Alright, I've been working in the materials industries for years, so I can see there is a lot of strange info here.

• First off carbon fiber is what you have after you burn everything else off. Yup that's how it's made, and it's not so environmentally friendly
• Second, carbon is the hardest substance known to man. mixing it in varied amounts with a strong yet flexible binder like epoxy allows a product to have the best of both worlds in varied amounts, as per design.
• Third, bamboo depends on it's cell structure for stiffness, and while it may be very stiff, it is not nearly as strong as carbon fiber by weight, and cannot be (carbon is as stiff as it gets)
• Fourth, once the bamboo is soaked in epoxy it is no longer environmentally friendly. It was up till that point but no longer
• Fifth, bamboo can rot, carbon can't. Which means that products made of bamboo have a life span, after which they will need a home int the dirt somewhere. Not necessarily so for carbon fiber
• Sixth, Carbon fiber used in a thermal set mold, using a blend of carbon, and nylon woven together instead of saturated with epoxy is one of the most durable products I have ever seen, and because it is a thermoplastic based binder, it could most likely be recycled.

There are many ways to use composites, of every type. In some cases not having to replace the product may be more environmentally sound than making it out of something semi-biodegradable like bamboo and epoxy. I'm just saying, that there are ups and downs to everything. It takes years and much useage to define the criteria, for environmentally sound, with any product. Wasn't to long ago I remember ethonal and biodesel were going to save the planet, and now we realize it's really not much better after all.

Elon Musk "will partner with several companies besides Panasonic". http://www.mercurynews.com/bus... I seriously doubt that Panasonic and the several other companies involved would want to invest heavily into a factory that produces batteries primarily for Tesla. It's a win/win for anyone involved in this endevour. If they can actually bring raw, newly mined materials into one end and then pump batteries out the other, they can cut out a huge amount of the cost of purchasing and re-working the pre-manufactured components and materials.

I can see this guy robbing a lot of banks if he's successful. Or at least getting pulled in for questioning a lot.

To work within the current system, you must first have enough money to publicly challenge those few who own most of it. The "system" has been slanted to favor the elite, and you will never get it back. Raise as much money as you can, and see how little it means to people with more resources than everyone else combined.

My house was robbed a few years back. We had an active alarm. The thieves were in and out while the alarm was still going, in the morning in broad daylight. They don't really care about alarms, because they, know they can be gone before anyone can respond.

After that I put cameras up. I put them in inside corners facing out of the porches where they can't be walked around, and in other places they can't be reached. This has worked as much more of a deterrent, due (I believe) to the fact that no one wants to be ID'ed while committing a crime. Since a lot of these people are recurring criminals, if you have a good image, your local cops may actually know who they are.

As for what system to use. I've used Zoneminder with IP cameras, and a couple HD USB cameras with powered remote hubs. The IP cameras (foscam) are the most unreliable of the bunch, simply because they tend to cut out when recording an event. You'll get the beginning and the middle, sometimes the end.. but never a full motion event. I've talked to other people and they say the same about a lot of IP cameras. The USB option is great, but there is a limit to the lenght of the USB cable that can be used even powered.

I wouldn't(haven't) recommend buying an ev. However, the Nissan Leaf in my area (Seattle) can be leased for $200/m with $2000 down. This is a great lease price for a car that you don't wan't to own due to battery degredation, and many people here have taken advantage of that.

also, large cheap bars of gold will sell equally well. Yes, the universe is full of free energy, that doesn't mean that harnessing it to "your" needs is going to be cheap. We live fat and happy off all the work the dinosaurs(mostly plants but I digress) put into creating energy, but never take into account that they used only a small portion of the energy available to us in the solar system. The question is not how to make cheap electric cars but how to make cheap electricity, because then even the creation of the cars becomes more economical.

