Really, because this is pretty damned close to what the G3 has. Replaceable battery - check; uSD - check; wireless charging - check; f1.8, no, but the lens is f2.4, the individual photosites are 25% larger than on the G4. Up until now, I'm not aware of any phone which has a maximum aperture larger than 2.2.

You clearly have not heard of the contract you sign when you get service(d) by Verizon or AT&T.

The paid reviewer mark would be an ideal checkbox. It allows them to declare, can make Amazon enforce purchase from that user, and can ban reviewers who violate the terms. They can even use that to weight the reviews differently vs paid and unpaid. I presume they already weight the Amazon vs non-Amazon verified purchasers. (And if the feedback is good, a paid reviewer isn't necessarily a bad thing).

" every reviewer would state their skillset and experience with similar products"

That's often evident from the reviews. 2-4 star reviews tend to be the most helpful, and there are often good points made in them. Expecting all of them to be useful or applicable to your situation would be like expecting all the /. story comments to be insightful, or to have a MS or Apple thread without trolls and fanbois in the mix. It just ain't gonna happen.

Paint him green and give him a funny looking helmet and we have a deal.

If we put humans on Mars, I'm guessing that would be considered life beyond earth. If NASA sends someone who isn't a US Citizen, they would be an alien.

So, really, not too far fetched for the pedantic among us. And, being /., that would be pretty much all of us.

At the (relatively low) burdened wage of $50/hr, you've both increased you costs by 50% and reduced your flight capacity by 25%. Need a co-pilot? You've doubled your flight cost per hour and halved your available payload, Congratulations, you've just increased the cost to fly by a factor of 4.

Not that anyone is flying a 172 for commercial purposes, but $100/hr for four passengers ($25/hr/passenger) vs $200/hr for two passengers ($100/hr/passenger) is a pretty big difference.

Its's not a breaker then.

Note that NASA has figured out most of these scenarios and while there are no guarantees you can work around quite a number of technical hurdles.

The problem *is* the humans. Humans program (via sw and hw) the automated system, but if they miss something then the flight fails without human intervention. OTOH, if you let a human touch anything during a flight there is a finite chance that that human will become compromised in some way. So to combat that, we put in two humans, wagering that the chance of both being compromised is exceptionally low.

The point is that as long as humans are in control or involved things can - and will - go wrong. But humans are dumb panicky animals, so we keep going around in circles like this to pretend we're doing something to make it better.

Fit the truck with two way communications and let a remote operator in a remote location take over. One driver could service 10 or more trucks, driving only last-mile areas.

You're conflating the business opportunity which drives the financials of a social media platform company with the user side of social media.

You see it as adversarial, I see it as symbiotic.

[voiceover] For just 44 cents a day, your family can participate in the exploration of the known universe, helping solve the cosmic puzzle we live in. [/voiceover]

That's interesting. I'll remember that the next time I have a huge swath of common interests to talk about with people I've just met at a weekend convention - common interests we discovered not through weeks or months of guessing, but with a quick glance at a public profile. I'll remember that the next time I see my cousins and we talk about all the shared experiences with have with out kids - spurred by our keeping in-touch through FB and seeing our kids grow up. I'm sure I felt that reconnecting with an old college buddy online was totally non-social. It was so non-social that he used FB to let me know he was going to be in my town for a night on business, and we get together at a pub and killed a couple of pitchers of Guiness over the course of a long evening. I met a woman from England at an event about 4 years ago. We see one another - at most - once a year. But when she comes to the states it's like we've been best buddies the whole time and we always have a fantastic time together with friends.

Social media, in general, is about keeping in touch with people and interacting. It doesn't take the place of face to face meetings - it bridges the gaps between those meetings. If you're not closer to your friends with social media than without, you're doing it wrong.

Not using social media is like never using a knife. Both are dangerous, but when used properly and with care can be exceptionally useful.

Are there times I'm careless with social media? I suppose there are certainly times I could be more reserved. But the more you [properly] manage your social media accounts the more you can gain from them. While you do open yourself up to a certain degree of transparency, you also offer an opportunity for people who offer you something beneficial to find you (ex: old friends displaced by time and distance, other hobbiests who share your passion).

If you don't own and never use a knife or other sharp-edged tool, you'll never have to worry about cutting yourself while using one. You'll also find that there are many tasks which are far more difficult to accomplish without one. And despite what you read in the news, you're pretty unlikely to kill, or even severely injure, yourself if used properly.

Or a phone, for that matter.

You can always send a letter. It's not like it's a big deal if we can't get to you TODAY. Anyone who doesn't plan more than a few days ahead is just asking for trouble anyway. The US was founded in a time when it could takes months to get a response from Europe.

So, no, it's really not necessary.

I mean, they are beating a dead horse at this point. We can imagine that the horse is pink.