So the metric system is based on science, while the Imperial system is based on the crap someone could find in their near vicinity to measure with, like the nearest stone, hand, foot, or how long their horse could ride before working up a sweat. I would suggest then the modern Imperial measurement system is based on American football field lengths, amount of concrete in a sidewalk between New York and Chicago, Phelps sized swimming pools, and how far their Hemi V8 engine can drive before requiring a tank-up. You know, the stuff God gave us to measure with instead of some bullshit sciencey mumbo-jumbo.
Also what Luddite Amish cave dweller thinks this stuff doesn't already exist today? I've had an automated torrent and archiving system for years. I can also wave my hands in front of the faucet of my bathroom and water comes out of it automagically.
Managers do this already, its called Agile Software Development where instead of measuring hour they create some bullshit standard of size that measures productivity sprint after sprint. In theory with Agile time is irrelevant as long as you complete your bullshit amount of work, but managers always find ways to increase the bullshit velocity of a team so they have to put in more hours to achieve higher levels of bullshit.
Agile works well for 80% of a project until a manager realizes the team is way behind schedule and then force teams to increase their velocity kicking up overtime hours and reducing software quality as everyone rushes to get more bullhit done, which is exactly the same outcome of the waterfall approach that Agile is supposed to replace.
while the general opinion here is that working long hours does not improve productivity in software development, most of the people commenting here are cave geeks that put in 12+ hour days anyways. A smart manager realizes that forcing a cave geek to work 12 hours days will cause dissention, but giving them the freedom to set their set their own hours will pay back in high productivity because the cave geek really doesn't want to leave their workstations.
that the value of a company is bullshit compared to the reality of what a company is actually worth. This is why the world's economy is in the tank, because there is a huge disconnect from the fantasy numbers that get thrown around and the stocks traded on compared to the real value of a company.
Why should space only be allowed for government use with limitless budgets?
I think that what the governments lack is innovation and a necessity to try and perform on a tighter budget. Governments are not concerned about such mundane things as profit and minimizing operating expenses. If the US wants to go to Mars, then they just jack up taxes and send spacecraft that were invented in the 1950s to Mars.
On the other hand, private corporations have a responsibility to perform on a budget. They have a vested interest in innovation and improving upon the technology that was first introduced in the 50's. Private corporations will open up space for all of us because of a necessity to monetize space, whether for industry, tourism, or science, as opposed to simply firing trillions of dollars up there over the decades with no real benefit or contributions back to society.
Yes initially space will only be available to the 1% at first, but privatizing space gets all of us closer to it then what NASA and other world governments have achieve in the last 60 years of space exploration. Governments have had zero agenda to bring space to the rest of us, and instead waste our tax paying dollars sending a select few to poke around up there, take some space pictures and find out some kind of simple celled organism can survive in a vacuum or there is water on another planet. So what?
I know one friend that severely limits "screen time" for their infant and the infant has been slow to pick up speaking skills and only kind of babbles at the age of 3. On the other hand I have a friend whose child has watched children TV since before the age of one and will talk your ear off, and you can actually understand her, at the age of 3.
I am tired of the idea that TV is a bad influence on children and that arrogant smug hipsters need to find studies that support the idea that TV is bad. Using TV like a babysitter where a child is sat in front of for 8+ hours a day is not good parenting, period. However using TV as a resource of visual and auditory stimulus as the infant's brain develops along with other good parenting practices like reading books and engaging children in conversation and other activities suggests that TV can be part of an effective learning enrichment campaign.
The reality is there are good parents and bad parents. Children watching TV in a home of bad parents are going to develop bad viewing habits and become lazy and addicted to TV and video games and develop poorly and get fat. Children watching TV in a home of good parents will develop quickly and do well in school and life in general.
I am tired of bad parents finding and using excuses for their reasons why their children suck. I am also tired of books and magazines that create smug bad parents that feel they child should grow up in a protective bubble devoid intellectual stimulus because they feel TV and other forms of entertainment are beneath them. There should be more studies on the effects of ignorant and lazy parents that have no real interest in raising their kids and instead turn to vices to keep them occupied while these "parents" selfishly go about their life as if children are an inconvenience to them.
Who the hell cares about web standards, seriously? Since the WWW was invented there have been competing browsers and platforms and any decent web developer worth their salt simply accept the fact that they have to do a little more work to support different platforms.
Not a year goes by without some statement about the need for cross platform standardization of the web, yet for 20 years nothing has changed or achieved that standard.
But in the meantime these VERY SAME companies are all trying to create walled gardens where the content you buy/download on one device locks you into using that device for the rest of time, or you have to accept the loss of hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars to change platforms and give it all up just to re-purchase it all again.
