polyfractal

Until you use it for something important (like a business). Then it becomes a liability. In those cases free is often worse than nothing, since you are actively depending on it.

Had you not chose the free offering, you may have chosen something else or built it yourself.

I think the difference is that enterprise software eventually nets you a $200,000 contract, while the OP company distributes free email and makes money through affiliate links.

> "We lost ourselves in incremental improvements and wars of efficiencies"

If blogs existed when the steam engine was created, I'm sure someone would be posting an article about how the state of the Steam Engine has stagnated and we are simply optimizing.

Arguably, this always happens, because low hanging fruit is so easy to grab. It's easy to have big, grand visions when you are discovering ground-breaking science every single month.

I'm from a biology background, so pharmaceuticals are a great example. Penicillin was huge and thought to solve everything. The second round of penicillin derivatives were equally magical. Then we started to see resistant strains of bacteria and had to start tweaking the magic formula, fighting for small improvements in efficiency.

The same happened to all major drug categories. We are in an era where most major small molecules have already been discovered, tweaked and optimized. We will continue to tweak until the next big thing comes along, and then it will start all over again.

To be fair, it's a news brief designed for the average layperson, not a research article. I think editorializing the content a bit is fine.

Besides, that particular phrase is commonly accepted as an idiom, not a serious reference to a Biblical Hell.

Yeah, I agree that it is a slippery slope. The difference between their two models right now is the difference between someone throwing dust at you, vs throwing grains of rice. Neither hurt...but it could quickly escalate to throwing pennies or bricks.

And for basically no value-add, since it's the TSA.

All in all, I think the TSA is awful and would love them gone. At the very least there should be regulation on the max amount of radiation that is allowed by a machine (not sure if this exists).

I feel a little silly linking an XKCD image, but it's accurate and relevant:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

An average human receives 10 uSv during an average day from background radiation, and 40 uSv on a cross-country flight. Living in Denver, CO for a year will expose you to 1800 uSv.

Some more dosages for various routine living situations and medical procedures (note, they are in mSv, not uSv): http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/R/Rad...

I'm not condoning the TSA in any way (I also think it is a deplorable organization), but as a biologist I feel compelled to state that you receive vastly more ionizing radiation looking out the window of your plane than you do in the one of the TSA scanners.

Again, not condoning the invasion of privacy for security theater, but the "threat" of ionizing radiation is almost always over-stated.

Err...the EPA didn't create a law that the company disagreed with. They created a regulation that was designed to incentivise the importation of renewable fuels.

Someone at Bioversal Trading was clever enough to realize that they could make more money gaming this regulation then actually selling their cargo. Therefore, they ran the train back and forth a dozen times and wracked up money from the Government.

Dirty? Yeah. Fraudulent? Potentially, depending on how the regulation was written.

If anything, it speaks to the danger of hidden incentives in otherwise innocent-looking regulations.

Like how Apple bought the core technology for Siri?

Just because it was purchased doesn't meant they haven't helped push the technology forward, either in pure R&D or by just promoting adoption.

Did you read my comment? "I used an iPad and I'm still alive!" is just about the worst argument possible (for anything), for similar reasons that saying an asteroid won't destroy the earth because it hasn't yet is a terrible argument.

It had nothing to do with the article (which I read) and my personal opinions (which, you'll notice in my comment, I express agreement with the article).

This is just turning pedantic now, so apologies. I should have just down-voted your comment instead of replying.

> In other words, I do what I think is sensible, reasonable.

Do you ignore medical advice because it is delivered by a nurse or CNA instead of the doctor himself? The CNA doesn't have experience prescribing medication, and is simply "parroting" information from the doctor. Does that make it less valid?

Are you an electrical engineer with experience in RF interference and complex avionics? No? Then you have no more knowledge of the situation than the hostess "parroting" instructions. Any rationalization you have is simply an excuse for being impatient.

Also, I hate everyone who grabs their bag immediately and stands up in the aisle. You realize we have another five minutes before the door opens, right?

tl;dr: You're kinda an entitled jerk on airplanes, which is one of the reasons I absolutely hate flying. For whatever reason, people like to pretend that they are god's gift to man when flying on an airplane.

An asteroid didn't destroy civilization yesterday. Therefore, it follows that an asteroid will never destroy our civilization.

I'm not a fan of "turn off all electronics" policy either, but your statement is just plain silly.

One of my hobbies is FPV flying with RC planes and quads, so I can comment on "consumer grade" drones.

The ARDrone is completely a toy. It has a range of about 20m before the video cuts out and the quad flies away by itself, crashing into a building or just falling out of the sky.

That said, you can make a long distance plane complete with video, gps and autopilot for $1000 - $2000. Depending on setup, flight time is between 15 minutes and an hour, with effective ranges up to 20km.

HOWEVER, very few people are capable of pulling off long distance FPV. Hell, most people fail at short distance FPV. The gear is hard, radio interference is a huge bitch (especially if you are near any urban area) and frankly, it's hard to fly a little plane made out of foam. They get knocked around by wind gusts really easily.

Any rotor platform (tris, quads, etc) are limited in range to 1-2km max, simply because you can't strap enough batteries onto the thing for longer range. Flight times are 15-30 minutes with current technology

Obviously, technology is going to continue to advance. And if the project is bankrolled by a government, all bets are off. But lone terrorists are going to have a hard time pulling off a drone attack. You can simply triangulate their signal (both the radio control and the video feed, which also usually includes a GPS downlink) and know exactly where they are transmitting from. Interfering with a drone is as simple as jamming the radio spectrum they are using...most drones (planes or quads) have about 10seconds before they crash into the ground when uncontrolled.