I agree 100%. This is one of those moments that anyone who's read any amount of scifi knows what is to come, and all the business suits out there in the PC/gaming world don't have a clue. Occulus is not just about gaming. It will transform the world of computing as we know it. Sure there will be lots of people who prefer, or for reason of their distinct needs will not want to use it. But for the most part it will be the most disruptive technology of the next five years opening up huge paradigms of tech in ways that we are barely able to imagine now. Personally, I read "Snow crash" way to late and could easily see how the author missed on so many things, but the basis of it, that was completely on par, and we are about to see it happen now.

You know in some countries (like Canada) it is actually illegal to knowingly lie in a news broadcast. Opinion should be stated as such. US media has no problems with outright lying to the public. Media and corporate interests are not necessarily in the public interest but they often have far more say.

Just a thought, but would it really make a difference? I mean corporations pay to have their points of view publicized over any one else's. Since swaying public opinion is how it all works to begin with wouldn't they just advertise their point of view anyway and sway elections even without donating.

I'm responding to this, because I agree that LMMS is a great program. A little awkward to use sometimes but still cool. I would also like to mention to the Ardour doubters out there that using the Calf plugins makes Ardour a whole new piece of software http://calf.sourceforge.net/ .

People, keep asking why they would want a Steam box. I think you hit the nail on the head. Preconfigured, pretested, and optimized to run games. I go over to peoples houses and watch them boot their computer for 10-20 minutes into Windows just to play a game. It's obvious they don't know how to build or maintain their systems. I have been using Linux as my main desktop since about 97. Admittedly early on it was because I was a tech junkie, but I really don't work on my systems very often. My wife even switched to Linux this last year, and the amount of maintenance headaches I've had since then have dropped ten fold. I know there are people who have had nightmare issues with Linux, and I know people who have had none. I also know people that can't keep a Windows computer running properly for more than a few days, and even more that think it's normal to wait 3 to 5 minutes for an app to start.

But excuse the rant. I think the point is that if Valve is going to sell a steam Box, that you could dual boot with windows if you want(or not), or install other applications to use it as a desktop(or not). That will just work day in day out, without the fuss of windows. People will buy it.

I believe Valve is consciously creating their own environment here. Much like Xbox, and PlayStation, they want to be able to offer you an end to end experience, where the software and hardware are tuned for performance. This may mean that Steam OS will give up some features as a generic linux OS to gain performance for gaming. In the case of the Steam Machine, this will more than likely mean that the hardware will have specially tuned drivers pushing it.

So think of taking your Windows machine, and passing it to to a team of experts who would then strip the OS down, rebuild it, and tune it specifically for the hardware you have installed, so that it runs games at max performance. In this case your best Windows 8 machine may not perform as well as a mid level (hardware) Steam Machine.

0.00001% of world population cares about the accuracy of statistics surrounding people who may or may not enjoy yachting.. sadly those people are also avid slashdot followers

The "king post" is what keeps the bow sprit from moving aft when pressure from the sail is added to it. The only reason for adding weight to it in this situation is if the bow happened to be rising to quickly. The rules imply that any wing shape added to the keel/centerboard must stay in the same angle/plane for the duration of the race. Designers skipped this rule by creating a moveable lifting plane on the bow of the boat. Tilting this plane lifts the boat up off of the water. However, this is a balancing act. It takes a lot of skill and design compitence to create and run one of these rigs. The NZ team was the first to figure out the cheat, and everyone else has been playing catch up. Team Oracles boat designed by Paul Burke, was not designed with the lifting planes originally intended. In this case some of the team members took it upon themselves to level the feild by adding weight to keep the bows from popping up to quickly and losing control of when they would and would not plane on the hydrofoils. It is a bit picky, but those people involved knew well what they were doing and went through lengths to cover it up. If they had just put a hunk of lead up there, judges would probably just have said "hey you can't do that".. but instead it was found buried purposely put there. That is pretty much willfull defiance of the rules. I'm an american shipwright from the northwest where these boats are built, so I'm definately on the US side.. but I see the significance of the decision, both ways.