The only reason why these companies give a rat's ass about web standards is because there is absolutely no monetary amount involved in this. These companies are all in a circle jerk to promote "standards: simply because it will not affect their bottom line. There is no monetary gain in producing a proprietary web standard and so all these companies are blowing hard coming off like heroes creating an irrelevant standards platform.
The web is simply a vehicle to allow these companies to create their walled gardens and I can't believe consumers are willfully accepting a reality where just because they liked the shininess of a particular device a few years ago locks them into a content platform for the rest of time.
Anyone hailing the efforts of these companies to create a standard web is completely oblivious to common sense and gullible to the highest degree. The web is irrelevant, content is king, and these companies would rather slaughter each other then create a standard content platform.
How about stop using Gmail? Seriously you think you are entitled to a right to privacy by volunteering to use Gmail? If you really care about the content of your email, set up your own email server.
You can't opt to use someone's services and then dictate how those services should be offered, it goes the other way around.
iPad Mini market is clearly for home users looking for an entertainment platform.
Windows 8 tablets are aimed squarely at the enterprise crowd.
Simply put, iPad has had a slow adoption into the enterprise world due to a real lack of compatibility with the Microsoft systems STILL IN HEAVY usage in enterprise. People can shit on Microsoft all they want for no longer capturing the consumer market, but Microsoft is still king in enterprise. People bring an iPad into the office expecting a large amount of compromise in functionality, and tolerate it because they are driving to finding a way to make iPad work in the office.
However it is a far more natural progression for enterprise users to get a Windows tablet the blends seamlessly with their office environment. In fact I suspect that WIndows 8 Tablets will truly mark the end of the "PC" era as enterprise users swap out desktops for tablets. The only reason for PC's to exist today is mostly to support enterprise workstations.
iPad Mini is not an enterprise product.
Sure if MIcrosoft is hoping to open up their market share in consumer electronics, Windows 8 will find it hard to compete with any iDevice, but even then there will be more variety and price points of Windows 8 tablets then Apple products, as has been historically for the entire history of Microsoft and Apple. Once again Microsoft is entering a market where Apple makes expensive niche products and Microsoft will focus on more value mainstream products. Just that this time around Apple's "niche" is significantly larger.
Don't be mistaken, Apple is VERY worried about the release of a Microsoft tablet product, just like they are worried about Android phones. Remember that for every iSheeple that must have everything Apple, there many more people that can't stand Apple or at least want to have more value conscious choices. Microsoft is poised to offer an alternative that is more easily adoptable by enterprise users and more attractive to value conscious consumers in the long run.
So many people assume that 3D printer's can replicate retails goods that match in terms of quality and performance, and that just is not the case.
There is a correlation between the cost of the output and the quality you expect.
Most "home" 3D printing solutions use cheap plastic and are intended more as novelties rather than creating functional products out of. Professionals generally used 3D printers for rapid prototyping and testing designs rather than producing actual retail quality output.
In situations where companies are using 3D printers for actual retail product, these systems cost millions and the materials put into them also cost significantly more than the average hobbyist can afford.
Will it get better? Is this a technology that will improve over time?
NOT AT ALL.
Consider actually producing a gun that can work safely and reliably. The materials need to be high performing and product something that simply will not fail. So cheap plastic is out of the question. Printing a metal gun at home means you will spend thousands on the material to feed into the printer making the idea of printing a gun at home logistically retarded. Sure you might be able to produce something that looks like a gun, maybe even fires a bullet, but I would stake my life that I could protect myself or use it without it misfiring or exploding in my hand.
Consider printing a bike at home. You need a system capable of building a carbon or metal frame large enough to accommodate an adult. Building it piecemeal out of smaller components will result in a heavier bike that requires more welds or joinery which means you will produce something inferior to what you can buy in store. Again you can build something that looks like a bike, but would not be something people would want to use.
Now consider the idea of printing a "car" at home? To print a functional engine block alone requires 100's of pounds of metal material and a printer system capable of supporting 100's of pounds of engine block while it is being printed. There is simply no advancement in "home" printing technology that is going to make that feasible.
Today's FAD of 3D printing is nothing more than just that, a fad. The technology has become inexpensive enough to get into the hands of hobbyist, but that is where it will remain. Hobbyists making novelty items. Sure there may be markets that will be devastated by the advent of home 3D printing, such as dollar stores selling cheap garbage that only works once or twice, but in general it just boils down to the fact that you are not going to clone retail goods for cheaper then what a factory is going to produce out of the convenience of your home.
I don't mean to shit on anyone's parade but people are walking around with your pants down and need to be told that the reality of printing anything you want at home is a hopeless dream where the reality simply is either you will never produce something of quality OR it will be too expensive then just buying it outright.
