Not quite.

This is about pushing the boundaries of what we can do. This is about shooting so high we're staring into the sun.

There was no reason for us to go to the moon. In and of itself, it accomplished nothing to improve the lot of humanity, but it was a hell of a thing. It made people dream, it inspired an untold amount of people to go into STEM fields, and on a more direct note, it advanced electronics tremendously.

As a race, we need to do big, audacious things. This is one of them, It should be done. It's not as big a thing as going to the Moon, but it's bigger than getting a cup of coffee.

I'm willing to bet that even if it is just as much a flop as you think it will be, (And you seem to know what you're on about, so I'm willing to concede that if it were done with the current technology, you're probably right.), inside of 20 years, it'll pay for itself in many ways, the least of which might be the power beamed back down to Earth.

Fair enough.

Buy lots of insurance, park it on the street :)

Not to detract from your point, but if you need to lower a wheel by dropping it into a pothole in order to leg down comfortably, you really should be riding a shorter bike. You ought to be able to comfortably flat foot both legs at any given stop. Your ability to quickly pull away should some asshole just not see you as they come speeding up behind is greatly enhanced by being at a good balance when you're stopped.

I take some objection to that notion. Possibly thrill seeker is a little extreme, but motorcycle riders can certainly be be categorized at least as being non-risk adverse. There is no doubt that riding a motorcycle is vastly more dangerous than driving a car, is you're someone who categorizes that as important, and especially if you're not going to counterbalance that fact in the decision making process that motorcycles are vastly more fun than cars (or as you call it, liberating), then you're not going to ride one.

I understand your desire not to be lumped in with squids, which is perhaps what GP was thinking, but motorcycle riders are thrill seekers.

Right now, btw, I have the credentials to talk about this, given that I'm currently bed confined s/p surgery to fix the leg I broke after my front tire blew out (a week and a half after I replaced both tires!)...and I'm anxious because I expect to get my bike back tomorrow so I can find out what I'm going to need to do to it to get it running by the time I'm healed.

Come now. Haven't you been paying attention to the US for the last 12 years?

They're going to label him a terrorist.

It's actually more complicated than that, there are international treaties involved in international airfare. The basic point, however, is that the 500USD ticket down there was much easier to buy when I was living in the states than the 500USD ticket back to the states was to buy while I was living down there.

Well, the difference is in the external costs.

Generally the internal costs of an area are consistent, a big mac will cost a certain percentage of the median income, no matter what that income is, but external costs are fixed.

For an example, I used to live in Honduras, the median income was 3k USD or so, the costs of food and housing were commensurate. International airfare, however, doesn't drop, nor for that matter, did the value of the student loans I still have outstanding.

I'd just like to point out that the median personal income in the US in 2012 was 42,693 USD.

I don't know where you're living, but I'd like to live there if the typical personal income is 90k.

Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on this.

You're missing a much more fundamental possible cause of the behavior. By and large, the drivers of rice rockets are late teens/early 20s males. Late teens/early 20s males have a couple things going on:

A) They engage in experience seeking, risk taking behaviors at a much, MUCH higher rate. The causal link between that and testosterone is the popular theory, scientifically it's still up in the air as far as I know, but I haven't really been paying attention.

B) They exhibit poor judgement. This isn't terribly surprising, given that judgement tends to grow out of experience, and they just don't have that much of it.

In short, late teens/early 20s males, myself included, have been driving like assholes for longer than the video games you want to blame it on have been around. I haven't really spent much time talking to any of them about it, so it's possible that's how they're justifying their stupid driving practices these days, but it's not what's causing it. Me, I just claimed to have superior situational awareness and car control, I didn't even bother trying to justify that accidents are caused by people who failed to come up to my mark...I didn't care about them.

Thankfully, as I look back, I don't think I caused any accidents, but that's really through no credit to myself.

I'll grant you the need/want thing, I should know better than to engage in inexactitudes of language.

As far as the distraction issue, it all comes down to a matter of prioritization. There are times I absolutely cannot take my eyes off the road ahead of me, when I'm going through blind curves or cresting hills, when I'm moving through an intersection, when I'm moving through a zone of merging, when I'm in a residential neighborhood filled with suicidal children (all children are suicidal), or any number of other situations in which the potential for rapidly changing road hazards exists. There are times when I absolutely can take my eyes off the road for a second, for example, when I'm on a long straightaway, without any vehicles close to me or I'm sitting at a stoplight, with no one coming up behind me any time soon. Currently I use that time to check my blind spots, check my speed to make sure I haven't creeped up further over the limit than I'm comfortable betting the police won't stop me (I never need to look at my speedometer to determine whether or not I'm driving at a safe speed.), check my odometer and figure out how much fuel I have, and after everything has been done, and I have some time before I need to repeat any of it, I'll look around at the scenery...why shouldn't I wedge check the map and read any alerts in there, especially given that doing either one leaves the roadway in my peripheral vision, which, for example checking my blind spots doesn't?

