I don't agree. I've used Code Red, Launchpad, and others. And the tools they give you pretend to be professional tools, and seem to have a steep learning curve. Especially with Code Red wanting to upsell to a better version. But most of these free IDEs are more like trial versions to me. Adruino's crippling was done to make the process of making little gizmos more accessible, most other tools are crippling so they don't cut into other markets.

That said, I never really was much of a fan of Arduino because I don't have much use for AVR. This is me finally admitting that Adruino was pretty good, and that I may have been a little stubborn to have resisted it all these years.

Sure, all the little shields and things are convenient. But most folks with a search engine and some jumper wires already find out how to connect things not designed for the Arduino to their boards.

But it's the software that has made it easy for everyone to get started immediately. I've used a dozen or so development environments for embedded, and Arduino's has the easiest learning curve I've seen. It's not particularly powerful or flexible, it's not super great at debug/ICE/ICD stuff. But you can type in the few line example C program, and flash your first blinking LED program in a matter of minutes.

For platform that is not commercial and not really for industrial purposes, the software seems to aim for the best user experience. And in software development, instant gratification is the biggest motivator there is.

Well I'm not saying it was aliens.

But...

I'd have thought the main reason was that technology moves incredibly quite slowly and takes forever to catch up with the "real world" when it comes to such vital systems as black box recordings.

Microphones are much simpler devices than cameras, and in any case they are a required part of the kit for normal operation of a flight.

Asking a question like that makes it sound like you think someone just needs to flip a switch and it's done.

Define "darkness." It obviously wasn't completely dark. Was it dark like a moonless night dark, or dark like an interior hallway dark?

Secondly, how do you define night vision in metres?

Is it important, and is it even an advancement?

They didn't come up with the idea and the effect was already known.

So their sole contribution appears to be the idea of using both insulin and DMSO (for no readily apparent reason and probably to no actual benefit).

Said "organization" appears to be two guys with unknown qualifications and "our fair share of body mod tools for when the mood strikes us." Their "paper" looks more like a blog post to me, and their "tests" were subjective at very best (something they do at least admit).

I'd half expect their next "paper" to be a study on the effects of downing a glass of diet coke after eating a packet of mentos.

Yeah, so far.

The summary goes on about how he uses Instagram and Skype, but doesn't actually get to the point brought up in the headline, which is that the guy does use email, on his Blackberry, apparently without knowing what it is.

I was pointing out the parts that itzly apparently missed when critiquing your suggestion.

It's not just you. It does not read like an Onion article to me, either.

If he can't get broadband, he can't do his job. If he can't do his job, he (probably) can't make his mortgage payments. If he can't make his mortgage payments, he can't live in the house.

So there's quite possibly not much choice about it.

I think Slashdot is trying to woo the beat poetry crowd.

But they haven't. So it's not.

I zoomed in at random and ended up at Pink Eye Bridge. Eww.

Passes like a bowel movement?