And not make an all-electric "most boring shit of a car on the planet", then I would be happy.
Seriously Toyota and Honda create some of the most boring cars in the history of automobiles. They have boring designs and boring engines and boring performance and handling. People that drive the majority of cars from these fleets pay more for something that speaks volumes of how these people have no style or excitement in their lives. When I think of Accord or Camry, I think of 60 year old retires driving 40km under the speed limit. When I think of Civic and Corolla I think of university grads that haven't developed a life yet.
Toyota dropped an "all-electric" vehicle roll out citing that is little demand for electric vehicles world-wide. That is entirely NOT true. There is just little demand for the kind of crap Toyota has been rolling out as hybrids and electric cars over the years.
I mean, companies like Kia and Hyundai are at least TRYING to add excitement to their cars with innovative design and packing them with tonnes of features you can't even get as an option in a Honda or Toyota, but most Toyota and Honda have to be about the most boring car companies on the planet for style and performance, definitely 2nd and 3rd after VW whose only saving grace is allowing you to pick a peppy engine as an option on most of their boring derivative vehicles.
If you are going to make an all-electric vehicle then please make a statement, not convert some tired piece of shit driven by the most boring people on the planet.
There is no reason for today's cellphones to cost more than many desktop/laptop computers. What is happening is that customers have created a market of high demand in which they are willing to pay more for these products out of perceived value than actual value. Also consider how highly subsidized phones are by cell companies to lock you into their excessively priced multi-year contracts and you realize that the market prices are completely driven by customers wants.
There is not a single customer out their that is getting screwed over by all these lawsuits. If a new generation of iPhone or Galaxy costs more than the last generation because of the cost of the lawsuits and settlements, and there are still millions of iTwits or gTwits lining up to buy them, then that is what drives up the cost of cellphones. Nobody forces you to buy something for more money then its worth, as a consumer you have complete control of where you money goes. Just that most people absolutely believe they need an upgraded iPhone or Galaxy when in reality there is actually very little differences between generations other than a new marketing spin. If Apple knows they can make an iPhone in a different case and have millions of people dump their 6 month old phone and re-buy the same thing then they are going to take full advantage of those people. That is capitalism 101 in a nutshell. Demand > Supply, $ Supply > $ Value.
Finally consider that Apple and Samsung make like 2x more profit than the cost to actually produce the device, they have more than a little slush room to absorb high legal costs.
The market bares what the market can bare, as long as people are willing to spend more for a cellphone then companies are going to charge whatever the hell they want for a phone. When people stop upgrading every 6 months and companies CAN'T cell millions of a product on its release weekend then you will see prices match closer to actual value. Just look at how the cost of PC's have bottomed out! Nobody wants them anymore and companies can't give them away.
Consumers can be smarter by buying last generation phones when they are being liquidated by these companies, or just NOT buying phones on day one.
If Samsung's claims are legit then they should pursue this as fully as possible.
Apple has created a hostile market that inhibits innovation by suing anybody with anything that resembles Apple's IP. While Samsung obviously lifted some design cues from iPhone, overall I don't think anything Samsung has done would make an Apple iPhone user switch over to a Samsung Android phone, so I thought the Apple lawsuit was petty and vindictive. Apple is doing a better job of moving people to Android then Samsung is capable of. Apple has to realize that there are at least 3 to 1 people that hate Apple and everything they do which means that Android will ALWAYS be a larger platform than Apple, just like Windows was always a larger platform than Mac. Apple never cared when Microsoft lifted UI designs, so why should they care when Samsung does the same thing.
So, if Samsung has valid claims then Apple should get a taste of their own medicine. Banning iPhone 5 sales, even for a few days during the holiday season would be a big blow to Apple, and if Samsung's claims are found justified and Apple has also infringed on other people's patents, then maybe people will wake up and see Apple for what they are.
However I have the distinct feeling that Samsung's claims are thin and flimsy and more out of spite and pettiness. I fully support legal action where it's justified, but the arguments between two petulant parties does nobody any good.
I live in a city where adults love to bike to work, and its very annoying.
Even among adults, few respect the rules of the road, and there hasn't been a week that has gone by where the radio hasn't reported about some bike vs vehicle accident. Of course the cyclists believe that its always the car drivers fault, but I mean, you are in a dense urban environment with heavy commuter traffic combined with the fact that few municipalities actually build adequate bike lanes and routes; its just common sense that even if both cyclist and driver are exercising adequate caution statistics suggest a cyclist is going to be hit by a car, and you know damn well the people in the car are not going to be affected by it.
