"The attempt was a bust if I recall right."

The I-Appliance BBS is an interesting source of info on orphan devices whose business models shat the bed, beginning with the famous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl

I could care less if someones business model fails, and if they gimme free stuff I'll happily put it to use.

Not so. You cannot prove that repeatedly making a measurement in the past is any indication that it will hold in the future. Pointing out that it's worked before is just begging the question, and therefore reproducing the results doesn't help, for it does not mean you'll reproduce the results *again*.

You *must* presuppose that the future is relevantly like the past for empiricism to have any meaning in any context; it's pretty much an irreducible problem.

With that said, such "faith" is, I would argue, essentially to daily living and doesn't really deserve to be categorized as "faith" except in the most pedantic of senses. Without acting under this presupposition, you cannot learn. Anything. I suspect that biologically this presupposition cannot be unlearned since it appears to be intrinsic to learning even in some of the stupider members of the animal kingdom.

whooosh ...

People dress in a myriad different ways in London, and frankly nobody could give a toss about somebody wearing shorts and a baseball cap, heck, many locals will dress like that at times (not this time of the year tough, it has been quite cold and windy the last few days).

The tactile feedback is in you actually feeling the touch. You don't press, you touch. You don't need confirmation that you have touched hard enough. With buttons, you need feedback because you have to press them hard enough for the button press to register. So the feedback lets you know that you have pressed hard enough.

London is quite a big place, If you go to Greenwich area the Science Museum.area is too far away. Even attractions that are centrally located (lets say Westminster area and the South Bank area) are 5 minutes away by underground rather than 15 or 20 minutes walk in the horrid weather of Nov or Dec.

Sharing your connection using Joiku with a file-sharing felon might tar you with the same brush. 3 strikes and you're all out.

Well you're the one deciding to share your connection. Shouldn't it then be your own responsibility to check just exactly -who- you're sharing the thing with?

If you decide to share your gun - which you only use for plinking - with some random stranger, they shoot somebody, and the ballistics end up matching a gun that's registered to you, you'd have some explaining to do, too.

Due process? We flushed that crap down the toilet years ago.

While I agree with this, I can't help but put myself in the shoes of the other (Evil) side and see - in practice, in discussions on slashdot and even in newspapers - that the aforementioned is also being exploited as a defense.

"Your honor, the accused lives in a household with 3 other persons - his wife and his two children - any one of these could have performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. The defense has not shown evidence which of these four individuals in fact performed this unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. Therefore, the defense moves for the accusation against the accused to be dropped."
Well gosh isn't that convenient. So next time I want to download something using a sharing client, all I'll have to do is go to a busy spot downtown, open up my connection and broadcast it to the world as, say, "FreeInternet", and hey presto.. I might be doing something illegal but good bloody luck proving that it was actually -me- and not one of the dozen people that were using my shared connection; They can't. Pirate-me wins.

If these issues were on a scale, then they're neither balanced, nor tipped over in either direction; the entire mechanism simply broke and both sides claim things in their favor where they shouldn't be able to.

"hey maybe theres something we dont know here"

which is the way most scientists are most of the time, and the methods they use are based around that.
They are human beings, as such fall prey to fallacies and assumption; whoever that's why people publish and peer review.

Well, it's good to know that we'll reach the technology to escape tractor beams before going for the warp drive : )

You deliberately chose some spotlight cases where the perpetrators most definitely were sick fucks who deserved what they got.

However, that's what grandparent meant by "unlike witches, they actually exist". It's a witch hunt: you catch the innocent along with the guilty.

That doesn't justify the disgusting treatment of high-school lovers and consenting relationships, which seems to be more and more common these days – much more common than the stories about the Phillip Garridos and their like. As a 25-year-old in the state where I live, I could legally get with a 17-year-old and the religious folks could just scream and bitch all they want – I'm not doing anything illegal. But if it's a 16-year-old, even if she's totally consenting, by golly I'm a sick pervert and ought to be locked up.

Oh, and that 17-year-old girlfriend who I of course don't have (I'm on slashdot, afterall)? Fornicating is fine, but take one little picture and I'm a child pornographer.

It's stereo.

Similar to stereo audio not being binaural audio.

Because there is only one fixed viewing angle and focus plane. Which is also the reason for the additional eye strain.

Uhhh...that's cheaper because it doesn't do what a roof does.

It doesn't insulate and it doesn't reflect the heat away from the house.

You essentially need an 'underroof' at that point, something on top of the ceiling that serves the purpose of the roof.

It is not cheaper than normal to build a house with a flat roof and then build a greenhouse on top of that roof, which is what you've actually suggested here.

And it's certainly not cheaper in any climate that would be described as 'tropical'.

Even with an older, fairly non-reflective roof, the heated up part is the 'outside' of the roof, whereas with a greenhouse, the heat would end up being on the 'underroof'. Even if you open the greenhouse totally to the outside air, it's still worse than a normal roof, which at least has an air buffer which it has to heat first. (And that itself can be vented.)

Such a greenhouse might make sense in cold climates where cooling is never an issue, although freezing and snow would present interesting problems...your roof would not heat up as quickly to melt the snow, hence removing some of the 'greenhouse effect' you're counting on to heat the house, and resulting in a freezing 'greenhouse'. (Which is hopefully insulated, via the underroof, from the actual house, or all the hot air ends up in there.) OTOH, you could hook up 'defrosters' like in cars and melt the snow from the inside.

I'm not sure what collecting roof runoff has to do with anything. Most traditional roofs have gutters, and, hence, could easily collect runoff if people wanted.

I absolutely agree. My only point was that it seems like this study kept an eye on people's workouts, but did not scrupulously police their caloric intake-- relying on them to "keep eating the same." But with such a small number of calories burned per day, it's very, very easy for a person to think they're eating the same and screw it up completely with only a few extra bites of food here and there. Heck, all they'd have to do is have a gatorade after their workout to completely ruin the calorie deficit they'd created.

We do have fully automated drones flying around, both with and without pilots attached...

You'd be surprised what a good autopilot can do. Did you know the space shuttle, using 70s tech, lands itself, with the only human interaction being pushing the landing gear doors? No kidding hands completely off from orbit to runway using 40 year old tech?

As long as you go outside, you're going to be seen anyway. You have a simple choice: Do nothing and maybe be ridiculed, or balance your diet, get in shape and maybe be ridiculed.

People see a tubby gal/guy going at the gym will have two reactions (and preferably keep them to themselves, but hey):
- Look at that fat joke, or;
- That one's working his/her ass off. (literally, even)

The former are reprehensible human beings who never had to work for anything in their lives. The latter are correct.