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Comment Re:apples and oranges (Score 2) 120

...China's biggest e-retailer, totaled more than $3.1 billion, doubling the $1.5 billion spent by U.S. consumers on Cyber Monday in 2012.

How many people live in China? How many people live in the US?

. A more valid comparison would be the amount of money spent per person, that removes the bias of large-populations.

Agreed. Here are some numbers:

Currently the US hosts: 317,047,520 people
China hosts: 1,349,585,838 people
(Source: http://www.census.gov/popclock/)
Ratio US to China: 1:4.2567

Comment Year-round (Score 1) 118

Or, you know, we could learn to eat vegetables that are in season locally instead of trying to live off of a handful of vegetables year-round.... Kale is amazing, green mustards and chard... amazing greens and definitely under-appreciated.

As a side note, Romanesco broccoli is probably the best kind. Steam it and eat it as is! Or, if you'd like, with just a dab of good olive oil and a pinch of salt/pepper. Some people like to add a little lemon juice as well. This is how I usually eat broccoli and I've never been let down. Also, I don't seem to get an upset digestion after consuming the Romanesco variety as opposed to the traditional broccoli, this also holds true for broccolini (or broccolette).

Comment Re:Nylon / Teflon (Score 2) 159

Yes!. You just got the charges backwards. If you look up triboelectric series (example here http://www.siliconfareast.com/tribo_series.htm) you'll see that nylon is half way up the positive scale where as Teflon is the second from the bottom on the negative side of the scale. Positive means that it tends to donate electrons and negative means it wants to accept or 'steal' electrons.

They key though, is the induction created to the water droplets which you can read about it here (http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/emotor/kelvin.html)

What is happening (my guess) is that the nylon when rubbed is positively charged (lost electrons) when placed near the tip of the syringe, the water is positively charged because its electrons are given to the nylon needle, creating a positive charge in the water. The Teflon needle, on the other hand, is a very negatively charged material (gained a lot of electrons through rubbing it with paper) and thus the positively charged water is attracted to the negatively charged teflon needle and the orbit through these opposing fields is achieved in microgravity!

Comment Re:I'm glad I could disable ads (Score 1) 137

Yes, but how many Stephen Colbert heads do you get per spool?

My problem with these 3d techs online is that there's no good way to know exactly how much you can DO with a given amount of raw material. At some point, i'm going to have to break down and purchase things, just to get a baseline on cost.

He claims in the video that the material is so cheap you can just give things to friends and print more, but... Somehow, I doubt it's that cheap.

Learn to calculate volume - the material is consumed based on how much volume goes into your part.

I think he wants to know how much plastic is in 1 kilo of spool. From what I could find, ABS density is roughly 1.05g/cm^3 and PVA is 1.19-1.31g/cm^3 which means that:

1000g is roughly 952.380952cm^3 of ABS plastic

OR

1000g is roughly 800cm^3 of PVA plastic (with 1.25g/cm^3 density)

Now your answer applies where depending on how big a Stephen Colbert design is, it takes more or less of the material: a 1cm^3 Colbert would give you 952 ABS heads or 800 PVA heads. Now THAT'S a lot of Colbert!

Comment Re:Kodak's Future... (Score 1) 177

Isn't what you're saying the same as a thumbnail of a pic? or 'fit to screen', zoom in/out ? I agree that this algorithm is (unfortunately) patentable but if this is what they're complaining about (I didn't read TFA, just going off from your comment) wouldn't this be considered prior art?

Comment Re:Who didn't see this coming?? (Score 4, Insightful) 189

from TFA:
"Only one person can rent a DVD at one time, meaning that if Zediva bought 20 copies of a movie, only 20 people can watch it simultaneously. Still, Zediva saves money because it could serve many more customers with the same physical copy of a DVD than a company that has to mail out a DVD and wait for its return. "

So they're not using a single DVD to broadcast to multiple people simultaneously; they are basically a renting organization that is very similar to RedBox except it is done through streaming and online purchasing but the limitation is still a 1:1 ratio of viewer-to-physical dvd copy. Ask yourself this: if Redbox has 20 copies of a movie and every day 20 people rent it and return it (some the same day, some after a day or two), how is this different than Zediva's business model other than the online factor vs. physical stand?

Comment Re:Great plan there (Score 1) 515

Because even when we do, there are a large number of parents who, when confronted with little Jimmy's 15 absences in a semester, will threaten lawsuits, call board of ed members and threaten to get everyone fired because their little sunshine isn't going to graduate.

...

Children and their parents don't have a right to frivolous lawsuits.

I agree with both statements but, having said that, it still doesn't prevent me from suing you and prove in a trial that my lawsuit is not frivolous. In the mean time: you're being sued, your job is at stake, your school MIGHT suspend you pending investigation and I'm sure that while you might think this a frivolous lawsuit, it will still affect you emotionally.

Frivolous lawsuits are a huge problem especially for any public institution like schools but even a private school can suffer at the hands of an idiot parent trying to sue their way through.

Unfortunately, the US (dunno about other countries specifically) has become a world of liability and everyone is trying to cover their ass from Joe Schmoe's lawsuit.

Security

Royal Navy Website Hacked, Passwords Revealed 114

An anonymous reader writes "The British Royal Navy's website has been suspended after a Romanian hacker exploited SQL injection vulnerabilities to gain access to the site. The hacker, named 'TinKode,' accessed usernames and passwords used by the site's administrators and published them on the web. TinKode's attack is 'particularly embarrassing for the British Ministry of Defence, as just last month protecting against cyber attacks was declared in the National Security Strategy to be a "highest priority for UK national security."'"

Comment National Institute of Health funds (Score 1) 216

So I was wondering, since the article mentions:

"The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health."

Does this mean that a drug company can't put a patent on it? what happens when research funded by public tax-payer money is released?

Please note: I'm not sure where the NIH money comes from other than rumors I've heard that it is a public institution in the US.

Comment Re:A Misdemeanor? Seriously? (Score 1) 222

I agree with what you said. FYI though, I am not a lawyer, but I know that:
You cannot talk about "potential" in legal talk. My favourite way to make a simple argument against the word "potential" is that each sperm has the "potential" to become a human being, therefore, every time a man masturbates, they commit genocide.
What you can talk about, though, is probable foreseeable future based on specific conditions, "Likely" is another term...
If you are driving drunk, you have a probable foreseeable future of killing someone due to the effects of alcohol etc...
If you have a microchip implanted in you, there is no known effect on your reactions/judgments parallel to alcohol to be considered for a probable foreseeable future of killing someone
=====
On the other hand, implanting a chip in someone has the probable foreseeable future of massive invasion of privacy amongst other questionably ethical motives.
I know that someone will come along and say "What if the guy is a pedophile? Shouldn't we know where he is at all times?" which is a clusterfuck of an argument that deals with a person's rights and privileges and how a society distinguishes between the two and how said society wants to remove a right and/or privilege from someone based on criminal acts. Not to mention how the penitentiary system has the responsibility to rehabilitate someone into society.
I don't even know where to start.

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