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Comment Re: The real reason (Score 5, Informative) 52

The problem is they're too limited. They have to get more capable, not faster, in order to meet my needs. If they can insert circuitry, maybe I can print things that are somewhat more useful. As of right now, I have needed exactly one 3D printed thing (a battery holder for an electronic project, which a friend provided gratis.) But at no point in the last five years have my needs for small plastic things added up to the $300 price of a Simplebot, let alone a printer with better quality, resolution, size, or capabilities.

Maybe you have kids who need thousands of plastic army men. Maybe you are in a business where fabricating prototypes is valuable to you. Great for you, I'm glad you have a use for one. Hopefully you'll help drive volume so the costs come down even further. But as they stand today, they're too expensive for anything I need, and would take up more storage space than I want to waste on a toy.

It has nothing to do with thinking big or small. I'm sorry you can't imagine a scenario different from your own experience.

Comment Re:Fake road signs... (Score 1) 287

How much havok will a 10 mph sign cause on the highway?

None at all. Drivers aren't that stupid, and still maintain enough control over their car to react appropriately.

You, however, might be so stupid that you'd slam on your own brakes to 10 MPH just to make another idiotic point, at which point you get rear-ended by an 18-wheeler who is unlucky enough to be following you. Fortunately, there is only one you, so the gene pool will be thinned out to the point where this situation won't repeat.

Comment Re:Cruise Control 2.0? (Score 1) 287

The system would be really awesome if could also maintain the proper distance from the car ahead of you.

Ford has had that for years now. It's called 'Adaptive Cruise Control', and uses radar to maintain a preset minimum following distance.

I have it on my 2011 Ford, and while it's nice, it can only be set to following distance, not time. I want to set it for a two second gap, but my choices are 22, 44, or 66 yards. It's too close for high speeds, but too long for low speeds.

Comment Re:it always amazes me (Score 0) 341

Devil's Advocate here, but maybe the reason is that all kinds of data is out in public, and some of it is likely flawed. Maybe there's a paper that theorized that you could set a Dewar's flask of liquid hydrogen next to an A-bomb to get an H-bomb. But Dr. Broad is a respected authority, and if he says "we did it this way" without mentioning the Dewar's flask idea, a rogue state would know what not to try.

Remember, these guys get about one shot to get their test explosion right, because in about an hour after a successful test of an H-bomb by anyone the US considers a threat the USAF is going to be raining actual working H-bombs on their entire nuclear program, with a few diverted to cover the presidential palace, the parliament, and essentially every researcher and civilian within a 20-km radius of the aforementioned targets. The US will not tolerate a new state of MAD with a new non-Western-approved government.

Comment Re:NOT "network timekeeping", just timekeeping (Score 2) 166

Remember that the bag's Zigbee radio is broadcasting the bag's location constantly in real time, whereas the child's embedded GPS transceiver is using an accelerometer to help predict when the child will zip across the roadway; plus the child's Wi-Fi chip, network path, etc., will all add latency. If that child's GPS receiver has lost signal due to interference, it's going to need to rely on inertial navigation and its own free-running clock to send the predictions of future locations to the car, and those might be out of sync, depending on how long the child has spent in the basement.

Oh, wait. Children aren't having embedded ADS-B chips surgically implanted yet? And random trash bags don't have Zigbee? Hasn't someone been thinking of the children?

Comment Re:That's all well and good... (Score 1) 112

I heard a great quote from a filmmaker who encouraged his cameramen to take big risks: "If you're going to soar with the eagles, you can't expect to crap like a canary."

They shot mountains of unusable trivial footage, which cost them a ton of cash. But they also produced some spectacular, memorable films, which catapulted them and their clients to huge popular success. He realized that he had to risk his business to succeed, and he won. Not everyone who takes those kinds of risks succeeds, but companies that take no risks generally don't explode with success, either.

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