What is even more frustrating is that I live in a Canadian city where there is snow on the ground 3 - 4 months of the year. I find it absolutely retarded when I see a cyclist on a snow covered, slushy, icy road in the middle of winter. There is no valid reason to risk your life in the middle of winter driving a bike. Your bike cannot handle icy roads well, and cars can't stop on a dime on icy roads either. You are playing with a high risk or injury or death for some petulant reason to commute in the winter on a bike and I think it should downright be outlawed.
Adults have to grow up. Bikes are for recreation and kids, NOT commuter vehicles. Risking your life to get to work just to save a little on gas, somehow believe you are saving the world, or for fitness is just not worth it. Take public transportation or carpool to save the planet and then after work take your bike to an off-road trail or exercise at a gym for health.
I can understand if cities build better dedicated bike routes through the city which mostly avoid heavy traffic routes, then by all means take a bike to work. But bikes are NOT a safe or adequate solution for commuters and its pretty damn juvenile for an adult to get on their bike everyday and expect the world around them to protect their interests.
So first they are not sugar batteries, but batteries with anodes made of carbon derived from sugar. Second, the poster feels they will be good for disolvable electronics for the body, but again you are not disolving sugar but some carbonized derivative of sugar which is probably actually toxic to the body.
Its an epic fail when a \. post doesn't RTFA nor understand the article they are posting.
Ive's should appologize next for designing a phone in the 21st century that scratches when it goes into its retail packaging when most of their cometition seemed to have firgured out how to create pretty durable products.
In less then one year after Job's died they ruined any legacy Steve hoped to leave behind. They took the last few products Steve had involvement in and turned them into mediocre jokes.
How can anyone take anything Cook and Ives say seriously now when they hold their hat's in their hands, kick a few rocks by their feet and say "Gosh sorry folks, the product sucks, we really didn't see this coming". I mean the next time Cook takes a jab at their competition in a keynote address it should be met with overt snickering. The next Ives white background video going on about how perfect his product is should be taken offline as an overt lie.
Is this the new then Apple, implement 3rd party products and then blame them when they are shit?
Apple chose to use an inferior quality material for the iPhone 5 which cannot even leave the factory without scratches and marks. They also clearly choose an inferior source of mapping data.
I mean why didn't Apple just use Google Maps data but build their own skin over it? Apple claimed yesterday they dropped Google Maps because Google didn't want to provide voice navigation, but Google is also simply a repository of a rich dataset of map data you can license sans UI.
Apple made very clear and bad choices for the iPhone 5 and it has nothing to do with the 3rd parties they partnered with. They chose to cripple a product to separate ties with what they perceive as the enemy. No way I will defend a company that chose to cripple their product on purpose out of spite.
Steve Jobs said he wanted to destroy the Android platform when it was first released and Apple has been on that vendetta ever since.
Apple used Google while it suited them to provide features Apple couldn't produce but are necessary for a mobile phone.
Once Apple got their mapping product close to ready (but far far from being ready), they ditched Google, pure and simple.
Apple doesn't like Google, Apple wants nothing to do with Google, and Apple created some bullshit excuse to cover up the fact they are separating ties with "their enemies".
I guarantee that Apple will be filing some massive lawsuit against Google in 2013 concerning Android and it doesn't make sense to maintain any licensing agreement with them, just like Apple has reduced the use of Samsung parts so they can pursue legal actions against Samsung.
Why are people so ready to eat Apple's bullshit. Apple has been streaming a steady load of bullshit since the release of the iPhone 5 to cover up the fiasco that it is. They used inferior materials to build the thing, inferior labor to make the thing, and included inferior software to distance themselves from the rest of their competitors in the mobile marketplace.
It is VERY obvious that with the passing of Steve Jobs Apple can no longer compete through innovation so now Apple is switching to a business model of suing competitors to maintain market share. Google is clearly in Apple's targets.
Apple has become rotten to the core and people have to stop thinking they are an innovative company at the top of their game. A company willing to cripple their products out of a fit of petulance and jealousy is not a company whose products people should be proud owners of.
All this is is Google not supporting export of Docs in antiquated Office formats. Meaning that the docs are originally in Google's format and the option to bring them to your desktop will not allow you to pick old formats. If you had uploaded a file to Google's clouds service in whatever format you uploaded it as, it will happily download in that same format.
If you are still using old versions of Microsoft Office, consider upgrading, its time to retire your 10+ year old software, you got your money's worth out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
We really going to stir up this old pot again?
