My kid got a laptop from her grand dad. They shorted her on 8 gigs of ram. I wasn't paying attention and neither was she. She uses it for school so it's not like it matters, but if I got that back it would go. I've returned tons of stuff like that over the years. Stuff that was functional but not what the manufacturer says it was.

I also use a Phillips Air Floss. Works great, but the motors die like clockwork ever 12-14 months. I bought the extended warranty and return it to the store. If you don't want me to keep returning them fix the bloody problem with the motors. It's not like I enjoy traipsing to Best Buy ever year when the damn thing breaks.

And don't get me started on cell phones. Use slightly cheaper ram and their performance goes to crap. Not a problem if you buy $700+ flagships. But I buy $250 mid range phones. I go through two or three before I find one that isn't crap and do that about every 2-3 years (mostly because radios improve and I want the better reception/new bands).

If you're savvy there are plenty of legit reasons to return lots of stuff. Companies will make barely functional crap if you let them. Returns are the one thing that lets us punish them. And again, I'm not scamming anyone. In fact, I'm pretty damn pissed companies are wasting my time with their God Damned corner cutting.

As proven by all the research done in VR since Occulus : the main drawback would be rendering speed/feedback loop.
Will this eyesight tracking work fast enough so the image rendering doesn't lag too much behind the eye motion ?

Already solved... nearly two years ago. It hasn't been used yet because no mainstream headset has installed the eye tracking sensors needed. I'm sure patents or cost are a factor. But the tech works, and the higher resolution we get the more important foveated rendering will be. So it's only a matter of time.

If that were true, everytime someone on Star Trek stepped through a transporter they would be dead too.

Jesus Christ, Trek people go to agonizing lengths to drive home the point that transporters are analog to avoid this issue precisely, but most people still get it wrong.

I'd think that /. would be the kind of place where those using Star Trek as evidence would have at least read one of the tech manuals.

Anyway, the whole point of the annular confinement beam and the phrase "Energize" is that Trek uses a matter-to-energy conversion system that actually moves atoms from point A to point B - it does not copy-and-delete and Geordi even says that even their computers do not have the capacity to duplicate all of the quantum states in the replicators. Roddenberry was very concerned about his plot device implying the absence of a soul.

By contrast, check out the episode of Outer Limits with the gal who goes to the sentient dinosaur planet from the Earth Moon station, to get a sense of the implications of a digital process. Spoiler alert: grim.

And they used the term web tech right there in the summary. I'm starting to think there are people who search the internet just to find places where they can inform people that HTML and CSS aren't programming languages.

So you're not talking about this survey then, right? Because that they never called HTML a programming language. They used the term "web tech" when referring to HTML, and even titled the list "Programming, Scripting, And Markup Languages" to be clear, and they STILL get called out for calling HTML a programming language, AND the comment gets modded up. Everyone is aware of what HTML is, but yet they felt the need to add the (un)necessary specifics just because of comments like this, and they STILL get accused of not understanding basic info they probably have know for 20 years. I guess with some things, you just can't win.

is that this is the big data folks keep talking about. I'll leave figuring out how this can (will?) be abused as an exercise for the reader, but regardless this puts more power in the hands of retailers and contributes to tipping the balance between consumer/retailer. Airlines do the same thing with rapid price changes, and yes there's a bit of an arms race on right now, but I don't expect plucky consumers to come out ahead. There was already a lopsided power imbalance before all the mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyout fueled bankruptcies.

TL;DR. We need to consider the effects of large sets of cheaply available consumer data being easily traded among the few retailers that are left.

The star trek transporter works by measuring a target's impression on spacetime at a subatomic level, and then creating a 4-dimensional hologram of that impression at the destination point. The inverse of that hologram is then applied to the source point, cancelling out the probability of the target being at the source location, while the probability of it being at the destination rises to certainty.

