I think people are just getting a little tired of the 3D printing hype. Yes, it's a cool emerging technology, but the sensationalism of these headlines and articles are a little grating at this point.

Calling it a "3D printed car" is not exactly lying, but it borders on disengenuous, seeing that the guts of the car are, of course, still manufactured the traditional way. It's apparently the body and frame that were printed, from what I can tell. Seriously, would that have been so damn hard to mention in the summary or the article? Oh, but that sounds a lot less impressive, doesn't it...

It was stated in the article that the car had 40 parts. I'm pretty sure they meant there were 40 printed parts, because there's no way in fuck you can build a car in 40 parts, unless you're conveniently counting the engine and frame as a single "part". Or maybe they're just counting each pre-packaged assembly as a "part".

I don't think people would complain quite as much if there was any real semblance of critical reporting here - less hype and more tech.

That's pathetic. All that effort to make a super-thin device, and you have to put it another case to protect it. Nokia would laugh.

Get a non-toy phone.

It's amusing that Apple can't get sapphire-coated glass to work. Sapphire glass for checkout scanners is a standard product. Every Home Depot checkout scanner has sapphire-coated glass. People slide metal tools across those for years without damage.

Replaceable is better than any amount of drop or scratch resistance.

I was referring to the internationally standardized system of units. Not the intrinsic merits of any particular base.

Agnostics that hold no belief are atheists.

Agnostics that entertain any measure of belief are theists.

Agnosticism is a position taken with regard to knowledge.

Theism and atheism are positions based upon belief, faith. The one does not replace the other.

Agnosticism is about knowledge. the Theism / Atheism poles are diametric opposites: belief and non-belief. There's no middle ground definable by knowledge, or lack thereof.

Agnosticism is not a third position. You're either a theist -- that is, you hold some measure of belief in a god or gods -- or you're not, and you don't. From there, you can, if you like, assert a state of knowledge to bolster your choice, or a lack of a state of knowledge to do the same thing. But your position is still either you believe, or you don't.

The whole point about belief, or not, is that it is contingent upon faith. Knowledge is not.

Hope that helped some.

The smartphone crowd assumes they own the user's eyeballs. They don't. What's needed is better voice integration. You should be able to call, receive calls, text, and receive texts via a Bluetooth headset with the phone in your pocket.

Android sucks at this. My Samsung flip-phone had better voice dialing than my Android phone. Wildfire, which is from 1997, did this quite well. But it was really expensive to do back then, and was priced as high as $250/month. Then Microsoft bought Wildfire and abandoned the product.

Business used to have a completely secular moral compass. Rotary International has their The Four-Way Test, a "nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships." Rotarians recite it at club meetings.

Of the things we think, say or do

• Is it the TRUTH?
• Is it FAIR to all concerned?
• Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
• Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

This is a morality for business. That's a concept that sounds archaic today. It was mainstream from about 1940 to 1975. Many small business owners used to belong to Rotary, especially in small towns. What went wrong? That's a long story, and has to do with the decline in the political power of small business.

Anyway, that's a completely non-religious moral system which is still around and once was mainstream.

...is a little monitor that hangs over your lips, showing a silent movie of your lips saying (in a loop) "I suspect I'm under surveillance" while underneath, you can be saying anything you like. :)

An interesting issue is, the photons that formed the image were not on their property at the time, nor do they have a legitimate claim to ownership of those photons just because they happened to bounce off their stuff. They probably bounced off a lot of other stuff, too. "My photon! MY PHOTON!" has more than a little bit of the ring of insanity about it. :)

If you don't want a photonic record of your actions, the sensible answer is to avoid photons that can form such a thing, i.e., stay inside your dwelling with opaque curtains drawn, erect a fence and a cover, etc.

Management 101: If you don't trust your employees - you are screwed. You need committed and motivated employees, and you must take actions to keep the employees committed and motivated.

CEO 101: Employee problems are management problems.

Financial Investor 101: A bad CEO can wreck the company.

The USPTO has experienced all three problems, and financial investors in lots of different tech companies have paid dearly.

Orwell was an Optimist

The big challenge for atheism is not God; it is that of providing an alternative to Spock-ism. We need an account of our place in the world that leaves room for value."

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or god. Nothing else. It's not about science, it's not about ethics, it's not about morals, it's not about values. When you say you're atheist, you're saying you do not hold any belief there is a god or gods. That's all. There's no dogma, no book, no set of "therefore we believe these here other thingamajigs", nothing.

If you want to know what an atheist thinks about something other than belief in a god or gods, you really must ask them, or you're simply letting your imagination paint a false picture of the world.

I am disputing nothing of the sort. As I have explained many times now, you are not drawing your lines properly. You keep making the same bullshit assertions, after I have proved them false. Why do you do this? You're just going to look that much more foolish later. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-13]

You're either disputing conservation of energy, or you're not calculating the actual electrical heating power. If you're calculating the actual electrical heating power, your calculation has to account for radiation from the chamber walls because it passes in through that boundary. That's why the electrical heating power would be zero if the chamber walls were also at 150F!

Can we agree that the required electrical heating power would be zero if the chamber walls were also at 150F?

... I held the power constant, just as Spencer stipulated. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-13]

It's so adorable that Jane keeps insisting that Jane kept the power constant, even after I showed that Jane's calculation was only able to hold the source temperature constant after the enclosing shell was added by halving the actual electrical heating power.

It's also adorable that Jane keeps ignoring the fact that his "electrical heating input" calculation wouldn't change even if the chamber walls were also at 150F. Even Jane should be able to comprehend that a 150F source inside 150F chamber walls wouldn't need electrical heating power.

NO!!! I have told you 5 or 6 or maybe more times now, this is a VIOLATION of the very straightforward Stefan-Boltzmann law. How it applies in this situation is quite straightforward, and not at all as complex as you are making it out to be. Radiant power output of a gray body is calculated using ONLY the variables: emissivity and temperature. THAT IS ALL. There is no other variable dealing with incident radiation, or anything else. When the system is at radiant steady-state, power out (and therefore power in) are easily calculated, and I have calculated them. Further, Spencer's "electrical" input power was to the heat source, not to the whole system. YOUR OWN PRINCIPLE: power in = power out. Now you're trying to contradict yourself and say it meant something else. It's just bullshit. You're squirming like a fish on a hook. You just don't seem to realize you have already been flayed, filleted, and fried in batter. You're owned, man. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-13]

No. Draw a boundary between the source (T1=150F) and the chamber walls (T4=0F) before the hollow sphere is added. Power in = power out. Variable "electricity_initial" flows in at whatever rate is needed to keep T1=150F. Net heat transfer flows out from source to chamber walls. Power in = power out:

electricity_initial = p(14) = (e)(s) * ( T1^4 - T4^4 )

So are you disputing that power in = power out through a boundary where nothing inside that boundary is changing with time? Or are you disputing that the radiation from the chamber walls passes through a boundary drawn just inside them?

And again, if you keep ignoring that "power in" half of the equation that all Sky Dragon Slayers miss, you'll have to keep wondering why your "electrical heating input" calculation wouldn't change even if the chamber walls were also at 150F. Even Jane should be able to comprehend that a 150F source inside 150F chamber walls wouldn't need electrical heating power.