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Comment Re:Humanity is lost (Score 2) 290

I agree. I think there although there are lots of people in America without money, there is also quite a few people with ample spending money. A graduate from a good university in a field with good jobs could easily earn $75,000 a year. Let's assume that the person is married to somebody who also went to school and can earn $75,000 a year. Together, they make $150,000 a year. That's a lot of money. Unless you are living in extremely expensive areas like Manhattan or San Francisco (in which case the two people will probably be making $200,000-$300,000 combined), then you should have plenty of money to spend on whatever you want.

Comment Re:A BIG thumbs-up so far! (Score 1) 114

Netflix has a couple huge advantages. First, they don't have t worry about censors. They can put whatever they want in the show and Nobody can say a thing. Network TV can't do that. Also they don't have to think about how long an episode is. Obviously they want the episodes to be within a certain range, but they don't have to choreograph the entire episode into exactly 42 minutes so they can fit it into an hour timeslot with all the required commercials. Also, with commercials, most shows write with the expectation of commercials at different points throughout the show. Netflix doesn't have to do that, and helps the shows be a lot better. I find you see HBO and other pay TV shows with content that is just as good, but they can do most of the same stuff Netflix can.

Comment Re:milling? (Score 1) 245

Oh, I agree. Making firearms at home will become very easy. But a 3D printer won't be the tool of choice for doing it. People will be much more likely to use metal lathes and mills to make a firearm out of metal. Sure you "could" do it with a 3D printer and end up with an inferior product, but why would you do so? It seems weird that everyone is focused on 3D printed guns when there are much more dangerous things to worry about.

Comment Re:I'm a little baffled (Score 1) 121

That being said, even Anonymous FTP requires you to "log in". I'm not sure if Google should be trying to log in, even anonymously to FTP servers. I mean, if they don't other people surely will, but I don't think most people expect that web bots are connection to servers that aren't HTTP/HTTPS. I wouldn't leave an anonymous ftp server open to the internet unless I truly wanted something public, but I really wouldn't expect that well behaving bot would start indexing my FTP server if I left it open.

Comment Re:milling? (Score 1) 245

With a 3D printer, any moron can download a design, and hit the big print button.

Yes, and any moron can blow off his hand the first time he goes to use it. 3D printers are not that easy to use. There are many variables that can affect the quality of the print. Even small variations in room temperature can make a difference in the quality of the print. When you're printing 3D trinkets or a case for a Raspberry Pi, this probably doesn't matter too much. But when you're printing something like a firearm that needs to withstand huge forces, it starts to become very important.

Comment Re:3D printed guns are no different to any other g (Score 1) 245

I don't think that plastic will ever be a reasonable material for making a firearm, no matter how good the printer gets. Otherwise we would see somebody making plastic guns using industrial injection molding methods. But all firearms on the market and even those produced in basements are pretty much completely made out of metal. Some use wood or plastic, but usually only in decorative pieces, or the stock of a rifle, and definitely not in the barrel or chamber (pardon my terminology if I'm using words incorrectly). The only really viable means to 3D print a firearm is via something like laser sintering, and even with the patents expiring, the cost of those machines will still be in the 10's of thousands of dollars. If somebody is willing to spend $35,000 to produce guns, then 3D printing is definitely not the most efficient way of doing it. Sure prices will come down, but so will the prices of all the other methods of manufacturing firearms, which means that 3D printing will likely never be the best way to do it. 3D printing is great for one-off prototypes, but once you want something resilient that can last, and that doesn't take huge amount of resources to make, you pretty much have to move to other production methods. That being said, I can definitely see 3D printers being used for some parts of the production, but possibly just for making molds for more traditional methods to be used in the actual production.

Comment Re:milling? (Score 2) 245

3D printers may be getting all the press, but the truth is that mills, CNC machines and many other kinds of manufacturing and prototyping matching are becoming very accessible to the public. A friend of mine recently bought a metal lathe. These things aren't expensive anymore, and can be obtained quite easily. There aren't that many home milled guns, but there also aren't that many 3D printed guns either. The press is simply reporting on it a lot making it seem like it's a bigger problem than it is.

