While this looks like an interesting and cheap device to populate empty PCBs, it is only a small part of the total sulution. The PCB has to be made, solder paste added (maybe this device could be extended to do so), and most importantly: heated. Of all these steps, the pick-and-place may be the least enjoyable, but also the one that _could_ be done manualy, if needed. Still, if this device saves two days of manual labor, it already pays itself.

With all due respect: why is this modded insightful instead of the funny it was probably aimed at? Especially because the device can be destroyed by means currently available, such as the volcalo mentioned above. And simpler means too.

All of what you say is true, except for your assumption that "there actually ISN'T that much demand" (citation?) and your condescendence on the people in want of a keyboard. I used to be very happy with my Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro which was actually smaller be it a but thicker than most phones of its day. It could be small exactly because it had a separate keyboard and none of the screen had to be sacrificed for a virtual keyboard. This "more expensive" phone was sold for €200 at a time when iPhones were in the +€500 region. If the Applefolks are prepared to shell out such amounts for some fancy looks, why wouldnt keyboard lovers do so for a real feature? There need not be hundreds of models, just one Samsung, one LG would do. But apparently not.

No discussion on one point, though: the slide keyboard made it more vulnerable and eventually it broke down on me, after intensive use. On the other hand: its 512 MB internal memory was also becoming a hurdle, so one year later I would have needed to replace it anyway.

DIY

Disclaimer: I am in hardware myself and may completely miss the point here. However, our software/firmware folks do agile programming involving dividing programming problems into pieces which are assigned to programmers, followed-up on large whiteboards and being daily discussed in "scrum meetings" etc. (I may be confusing some concepts here but that is of less importance). The point being that your statement, that programming is some sort of unique dark-art-which-cannot-be-measured-by-managers, appears untrue to me and, honestly, rather pedantic. What these guys are doing is quite measurable. Maybe not by a silly measure like "lines of code", but by the measure of number of problems being solved, having a complexity that apparently everyone of them agrees on.

Indeed, the CEO doesn't know the exact details of how this works, but neither does he personally count the number of cleaned toilets.

According to wikipedia , normal black paint reflects 2.5%, making it 97.5% efficient, according to this metric. Going to 99.99xx is an insignificant improvement compared to the cost of ordinary black paint and this new stuff. I doubt highly that the bottleneck is in the reflectivity of the coating.

This is the type of stuff I used to find cool and tinker with 10 years ago. Nowadays, I value my time (a bit) more and prefer to dedicate it to other, more useful projects. Why waste time trying to run an old version of an OS that has been improved over the years? Processing power and RAM are dirt cheap. Even the small systems, like the raspberry pi support modern distros. It was cool to struggle with a slackware installation 10 years ago and succeed. Given enough effort and time, it can also be done on recent hardware but what does it prove? I would prefer to start a more useful and challenging project.

Then why don't you write Nobel prize in the first place? Your comment, on how bad writing should not be contributed to sloppiness is the first time I ever encounter this "noble prize". Also, "Strictly speaking" is completely out of place here. "Strictly speaking" we should also refer to "Murphy's law" and "Newton's law" instead of "muphries law" and "netwon's law", which no-one ever does anyway.

This may be a detail in your explanation, but you are wrong. That joke relies on "to smell" meaning both to observe odors and to spread them. Apart from that, I agree completely with you. There is no good reason to "wrongify" languages, except laziness. Okay, go ahead and stop using correct grammar, but don't attribute this to some higher bullshit principle. The only reason for all this crappy writing is that people are to lazy to put in any effort. As a correct grammar contributes some redundancy, it eases the reading. (non-native English myself).

How about grammar-nazis? Should they now be referred to as grammar-stalinists?

Thanks for pointing out mistakes in his explanation. This allows other readers to see his statement in another light. But why "mod him to oblivion"? He offers a remarkable story. Why should others not be able to judge for themselves (taking into account your own comment)?

Making the parent's remark even more to the point.

More to the point, how can the researchers assess which female rats are "babes" and which ones are fuglies.

Easy enough. The "pretty ones" are being fucked more than the ugly ones.

How would this be an easy way to get random numbers? Why not just sample an analog noise source? Admittedly, I wasn't even aware of this apparent need for random numbers and the difficulty of getting them.