Your final point is an important one: people who grow up accustomed to low quality (or reliability) will tolerate far more than those who grew up with higher quality.

I've worked in telecom for 15 years and I frequently hear people spout that they switched to VoIP/SIP and saved lots of money. You talk to their staff people (who use the service daily, not the ones who make the financial decisions) and they'll admit to inconsistent quality. For a personal/home account, that loss of quality is a viable trade-off. But if you're running a business, you have to consider the affect on your communications with your clients. If your client calls regularly and half the time gets a low quality voice connection, in a subtle way, their opinion of your company declines.

Ultimately, just how a low a quality can we tolerate? (note that I am NOT talking about the speed of the service the voice runs over, just the voice connection quality) I am often appalled at the quality of cell calls - I struggle to understand words that are cut short or experience some sort of distortion, reducing me to guess based on context. Isn't this a race to the bottom, where everyone eventually will lose, except those who control the services from on-high? (Don't forget that downward pressure on prices eventually leads to downward pressure on your wages)

[further analogies can be made to low cost (and thus low quality) electronics that are only designed to last a short time before you have to pay again for a replacement]

Your robot is also your urinal.

OK, but a 'robot' that was small enough to carry around with you would seem unlikely to produce much power. (The article implied a small robot - maybe I'm incorrect.) Maybe just enough to occasionally charge your cellphone? You're gonna carry around a bag of pee to charge your cell?

I somehow hoped for something (ultimately) on a larger scale.

I didn't realize that compounds found in urine (a waste product, after all) contained enough convertible energy to make the net work output worthwhile. After all, you have to take into consideration the energy expended in gathering and transporting the urine to the robot. The article also mentions using waste water - waste water from what? Is the world just full of all kinds of energy sources that are being discarded, or are we finally realizing that what was once considered 'marginal' capacity for energy harvesting is worth pursuing, since much of the low-hanging fruit (e.g. easily-accessible oil deposits) has already been picked?

(Obligatory comment: I, for one, welcome our new urine-sipping robot overlords. What's that you say? You need several samples for my employment pre-screening?)

I guess I'm still stuck asking why?

OK, so you've had your genome sequenced (or whatever) and determined there might be a problem. Isn't that nature's way of saying 'sit this one out'?

Rather than encourage society to devote so many resources to finding new ways to let you make a baby, how about adopting? There are soooo many deserving children out there who are aching for a home. They already exist - they already have the need.

Don't fiddle with nature - do the simpler thing and bring an existing child into your life.

"The wave is being considered 'complex' and is believed to have been caused 'the slumping at the continental shelf east of New Jersey' or a strong storm according to the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center."

How is it that they need a center on the West Coast to determine that it was something off the coast of Jersey that caused it?

Are they spending too much time watching the Jersey Shore and not enough time watching the shore of Jersey?

Wouldn't it have been better if they did NOT announce to the world that they found this new city until they *knew* that the gov't could secure it against looters?

I mean, now that this 'unlooted site' has been announced, isn't it just a matter of time before someone loots it?

I swing back and forth.

I'll slowly let things get too messy/disorganized - piles start to develop - then something (like visiting someone else's house which is neat) will light a fire under me to get my place cleaned up. So I'll swing the other way and start throwing out things (like old software manuals, receipts, parts that I'll never really use) and taking old computers to be recycled. (fess up - how many computers are in your place right now that should be gotten rid of?)

I'm not consistent - unless you count the oscillating cycles.

(Do I get extra points for saying "oscillating cycles"?)

Banks used a motif in his Culture books that I wish we saw more of in Sci-Fi: a future where (almost) everyone's basic needs of life were taken care of. No poverty or war (most of the time). You didn't have to take a crappy job just to put food on the table and live in some tiny apartment.

This allows the author to explore the potential the human mind and society have if you remove the day-to-day worry of survival. We are, as a species, capable of so much more than just 'survival' and 'business efficiencies' and minimal laws governing what large corporations/governments can do to us. Banks pondered new ideas about what we could dream up if freed from daily worry. New ways of living, thinking in very broad vistas (over time and space), exploring what is possible beyond the body we were born with. Wondering what it would be like to be another gender or species? Make the change! Want to enjoy (truly) exotic adventures, but still maintain a good chance of surviving it? The Culture's got you covered!

I believe that our (unfortunately necessary) focus on survival in our present world draws off energy and creativity that could be applied to expanding what it means to be human. It's nice to read an author who wants to speculate about what might lie beyond our present existence.

Banks will be sorely missed.

Welcome our new Giant Robot Jellyfish Overloads and... oh never mind

I believe the article alludes to the diameter of the eyes having a 6mm difference, not the radius.

A 6mm radial difference would be a 12mm diameter difference, which would be... practically Manga.

Why are you continuing to run a set-up that, by your own admission, is a great hassle ameliorated by a once in blue moon event?

Part of the reason is granular control of incoming mail filtering (before my POP client - where I prefer it), part is a desire to feel like my personal mail is not sitting on someone else's machine.

Both reasons are more personal/subjective rather than rational/objective. Not advocating that everyone do it, just something I feel is the best choice for me.

I've hosted my own mail server for about 15 years and I regularly think to myself, 'I'm tired of worrying about hardware and my circuit. Maybe I should let somebody else host it.'

Then it seems there's always an article like this that clears my head.

For decades, Kodak was a technology company. Maybe not 'high tech' by a slashdot definition, but their film and paper production and (at one time) optics tech was world renowned. Even today, any company, anywhere in the world, would be hard-pressed to create a production line with the tight controls that Kodak insisted on. They did ongoing research in materials and chemistry for almost 100 years.

Assuming they stay in a slide, what becomes of all that tech? Will the patents just get distributed to the highest bidders? And will the tech ever get used again?

OK, so I'm labeling myself as a throw-back to earlier times, but it is sad to see any venture, that attained such a height, brought low and then just ... dissipated.

I think that being a publicly-traded company also hemmed them in.

One (unlikely) path would have been to decide to become a niche player in much smaller markets. Film and paper are NOT going away entirely - there have been other companies (Ilford/Harmon, Fuji, Foma) that have offered (and continue to offer) competition in the film space. But Kodak is big, and shareholders are not going to respond well to being told that management believes there is a niche market in which Kodak could continue for years, albeit as a much smaller company with much smaller value. (Kodak has some of the best film manufacturing technology, equipment and expertise in the world, all but the ongoing labor already paid for)

The 'needs' of shareholders force corp management in some directions, which may have short-term but not long-term benefit. Jobs was able to turn Apple around because he could bully everyone - if management had listened to shareholders, would Apple have survived?

I work for a telecom company with thousands of miles of fiber and you'd be surprised how 'tasty' some cable seems to be to other rodents like squirrels. While not common, a year going by without squirrel damage would seem very odd.

Of course, drunk hunters do far more damage during hunting season. You'd think the cable had little bulls-eyes printed on the sheathing...