Lastly, carrying gear is really hard for any rotor platform. Max payload right now is a couple of kilos, usually a DSLR on a gimbal. These have to be lifted by octocopter setups (8 rotors) which absolutely kills battery efficiency. You get 15 minutes flighttime max, and the thing sounds like a swarm of killer bees.

There is some scientific evidence for a large flood in the Black Sea [1] which may easily have been the basis for a Noah's Ark type story, but not a world-wide flood.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

Regardless of health effects, cooking with unsalted varieties (stock, butter, etc) allows you to control the amount of salt in your dish. You may end up with an over-salted meal if you use salted butter, etc.

I had leftover Easy Mac that was made with Eggnog instead of milk because I had ran out.

It was sinfully delicious. Probably took a year off my life though.

Besides, I'd rather "cook" in a crockpot than a rice cooker. More versatile, same style of "dump everything in" recipe. You can also make a mean bbq pulled pork with just a crockpot and a hunk of meat.

I think everyone should save chicken bones for stock. They keep in the freezer forever, so even if you don't roast chicken often there's really no excuse not to save it. Homemade stock is so much better than the stuff in cans.

And you won't have boxes of super-8 film in your basement slowly rotting because no one has the time to encode them to a digital media. My family has tons of super-8, VHS and simple photos which will, in all likelihood, rot into nothingness because no one will fish them out of the basement in time.

There are problems with digital media (e.g. easy to lose it all if you don't have a good backup scheme, or don't continually keep up with current formats). But its easier that physically copying old media.

This seems to be an arbitrary limitation you are applying. Most specialized machinery requires highly-skilled workers. They are effectively useless without the right person operating (executing) the machinery.

Regardless, my original point still stands: it is their duty to return as much money as they can to shareholders/investors. Someone is willing to buy their patent portfolio, therefore they are selling it.

Why are you trying to assign morals to something as simple as an exchange of assets in a market?

(This isn't arguing for or against the idea of patenting these technologies...that's a different can of worms. But as it stands, they A) have patents and B) are capable of selling said patents.)

It's their duty to shareholders and investors to return as much money as they can. No one would claim that they should give their factories and office furniture to the "Public Domain". They are going to liquidate that stuff.

Why would patents be different?

"Buy high, sell slightly lower" is not a great investment strategy.

This, although I would say that you are probably better off just investing in a low-fee index fund like Vanguard's Total Stock fund.

Even if you have an understanding of a sector, most people are horrible investors and a simple index fund will out-perform them.

Yes, because the recent financial crisis proved how much we know about banks and their dealings.

Banks are one of the most opaque industries and are constantly devising (ingenious) ways around regulation.

I imagine you would need a ridiculously large solar sail to slow down the mass of an Orion.

It's not that slowing down is impossible...you just start throwing bombs the other direction. But by slowing down you increase your travel time, so the 150 year estimate is no longer valid.

Meh, I think it will just take time before people are A) used to HFR and B) directors/producers are accustomed to working with the new framerate.

The porn industry thought HiDef was going to be the end of their career, since suddenly everyone could see that the porn actresses were really just people with makeup on. Porn certainly hasn't died yet. Cinema won't either.

(Sorry for comparing porn to cinema)

Hehe...yeah...

They are mostly safe, you just have to treat them nicely. Improper charging is the biggest risk, so as long as you charge slowly with a proper balance charger there is basically zero risk. It takes longer, sure, but I'd rather charge at 2C and not burn my house down than charge at 10C and play LiPo roulette. I charge and store my batteries in a flame-proof LiPo bag, and will be getting a fireproof safebox soon.

A lot of people will fast-charge when they are outside charging from a car battery or something, so it's less of a big deal if it explodes (since you should be charging it on a concrete block or something away from people).

Over-draining isn't really a problem, since even cheap ESCs have over-drain protection and won't let you drain the battery. I don't think explosions are a problem when you over-drain anyway...you just permanently damage the battery.

Otherwise, the only thing you really have to worry about are crashes. After a good crash, check your batteries to make sure they are uninjured. If they look a little deformed, best to play it safe and store them somewhere safe (bucket of sand, metal box, etc) for a few days to see if they get puffy.

Puffy == dangerous, discharge safely and dispose.

I haven't, but mainly because I don't have the necessary space/facilities to work with CF. I live in an apartment and don't really have space to make a CF-safe work zone (somewhere to contain the dust, keep my dog from eating the epoxy, etc). Ditto to a proper vacuum bagging setup [1]. I agree that CF is probably the ideal composite.

I'm working mostly with wet-layup fiberglass cloth and sandwich panel constructions, as well as some semi-silly experiments with glue/paper/fiberglass. Also exploring some designs that use tension cables to support the load. Lots of fun, if not entirely fruitful so far

[1] I could probably find space for a vacuum bagging setup...but my girlfriend barely tolerates all the stuff as it is. Best not to push my luck :)

Agreed. Components are just getting cheaper and cheaper. The biggest obstacle right now is information and experience, in my opinion. All the good information is locked up in billion-page forum posts. I've considered writing a bunch of in-depth tutorials and info-guides...but just haven't found the time.

Experience...well, you just have to crash a few times because the servo is installed backwards before you really understand =)

Haha yeah, that's why my dayjob is as a software engineer. I feel your pain

On the side, I'm building experimental composite frames for quadrotors. If I come up with something usable, I plan on selling them to the quadrotor FPV community. Not really a startup, but hopefully a profitable side business.

Most high performance quadrotor frames are made out of carbon fiber. This makes them expensive, brittle, prone to horrible vibrations and not so great for RF interference. I'm basically tooling around in my garage with new combinations of composites to see if I can replace CF with something else. =)

I'm ex-biology and a year ago worked in a wet-bench neuroscience lab.