pogo's comments

Thanks for the tip! I just installed Artemis on 3 tablets and it's fantastic for my purposes. And looking at the Artemis forums, there are a number of people building Star Trek-like bridge consoles, similar to what I'm doing. Except I'm aiming for more of a gritty Alien type of aesthetic.

This is an incredible and timely resource for me. I'm currently building a spaceship cockpit for my young sons. I'm a former EE, so I've got the blinky LEDs, switches, LCDs, keypads, and other physical UI components covered, but I'd love to add a sophisticated GUI component. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a coder. Do you know if any sci-fi GUIs are available as Android apps for tablets? I have 3 Kindle Fire tablets that I would love to turn into dedicated GUI touchscreens for the cockpit.

No, collisions are a very real risk. In fact, they've already happened. In 2009, an Iridium satellite accidentally collided with a Russian satellite. Space-X is talking about quadrupling the number of existing satellites, so collisions will be more likely and the resulting debris increases the chances of subsequent collisions much more. This escalating effect is know as Kessler Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome).

We have a local Lego re-seller (https://bricksandminifigs.com/) which I visit occasionally. One time I spoke to the owner about the business economics. They try to buy complete kits. It is not economical to re-create kits from parts if you sort manually. When they buy unsorted Lego collections from collectors/enthusiasts, they do a limited manual sort to pull out the most valuable pieces and then they store the leftovers. When I spoke to her, I believe she said she had 2 storage units filled with Lego that aren't economical to sort further. Run-of-the-mill bricks and pieces have no value other than scrap. The value is primarily in mini-figs and rare specialty pieces like clear acrylic canopies. Obviously, kits are valuable, but only if you don't have to create them by manually sorting. Also, used kits are much more valuable if they are sold already assembled as proof that all of the pieces are included. This assembly labor must be factored into the business model.

Buying lots off of Ebay, it seems like you risk buying presorted Lego which have already been picked over for the most valuable pieces.

In general, this is good advice for dealing with price objection in the negotiation of a premium product. It correctly emphasizes long term relationships over a single sale. It also encourages you to stick to your guns on maintaining margin instead of chasing revenue - critical for premium products.

Where the article loses me is when it advocates telling the customer that you'll lie to help them get a better offer from the competition: "I'll even help you negotiate a lower price by sending you an email underbidding their latest offer." This is ethically wrong. But if that's not a convincing argument, it's also pragmatically a very bad idea. Maintaining integrity is the only sustainable business practice in the long run. Lying & cheating may work once, twice, or a dozen times, but it will catch up to you. Even more pragmatically, you've just told the customer that you can't be trusted, that you'll lie to make a situation more favorable for you. That's undermined your relationship when it's purpose was meant to do just the opposite.

Prime beef is only 2-4% of all graded beef(1). Of this, most is sold to restaurants. So I don't think it was ever the "standard meat for sale", but it is available if you look. Butcher shops and, as others have pointed out, Costco.

(1) http://www.threetreesranches.com/documents/pdf/USDA-percenta...

They are very small, but not microscopic. They are done in yellow ink, which is why they are very hard to see. If they were printed in black ink, I think you'd be able to spot them immediately, despite their small size.

Here's a great article with many more examples:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/computers/if-it-aint-b...

My favorite is the 90 yr old Texas company that uses an IBM 402 from 1948. The computer uses plugboards - breadboard-like cards that are programmed by plugging wires like a patch panel. As of the date of the article (2012) they still used the plugboards, as well as a more modern card reader/puncher.

Edit: I just realized my example is also mentioned in the OP article, though there is more detail (and photos) in the PCWorld article I linked.

A never-used $200 "burner" laptop might be a wise investment in this case.

In this case, get a lawyer and don't answer any questions without them. Also, if you do leak a hard copy, print it at a public place and use a B&W printer. Color printers are relatively easily traced.

Having started my career making military radars, I've always been amused by tourists that criticize the cost of products that are required the have extreme performance and reliability in industries that are highly regulated to ensure compliance. The best simple explanation I've ever seen for the seemingly excessive cost was from an episode of West Wing:

https://youtu.be/7R9kH_HOUXM

While an ashtray may seem trivial, this example shows that in life-or-death situations, every detail must be considered and doing so is not cheap.

It's important to note that these improvements only apply to BLE. Classic Bluetooth (EDR) is not changing, at least not significantly.

Also, there will continue to be minor spec revisions (5.1, 5.2, etc). The "Bluetooth 5" terminology is for marketing and PR, to simplify the message. They don't want to confuse the general public with spec revisions.

On a larger scale, this sounds like the premise behind Asimov's Foundation books. In essence, a visionary mathematician predicts a 30,000 year dark age descending on the Galactic Empire. In response, he creates the Foundation, a remote galactic repository of human knowledge to assist in the reboot.

FlightCar is a business that uses another entity's property and services without permission and for profit,but without remuneration. This is not at all comparable to a private individual doing a friend a favor for free. I would imagine that the airport would start with a cease-and-desist letter, perhaps along with an offer to come to to some sort of revenue-sharing agreement for continued access. Failing a voluntary resolution, a lawsuit might follow.

To address your last point, let's use another example. Football stadiums are public facilities often owned by local municipalities. But that doesn't mean I can go in and start selling hot dogs.

The degree of "burden" that FlightCar imposes on SFO is irrelevant to SFO's ability to charge a fee to FlightCar. SFO owns a platform and nobody is entitled to use it without paying, even if such use costs SFO nothing. (Which is not the case here, since FlightCar rentals are displacing car rentals that would otherwise pay a fee to SFO.)