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Comment: Re:BS (Score 5, Funny) 322

by tbird81 (#44444551) Attached to: Study Finds 3D Printers Pay For Themselves In Under a Year

Don't mock the article. Here's what I found from a brief Google search:
Yearly spending per household 2009:
Housing – shelter – $10,023
Pensions, Social Security – $5,027
Food – food at home – $3,465
Transportation – gasoline, motor oil – $2,384
Shower curtain rings - $2,105
Healthcare – $2,853

You'd be surprised how much the average household spends on shower curtain rings. Shower curtain ring failure is an important cause of household injury, and has a high fatality rate. Also, you probably underestimate addictiveness of the shower curtain. While you may only need the ones that came with your shower curtain when you moved into the house 15 years ago, plenty of addicts blow through new shower curtain at a rate of dozens per day.

You may have heard of Narcotics Anonymous or the AA. There's also the SCA, and a non-spiritual group called Glass door which helps people get over this dreadful affliction.

While 3d printers may reduce the cost of the curtain rings, which may help financially, they will not be doing anything for the root cause of the problem. This is just another reason 3d printers should be banned from general use.

Comment: Re:Meh.... (Score 1) 120

by tbird81 (#44306653) Attached to: New Moon Found Orbiting Neptune

This phenomenon is called tidal locking.

From Wikipedia:

Most significant moons in the Solar System are tidally locked with their primaries, since they orbit very closely and tidal force increases rapidly (as a cubic) with decreasing distance. Notable exceptions are the irregular outer satellites of the gas giant planets, which orbit much farther away than the large well-known moons.

Pluto and Charon are an extreme example of a tidal lock. Charon is a relatively large moon in comparison to its primary and also has a very close orbit. This has made Pluto also tidally locked to Charon. In effect, these two celestial bodies revolve around each other (their barycenter lies outside of Pluto) as if joined with a rod connecting two opposite points on their surfaces.

The tidal locking situation for asteroid moons is largely unknown, but closely orbiting binaries are expected to be tidally locked, as well as contact binaries.

Comment: Re:Innocent until blogged about (Score 1) 666

by tbird81 (#44080411) Attached to: Security Researcher Attacked While At Conference

Why, oh, why couldn't you have written the summary? You actually summarize what has happened, rather than wasting a long sentence just mentioning you went to the conference and stayed at another hotel. I hope you are modded up.

Submitters - think before you submit, and make the summary so good we are not forced to read the article.
Editors - feel free to edit and improve things, and importantly, you don't need to sensationalize everything for us to read it - that just pisses us off.

Comment: Re:What a dumbass idea (Score 1) 401

by tbird81 (#44020901) Attached to: Wi-Fi Light Bulbs Shipping Soon

Slashdot is just full of negativity about everything. Just stupid overused jokes, and ridiculous theories about what a "hacker" or the NSA could do to your system. It's hard to think that people here are able to achieve anything in the real world harbouring such pathological cynicism. The world is actually a pretty cool place.

There's nerdiness - in which people should get excited about this type of stuff; and then there's bitterness - where everything is stupid and a waste of time. I hope that the two are independent variables.

I've only just (in the last 2 months) started browsing reddit. Sure there's a lot of crap, but everyone seems much more positive than they do here. Nearly every new device or technology, from the Ouya to the Oculus, including every new Nasa project, every new discovery, is just bagged without any real interest on Slashdot.

Slashdot seems a lonely place.