As for the first point, it's a fair concern. However, there's already a solution on the market for that, active noise canceling microphones, in fact, my helmet has a hard mount for one built in. I've never used one myself, but from what I understand, they work rather well, though not perfectly, as the wind noise is rather, though not perfectly steady. Whether or not the remaining noise is enough to overcome the STT tech, I don't know, but I'm hoping not, with, I think, some reasonable justification, given the ability of google voice to comprehend me when I'm in an ambulance (which has a huge and noisy diesel engine) doing 90 MPH without a noise canceling headset. I'm reasonably sure that by spending a fair bit of time doing training, it will understand me tolerably well, at least over the crucial commends. Even if not, though, there's still use to it, if I can just set the google maps up before I start riding, and have it scroll any alerts across the top (which I believe I've seen "screenshots" of it doing, but I can't find right now), that will absolutely fill my need.

The second point, however, doesn't have much to say for itself. As it stands, I wear two different kinds of glasses while I ride. First are my corrective lenses, which I wear when my contacts are acting up, those just stay in place, between the ear hooks and the pressure that the helmet places on the side of my head, they don't move. The second, and more common, are a pair of cheap sunglasses, wince they have more or less straight bows, they do move some, but probably not enough to be irritating were they providing a HUD. Admittedly, though, the Glass is likely to be much heavier, and thus will move more...so it's probably fortuitous that I've already solved that problem by putting a couple of wedges/shims that are mounted to the faceplate (not visor) that comfortably hold them in place.

Here's the one you missed that's a much bigger concern than either of the points you raised...will Glass fit under my helmet without requiring modifications that will compromise the safety of the helmet? God I hope so, but there's really no way of telling until they hit the market and I can try both on at the same time.

I disagree. I, for one, am incredibly excited to see Glass come to market. There's a need in my life that Glass can fill that my smartphone can't.

I ride a motorcycle, while I'm on the road, I can't pull up google maps, or check to see what that alert sound was (assuming I even hear it). Now, there are a variety of clamps that you can use to mount your smartphone to the handlebars, but those don't work for me for a few reasons, first: I live in New Mexico, in direct sunlight I can't see shit on my screen, and the glare off of it would be...problematic. Second, the roads I frequently use don't really allow for taking your hands off the handles...which incidentally means that those same roads would do their damndest to shake the phone out of the clamp. And finally, I ride what amounts to a 5/4 scale dirt bike, the notion of rigidly mounting my expensive and delicate piece of electronics to something that bounces and vibrates quite that much doesn't please me.

Now, the flip side of this is that I'm a Paramedic, while I'm at work, the camera would make wearing the Glass basically completely verboten. I'd probably be happier with the product if it wasn't there, but then I'd be just as happy if my phone didn't have a camera either, and I know lots of people who consider the camera in their phone to be a killer feature, I, being an adult, have learned that not every product is designed specifically for me, and if I want a product for the features I like, I often have to take the features I don't along with them.

As for someone else who complained about the ads popping up, either in the initial release or down the line, First, see what I said above about being an adult, some people like that shit, don't ask me why. But, more importantly, the chances of there not being a custom ROM that explicitly addresses such concerns is effectively nil.

Just for shits and giggles, I took a ruler to my pockets. My front pockets are 11" deep by 6 inches wide. My thigh pockets are 8" by 8" (this is where I'd probably care a 3DS, were I to carry one), hell, the cell phone pocket is 5.5"x2.6" with a 1" accordion...that might be a little tight, but is probably doable. My shirt pocket is 5" by 6"...should easily fit, though I wouldn't carry it there, because it would ruin the lay of the shirt.

Now, granted, most people don't wear pants with thigh pockets and cellphone pockets (Actually, I think it's supposed to be a magazine pocket, but...), but my other pockets aren't abnormally large. Why the hell shouldn't someone carry a 3DS in a pocket?

I dunno about the rest of you, but I read the title as 'Modeling Color Spaces with a Blender.'. That was gonna be awesome.

I was hoping I'd get to see a real life version of the mac working cursor...now that I think on it, I believe when I get off work I'll be going to the thrift store to buy a cheap blender.

I'll post the video.

I actually disagree.

Speaking as a native of the first world who has lived in the third world, I find that phrase to be quite apropos occasionally to mock the sense of entitlement that some people have, that's just a bad use of it.

When you've got children starving to death, and someone is going on about the fact that they have to start brewing their own coffee because they need the money they used to spend on starbucks to fill the gas tank on their $45,000 V8 SUV as though it were the end of the world, that's an appropriate time.