It's a mix. Partially due to it being an architecture school, there's a need for the cad drafting programs (autocad, revit, rhinoceros), but even during times where rendering, layout, and diagramming (using adobe suite products that used to be the mac's bread and butter), no one bothers to change to the mac side.

As someone who had the macs in school as a kid, as well as macs in the school I'm at now, I think it's the sexy packaging more than anything else. All the school's computer's now are loaded with bootcamp, and are almost entirely run on the windows side. This is in a design school, where apple always had a foothold with the students. The shift came not from exposure while you, but from a smart understanding that computers don't need to be a bulky, beige box, and can be a status symbol.

To be fair, that was over 100 years ago and a completely different setting for wildfires. I would be the science behind this technique may have improved since then. But it does provide precedent for not fighting urban fires with explosives, which is hard to label as bad find.

Jesus, when did Slashdot become populated by Luddites? 20 years ago, VR was populated by overly heavy, underpowered, expensive systems. the 2000su system (the first vr system I ever had a chance to experience, coincidentally) was a second gen system, and yet still cost somewhere around £10,000 [http://www.retro-vr.co.uk/test/vr2000su.html]. The head sets themselves were about a half pound heavier than the oculus rift (50% increase), had a resolution of 756x244 pixels, and a view range of under 60 degrees (with only 47 degrees in the vertical dimension!). [http://www.arcadianvr.com/SU_2000_TECHSPECS.htm]So yes, 20 years ago, this was a bad idea.

Well, wait. "What about the virtual boy?" you might ask. let's look at that one and see why it failed. resolution? 384x224 resolution (4 color with 32 levels of Intensity). head tracking? no. processor? 32bit RISC 20mHz Clock speed. Check out that speed. [http://www.goliathindustries.com/vb/VBSpecs.html]

So the Oculus Rift is higher res by a factor of 5: 960 x 1080 per eye. It has a higher viewing angle, 100 degrees. it weighs one third less than the old standard. the system is just a display for a computer, so the processing power is both upgradable and much faster than before. and the development kit, not even the production version which will be cheaper due to scaled production, is only 350 dollars. And software wise, there's a lot of work out there to provide interesting experiences from standard gaming to straight simulation of flight.

Being a naysayer is boring. Next time try to imagine what could be instead of thinking your perfect little view of the world is the only way.

I'm speaking from memory of a tour of the facility that I took last year. I did a quick search for the biosolids portion of tour, and found this on their website: http://www.kingcounty.gov/envi... and http://www.kingcounty.gov/envi... If I recall correctly, the biosolids are treated for everything except viruses, and that's what the third party takes on. That said, I'm speaking from memory, which while good, is not something I'd hold up in court. I also work at the Bullitt Center (http://www.bullittcenter.org/), which has composting toilets that they are sending out to the same third party company when the on-site composting is complete. Both the water treatment plant and the BC have a wide array of treatment systems to filter out dangerous pathogens, chemicals, etc. Fun fact, the BC actually was required to become it's own water municipality to be off the grid.

The grass clippings, I do not know. I'm speaking only on the wastewater treatment. However, I do know that the city collects yard waste for composting purposes. I'll leave the extra research up to you.

The compost is treated to a specific level on site, then passed along to a third party company that handles viral and chemical issues. It's actually the reason the waste water treatment plant cannot directly offer you the compost. That said, there's a ton of research going into this and a working system in place that currently opposites commercially. Your concerns are valid, but they are also taken into account.

Seattle's already doing this. The water treatment plants compost solid waste and turn it back into, well, usable compost. http://www.loopforyoursoil.com... I've heard this is becoming common elsewhere as well. The big issue, now, is to reduce agricultural run off which represents a huge break in the nutrient loop.

As a male couchsurfer who has both hosted and traveled with the service, I would argue you have some misconceptions about the system. Most recently stayed in Chur, Switzerland with a host (male, straight) who picked me up at the train station, offered a couch to sleep on in his apartment, and then proceeded to give me a tour of the town and act as a translator. All in all, he asked for nothing in return but a good story. That has been the norm for the entire time I've been on couchsurfing (around 6 years now), and from my discussion with others in the group, my experience is common. The people who seem to have a difficulty using the system are those who don't understand that couchsurfing, while free, isn't free. While you could hop into town, sleep on someone's couch and leave, that's not the spirit of the system. The system revolves around the idea of the gift, that these people are opening up their home and lives to you. Ideally, you should be there to exchange culture, stories. I found it was helpful to offer to buy my hosts drinks for the night, or offer to pay for their dinner, but this is by no means a requirement. However, for the price of a meal, I was able to share in someone's life. This was inevitably cheaper than renting a hotel room, and far more enlightening.

Sending them on a one way trip turns risk into reality. It's one thing to say there's a 20% chance of survival and another to say, we're not bringing you back. Short of suicidal people, there aren't many I know who would choose to die (not to possibly die) for the sake of science.

The killer app probably depends on your usage. As an architect, I'm interested in seeing something like the Oculus Rift combined with 3d modeling apps like Rhinoceros. Being able to actually stick your head into your models would be a huge advance in getting to understand the feel of a space.

So it's more like "Baby's first handgun?" Let's hope we survive our first "test" here.

This is a very good point. Homes, individually, don't take too much power, so powering each one of them with it's own generator (solar or otherwise) is redundant and expensive. Maintenance, too, is a pain for the average home owner. So centralizing power generation is great, for the most part. At least until you start factoring in transmission loss. What ideally will happen, and this will take time thanks to the cooperation it requires, is that district power plants will spring up. That a commercial building can produce so much power that it can sell the rest to local houses. You're starting to see this happen, and in the future, hopefully it will happen more. There's other benefits to this approach as well. Say, for instance, you run a massive server farm. This farm produces a lot of heat, and if you can capture this heat, you could use it to power your building and perhaps other neighboring buildings as well. It's an idea that's catching on in Europe and a few places in the US. So maybe solar power on your home isn't going to become viable, but that doesn't mean solar won't be in your future.

You know, sometimes even the Koch funded studies turn up something surprising: http://www.businessinsider.com/koch-brothers-funded-study-proves-climate-change-2012-7.

Yeah... and I didn't help myself for not fully reading their comment. Read the article and not the comments, I should be banned, right?

No where in the article does it say they are looking directly at the camera. And if you look at the photos they are showing, you should automatically realize that the viewer is looking away from the camera (presumably at the screen displaying the other person's face), and the image is adjusted to give the illusion that the viewer is looking into the camera (thus achieving digital eye contact). Come on folks, this is Slashdot. We used to be smart. Let's bring that back.