i would much rather schedule a download to occur at night when i'm sleeping, streaming over 0.5mbit would be very poor quality but i can download a 720p movie or tv episode while i sleep.

It sure makes sense.... a service provider could offer a service where you rent or buy a unit with a 4TB hard drive; has most of their media content pre-loaded (encrypted) instead; a couple thousand full movies would fit. And caches new content that you're likely to want to watch based on recommendations/past viewing habits, or that you added to your list, by trickle-downloading over time.

Then you connect to their service; and when you want to watch something.... it's served up from local media; without stressing the WAN.

5 years ago where I live finally got DSL at 768bps.

Do you have some better tips on how to survive that?

If you can write them up and post them to a blog, then it might be /. worthy.

Nothing wrong with the ideas in this article.

Clearly someone thought it was useful, or else, the submission wouldn't appear on Slashdot.

Not necessary to remove ads. Slashdot has them. All the major blogs have ads. Clearly they generate something for all the bloggers out there; probably mainly in relation to the relevance of ads with regards to the content.

But I understand sales affiliate programs are more revenue-generating than simple Ads in many cases; where the blogger can make a meaningful product review.

They seem to be treating waste at the most basic level by using lots of chlorine prior to discharging the treated waste.

There are plenty of nasties that will survive chlorine treatment; namely Cryptosporidium, so even that is inadequate --- they should be adding UV and other treatments that truly sterilize and destroy dangerous genetic material

The same applies equally to waste water treatment in other countries.

Regular low-dose antibiotics for livestock causes the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the gut.

This is problematic. If the antibiotic is prescription for humans, then access should not be allowed to use it for non-medical non-veterinary purposes.

If there are life/limb-threatening diseases that the antibiotic is on a short list of treatments for; it should be prescription only.

Fair enough. I wonder how much they patented. If the patent just magnetic based, then presumably you could add an extra pin and only switch on the PSU when you get the correct command over some 1 wire bus protocol.

It would also be conceivable to put a "sheath" around the pin; that doesn't mate with anything, but prevents the bare pins from being exposed

Have a spring-loaded plunger switch that gets forced down when the device is properly plugged in, and power is stopped at the plug, until the switch is operated.

Or put another magnet on the connector side itself that operates a reed switch in the plug.

There are probably thousands of ways to sense "connector plugged in"; without using Apple's specific sensing circuit

You won't get mildly electrocuted by a plug with 16V potential difference across it.

Actually... this depends on amperage and duration of exposure; You can take a static discharge of thousands of volts, under the right conditions, and not feel anything.

In the very worst case (car battery/hand to hand) 12 Volts DC across the chest can kill and has killed people --- exposure long enough to disrupt the normal heartbeat can kill.

6 Volts at 50 amps or 3 Volts at 400 amps can be deadly with only brief exposure.

Don't bet your life on your power supply being perfectly within spec either.

Electricity; DC or AC apparatus that can generate current over a period of time is nothing to be trifled with, even if 16V.

Many if not most inventions are obvious after you've seen them.

It's not invention; it's innovation. A "social" leap by Apple, not a technical one.

The fact of the matter; is "security through obscurity" was just fine, as far as the big players thought. The current design was just fine; no need to worry about that, buy the generic part and focus on other stuff.

They were out of touch with the consumer ---- they didn't acknowledge the "yank" problem existed. Just buy the generic connector parts and move on: It would be a waste of money, to go throw together a new fancy connector.

It's not that the connector design was not obvious; they would have easily built a connector with the similar design, without any significant difficulty or need to make an invention step --- they were not motivated to solve the yank problem in the first place.

At least for me, that passes all the tests of non-obviousness and first people to think of it.

I would not agree... Magnet + Exposed pins are a combination of previously known elements. A connector of your size and shape should be patentable, together with your exact placement of circuits, but not the concept of using magnets and magnetic switches; which are all previously known elements.

When faced with the problem of making a connector that will give way if yanked, yet not fall out on its own --- magnetic attraction is an obvious choice.

After analyzing the design or testing, and finding the damage or shock risk of the pins becoming shorted on a metal object --- the choice to limit when the power is switched on is also obvious.

Again, to maintain the yank-resistant characteristics, you need to switch the power on without relying on physical mating ---- a magnetic switch, or magnetic sensor on the plug are obvious choices.

I haven't even read Apple's patent; I have no idea how their connector works, but I see an obvious choice is to have a circuit in the power transformer block measuring the electrical characteristics of one of the leads, to decide when to switch on power, based on detecting the right signal OR "magnetic field" (if you like).

At some point I'm going to buy an uber cheap tablet to mount on the wall next to my bathroom mirror, and then write an android app that displays the time, weather, local traffic and RSS feed/slideshow of the morning's headlines

As is frequently the case, the article is misleading and misinterpreting the scientists.

Also just like /. tends to do, the linked news article headline is sensationalized and exists just to get people to read the story.

The scientists talk about three specific things: (1) Preventing chronic disease, including heart disease and cancer, (2) preventing cognitive decline in seniors, and (3) high-dose pills to prevent subsequent events after a confirmed heart attack.

For those three specific things, multiple studies show they do not provide statistically significant benefits. They found that high doses of specific nutrients could slightly increase the risk of certain cancers in people pre-disposed to them, which is why they recommended against the multivitamins for those in good health.

Note that also in TFA they agree that there are some health benefits in specific cases. These include vitamin D in the elderly for bone strength, iron and folic acid for pregnant and nursing mothers (and in unrelated studies elsewhere, also in men wanting children), those with poor nutrition, and for other specific situations.

Note that the studies do not say multivitamins are worthless, nor does it address any other health areas except those three. That is just the headline sensationalism.

So, birth is just a starting position in life, it is up to you how hard you want to work to finish.

All too often, without external help, that amount of hard work required given your starting position will kill you.

There are is a large proportion of people who would rather maintain the sanctity of their imaginary divine market than help their fellow man.

That's a world of difference, Capacitive or Resistive is the difference between a budget and a usable tablet

And yet the Pogo charger performs the same function with the same magnetic disconnect mode. It's used by a handful of top tier tablets and phones, but clearly someone has found a loophole in Apple's patent for the connector, as it's functionally identical.

I'm thinking huh?

Download the "Windows XP with Service Pack 3" from MSDN, install that, install VMware tools; do the switcharoo to change virtual hardware to paravirtualized hardware (VMXNET3 + PVSCSI); then go to autopatcher.com and get the latest APUP, or deploy updates using WSUS....

I have not found things so unreliable.

OS updates are simple enough.... now the .NET framework update process is a can of worms; whether in XP/2003 or Windows 7/2008....