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Comment 6'8" 240 (Score 1) 365

by Polybius (#32259170) Attached to: I usually fly...

I avoid flying because I cannot afford/justify the price of first class and because I am 6'8" 240lbs. Those small planes with 1 row of seating on one side and 2 on the others are uncomfortable in ANY seat. Larger planes I pray I can reserve or trade for the bulkhead or emergency exit seat. Another issue is my clothing is simply larger, I cannot fit nearly as many sets of clothing in a carry on or checked bag as most people so if a long trip I'll end up paying more for bags. The size of 38/38 jeans and 15 shoes adds up quickly. I have also been on planes where I physically couldn't do the little exercises to avoid blood clots due to how crammed in I was.
Graphics

NVIDIA Shows Off "Optimus" Switchable Graphics For Notebooks 102

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-some-prime-namespace dept.
Vigile writes "Transformers jokes aside, NVIDIA's newest technology offering hopes to radically change the way notebook computers are built and how customers use them. The promise of both extended battery life and high performance mobile computing has seemed like a pipe dream, and even the most recent updates to 'switchable graphics' left much to be desired in terms of the user experience. Having both an integrated and discrete graphics chip in your notebook does little good if you never switch between the two. Optimus allows the system to seamlessly and instantly change between IGP and discrete NVIDIA GPUs based on the task being run, including games, GPU encoding or Flash video playback. Using new software and hardware technology, notebooks using Optimus can power on and pass control to the GPU in a matter of 300ms and power both the GPU and PCIe lanes completely off when not in use. This can be done without being forced to reboot or even close out your applications, making it a hands-free solution for the customer."
Image

Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" 319

Posted by samzenpus from the ad-nauseum-roundhouse dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Communications

Pedro Matias Sets New Texting Record At Mobile World Cup 70

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the text-invalid-if-bff-appears-anywhere-in-it dept.
Pedro Matias showed off his mad txtin sklz at this year's Mobile World Cup and managed to set a new record for "fastest, most accurate" texts as determined by the event's corporate owners. "history was made when Portugal's Pedro Matias set the new World's Record for texting by typing a 264-character text in just 1 minute 59 seconds (besting the previous record by 23 seconds). Of course, each Mobile World Cup must have its share of controversy -- in this case, Engadget Mobile's very own Chris Ziegler led a silent protest during the awards ceremony. The group was reportedly upset over the use of QWERTY phones (the LG enV3 in this case) to break the record."

Comment Re:My heart goes out to him... (Score 3, Interesting) 139

by Polybius (#30498600) Attached to: <em>Alien</em> Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, Dead At 63
If it doesn't gross you out too much you may want to find and take part in a controlled study like this: http://www.drugs.com/forum/alternative-medicine/worms-crohns-disease-23351.html
Purposely infecting oneself with parasitic worms (helminths) and reaping the benefits of their immunosuppression. The results look promising.
Idle

Hand Written Clock 86

Posted by samzenpus from the up-to-the-minute dept.
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."
Transportation

Lotus Teases With a Fuel-Agnostic Two-Stroke Engine 269

Posted by timothy from the ask-a-lotus-eater dept.
JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."
The Almighty Buck

Virtual Bank Woes 127

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-iskamins dept.
bobmorning writes "EVE Online's largest player-controlled virtual bank, Ebank, just can't seem to catch a break these days. A few months after it was revealed that the company had been defrauded of a staggering amount of virtual cash, it turns out that the institution's digital vaults are far more barren than many realized, leading to an in-game freezing of accounts for any individual or organization that happened to have invested any InterStellar Kredits (ISK) with the bank. Early this summer, it came to light that a veteran EVE player (known only as 'Ricdic') had embezzled — and then sold in the real world — over 200 billion ISK from Ebank, causing a run on the virtual financial institution. However, this was just the beginning of the problems for the player-owned bank. Recently-installed Ebank Chairman Ray McCormack admitted that the bank had been mismanaged, and rules, safeguards, and controls were not enforced. As a result, it's been revealed that Ebank is 380 billion ISK poorer thanks to a number of defaulted loans. Because of the aforementioned mismanagement, it apparently took the bank's new officers a while to figure out just how far in the red their institution is."

Comment Moon (Score 1) 554

by Polybius (#28678457) Attached to: NASA Plans To De-Orbit ISS In 2016

Divert the money to a permanantly manned Moon base and send up some metallurgists to play around with alloys in the low gravity and near-vacuum. Could probably just use some frensel lenses to heat the forge. Maybe they could find some new super mega alloy, produce it on the Moon then construct a ship there to send to Mars with the newly gained "how to run a moon base" knowledge.

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