Cap'n Refsmmat

A moderator/expert who recently vanished.

I love Darwin Awards. "Commemorating those indivuduals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by eliminating themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion."

This thread is a year old.

Do you have Java installed properly?

Unstuck the thread, as it's past Christmas now . (It was showing up at the top of the main page news, which I didn't want)

Indeed. I'm planning on writing up some guidelines on news stories and such. It'll only be viewable to news group members, but we'll fix up the rest of the submissions. (Actually, I might make it visible for the public... hmm...)

I hear a generic voice. It's not my voice, but it's basically a completely neutral voice with absolutely no accent. And it's a bit monotonous.

Okay, folks, dave has kindly set things up for us, so if you're interested and you have the time, PM me or post here. If applicable, include information like subscriptions to a scientific journal (it would be nice to get articles from a wide variety of sources) and so on. I won't take everybody (we won't need that many people in the start) so please don't be offended if I don't accept you. Regular users can still post submissions to the news forum, however, their threads will be moderated.

Bleh, the late fees suck though.

The United States Military is currently developing a "robotic pack mule," which walks on four legs and displays amazing reflexes and walking abilities. The robot can withstand a strong kick to the side without falling over, and can navigate rocky ground without tipping over. It's an amazing display of abilities for a robot, and the military hopes to develop it further. The possibilities are endless, and it could possibly replace human roles in certain dangerous tasks and other menial ones, like transporting large containers or doing medical evacuations. In any case, it's a major achievement for the robotics industry. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8802

Pity that most of our experts and moderators are incredibly busy. Well, good luck to Mokele, and hope he's back soon.

Ha! I haven't gotten water bills for several months! Beat that!

a) you said you didn't understand it either, b) prove it, c) no, we just like proof for everything we get.

Not necessarily. I could probably learn a new keyboard, and if it's beneficial, I wouldn't mind spending the effort. But there are a lot of people who wouldn't want to spend the effort, or do not have the time to, that would not want to change. In any case, QWERTY is a de facto standard, and it'll take a long time to go away. In the mean time, you can pop the caps off of your keys, rearrange them, and then change the character map.

It's still another irritating change that would take time and would affect productivity until people became used to it.

You'd have to implant it into all of the sharks.

Indeed. We've already figured out how to get a guy to control a mouse on a computer with his thoughts--now all we need to do is find out how to extract sensory information out of the brain.

I know. I happen to have a car like that. It gets irritating. And yes, that would be like using a cell phone while driving, which everyone seems to do, unfortunately. 1 usage case != many hundres of complaints, plus a class-action lawsuit Calling them idiots won't fix the problem. Titanium TVs would be marketable. You're assuming that this dominance will continue and will grow. And you took my quote out of context. Read the rest of the statement. a) that's an ad hominem attack, b) this is completely different, c) I am not against Microsoft because of their "market dominance," d) Apple makes a ridiculous profit off of their products, e) there are alternatives that your anecdotes will not destroy. You didn't look very hard. The first one is $90 cheaper, has the same capacity as a $250 Nano, and has a 5-star review average. Just because you didn't find one doesn't mean there is no viable alternative. According to PC World, battery life should be 2.5 hrs. iPods have many known battery problems, especially as their batteries wear out rather quickly. a) iPods are also pieces of plastic, b) you obviously didn't look very hard.

Any keyboard promotes carpal tunnel. It's the way the wrists rest on the desk/keyboard that's the problem.

Actually, QWERTY was designed for speed, to prevent jamming of the keys and to allow each hand to do one key at a time, so that one hand could press a key while the other moved into position. There is also a Dvorak keyboard layout system that is supposedly faster than QWERTY, but it's subjective. The QWERTY system is unlikely to change for a long time, I think.

Researchers funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have figured out how to literally control a fish's movement through the water. Using a system of electrodes implanted in a dogfish, they have stimulated the fish's brain to fool it into thinking it smells something in one particular direction, so it turns that direction to see what it is. This works remarkably well, so the Navy is hoping that it can expand the technology further. One has to wonder about the implications of this. Could it be expanded to work on other animals--even humans? We'll have to see. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18925416.300

I doubt it would be on most cars--only fancy ones. The fast majority of people who drive do not have iPods, so the car manufacturers would have nothing to gain. Ah. So now senior citizens trying to make a left turn will find they suddenly turned up the volume. a) there are plenty of alternative large-capacity mp3 players, so do your research b) anecdote != general statement covering all alternative mp3 players c) ever notice the controversy around the Nano being so easily scratchable? it was caused by Apple's cheap manufacturing--they didn't bother spending four cents or so to add a layer of resin over the screen. Sony is near the bottom of PC World's rankings. You're still assuming iPod market dominance. Oh yes, and I have seen CD players that allow you to use the headphone jack to control them. It's just a small extra plug added in. You don't have to use an iPod dock to get the advantages of one. Like that ever stopped anybody. And yes, Apple does have a proprietary file format for the iPod. It's called Apple Lossless. You can use other formats as well, but whatever. iPods still can't play Ogg or FLAC, which are some of the best, and not proprietary.

What I'd like to do is get the debate and projects forums going again. For example, if someone says "I can prove that relativity is wrong," move it to the challenges forum and wait for the fun to begin. We also need intelligent people with different points of view. It's a lot more fun when you have a logical and intelligent person to argue against.

Proprietary. And you know that open-source nuts won't let that happen.