So the metric system is based on science, while the Imperial system is based on the crap someone could find in their near vicinity to measure with, like the nearest stone, hand, foot, or how long their horse could ride before working up a sweat. I would suggest then the modern Imperial measurement system is based on American football field lengths, amount of concrete in a sidewalk between New York and Chicago, Phelps sized swimming pools, and how far their Hemi V8 engine can drive before requiring a tank-up. You know, the stuff God gave us to measure with instead of some bullshit sciencey mumbo-jumbo.
Also what Luddite Amish cave dweller thinks this stuff doesn't already exist today? I've had an automated torrent and archiving system for years. I can also wave my hands in front of the faucet of my bathroom and water comes out of it automagically.
Managers do this already, its called Agile Software Development where instead of measuring hour they create some bullshit standard of size that measures productivity sprint after sprint. In theory with Agile time is irrelevant as long as you complete your bullshit amount of work, but managers always find ways to increase the bullshit velocity of a team so they have to put in more hours to achieve higher levels of bullshit.
Agile works well for 80% of a project until a manager realizes the team is way behind schedule and then force teams to increase their velocity kicking up overtime hours and reducing software quality as everyone rushes to get more bullhit done, which is exactly the same outcome of the waterfall approach that Agile is supposed to replace.
while the general opinion here is that working long hours does not improve productivity in software development, most of the people commenting here are cave geeks that put in 12+ hour days anyways. A smart manager realizes that forcing a cave geek to work 12 hours days will cause dissention, but giving them the freedom to set their set their own hours will pay back in high productivity because the cave geek really doesn't want to leave their workstations.
that the value of a company is bullshit compared to the reality of what a company is actually worth. This is why the world's economy is in the tank, because there is a huge disconnect from the fantasy numbers that get thrown around and the stocks traded on compared to the real value of a company.
Why not?
Why should space only be allowed for government use with limitless budgets?
I think that what the governments lack is innovation and a necessity to try and perform on a tighter budget. Governments are not concerned about such mundane things as profit and minimizing operating expenses. If the US wants to go to Mars, then they just jack up taxes and send spacecraft that were invented in the 1950s to Mars.
On the other hand, private corporations have a responsibility to perform on a budget. They have a vested interest in innovation and improving upon the technology that was first introduced in the 50's. Private corporations will open up space for all of us because of a necessity to monetize space, whether for industry, tourism, or science, as opposed to simply firing trillions of dollars up there over the decades with no real benefit or contributions back to society.
Yes initially space will only be available to the 1% at first, but privatizing space gets all of us closer to it then what NASA and other world governments have achieve in the last 60 years of space exploration. Governments have had zero agenda to bring space to the rest of us, and instead waste our tax paying dollars sending a select few to poke around up there, take some space pictures and find out some kind of simple celled organism can survive in a vacuum or there is water on another planet. So what?
I know one friend that severely limits "screen time" for their infant and the infant has been slow to pick up speaking skills and only kind of babbles at the age of 3. On the other hand I have a friend whose child has watched children TV since before the age of one and will talk your ear off, and you can actually understand her, at the age of 3.
I am tired of the idea that TV is a bad influence on children and that arrogant smug hipsters need to find studies that support the idea that TV is bad. Using TV like a babysitter where a child is sat in front of for 8+ hours a day is not good parenting, period. However using TV as a resource of visual and auditory stimulus as the infant's brain develops along with other good parenting practices like reading books and engaging children in conversation and other activities suggests that TV can be part of an effective learning enrichment campaign.
The reality is there are good parents and bad parents. Children watching TV in a home of bad parents are going to develop bad viewing habits and become lazy and addicted to TV and video games and develop poorly and get fat. Children watching TV in a home of good parents will develop quickly and do well in school and life in general.
I am tired of bad parents finding and using excuses for their reasons why their children suck. I am also tired of books and magazines that create smug bad parents that feel they child should grow up in a protective bubble devoid intellectual stimulus because they feel TV and other forms of entertainment are beneath them. There should be more studies on the effects of ignorant and lazy parents that have no real interest in raising their kids and instead turn to vices to keep them occupied while these "parents" selfishly go about their life as if children are an inconvenience to them.
Who the hell cares about web standards, seriously? Since the WWW was invented there have been competing browsers and platforms and any decent web developer worth their salt simply accept the fact that they have to do a little more work to support different platforms.
Not a year goes by without some statement about the need for cross platform standardization of the web, yet for 20 years nothing has changed or achieved that standard.
But in the meantime these VERY SAME companies are all trying to create walled gardens where the content you buy/download on one device locks you into using that device for the rest of time, or you have to accept the loss of hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars to change platforms and give it all up just to re-purchase it all again.
