone has on hearing of something like the Google TV box instead of "wow, that's cool!", and why all my non-techie friends are ridiculously impressed with my setup and have never seen anything like it before. Microsoft has needed to do this for a couple years now, and it's really a smart move if they can market it right. (That last bit has never been their greatest strength, though ... as evidenced by all those non-techie friends not realizing that their computers already have the software I'm using built-in.)
Ditto, except for the WiFi bit ... I upgraded from an old WM6.5 phone and always left WiFi off there to preserve the battery. With the Focus, I tend to leave it on, so some of my usage has transferred over and I'm down around 500 MB/month rather than my previous 1-2 GB on average.
It should also be noted that AT&T's terminology on their data usage breakdown considers everything as "sent" regardless of the direction of data transfer, since the phone initiated the transaction (as opposed to an incoming text message or phone call). I suspect those 30-50 MB chunks of data "Sent" are most likely downloads, rather than uploads. I'm quite certain I haven't uploaded 458 MB so far in this billing cycle against zero downloads, even though all that usage shows as "Sent." They simply don't break it down into upload/download for you.
My guess would be that the user is probably using apps that pull more data than she realizes, and it's just normal usage.
(Besides, a fast-moving magnetic pole screws up the UK's Ordinance Survey maps, which are magnetic north aligned.)
Would that be survey maps of local laws, or survey maps whose creation is mandated by law?
I read his post not as implying actual conspiracy theories, but as saying that right-wing fear of Net Neutrality laws may be attributable, in part, to an overreaction to statements from Democrats that create a logical connection between Net Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine. Net Neutrality is innocuous, if controversial from a "do we really want more bureaucratic regulations?" perspective, while the Fairness Doctrine is, from the perspective of the right, a dangerous attack on the First Amendment. He's right in noting that such logical ties, if made by the Democrats, would serve only to inflame opposition: if those connections were real (I don't believe they are), then the Republicans should oppose it! I don't know what his sources were or if his quotes were accurate, but the post was implying that the public opinion battle is not helped by extreme-left rhetoric; that doesn't mean that the extreme-left rhetoric is actually true.
I was using hyperbolic language there, but while I agree that nudity alone need not always be sexual, and that non-nude advertising can be more so, in this context a "sex game" is clearly intended to arouse such desires.
Ever heard of hyperbole?
Anybody else think maybe we have this backwards?
No, because sex and violence are hardly comparable.
Normal people don't yearn to kill someone when they see a mangled body. Normal people do yearn to fuck someone when they see a naked body. There's a bit of a difference.
I'm not saying it's good to glorify violence or that sex is evil and violence is not, but pretending that they're analogous categories is just silly.
This is exactly right. DOE issued the following guidance to the national laboratories:
DOE personnel should not access the WikiLeaks or other public websites to view or download the publicized classified information. Doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks/systems.
There has been rumor the information is no longer classified since it is in the public domain. This is NOT true. Executive Order 13526, Section 1.1(4)(c) states “Classified Information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information.”
Despite the circumstances surrounding the WikiLeaks, you must continue to protect similar or identical information commensurate with the level of classification assigned pending a reclassification/declassification by an Original Classification Authority (OCA). To date, this has not occurred.
if the founding fathers were alive today, they would roll their eyes at you and say "will you just shut up and do what makes fiscal sense? the document we wrote is a solid foundation, not a piece of holy scripture you have to be a fundamentalist about"
Which is precisely why they included a means for amending the constitution. They recognized that times would change and the country would not be best served by keeping the document in exactly the same form. If the people would be best served by changing what powers Congress is allowed to exercise over them, that can be done. But the government isn't allowed to merely run slipshod over the freedoms of the people without any restrictions whatsoever.
As for what's really at question, I disagree: the problem is not that insurance is too expensive. The problem is that health care has become so damn expensive that you need insurance to begin with. Making us more dependent on insurance seems to me to be exacerbating the problem rather than solving it, but that's beside the point. There are approaches we could attempt that would really address that, but the debate over what approach is best isn't one that will be solved on /. anyway ...
Look: car insurance is mandatory in the USA. If you understand the logic behind that, you understand why health insurance should be mandatory, and not some evil socialist plot to destroy America, blah blah blah, FUD and propaganda paid for by health corporations.
But it's not ...
It is mandatory in most states for drivers to carry liability insurance when driving vehicles on public roads. But there's no federal mandate on the subject at all, and even in those states where it is mandatory, the mandate is directly tied to the operation of vehicles on public roadways and does not apply to all citizens. Anyone is free to not own a vehicle, or to own a vehicle and not drive it on the street, and need not carry insurance on it.
A few terrorists wonldn't be able to take over an airplane, not now that the passengers will fight back and the cockpit doors are reinforced. Preventing passengers from bringing things like nail clippers is just asinine.
Not only is that asinine, but it's probably counter-productive to continue to ban things like small pocket knives, given the previous statement about passengers fighting back.
