Am I missing something? I don't see a linked article or documentation anywhere in the post that states these prices.

Why would a bouncing infrared laser hurt the lens that the laser beam just passed through??? The other end of the laser tube is another IR mirror. There is no ill effect of having the beam bounce back directly down the path.

Bill

White paint would have no effect unless of course it was "titanium white" in which the titanium would be a relfector. The rest of it would simply vaporize away. This isn't a little laser pointer we're talking about... it's a 40 watt CO2 laser... that has a wavelength of 10600 nm. That's a far longer wavelength than the ~800 you can see in the near infrared and will be absorbed in quite a few materials you think are good optical reflectors. Using a rough metal shield would be the best thing to have. (Smooth metal shields tend to be infrared mirrors... which wouldn't exactly help the issue.)

Bill

If the project is well thought out and the pitch is done reasonably well so that the the funder knows what they are getting into, then yes, it does work.

As a kickstarter myself (shameless plug: Ultra-Bot) I started out with a modest goal... and quickly achieved it with a product that I think was well thought out, had reasonably low expectations and offered the intended audience exactly what they wanted.

With that said, however, there are a few kickstarters that are way off the mark and haven't thought it out that well... usually because they have their emotions tied into the product and it really isn't as good as they think it is... which in that case, Kickstarter actually works as well... it allows you to know that your idea isn't so hot before you invest a billion bucks in it.

Bill

And then said "Famous douchebag" posts your message as an A/C on Slashdot.

Man, I just wish I had mod points.

Bill

It's most certaintly not the first. There are several 3D printer manufacturers (including MakerBot themselves) out there that have been doing this for quite a while now... but none of them are charging as much for their consumables. It seems that for $50, you get about a pound of material, which is roughly 3 times the normal cost.

Bill

Bullshit. The largest antitrust fine to date: €1.06B, was on Intel, for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market.

Perhaps you missed the linked videos... but they actually show how flexible the display is as well as how tolerable it is to cutting it in half!

Bill

I'm not sure where you got that information, but that is not the correct course of action. Even in a low altitude situation, a stall can only be recovered by lowering the angle of attack... engine power and speed have absolutely nothing to do with it. A stall is an aerodynamic condition where the wings are not producing enough lift for flight. Pushing the nose over (to lower the angle of attack) allows the air to reattach to the wings which eliminates the stall condition.

Bill

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The Airbus, like Boeings, have "Stick Shakers" to give feedback to the pilot. The stall waring indicator, in fact, does trigger the stick shaker, but once you get below a certain speed (like these pilots did) the aircraft thinks the plane is too slow to be flying so it must be taxing, so it turns it off.

Bill

Really? I'm pretty sure Falcon 1 has successfully launced several payloads to orbit... which pretty much blows your assertations out of orbit. Also, the Falcon 9 has had launched twice, both successfully orbiting the Dragon capsule (though the first was just a shell with no avionics) it still was a successful mission. They did have failures (first 3 F1s for example) but that's not a 90% failure rate by any stretch.

Bill

Actually, only a few companies working on non-orbital vehicles are designing aircraft with wings... since they spend a lot of their time in the air... in space, you don't need wings. It's much more efficient to design a vehicle without them if all you're doing is shooting it up on a rocket and landing it under a parachute (after reentry, which also causes problems for wings.)

Bill

No where in Elon's Tweet or in the referenced article does it say they need to tweak the code... it says they need more time to "test" it.

Bill

The fact that the Win RT based devices can't join a domain doesn't matter. In fact, the iPad has never been able to join one and it doesn't seem to be a problem with them. Corporate infrastructures are adapting to support the comsumer based devices being brought in by employees... it's just a simple fact. Corporations save a lot of money when they don't have to buy their employees devices, so the trade offs are worth it.

Bill

Exactly... what's to test... they're used to board and leave the space station every single time! The Russians have been using these for decades. One of their early modules failed, but that was in the early 70's... since then they've been very reliable with only minor issues.