I've had the opposite experience. I try to do a lot of jobs myself and that means that it's not generally an emergency when I call someone and I can wait for someone who is getting good reviews or a personal recommendation from a friend/neighbor, but the roto-rooter guy had a root cutting tool that I will never own and he was quick and efficient at getting my drain line unplugged, the heating guys spent days crawling around under my house, a service I was very willing to pay for having done far too much of that myself. I could never have done as good a job making the kitchen cabinets as the carpenter I employed. In general the people coming to the house have been courteous, fair and competent.

This has happened before. Apple makes a product that is a little too much upscale and pricey for average joe, and fails miserably.
Apple may be the Cadillac Of technology... However when they try to push out the Rolls Royce type of technology, it goes too far.

I can't see myself getting one for the price.
1. The next year or 2 it will be thinner, more powerful, and easier to use. For a watch I want something timeless.
2. How long can you have such a device until it is not supported by you other device.
3. I am not getting any real good features from it. The iPhone has became todays pocket watch. the Apple watch, only adds a minor convenience.

If it does success the apple watch 2 or 3 may be much more affordable under the $100 range where I can justify the expense.

What about sincerely held non-religious convictions. Oh that's right. the protection of the law is only supposed to extend to followers of the book.

No-one is born jewish.

And assuming sexual preference is a mental function then I'm not sure that such function is present in a newborn either (I know the brain is still developing).

Being Romanian is merely an artifice to do with the parents' legal status and the place of birth, not anything intrinsic to the newborn's biology (the baby is a citizen of Earth).

So of all of the things you list as being innate at Birth I would say that skin tone is innate, Sexual Orinetation may be innate, nationality is not a biological issue and jewishness is an add-on later (or a take-away if you count the Bris I suppose).

I can't believe how many people are can't wrap their heads around businesses being able to choose their own customers. Being a 'jerk' is a moral offense and should not a legal one on par with robbery or murder. People already are allowed to be jerks for a million other reasons, why is orientation so special? If the government needs to go after bakers not baking a cake for someone why not also jail and fines for adultery or cutting in line?

The problem is where do you draw the line?

Why is there a line to be drawn?

Photographer refuses to take photographs at a non-white wedding because of "religious" beliefs. Will take photos of any white ceremony.

And? Can the couple still get married? Can they find a photographer? Pretty sure they can. The photographer's bigotry does not pick anyone's pocket or break anyone's leg. It does not interfere with anyone's rights. Let him turn down paying customers and give opportunity to his competition, it's sort of a self-limiting problem.There is no need for any action here, any more than if a Catholic music composer accepts a commission from the diocese but doesn't accept a commission from the local synagogue (or from the Westborough Baptist Church).

The problem is most of the people do not like a group of people, and such business are allowed to refuse services, we can create a situation where the outcast group cannot use the goods and services they need to function/survive in society.

We need business to offer goods and services for us to function, otherwise we will spending all of our time on our own survival. Having businesses refuse business based on aspects people cannot control means your are forcing people from the society.

Explain to us then the rational opposing position then. Explain to us the pro-discrimination position whereby we should be permitted to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, or even sexual orientation when none of those things should matter.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that all things except what the state have decided are proper should be forbidden.

Yes, among enlightened people race, gender, age, or even sexual orientation should not matter. That does not imply that unenlightened people should be subject to criminal prosecution or lawsuits.

You should be permitted to discriminate in some areas because you should be permitted to do anything you want that does not interfere with the fundamental rights of others. Housing is a fundamental right, so you shouldn't be legally able to discriminate in renting out a house. But hiring a specific person to take your wedding pictures is not a fundamental right, so a photographer should be legally able to turn down a paying customer for whatever reason they want, even bigotry.

It looks like the main focus of the research is really around haptics. They seem to have a pretty cool whole-arm haptic interface and talk about using it to sense body motion to infer subtle control inputs from the user. That is pretty cool. They also mention that the robot can 'feel' items around it and, I am assuming, feed this back to the operator using the haptic actuators in a natural way.

I would imagine the firefighter thing is just an application domain to give them a framework for developing the tech, and to make it easier to do a press release for the general public. In any event, I would have thought a better application would be a robotic guide dog for vision impaired people. At least that doesn't normally have to climb through a fire damaged building.

$17000 for the Edition, yet the average Apple factory worker earns $1.50 per hour (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/29/apple-investugates-claims-china-factory)

I guess the sociopathic nature of Steve Jobs is also a enduring Apple Value.

Doing the math with the wrong numbers isn't informative. You've ignored the atmospheric losses suffered by ground-based systems -- clouds, dust, the opacity of air. I think you're also being much more generous in estimating the potential lifetime of ground-based systems than space-based ones, which skews your numbers.

It may be that the gains are small enough to not justify the launch costs, though that depends on how much we value land taken up by solar arrays.

Don't forget the jumbo jets required to get these things between tracks. As with most motor racing, the fuel used in the cars during the race is really the least of the environmental problems.

Because the power output of an electric motor is torque * rotation speed. The electric motor can produce max torque across the speed range (roughly for most types anyway), but the power output still increase with the RPM. So if you want to get max power at any wheel speed you want to keep the motor revs up.

Hence the gearbox.

Ground effects cars were crazy though. I kinda think it is a good thing that the best driver in F1 doesn't simply correspond to who is the most suicidal. And something like the Williams FW15C was going to render the skill of the driver almost redundant if that seam of development had been allowed to continue.

On the other hand those cars and others (like bernie's fan car, and even the blow diffuser and f-duct) are part of the interesting narrative that is F1 and I do think the FIA has become so concerned with preventing another Lotus 79 or Williams FW15C that they are pre-emptively killing any chance for real technical innovation.

But they're just a bunch of businessmen now. Once Bernie goes I think it will sadly fall apart. The management, rights holders and teams will end up spending more time in court than out on the track. As much as I think Bernie is a dick, like an dodgy book keeper, I also think he maintains a careful balance of handouts and ego massaging that allows the various interests involved to generally get some cars out on track every weekend.

I do think the future of cars/racing is electric, but for me there is something spine tinglingly impressive about this (V8 F1 cars running up eau rouge):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

But since the FIA is currently doing its best to ruin F1, these electric cars will probably compare pretty good in a few more years. Oh well, at least we have the memories.