The only reason why these companies give a rat's ass about web standards is because there is absolutely no monetary amount involved in this. These companies are all in a circle jerk to promote "standards: simply because it will not affect their bottom line. There is no monetary gain in producing a proprietary web standard and so all these companies are blowing hard coming off like heroes creating an irrelevant standards platform.
The web is simply a vehicle to allow these companies to create their walled gardens and I can't believe consumers are willfully accepting a reality where just because they liked the shininess of a particular device a few years ago locks them into a content platform for the rest of time.
Anyone hailing the efforts of these companies to create a standard web is completely oblivious to common sense and gullible to the highest degree. The web is irrelevant, content is king, and these companies would rather slaughter each other then create a standard content platform.
How about stop using Gmail? Seriously you think you are entitled to a right to privacy by volunteering to use Gmail? If you really care about the content of your email, set up your own email server.
You can't opt to use someone's services and then dictate how those services should be offered, it goes the other way around.
So?
iPad Mini market is clearly for home users looking for an entertainment platform.
Windows 8 tablets are aimed squarely at the enterprise crowd.
Simply put, iPad has had a slow adoption into the enterprise world due to a real lack of compatibility with the Microsoft systems STILL IN HEAVY usage in enterprise. People can shit on Microsoft all they want for no longer capturing the consumer market, but Microsoft is still king in enterprise. People bring an iPad into the office expecting a large amount of compromise in functionality, and tolerate it because they are driving to finding a way to make iPad work in the office.
However it is a far more natural progression for enterprise users to get a Windows tablet the blends seamlessly with their office environment. In fact I suspect that WIndows 8 Tablets will truly mark the end of the "PC" era as enterprise users swap out desktops for tablets. The only reason for PC's to exist today is mostly to support enterprise workstations.
iPad Mini is not an enterprise product.
Sure if MIcrosoft is hoping to open up their market share in consumer electronics, Windows 8 will find it hard to compete with any iDevice, but even then there will be more variety and price points of Windows 8 tablets then Apple products, as has been historically for the entire history of Microsoft and Apple. Once again Microsoft is entering a market where Apple makes expensive niche products and Microsoft will focus on more value mainstream products. Just that this time around Apple's "niche" is significantly larger.
Don't be mistaken, Apple is VERY worried about the release of a Microsoft tablet product, just like they are worried about Android phones. Remember that for every iSheeple that must have everything Apple, there many more people that can't stand Apple or at least want to have more value conscious choices. Microsoft is poised to offer an alternative that is more easily adoptable by enterprise users and more attractive to value conscious consumers in the long run.
So many people assume that 3D printer's can replicate retails goods that match in terms of quality and performance, and that just is not the case.
There is a correlation between the cost of the output and the quality you expect.
Most "home" 3D printing solutions use cheap plastic and are intended more as novelties rather than creating functional products out of. Professionals generally used 3D printers for rapid prototyping and testing designs rather than producing actual retail quality output.
In situations where companies are using 3D printers for actual retail product, these systems cost millions and the materials put into them also cost significantly more than the average hobbyist can afford.
Will it get better? Is this a technology that will improve over time?
NOT AT ALL.
Consider actually producing a gun that can work safely and reliably. The materials need to be high performing and product something that simply will not fail. So cheap plastic is out of the question. Printing a metal gun at home means you will spend thousands on the material to feed into the printer making the idea of printing a gun at home logistically retarded. Sure you might be able to produce something that looks like a gun, maybe even fires a bullet, but I would stake my life that I could protect myself or use it without it misfiring or exploding in my hand.
Consider printing a bike at home. You need a system capable of building a carbon or metal frame large enough to accommodate an adult. Building it piecemeal out of smaller components will result in a heavier bike that requires more welds or joinery which means you will produce something inferior to what you can buy in store. Again you can build something that looks like a bike, but would not be something people would want to use.
Now consider the idea of printing a "car" at home? To print a functional engine block alone requires 100's of pounds of metal material and a printer system capable of supporting 100's of pounds of engine block while it is being printed. There is simply no advancement in "home" printing technology that is going to make that feasible.
Today's FAD of 3D printing is nothing more than just that, a fad. The technology has become inexpensive enough to get into the hands of hobbyist, but that is where it will remain. Hobbyists making novelty items. Sure there may be markets that will be devastated by the advent of home 3D printing, such as dollar stores selling cheap garbage that only works once or twice, but in general it just boils down to the fact that you are not going to clone retail goods for cheaper then what a factory is going to produce out of the convenience of your home.
I don't mean to shit on anyone's parade but people are walking around with your pants down and need to be told that the reality of printing anything you want at home is a hopeless dream where the reality simply is either you will never produce something of quality OR it will be too expensive then just buying it outright.
And not make an all-electric "most boring shit of a car on the planet", then I would be happy.