Comment Re:3D printed guns are no different to any other g (Score 1) 245

3D printed guns are a long way off from being able to click print and create a functioning, useful firearm. It's much easier to create a makeshift firearm using more traditional tools. 3D printing isn't as easy as people make it seem. Most people 3D printing firearms will probably do it just for fun, and probably aren't looking to hurt anyone. They probably have a better chance of hurting themselves when it blows up after 10 shots. If they want to use it to hurt someone else, there are much easier ways of obtaining a weapon.

Comment Re:16 gigs? WTF? (Score 1) 22

Personally, I think that Android works well on a phone, but I just don't understand why anybody would want to use it on a 10 inch tablet. It's completely ridiculous. Only 1 app on the screen at a time. Some manufacturers have made hacks to allow some apps to be displayed side by side, but it doesn't work universally for all apps. The iPad is just as bad. I have a Surface 2 (not pro) and I think Microsoft has the right idea for tablet OS's. The new Surface 3 runs full Windows and costs the same as this thing, and also the same as the iPad. Windows has a lot of functionality that is left out on Android and iOS. Universal network share and OneDrive support in all applications/apps is a huge advantage. Plus, having a full size USB port and that you can hook up just about any USB device to is a big plus. Android and iOS are fine for phones, but I find they really leave something to be desired on a bigger screen.

Comment Hard sell with the new Surface 3 out there (Score 1) 22

This thing is going to be a hard sell wit the new Surface 3 that just came out. $499, or $629 for this android tablet is exactly the same price as the Surface 3. Why would I want an Android laptop when I could have a full Windows laptop. The base model comes with 64 GB of storage.

Comment Re:Did this really need demonstration? (Score 1) 113

Yeah. Most of the emulators out there use hacks to get them to run smoothly on today's hardware. There's a lot of emulators out there that don't run exactly as the old hardware did. Some emulators like BSNES actually try to run the machine code exactly the same way the old consoles did, while others take short cuts and there fore might only work with the most popular games.

There's even a fair number of N64 emulators that can't play Ocarina of Time properly. There's a part very early in the game where you have to pick a path based on the direction path the song is coming from. Most of the emulators fail at this and just play the song the same no matter which path you go down.

Comment Re:Might as well (Score 3, Insightful) 113

Driving is boring, people don't pay attention to the road, is the solution to make it more boring?

This is always my concern. If the car is semi-autonomous, that means the driver should be ready to take control of the car if something goes wrong. But if the person has their hands off the wheel, and foot off the brake, what are the odds that the person will be able to take control when they need to?

I'm just envisioning the near future, where most days people don't have to touch the controls. People get complacent, and start reading books, watching a movie, or browsing the net while driving, because it's so boring and they never have to do anything anyway. Then once in a while something bad happens, and the person is unable to do anything about it, because they weren't paying attention. Sure you could blame the person, but you could put some blame on the car/manufacturer for giving them a false sense of security.

That or people just don't buy the self driving car, because if I have to pay attention all the time anyway, there's no way I'm paying for the self driving car unless I can actually do something else while driving.

Comment Re:Oh this is easy .... (Score 1) 394

Wouldn't a better solution be to buy the smallest/cheapest phone that supports tethering and use a tablet to do extra computing tasks? That way you can bring your cheap phone anywhere and not have to worry about how much space it takes up, or whether you are going to break/lose it, and then you only have to bring the tablet when you feel you might actually have a need for such a device.

Comment Re: The authors found that batteries appear on tra (Score 0) 330

Your gas car can fill up in 10 minutes. This is the reason that an electric car needs such a long range to be taken seriously. Personally I think a lot of people would be fine with a car with 100 mile range as a second car, or even as their only car. They could rent a car the 2 or 3 times a year they needed to drive further. I realize there are people who dive hundreds of miles in a single day almost weekly. Electric cars will possibly never solve their problem. But they are a minority.

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