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Comment Re:Well DUH (Score 1) 302

by SleazyRidr (#46837041) Attached to: Consumers Not Impressed With 3D Printing

I guess it depends on the application, but for a lot of the common stuff you'll just download the plan from the internet. Obviously, half the point of a 3d-printer is the niche stuff that you can't download, but we're ignoring a lot of the potential of computers when all they get used for is facebook and twitter.

Comment Thank you (Score 1) 200

by SleazyRidr (#46828247) Attached to: How Much Data Plan Bandwidth Is Wasted By DRM?

Thank you for expanding on this comment from a few days ago, or either of these from a couple of months back.

Also, congratulations on realising that the content companies aren't really providing a good service to us. Do as the rest of us do and stick to torrents until they do. the music industry has learned its lesson and is now selling DRM-free files, the movie industry will catch up eventually.

Comment Re:Not Necessarily A Bad Thing (Score 1) 202

by SleazyRidr (#46816383) Attached to: Netflix Plans To Raise Prices By "$1 or $2 a Month"

He may as well have included the $100/month for electricity, although I suppose you need that for cable TV too. The problem I have is that the TV and internet are bundled in such a way that it would actually cost more to just have internet. I very rarely use the TV, but as it's not costing anything I keep it around just in case.

Submission + - Experts Say Hitching a Ride in an Airliner's Wheel Well Is Not a Good Idea 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Hasani Gittens reports that as miraculous as it was that a 16-year-old California boy was able to hitch a ride from San Jose to Hawaii and survive, it isn't the first time a wheel-well stowaway has lived to tell about it. The FAA says that since 1947 there have been 105 people who have tried to surreptitiously travel in plane landing gear world-wide on 94 flights — with a survival rate of about 25 percent. But agency adds that the actual numbers are probably higher, as some survivors may have escaped unnoticed, and bodies could fall into the ocean undetected. Except for the occasional happy ending, hiding in the landing gear of a aircraft as it soars miles above the Earth is generally a losing proposition. According to an FAA/Wright State University study titled “Survival at High Altitudes: Wheel-Well Passengers,” at 20,000 feet the temperature experienced by a stowaway would be -13 F, at 30,000 it would be -45 in the wheel well — and at 40,000 feet, the mercury plunges to a deadly -85 F (PDF). "You’re dealing with an incredibly harsh environment,” says aviation and security expert Anthony Roman. “Temperatures can reach -50 F, and oxygen levels there are barely sustainable for life.” Even if a strong-bodied individual is lucky enough to stand the cold and the lack of oxygen, there’s still the issue of falling out of the plane. “It’s almost impossible not to get thrown out when the gear opens,” says Roman.

So how do the lucky one-in-four survive? The answer, surprisingly, is that a few factors of human physiology are at play: As the aircraft climbs, the body enters a state of hypoxia—that is, it lacks oxygen—and the person passes out. At the same time, the frigid temperatures cause a state of hypothermia, which preserves the nervous system. “It’s similar to a young kid who falls to the bottom of an icy lake,” says Roman. "and two hours later he survives, because he was so cold."

Submission + - US Government Issues Subpoenas for Twitter and Yahoo Users. Why? It's Secret! (aclu.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The freedom-hating liberals at the ACLU write: In three separate recent cases, the government has sent a grand jury subpoena to Yahoo or Twitter and requested a gag order from a magistrate judge, attempting to bar these tech companies from informing the customers in question. Seems legit.

Submission + - Reinventing the Axe (geek.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The axe has been with us for thousands of years, with its design changing very little during that time. After all, how much can you really alter a basic blade-and-handle? Well, Finnish inventor Heikki Karna has tried to change it a whole lot, with a new, oddly-shaped axe that he claims is a whole lot safer because it transfers a percentage of downward force into rotational energy, cutting down on deflections. "The Vipukirves [as the axe is called] still has a sharpened blade at the end, but it has a projection coming off the side that shifts the center of gravity away from the middle. At the point of impact, the edge is driven into the wood and slows down, but the kinetic energy contained in the 1.9 kilogram axe head continues down and to the side (because of the odd center of gravity)," is how Geek.com describes the design. "The rotational energy actually pushes the wood apart like a lever." The question is, will everyone pick up on this new way of doing things?

Submission + - America's First Commercial Drone Test Site Is Now Open for Business (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The first of at least six commercial drone test sites has officially opened in North Dakota, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday. The site opens the door for officially-sanctioned FAA drone testing, which is the first step towards starting a government-approved drone company. Companies that use drones have been operating in legal limbo over the past few years, a situation that became a little more clear last month, when a federal judge ruled that there are no official laws against operating a drone for profit. That’s not the way the FAA has looked at it, however, as the agency still insists that the commercial use of a drone without FAA permission is illegal. The FAA’s test sites have always been part of its plan to officially integrate drones into American skies. The plan, according to Larry Brinker, who will operate a test site in Rome, New York, is to allow anyone to test their drones at the sites.

Submission + - The Ethical Dilemmas Today's Programmers Face

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: As software takes over more of our lives, the ethical ramifications of decisions made by programmers only become greater. Unfortunately, the tech world has always been long on power and short on thinking about the long-reaching effects of this power. More troubling: While ethics courses have become a staple of physical-world engineering degrees, they remain a begrudging anomaly in computer science pedagogy. Now that our code is in refrigerators, thermostats, smoke alarms, and more, the wrong moves, a lack of foresight, or downright dubious decision-making can haunt humanity everywhere it goes. Peter Wayner offers a look at just a few of the ethical quandaries confronting developers every day. 'Consider this less of a guidebook for making your decisions and more of a starting point for the kind of ethical contemplation we should be doing as a daily part of our jobs.'

Submission + - Administration ordered to divulge legal basis for killing Americans with drones

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a claim brought by The New York Times and the ACLU, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the administration must disclose the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones. From the article: 'Government officials from Obama on down have publicly commented on the program, but they claimed the Office of Legal Counsel's memo outlining the legal rationale about it was a national security secret. The appeals court, however, said on Monday that officials' comments about overseas drone attacks means the government has waived its secrecy argument. "After senior Government officials have assured the public that targeted killings are 'lawful' and that OLC advice 'establishes the legal boundaries within which we can operate,'" the appeals court said, "waiver of secrecy and privilege as to the legal analysis in the Memorandum has occurred" (PDF).

Submission + - Later, Baby: Will Freezing Your Eggs Free Your Career? (businessweek.com)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Really interesting piece by Emma Rosenblum about women freezing their eggs in order to take "biological clock" pressure off while they pursue careers: 'Not since the birth control pill has a medical technology had such potential to change family and career planning. The average age of women who freeze their eggs is about 37, down from 39 only two years ago... And fertility doctors report that more women in their early 30s are coming in for the procedure. Not only do younger women have healthier eggs, they also have more time before they have to use them.'

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