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Comment Re:Well DUH (Score 1) 302

by SleazyRidr (#46837041) Attached to: Consumers Not Impressed With 3D Printing

I guess it depends on the application, but for a lot of the common stuff you'll just download the plan from the internet. Obviously, half the point of a 3d-printer is the niche stuff that you can't download, but we're ignoring a lot of the potential of computers when all they get used for is facebook and twitter.

Comment Thank you (Score 1) 200

by SleazyRidr (#46828247) Attached to: How Much Data Plan Bandwidth Is Wasted By DRM?

Thank you for expanding on this comment from a few days ago, or either of these from a couple of months back.

Also, congratulations on realising that the content companies aren't really providing a good service to us. Do as the rest of us do and stick to torrents until they do. the music industry has learned its lesson and is now selling DRM-free files, the movie industry will catch up eventually.

Comment Re:Not Necessarily A Bad Thing (Score 1) 202

by SleazyRidr (#46816383) Attached to: Netflix Plans To Raise Prices By "$1 or $2 a Month"

He may as well have included the $100/month for electricity, although I suppose you need that for cable TV too. The problem I have is that the TV and internet are bundled in such a way that it would actually cost more to just have internet. I very rarely use the TV, but as it's not costing anything I keep it around just in case.

Submission + - Experts Say Hitching a Ride in an Airliner's Wheel Well Is Not a Good Idea 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Hasani Gittens reports that as miraculous as it was that a 16-year-old California boy was able to hitch a ride from San Jose to Hawaii and survive, it isn't the first time a wheel-well stowaway has lived to tell about it. The FAA says that since 1947 there have been 105 people who have tried to surreptitiously travel in plane landing gear world-wide on 94 flights — with a survival rate of about 25 percent. But agency adds that the actual numbers are probably higher, as some survivors may have escaped unnoticed, and bodies could fall into the ocean undetected. Except for the occasional happy ending, hiding in the landing gear of a aircraft as it soars miles above the Earth is generally a losing proposition. According to an FAA/Wright State University study titled “Survival at High Altitudes: Wheel-Well Passengers,” at 20,000 feet the temperature experienced by a stowaway would be -13 F, at 30,000 it would be -45 in the wheel well — and at 40,000 feet, the mercury plunges to a deadly -85 F (PDF). "You’re dealing with an incredibly harsh environment,” says aviation and security expert Anthony Roman. “Temperatures can reach -50 F, and oxygen levels there are barely sustainable for life.” Even if a strong-bodied individual is lucky enough to stand the cold and the lack of oxygen, there’s still the issue of falling out of the plane. “It’s almost impossible not to get thrown out when the gear opens,” says Roman.

So how do the lucky one-in-four survive? The answer, surprisingly, is that a few factors of human physiology are at play: As the aircraft climbs, the body enters a state of hypoxia—that is, it lacks oxygen—and the person passes out. At the same time, the frigid temperatures cause a state of hypothermia, which preserves the nervous system. “It’s similar to a young kid who falls to the bottom of an icy lake,” says Roman. "and two hours later he survives, because he was so cold."

Submission + - Reinventing the Axe (geek.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The axe has been with us for thousands of years, with its design changing very little during that time. After all, how much can you really alter a basic blade-and-handle? Well, Finnish inventor Heikki Karna has tried to change it a whole lot, with a new, oddly-shaped axe that he claims is a whole lot safer because it transfers a percentage of downward force into rotational energy, cutting down on deflections. "The Vipukirves [as the axe is called] still has a sharpened blade at the end, but it has a projection coming off the side that shifts the center of gravity away from the middle. At the point of impact, the edge is driven into the wood and slows down, but the kinetic energy contained in the 1.9 kilogram axe head continues down and to the side (because of the odd center of gravity)," is how Geek.com describes the design. "The rotational energy actually pushes the wood apart like a lever." The question is, will everyone pick up on this new way of doing things?

Submission + - The Ethical Dilemmas Today's Programmers Face

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: As software takes over more of our lives, the ethical ramifications of decisions made by programmers only become greater. Unfortunately, the tech world has always been long on power and short on thinking about the long-reaching effects of this power. More troubling: While ethics courses have become a staple of physical-world engineering degrees, they remain a begrudging anomaly in computer science pedagogy. Now that our code is in refrigerators, thermostats, smoke alarms, and more, the wrong moves, a lack of foresight, or downright dubious decision-making can haunt humanity everywhere it goes. Peter Wayner offers a look at just a few of the ethical quandaries confronting developers every day. 'Consider this less of a guidebook for making your decisions and more of a starting point for the kind of ethical contemplation we should be doing as a daily part of our jobs.'

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