Licking his palms.

And for some reason, I has a strange compulsion to reply to this.

The valve is the easy bit (if you don't mind manually switching a tap on in response to an alert).

The sensor is not so simple. Even if digital hydrometers were cheap and easily available, you'd need to find a way of mounting it inside the fermenter such that you're not going to create a haven for bacteria (hint: any kind of non-smooth surface inside the fermentation vessel is a haven for bacteria).

I've heard of people using ultrasonic transducers for measuring the gravity of fluid in a pipe, but it sounds like a lot of work.

You reckon you can do temperature control in an uncontrolled environment with a handful of transistors? Keep in mind the external temperature is uncontrolled. The yeast itself generates heat within the ferment at varying (and often unpredictable) rates.

The simplest approach you can reasonable consider for the level of control they're looking for in their environment would be a PID controller, which if memory serves me correctly will have more than a handful of transistors in it. You're going to need a pretty decent PID to handle temperature profiling, which their solution

They're using cheap, off-the-shelf parts to solve their problem, which in turn allow them to put extra features in there like web control, and it's now much easier for anyone to do the same thing. The parts may not have existed in 1964, but you need to keep in mind The Doors aren't the only good thing to happen since then.

Could explain their web design.

Actually, you're not far off. Their Quality Assurance Coordinator is due to complete their Comp Sci degree this year.

Their "Software Engineer" also plans to graduate this year.

Their "Research Analyst" completed her fine arts degree last year.

Their "Director of Marketing" should finish her Bachelor of Science, Journalism this year.

Odd.

Could be...

The author of this book: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b35jEu5ZeLQ/UCmyWXslzEI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/Oc86dmx1xDQ/s220-h/door-crop.jpg

The author of the RFCs: http://blog.neustar.biz/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/peterson-dist-eng.jpg

There's certainly a similarity there.

They know they there's no chance Romney will pay up. If he pays up, he likely does more damage to himself than the tax returns ever could.

The alternative is to say, "leave $1M dollars in unmarked bills under some overpass". They're hardly going to hang around waiting to see if he pays.

This launch has so many firsts, that the launch window is instantaneous.

If they didn't launch right on the scheduled launch time, they were not going to have enough fuel to get to the ISS *and* do the test manoeuvres they had planned for the approach.

I never said otherwise, and agree this patent is the result of a significant research.

I was replying to a post, which has since been modded "troll" suggesting there was some sort of double standard, anti-American sentiment going on here.

No-one has any problem with this applying to actual American research. We just disagree on whether or not thinking up a trivial solution to a problem, or marrying two obvious technologies on some idle Tuesday afternoon counts as research.

In electrocution it's high currents [...]

Why is this piece of misinformation so pervasive?

Yes, if you want to get technical, it's the current passing through your tissue, in particular your heart, that does the damage.

But all other things being equal, current is proportional to voltage. Two systems at the same voltage but differing currents will deliver the same shock if you make contact. In fact if anything, if the system with the higher current is near capacity, it might deliver a slightly smaller shock because more of the available current will get drawn by the load.

The only problems with higher currents is the need for thicker wires, and the increased risk of thermal effects.

There seems to be some confusion here. A lot of people think the inverted image shows the TSA is showing doctored images rather than showing us what the scanners actually show. As far as I can tell, the inverted image has never been released by the TSA or the scanner companies. They were part of a hoax suggesting the scanners can see more than they were letting on.

I don't think there's any reason to think images released by the TSA aren't real scanner images.

How many guns were smuggled onto planes as part of 9/11 again? You could easily conceal a weapon in a tin that size.

His point is that a metal detector would've actually detected that tin, and allowed them to inspect the contents to see if contained something that might be used as a weapon, with much less impact on his privacy.

Thanks for the links! I was really concerned MS were going to drop the ball.

Is that 1GB video file less than 10 minutes long?

If you're really that lacking in imagination, what the hell do you need 200GB/mo for? If the most bandwidth intensive thing you do is download streaming media, and you prefer your porn^W video at 1.5Mbps, you really watch more than 8 hours of video a day?

Some transfer protocols don't support reliable streaming. Streaming just doesn't make sense for the most bandwidth intensive tasks.

A modern game typically takes me more than 2 hours to download (with my ~2km ADSL connection). That'd be ready to go in 15 minutes at 100Mbps.

A 200GB cap equates to around 600kbit/month, so what your actually getting is a 600kbit connection which is burstable to 100mbit.

Now you're getting it! The original question was: "what is the point of a speed that fast with a download cap that small?". The answer is kind of obvious, right? "[The] connection [...] is burstable to 100mbit."

Not sure of the relevance of 600kbps is though - I don't know too many people that aim to spread their quota evenly throughout the month. Most downloads are bursted.