Please explain.

If you're talking about automotive alternators, which are the only "generator" that the average consumer runs on a daily basis, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Let's pretend that you're a suburban wage-slave who drives a car 2 hours/day, 365 days/year.
A typical car alternator puts out around 250 watts in normal usage.
So, you would generate 0.5 kWh/day, or 183kWh/year. Less than 1% of your energy consumption from petrol.

Or did you have other generators in mind?

Similarly, $1/GB seems steep for a USB flash drive, since hard-drive space can be purchased for less than $0.05/GB.
Size and convenience do, in fact, matter.
However, it's a moot point since the gizmo in TFA is vaporware, unlikey to be produced in any mass-marketable quantity.

I doubt you'll ever see this device.

Voice recognition & response are horribly inefficient compared to visual input & output. We've had the ability to do it in consumer products for about 15 years, but it hasn't caught on for this very reason.

Voice support is extremely helpful when your eyes are busy doing something more important. For most folks, that means driving.

But for most purposes, a smartphone with tactile input and visual output (e.g. a touchscreen) is much more useful, so you carry it anyway. If you want to go voice-only to save battery life, you can just turn off the screen. So...why would you carry a smartphone with a display (for most usage) AND a voice-only device (for a subset of the stuff that the smartphone can already do).

The only answer I can think of is: for ultra-minimal carrying. Same as carrying a tiny money-clip, instead of your larger wallet, when you go out on the town. But the economics still aren't there. This voice-only device would have to cost less than $50 (and work with the same account as your everyday smartphone) before it would make sense for many people.

Wow, that sucks. Hopefully they kept the $5 plan, and just don't publicize it.

I see that their other option is $0.20 for a single text, and $0.30 for a single photo/video message.

I think we can assume that AT&T does not lose money on any of these services. So since a text message is about 1000x smaller than a photo/video message, that means it should really cost less than $0.0003 per text...33 texts for a penny...3300 texts for a dollar.

But you know, whatever the market will bear...

I dunno about Verizon, but AT&T charges me $5 a month for 200 SMS or MMS messages.

If someone uses their unlimited service for short text messages, then yes, that person needs to wake up and realize that they can "text" practically for free using other apps.

But if you use the $5 service to send mostly video & photo messages, it makes more sense. Super convenient too.

YMMV.

Or...buy her a big jar of foam earplugs.

Or...buy yourself a vibrating bluetooth wristband.

Or...get good enough at your job that a) there is rarely any reason to call you, and b) they can't afford your rates except in a world-exploding emergency, or c) you can simply refuse to be on-call at night in any situation whatsoever.

LOL

I remember a middle-school science experiment many many years ago.

We heated an empty 1-gallon steel fuel can over a bunsen burner, then screwed on the cap, and turned off the heat.

As the can cooled, the internal pressure of the heated air inside dropped, and atmospheric pressure started to crush the can. By the end of the class period, it was a crumpled mess.

Rule of thumb: If an NFL linebacker can crush a container by standing on it, then the atmosphere alone will crush that container when it is "full" of vacuum.

And the steel can that we used in that experiment was ~100 times stronger than a foil-wrapped aero-lattice.

Thanks for the linked data.

50% is relatively small compared to 100%.

Plus, that is the energy consumption for the entire country, including industry, government, military, etc. If you look at consumer/domestic energy usage, electrical becomes a much much smaller.

I don't have the detailed numbers for France, but if you Google "global per capita energy consumption"
you will see that it is more than half that of the US, so I'll use the US as a close-enough example.

The average US household consumes roughly 10,000 kWh of electrical energy per year.

1L of petrol, jet fuel, diesel, or heating oil equals approximately 10 kWh of energy.

The average US household operates at least 2 vehicles, which each consume about 500 gallons (1900 liters) of petrol per year. 1900L * 2 vehicles * 10 kWh/L = 38,000 kWh of energy. In other words, roughly 4x the electrical usage for that household.

And that's just the beginning.