Seriously Toyota and Honda create some of the most boring cars in the history of automobiles. They have boring designs and boring engines and boring performance and handling. People that drive the majority of cars from these fleets pay more for something that speaks volumes of how these people have no style or excitement in their lives. When I think of Accord or Camry, I think of 60 year old retires driving 40km under the speed limit. When I think of Civic and Corolla I think of university grads that haven't developed a life yet.
Toyota dropped an "all-electric" vehicle roll out citing that is little demand for electric vehicles world-wide. That is entirely NOT true. There is just little demand for the kind of crap Toyota has been rolling out as hybrids and electric cars over the years.
I mean, companies like Kia and Hyundai are at least TRYING to add excitement to their cars with innovative design and packing them with tonnes of features you can't even get as an option in a Honda or Toyota, but most Toyota and Honda have to be about the most boring car companies on the planet for style and performance, definitely 2nd and 3rd after VW whose only saving grace is allowing you to pick a peppy engine as an option on most of their boring derivative vehicles.
If you are going to make an all-electric vehicle then please make a statement, not convert some tired piece of shit driven by the most boring people on the planet.
No buddy, customers are driving up phone costs.
There is no reason for today's cellphones to cost more than many desktop/laptop computers. What is happening is that customers have created a market of high demand in which they are willing to pay more for these products out of perceived value than actual value. Also consider how highly subsidized phones are by cell companies to lock you into their excessively priced multi-year contracts and you realize that the market prices are completely driven by customers wants.
There is not a single customer out their that is getting screwed over by all these lawsuits. If a new generation of iPhone or Galaxy costs more than the last generation because of the cost of the lawsuits and settlements, and there are still millions of iTwits or gTwits lining up to buy them, then that is what drives up the cost of cellphones. Nobody forces you to buy something for more money then its worth, as a consumer you have complete control of where you money goes. Just that most people absolutely believe they need an upgraded iPhone or Galaxy when in reality there is actually very little differences between generations other than a new marketing spin. If Apple knows they can make an iPhone in a different case and have millions of people dump their 6 month old phone and re-buy the same thing then they are going to take full advantage of those people. That is capitalism 101 in a nutshell. Demand > Supply, $ Supply > $ Value.
Finally consider that Apple and Samsung make like 2x more profit than the cost to actually produce the device, they have more than a little slush room to absorb high legal costs.
The market bares what the market can bare, as long as people are willing to spend more for a cellphone then companies are going to charge whatever the hell they want for a phone. When people stop upgrading every 6 months and companies CAN'T cell millions of a product on its release weekend then you will see prices match closer to actual value. Just look at how the cost of PC's have bottomed out! Nobody wants them anymore and companies can't give them away.
Consumers can be smarter by buying last generation phones when they are being liquidated by these companies, or just NOT buying phones on day one.
If Samsung's claims are legit then they should pursue this as fully as possible.
Apple has created a hostile market that inhibits innovation by suing anybody with anything that resembles Apple's IP. While Samsung obviously lifted some design cues from iPhone, overall I don't think anything Samsung has done would make an Apple iPhone user switch over to a Samsung Android phone, so I thought the Apple lawsuit was petty and vindictive. Apple is doing a better job of moving people to Android then Samsung is capable of. Apple has to realize that there are at least 3 to 1 people that hate Apple and everything they do which means that Android will ALWAYS be a larger platform than Apple, just like Windows was always a larger platform than Mac. Apple never cared when Microsoft lifted UI designs, so why should they care when Samsung does the same thing.
So, if Samsung has valid claims then Apple should get a taste of their own medicine. Banning iPhone 5 sales, even for a few days during the holiday season would be a big blow to Apple, and if Samsung's claims are found justified and Apple has also infringed on other people's patents, then maybe people will wake up and see Apple for what they are.
However I have the distinct feeling that Samsung's claims are thin and flimsy and more out of spite and pettiness. I fully support legal action where it's justified, but the arguments between two petulant parties does nobody any good.
I live in a city where adults love to bike to work, and its very annoying.
Even among adults, few respect the rules of the road, and there hasn't been a week that has gone by where the radio hasn't reported about some bike vs vehicle accident. Of course the cyclists believe that its always the car drivers fault, but I mean, you are in a dense urban environment with heavy commuter traffic combined with the fact that few municipalities actually build adequate bike lanes and routes; its just common sense that even if both cyclist and driver are exercising adequate caution statistics suggest a cyclist is going to be hit by a car, and you know damn well the people in the car are not going to be affected by it.