The tone of Slashdot seems to have changed a lot lately. It's disheartening, but posts like these remind me that everything is still right in the tech world.

If you have the magic tech to raise the dead, you can also have separate real or virtual planets for them to inhabit which will suit their particular outdated desires. And there's certainly no need to give the undead the right to vote on Earth.

Then you've got a Microsoft tech remoting i to your machine via the update ticket, or a Microsoft tech calling you up and asking you to install TeamViewer so he can remote in... *hint* *hint*

By not having the device phone home to fix, without a special support agreement anyway, it avoids customers getting used to unsolicited support calls, and thus hopefully fewer individuals scammed.

And because of that you're going to see a dramatic decrease in the number of women hired in tech.

If you run out of funding in 30 years, you've already been paid so toss the brains out. Just like you should have 30 years ago. I'm not only worried about them making the transition to uploading minds, I'm wondering if they can even do what they're promising now. Embalming a body so that there's NO decay after hundreds of years is a pretty big claim. Didn't RTFA to learn about "high-tech embalming," but it must be something special.

./ seems to do well allowing downvotes. There's certainly bias on certain subjects, but in general you find high quality comments on both sides.

I think technology (the moderation system) plays a role, but as tech people I think we tend to overemphasize technology and understate the role of editors in establishing a site's culture. The /. editors simply don't post the sorts of stories and summaries that attract trolls and extremists, as a result the people who mod tend to be more reasoned and open to opposing ideas.

Sites who post controversial stories to drive page views are going to have lower quality comments because that's the people they attract and the tone they set.

Sites who allow users to post stories are going to end up with sections that are cesspools.

I don't think you can fix reddit with the right moderation system, whenever users control the content there's always going to be problematic content.

That's a nice symbol to represent humanity, but it's not a depiction of humanity.

It's nice that you pick on a fairly high-tech material - concrete - representing the application of geology (the aggregate, the shale, the lime), chemistry (the cement), heat (to make the lime, then to react the components together), engineering (to grind the components together and mix them well). It's a good metaphor, but I don't think it's a good depiction of the human species.

I think this story should serve for non-technical buyers to provide greater awareness of the amount of CONTROL that Apple wields upon their ecosystem. Many users are completely unaware that Apple effectively sets what you can, and often CANNOT, buy to interface with your iDevice. And consumers should know... because when they can't get that accessory they want, or they blame a vendor when a device uses a USB micro-B port/cable instead of Lightning, often their ire is misplaced at the vendors when 90% of the time it is Apple that has denied them the solution they desire. And considering how many vendors "take it on the chin" and never publicly inform the buyers of this, I can only assume there is a non-disparagement clause in the MFi license as well. From the amount of abuse that some vendors take and still remain silent, Apple might be the biggest "abuser" in the relationship. Certainly Apple took advantage with their passthrough Lightning port-to-Lightning plug used in the "bandaid" iPhone battery cases; they even used the fact that their case had it as a competitive finger in the eye to their partners... all without mentioning that they themselves prohibited the vendors from using such a port/plug combination. Mophie has remained silent, still can't use the part. Oddly, tech "journalists" reported the "marketing", knocking MFi partners in reviews for not having the port rather than reporting to buyers about Apple's shenanigans. I've not read a single review yet where this control over ports/options has been exposed.

While Apple is the big name attention getter in all this the real drivers for this are the farmers. They NEED the Right to Repair since they're locked into support contracts for their equipment. They can't replace any part without a service tech showing up and telling the thing that it's OK to keep working.

Full time farmers tend to be skilled enough to do most repairs to their own equipment and having their combine stand inactive for a day or three until the tech can/will show up is a real problem. Especially since that tech doesn't have to do anything besides that software blip.

If dragging Apple into court so they can show how little sense it makes to have vendor lockout on purchased equipment makes the law go forward I'm all for it. Heck I'm all for it because they're being jerks. But keep your eye on the ball - the farmers who actually produce something necessary to live.