As an AT&T customer who doesn't use iPhones, I'm convinced that the vast majority of the complaints are due to the iPhone's crap antenna. On both my old HP iPaq 614 and my new Samsung Focus, I've repeatedly looked down and seen 2 "bars" of service when iPhone users next to me are dropping calls. It's purely anecdotal experience, but the sheer volume of it is pretty convincing, from my perspective.
I do hope Verizon eventually gets the iPhone, for two reasons: First, it'll get a lot of the whiners off my network and give me even better data speeds, and second, it'll be endlessly amusing to see their reaction to Verizon Math.
Maybe he's following so closely that the right side of the car in front of him is outside his field of vision...
There's another explanation: the owners of GM are pushing this for political reasons. Considering the rhetoric about making them make cleaner cars when the bailout occurred, it would be a conspiracy theory to NOT believe that the government had a hand in this.
Your first explanation of economies of scale not being applicable and GM taking a loss now to enable future profits is spot-on. This government conspiracy bit is not. GM told us what their strategy was way back in 2007 when they announced the Volt (in pre-government-bailout days): They want to get to where the vehicles aren't a pollution-emitting device so that they don't have to deal with all the EPA regulations. If they can displace the problem to electricity generation companies, that makes good business sense for them. They'll take a loss now to develop the technology that will benefit them later.
I have serious doubts as to the likelihood of their strategy succeeding to that extent: I think liquid fuels will remain the dominant energy source for vehicles for the foreseeable future, as they have major fundamental advantages (energy density, ease of refueling, infrastructure, etc.), especially given the significant improvements in engine efficiency that are being realized with new technologies (e.g. Ford's EcoBoost engines now; maybe things like HCCI and waste heat recovery systems in the future). But GM's big enough to pursue multiple technology paths at the same time, and it makes business sense for them to establish a leadership position in the EV market if there's a reasonable chance of it ever becoming profitable, even if it remains a niche market and doesn't displace the ICE as the dominant transportation power source.
The only reason IC engines are even competitive with the electric motor is because of the high energy density of the fuel carried on board. If you solve the energy storage problem for the electric motor, there is no way IC engines could compete. Not on efficiency, not on torque, not on emissions, not on noise pollution, nothing. You are held hostage by the fuel tank. Not the IC engine.
Of course, but that's been the case since the advent of horseless carriages, and shows no signs of changing any time soon ...
They're not using the Stirling cycle because Stirling engines are very heavy (and have poor transient performance), and are thus a very poor choice for transportation applications.
They're one of several companies looking at opposed-piston (not simply a flat-four, but two pistons per cylinder) two-stroke engines (Achates Power is another significant venture-backed player), because the power-to-weight ratio advantages there are substantial, if issues with lubrication, cooling, and combustion quality can be solved well enough to bring them in line with conventional 4-stroke reciprocating engines in quality.
What possible application could this research be for?
If they're scientists rather than engineers, the obvious answer is, "Who cares?" ... Perhaps the most distinguishing aspect of "science" is that it's a search for knowledge for its own sake, not tied to a practical application. Engineering research is generally tied to something practical. Scientific research need not be. That's not to say that scientists never take up research that has practical application, just that the mindset of a scientist is that the practical application isn't the ultimate goal: the knowledge itself is. If you're curious about dog-fur-shaking, research it. That's science.
That said, the dynamics of water droplets on fibrous materials probably aren't well understood, given that there are open questions about the dynamics of liquid films on some solid surfaces [1], and there are numerous applications that could be imagined there - filters, absorptive mats, perhaps new methods of creating sprays using some sort of shaking synthetic fibers, etc. If we only studied the questions for which the technological benefit was directly obvious, we'd still be in the pre-industrial era. I don't know if this particular study was well-designed or will provide useful information, but any knowledge has potential to prove valuable, often in areas not directly related to the question that was being studied initially. These studies may sound silly when explained superficially, but that doesn't mean they're worthless.
[1]The breakup and atomization of the shear-driven fuel film on an intake valve at cold start in a PFI gasoline engine, for example, depends on whether the film will separate from the valve surface when it reaches the corner, or flow around the corner and down the side. This is a relatively simple problem, geometrically, but the interplay of surface tension, viscosity, inertia, and the boundary with the air flow is something that current models really didn't handle at all until a year or two ago - the experimental side of the project is something that a couple of the MS students in my research group were working on while I was in grad school. Something as complicated as how the effect of the frequency of the oscillations of the underlying layer to which fibers are attached affects the behavior of droplets clinging to those fibers is more complex, and thus I would guess it's most likely not understood well at all at the level of being able to explain and model it in detail.
I don't quite follow how a redesigned menu/toolbar system that is intended to reduce the clutter of unused, everpresent toolbar button "features" is evidence of nonfunctional bloat? I'm not saying you have to like the new interface, but how does it argue against the statement you're replying to?
Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes.
Neither did any of the users who were forced to try to use it.