What is even more frustrating is that I live in a Canadian city where there is snow on the ground 3 - 4 months of the year. I find it absolutely retarded when I see a cyclist on a snow covered, slushy, icy road in the middle of winter. There is no valid reason to risk your life in the middle of winter driving a bike. Your bike cannot handle icy roads well, and cars can't stop on a dime on icy roads either. You are playing with a high risk or injury or death for some petulant reason to commute in the winter on a bike and I think it should downright be outlawed.
Adults have to grow up. Bikes are for recreation and kids, NOT commuter vehicles. Risking your life to get to work just to save a little on gas, somehow believe you are saving the world, or for fitness is just not worth it. Take public transportation or carpool to save the planet and then after work take your bike to an off-road trail or exercise at a gym for health.
I can understand if cities build better dedicated bike routes through the city which mostly avoid heavy traffic routes, then by all means take a bike to work. But bikes are NOT a safe or adequate solution for commuters and its pretty damn juvenile for an adult to get on their bike everyday and expect the world around them to protect their interests.
Grow up and get off the bike.
So first they are not sugar batteries, but batteries with anodes made of carbon derived from sugar. Second, the poster feels they will be good for disolvable electronics for the body, but again you are not disolving sugar but some carbonized derivative of sugar which is probably actually toxic to the body.
Its an epic fail when a \. post doesn't RTFA nor understand the article they are posting.
Names should simply be GUID's.
Oops, sorry folks, I made a spelling error.
or at least step down.
Ive's should appologize next for designing a phone in the 21st century that scratches when it goes into its retail packaging when most of their cometition seemed to have firgured out how to create pretty durable products.
In less then one year after Job's died they ruined any legacy Steve hoped to leave behind. They took the last few products Steve had involvement in and turned them into mediocre jokes.
How can anyone take anything Cook and Ives say seriously now when they hold their hat's in their hands, kick a few rocks by their feet and say "Gosh sorry folks, the product sucks, we really didn't see this coming". I mean the next time Cook takes a jab at their competition in a keynote address it should be met with overt snickering. The next Ives white background video going on about how perfect his product is should be taken offline as an overt lie.
Steve never would have allowed the product out the door in the first place not after the Mobile Me fiasco.
I think Tim Cook should step down (or perhaps fired) as with nearly a year under his belt as CEO he is proven to be a major fuck up.
Is this the new then Apple, implement 3rd party products and then blame them when they are shit?
Apple chose to use an inferior quality material for the iPhone 5 which cannot even leave the factory without scratches and marks. They also clearly choose an inferior source of mapping data.
I mean why didn't Apple just use Google Maps data but build their own skin over it? Apple claimed yesterday they dropped Google Maps because Google didn't want to provide voice navigation, but Google is also simply a repository of a rich dataset of map data you can license sans UI.
Apple made very clear and bad choices for the iPhone 5 and it has nothing to do with the 3rd parties they partnered with. They chose to cripple a product to separate ties with what they perceive as the enemy. No way I will defend a company that chose to cripple their product on purpose out of spite.
Steve Jobs said he wanted to destroy the Android platform when it was first released and Apple has been on that vendetta ever since.
Apple used Google while it suited them to provide features Apple couldn't produce but are necessary for a mobile phone.
Once Apple got their mapping product close to ready (but far far from being ready), they ditched Google, pure and simple.
Apple doesn't like Google, Apple wants nothing to do with Google, and Apple created some bullshit excuse to cover up the fact they are separating ties with "their enemies".
I guarantee that Apple will be filing some massive lawsuit against Google in 2013 concerning Android and it doesn't make sense to maintain any licensing agreement with them, just like Apple has reduced the use of Samsung parts so they can pursue legal actions against Samsung.
Why are people so ready to eat Apple's bullshit. Apple has been streaming a steady load of bullshit since the release of the iPhone 5 to cover up the fiasco that it is. They used inferior materials to build the thing, inferior labor to make the thing, and included inferior software to distance themselves from the rest of their competitors in the mobile marketplace.
It is VERY obvious that with the passing of Steve Jobs Apple can no longer compete through innovation so now Apple is switching to a business model of suing competitors to maintain market share. Google is clearly in Apple's targets.
Apple has become rotten to the core and people have to stop thinking they are an innovative company at the top of their game. A company willing to cripple their products out of a fit of petulance and jealousy is not a company whose products people should be proud owners of.
All this is is Google not supporting export of Docs in antiquated Office formats. Meaning that the docs are originally in Google's format and the option to bring them to your desktop will not allow you to pick old formats. If you had uploaded a file to Google's clouds service in whatever format you uploaded it as, it will happily download in that same format.
If you are still using old versions of Microsoft Office, consider upgrading, its time to retire your 10+ year old software, you got your money's worth out of it.