Flying for business or pleasure? A roundtrip from LAX-JFK (5000 miles) burns 250L of fuel per passenger = 2500 kWh. Flying LAX-SYD? 7500 kWh per passenger. Yes...the energy consumption from ONE passenger's US-Australia trip, approaches the electrical usage of a US household for an entire YEAR.

Heat a home with oil or gas? Roughly 10% of US households (mostly in the Northeast) burn an average 750 gallons of heating oil each, every year. That's another 28,500 kWh, about 3 times the electrical usage.

Also more than half of US households run their most energy-intensive appliances -- water heater, furnace, range, oven, dryer -- on natural gas, not electricity.

If you want to save energy: fly less, drive less, carpool, turn down your thermostat, dress appropriately for hot or cold temperatures, and insulate your house. For most folks, electrical consumption is the last thing to consider.

From the summary:

No. France generates almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Not its overall power.

I'm sick of this consistently sloppy reporting about energy usage in the mass media. And sick of the idiots who think that electricity consumption is the big issue (oh noes! we need solar to make teh watts, and CFLs to save teh watts!). Dumbshits.

France's planes, ships, trucks, cars, and more still run on OIL. Not nuclear. Do the math. Electricity is relatively small component of power usage.

Since you asked, OK, I believe that life is for a) enjoying, b) helping others, and c) advancing the overall condition and knowledge of humanity.

Any one of those three goals is a worthy pursuit, but if you can combine all three...that is the absolute best possible use of your time & money.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to take any moral high ground. I've also spent many $10K's on "horribly wasteful", but awesome, hobbies: motorcycles, helicopters, games, music, lasers, etc.

I'm just explaining why the FAA guys might have been unimpressed. They surely knew that there was absolutely nothing new or interesting about this launch. Just another hobbyist to keep from interfering with the airways.

Like I already said, our global weather services send more than 500,000 instrument packages (with radio telemetry) to similar altitudes every year. And the German rocket hobbyists who inspired the V2 program (which inspired the ICBM, which inspired the Russian & American space programs and all that followed) had more advanced rockets than this "Qu8k", almost 70 years ago.

The only reason this launch got so much attention is that hobby rockets have been out-of-vogue for about 30 years. Oh and some association with a popular video game developer.

I predict a surge in Estes sales based on this launch. If Derek was smart, he's actually sponsored by Estes. :)

Well...if you knew that we put up more than half a MILLION fully instrumented weather balloons to similar altitudes every year (800 balloons every 12 hours, 1600 every day, 365 days a year), for just a couple hundred bucks each...I think you would be far less impressed with this $10K+ hobby exercise.

Probably the only reason the FAA guys were there, was to make sure that this toy rocket did not go careening south towards RNO (Reno-Tahoe International Airport).

In any case, it is the most awesome toy rocket ever. A horrible waste of time and money, but awesome. That's what hobbies are all about.

Top-level orgchart for DHS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homeland-security-orgchart-2008-07-17.png

Suggestions:

1) Put FEMA, plus the search & rescue part of the Coast Guard, under the Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS). Put the policing part of the Coast Guard under the DoD and/or Commerce.

2) Disband the TSA, and require private parties to control their own security. Let each airline specify their own security checks, to a regulated baseline. If you the consumer don't like the level of security, you can choose a different airline that makes you take off your shoes, or that asks you intelligent questions instead of stupidly frisking you, etc. Let the market decide.

3) Split the Secret Service into its separate functions under the Treasury (counterfeiting etc), President/VP (protection), and State (protection).

4) Put Customs under the Dept of Commerce.

5) Put Immigration under the Dept of State.

6) Send the higher bureaucracy of DHS to an isolated island in the south pacific, where it will implode within a matter of days under its own weight and paranoia.

7) Nothing is left to rename. Move along.

From your snark.

Unless of course you have a good alternative to using fog for a walk-through volumetric projection, in which case, you should speak the fuck up instead of wasting everyone's time with idiotic comments.

Thank you Mr. Fog Machine...but of course that would eliminate slashdot...and then where would you be?

Just sayin.

Or a way to redundantly re-state the quoted post.