As I understand it, no. (I'm not a marijuana expert however.) From what I'm told, while the two plants are closely related, marijuana is really good for smoking, but the fibers are not very good for rope-making, whereas hemp has great fibers for rope-making and clothes and such, but sucks for smoking. So basically you can have one or the other, but not both.

It's kinda like trying to use a Prius for hauling plywood and concrete, and a Ford F350 for daily commuting. You could probably get both those combinations to work, but the Prius is not optimized for cargo like the F350 is, and the F350 gets lousy fuel economy compared to the Prius and is much harder to maneuver and park.

Go read this website. Dvorak really isn't that great compared to other layouts. If you're going to learn a new layout, pick one that performs better. Dvorak was a good idea, but it was designed in the days before computers and modern statistical analysis.

That's it! Exactly the one I was thinking of. It looks like "QGMLWB" is actually the best layout overall, according to his statistical work.

Dvorak is good, but Colemak is also a very good alternative that's probably a lot easier for Qwerty typists to adapt to. Also, some guy did a bunch of research and made a website (wish I had a link, sorry) about different keyboard layouts and found that Dvorak was actually eclipsed in some metrics by both Colemak and another layout he created.

>I think they do manual point-to-point wiring on the switches. But if you look at the sculpted shape of a Maltron, they don't lend themselves to conventional PCBs.

This sounds like an application for flexible circuits boards. Point-to-point wiring is far too labor- and time-consuming.

Is this the wisest choice? In my opinion, MicroUSB is actually a pretty crappy connector, and doesn't have very good retention. MiniUSB and regular USB-B ports are far better and sturdier choices for a corded item on my desk which gets bumped around a lot. The only really good thing about MicroUSB is the thinness, but that's only important on mobile phones, not large items like keyboards.

I don't get the bit about weight. Aluminum has a very high strength-to-weight ratio; you're not going to get a product with the same weight and durability with wood (e.g. you could use balsa, which is extremely lightweight, but it also have low strength and absolutely terrible hardness).

In high quantities, aluminum should be pretty economical; you can just use a big press to stamp it. The big cost here is the tooling, but after that the per-unit cost is cheap. Milling is far, far more expensive than pressing/stamping, and only really makes sense if 1) the quantities are really low and/or 2) the product cost is really high and 3) it's really needed for some reason. For enclosures and the like, stamping is usually sufficient.

To keep it from looking like an Apple product, there's something really cool you can do with aluminum called anodizing. Anodize it black and give it some corners and sharp lines and it won't look anything like an Apple product. Anodizing is better than paint since it's more durable. For a high-end product as this is sure to be, it should be within budget.

Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries seem to fit the bill. Italy probably works too; there's a lot of Catholicism there of course, but you never hear about them being violent these days. They seem to have gotten over that centuries ago. Also, the Eastern European countries generally aren't very religious either, with a few exceptions.

The LDJ ( French version of the Jewish Defense League, which is prohibited in the USA) attacked first a peaceful anti-war protest, and when some protesters retaliated, LDJ members protected themselves behind police line,

Well there's either a problem with violent Muslims or violent Jews there, and violent protests in general. Whoever started it, it doesn't make me want to visit. I'd rather visit a country which doesn't have a lot of religious extremists running around.

The only time I wear my suit is for interviews. I don't have any friends that had big $100,000 marriages (just small private ceremonies like I did), so no, I don't go to friends' marriages. What other formal events are there to go to? Real life isn't like a movie about rich people for most of us. We're mostly software developers here, not billionaire playboys.

What do you wear to interviews? I have one suit, and one tie, and the only time I wear that dreadful outfit is to interviews. After that, it's either jeans or slacks (the latter for stupid companies with a "business casual" dress code).

Well since you like French cities, you might as well try to get up to Montreal while you're here. It's only a very short plane ride away from NYC (or about 6 hours by car if you want to take the scenic route and avoid another molestation by TSA; in fact, you can fly in and out of Montreal if you want to avoid the TSA and American airports altogether, as many European travelers do), and while I haven't been there yet myself (soon hopefully), everything I hear about it is great as long as you can understand some basic French since all the signs are in French (though there's a lot of smaller-text English since the rest of Canada uses English).

Have fun with the TSA. Why Europeans would want to travel here, I have no idea, except maybe to visit some of the national parks in the western states. New York City? I live right next to it; you're not missing much. It's a dirty, smelly city with a ridiculously high cost-of-living (European cities are much cheaper) and not much to see. There's a few interesting things: a couple of cathedrals (St. John the Divine is I believe the largest cathedral in the world), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is pretty fantastic, but that's about it. I guess Times Square if you really like seeing giant moving displays all over and a bunch of typical mall stores. At least you won't see many fat people; having to walk around a lot keeps people in better shape.

Honestly, if you like spending your vacation time visiting cities, most of the ones worth visiting are in your back yard. The ones that aren't are probably all in Asia. Vancouver Canada is pretty cool too, but that and maybe Montreal are the only North American cities I can think of that are worth a cross-continental trip.