Comment Re:Why on earth would I save? (Score 1) 182
You're my hero.
Comment Re:I didn't buy one for the payback (Score 1) 762
When I bought the car in 2005 there weren't a hell of a lot of used hybrids. The Toyota dealer had a waiting list for a Prius and I needed a car ASAP so I went to the Honda dealer. My father sells cars and he always says to buy "used" car because the resale value of the vehicle drops significantly by basically driving it off the lot. Either way, in CA you pretty much need a car, though I did manage to bike to work a few times, it's not something I'd like to do every day - I'm not Lance Armstrong.
Comment I didn't buy one for the payback (Score 5, Interesting) 762
Look, is it so hard to believe that someone would buy a hybrid to make a statement not to others, but to the car manufacturers making these products? I own a Honda Civic hybrid. It's not much to look at and it certainly doesn't turn heads. On the other hand, I bought it new from a Honda dealer in California when they were trying to push a lot more expensive cars on me. Why? Because I want Honda to know that I'd rather be green than cool or hip or whatever. I want Honda to know that it's important to ME so in the future they'll make cars better-suited to ME.
From one of the linked articles, "Translation: The kinds of people who buy Toyota Prius hybrids in the U.S. may indulge themselves in private, where no one else will see them, but want to be seen in public with less luxurious, greener products to bolster their reputation."
I call bullshit. I didn't do it to bolster my reputation. I put my money where my mouth is and instead of getting on a soapbox and telling everyone to go out and buy a hybrid, I actually bought one.
I don't care that I probably spent more than I'll recoup from the fuel-efficiency. For me, it wasn't about that.
From one of the linked articles, "Translation: The kinds of people who buy Toyota Prius hybrids in the U.S. may indulge themselves in private, where no one else will see them, but want to be seen in public with less luxurious, greener products to bolster their reputation."
I call bullshit. I didn't do it to bolster my reputation. I put my money where my mouth is and instead of getting on a soapbox and telling everyone to go out and buy a hybrid, I actually bought one.
I don't care that I probably spent more than I'll recoup from the fuel-efficiency. For me, it wasn't about that.
Comment Simple (Score 1) 467
Don't die.
Comment This is why I'm OK with AT&T (Score 1) 370
Not that I believe AT&T has no problems, because it absolutely does. But I figure I use my iPhone more for data services than phone calls anyway and that's one of AT&T's strong areas. But at least I'm not giving my money to Verizon no matter how good their coverage is -- they're basically jackasses.
Sugar-Sensitive Tattoos Could Make Life Easier For Diabetics 5
mbstone writes "Aside from ending painful daily fingerpricking for millions, the invention of the color-changing blood sugar tattoo should also reduce the vast amount spent on glucose test strips ($1/test). Next, I want to see artistic diabetic tattoos that morph according to the wearer's blood sugar."
Hand Mounted Flame Thrower 30
emeraldd writes "Everett Bradford's 'Prometheus Device' is a hand-mounted appliance that shoots fire."
Comment Re:Time Travel (Score 1) 903
I most certainly can. Time slows down as your approach the speed of light. This is very well-understood by relativistic effects. Where an hour passes for you, a minute may pass for me depending on how fast I am going relative to the speed of light. So while one day may pass for me, I may effectively jump 100 years into the future. Einstein wasn't kidding when he said all of this stuff.
Comment Time Travel (Score 1) 903
I travel into the future all the time!
Comment One less "feature" (Score 2, Interesting) 361
With most of the emphasis on performance and stability, this was probably the one "feature" I was looking forward to with Snow Leopard. At $29 I'll still upgrade. Grand Central and OpenCL sound fairly impressive but I was really looking forward to a file system that never needed to be upgraded... I guess I'll keep on waiting.
Comment People Against the new Terms of Service (Score 5, Informative) 409
Here's a link to this group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=77069107432
Submission + - Suspended Animation Produced without Freezing
Predictions Market writes: "Low doses of hydrogen sulfide, the toxic gas responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs, can safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and aspects of cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation-like state that does not depend on a reduction in body temperature and include a substantial decrease in heart rate without a drop in blood pressure. The researchers measured factors such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration and physical activity in normal mice exposed to low-dose (80 ppm) hydrogen sulfide for several hours. In all the mice, metabolic measurements such as consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide dropped in as little as 10 minutes after they began inhaling hydrogen sulfide, remained low as long as the gas was administered, and returned to normal within 30 minutes of the resumption of a normal air supply."Producing a reversible hypometabolic state could allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury," says Gian Paolo Volpato, MD, MGH Anesthesiology research fellow and lead author of the study. "We don't know yet if these results will be transferable to humans, so our next step will be to study the use of hydrogen sulfide in larger mammals." The full report is available online."
Submission + - SCO blames Linux for bankruptcy filing 4
Stony Stevenson writes: SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says competition from the open source Linux operating system was a major reason why the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.
In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux."
McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."
In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux."
McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix."
Submission + - German police arrest admin of Tor anonymity server (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a data center, over 500km away. In the last year, Germany has passed a draconian new anti-security research law and raided seven different data centers to seize Tor servers. While back in 2003, A German court ordered the developers of a different anonymity network to build a back-door into their system. CNET's article has the full details.
