Indeed. The massive environmental impact of the battery pack was part of that criticism, but this is also where electric cars win, if one is being honest about the numbers and don't have a anti-electric car axe to grind: The NiMH battery pack of early hybrids is pretty much 100% recyclable. Li-ion and Li-po etc isn't properly 100% recycled at the moment but that's a infrastructure problem - theoretically 100% recyclable. (I would imagine some years down the track used battery packs would be quite valuable scrap). You just cannot say as much for the hydrocarbon fuel going through the tank of a regular automobile.

Why hovercraft never caught on:

Expectation: http://www.google.com/search?q=concept+hovercraft

Reality: http://images.google.com/search?q=hovercraft

Perform this search experiment with Hoverbike/Concept Hoverbike as your search term and the disparity is worse - the real world things, even the expensive ones always look like they've been made in some back yard.

But even with the same socket type and it's dimension limitations why does it still need to be round and bulb like? A spherical bulb is the worst case scenario for heat dissipation, other shapes would perform better. Many LED bulbs have a cluster of LEDs often with some lens over the top of them. To me that allows a lot of freedom for heat dissipation considerations. But it's not a lack of imagination from manufacturers, they are just are playing it safe by assuming consumers won't accept odd shaped lights.

I find LED spots and floodlights have less of a problem as there is room for a heatsink. Yet MR16's get so hot it scares me.

Helps mainly. Hurts barely at all. Thought we didn't get a Slashdotter that mentioned merchandise - the tangible goods (including the George R.R. Martin books) that get purchased by people who may have never paid a penny for the original content. Often a merchandising empire is a vastly bigger source or revenue than the original legal means of consuming the content. This is becoming the case with GoT.

The occasional Slashdotter will point out the war on piracy was never about lost revenue, it was about profit maximization, and in the case of DRM for example, about leverage over equipment manufacturers (any prevention of casual copying was a small bonus). Example: Apple's declaration that DRM had failed, and subsequent was not some cathartic pro-user move, but rather they are a huge content consumption equipment manufacturing when they became powerful enough to dictate terms in the opposite direction, they through DRM it right back in the freakin' content industries face.

Richard Plepler may see piracy as a background noise HBO has to live with - but one that is actually helpful, possibly lucrative if played right.

Also recommend using the app freeze feature in Android. Requires root on most devices but this useful trick "Freezes" an app without actually uninstalling it, it becomes invisible to the system and cannot execute. Some apps like App Quarantine, Titanium Backup and Hide It Pro offer a convenient way of doing this. This means you can have Facebook or some such app, but prevent it from running when you aren't directly using it.

Yeah, because almost nobody uses Facebook. Only 1 in 7 humans alive use Facebook, that's merely a Billion people*.

Clearly there's no market for this.

And not "Weather change"!
Weather != Climate. Some mention of Weather extremes inevitably gets linked to Climate extremes. Some comment that ammounts to "It's colder today than and by next week it will be an ice age!"
There is huge difference between Climate and Weather.

Rainforests make 20% of our oxygen. And we let people cut that shit down?

There's plenty of articles from "experts" on why 16/44.1 is all you need, however these kind of opinions risk being being wrong: What about actual data? I see little solid data where the hypothesis has been put to the test.

I think the point is, some say 24/96 survives lossy compression better, it also produces less artifacts as the higher frequencies have less data points to describe their waveform. Perhaps some won't hear the difference in uncompressed audio, but I bet some can hear the difference in compressed.

Sony already makes and sells a SmartWatch. This seems to have gone completely unnoticed by the blogosphere, who keep using terms like "first to market" and "new category" and don't seem to be able to use a Google search to see whats already out there. Sony's Smartwatch also is the benchmark that Apple will copy pretty much everything from, including the way it syncs with your existing Android phone and bluetooth gadgets. (You can bet it will do less cost too much, just prettier, and sell millions more).

Apple seems to pick on poor Sony, they already stole Sony's idea with a one-brand retail outlet. (Sony Style stores opened in the 1980s - decades before Apple Stores). Apple's original iPhone was almost as similar to some of Sony's touch screen concept phone, that you you wonder. Now they'll copy the Smartwatch.

Samsung has some very cool display tech though, such as flexible screens - there's a damn good reason why they aren't in Sammy's new phones (S4 etc). I would put good money on Smartwatches being the first use of these screens and that's where production resources are being directed right now.

Unless Apple uses AMOLED for their watch, Samsungs going to be the winner.

All that asside, the author of TFA seems to be under a very specific individually targeted attack, rather than some kind of automated attack.

My tip: LONG passwords. make them really really long.

Many people think they are clever with symbols and numbers by doing something like P@55w0rd.

I can't think how many times I've seen something like that for some kind of critical system.

Avoid using guessable common $ubs!tutions for l3tt3rs and numbers, along with 123, 666, 69 etc etc.

I would have just said spending is the only way out of debt. (Where spending = investment)

Discredited does not equal falsified. He hasn't been discredited, in fact there's an absence of results showing the claims as falsified. This doesn't automatically mean it won't turn out to be crackpot science but there is not much to demonstrate that it is. In contrast Cold Fusion was fairly well falsified quite quickly.

This actually smacks of a recent cock-up by skeptics, I cite thus:

Many credentialed aerodynamicists (in chorus with most of the internet's "experts") swore black and blue that a wind powered land vehicle could not sail dead down wind faster than the wind (DDWFTTW). It would violate the laws of physics it said. So someone built the thing ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(land_yacht) ... and it worked and went 2.8x windspeed even (!) ... repeatedly. What's more the theory was sound all along, no change of the laws of physics was needed.

Indeed, boldly, emdrive are not claiming any physical laws are violated, that any new physics is required or that any well tested institution is being challenged. When was the last time you heard a antigravity/cold fusion/levitating sasquatch crystal skull claim do that kind of thing? It's a little encouraging no?

Ultimately I think skepticism not backed by proof is just as crazy and as the opposite with the same amount of proof. I wonder if it is just a different manifestation of the same underlying cognitive & personality problem. We'll have to wait and see for real-world results. They'll build it, and it will work or it wont!

I prefer Android, but it seems hard to find iPhone users who aren't enthusiastic about it. Whatever kind of phone you prefer, are there features you envy the users of some other variety?

I agree, most of my iPhone using friends love their gadgets, they are good, but then for every one of those I probably know someone who's switched to a Android now. Including myself going from a iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S2. The most surprising thing is they point out a better GUI, say it's just as easy to use, and absolutely love the ability to personalise your phone. Remember it wasn't even possible to set the iOS homescreen wallpaper until iOS 4 was released!

So when you press the shift/caps key on an Android on-screen keyboard, the letters on the keys change - which is a delightful feature. iOS, they are always capitals.

Woz understates the problem. Apple has been copying features pioneered on Android for some time now, and anything Apple original is coming out a little half-baked. Note that Siri wasn't an Apple original but a company they bought. Copy and paste, multi-tasking, the notification drawer, it's all better on Android and has been for some time. You couldn't even set a homescreen wallpaper until iOS 4. iOS stopped being good when Apple chases ever more revenue and half-baked sidetracks like Siri and their own maps. They are pouring a lot of effort in to hardware too but perhaps not pushing iOS ahead.

iOS still has it's good points for some users, but generally speaking it's so far behind it's not funny.

Some people don't like the taste? I hate mushrooms, and I can taste them on my (sweet sweet) bacon if they are cooked on the same grill. I can therefore imagine for people who don't regularly eat meat the flavor contamination is highly noticeable.