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Comment Who remembers the AOL cancellation nightmare (Score 1) 49

by george929a (#64870043) Attached to: FTC Takes on Subscription Traps With 'Click To Cancel' Rule
AOL ("You've got mail!") was all the rage like 25yrs ago. I think they sent a CD (or multiple) to just about every household in the US to sign up. They made it easy peasy to install, pay and use. But holy crap they made it impossibly frustrating (deliberately so) to cancel. My own experience were multiple calls to cancel the service. Each time they would keep you on the phone while they tell you why you should not. It was a ploy to get you completely frustrated and either just hang up or mad enough to get angry with them. If that happened they had an excuse to hang up on you for being abusive. It took several attempts before I caught on to the tactic and was able to get them to say they were canceling. It took 30-45minutes. Even so I still got a month charge which took more effort and time to stop and get the $ returned. They were the poster child of being difficult (maybe the original). I carry this cancellation scar to this day.

Comment Re:cognitive science (Score 1) 418

by george929a (#44519957) Attached to: Talking On the Phone While Driving Not So Dangerous After All

It's usually not the glancing at things inside or outside of the car that gets people distracted. It the amount of time they spend focused on that 'other' thing. A half or 1 second glance is not the same as spending 4-5 seconds looking at your radio, phone(texting) or anything else for that matter. If your taught to keep a 2 second gap between you and the vehicle in front it's not difficult math to figure out what will happen if you're doing more than glancing when that vehicle steps/taps the breaks/changes lanes/etc.
NASA

Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266

Posted by Soulskill from the new-perspective-on-an-old-tragedy dept.
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222

Posted by samzenpus from the only-one-on-the-block dept.
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
Image

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.
Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

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