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Comment Armrests, not weight (Score 1) 940

Not that I necessarily agree with Southwest's policy (and I'm a fairly small person: 5'2", 120 lbs), but it's not a weight issue. It's an armrest issue. If you're grossly overweight, but can get the armrests down and not spill over into the other seats, you're fine. If you need a seatbelt extension, you're fine. The only issue is spilling over into the other seats with the armrests down. It can happen to a very wide, but not very fat person. It doesn't matter if he weighs 235 or 555; get the armrests down and don't spill over. Apparently, they didn't follow their own policy in this instance. The armrests were up when he sat down and didn't bother to put them down. They decided he couldn't get them down without ever checking them. It's happened several times, but this is the first "celebrity" to whom it's happened. Check out The Consumerist on this issue.

Comment No extra profit (Score 1) 940

Regarding Southwest, they do not make a profit by selling the extra seat. If the flight is not full (98% of the time, according to their FAQ), they refund the extra seat. if the flight IS full, then some other customer lost their seat and was issued a voucher in addition to a seat on another flight.
Data Storage

Submission + - Build your own $2.8M petabyte disk array for $117k (backblaze.com)

Chris Pirazzi writes: "Online backup startup BackBlaze, disgusted with the outrageously overpriced offerings from EMC, NetApp and the like, has released an open-source hardware design showing you how to build a 4U, RAID-capable, rack-mounted, Linux-based server using commodity parts that contains 67 terabytes at a material cost of $7,867. It's open-source hardware! Their blog states: 'Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us.'"

Comment Keep rolling (Score 1) 575

It means you get to roll another d20 and add that to the 60 you already rolled. As long as you keep rolling 20's you get to keep adding another die.

Odds of rolling 4 natural 20's is 1:160,000. Hitting 7 is less than 1 in a billion shot. Not quite what's observed in nature, but close enough for games, I think.

Comment Re:Kinda reminds me of a Chumby (Score 3, Informative) 85

The thing is, this isn't a normal business venture. He mostly wants it to be built because he wants one himself. He's not motivated by profit, but desire to realize the product. A lot of the initial work was done openly by volunteers which drastically cut engineering costs. I don't think there's going to be much of an advertising budget.

My guess is that he's done the math and probably has a better idea of what he can sell it for and not go out of business. Note that: NOT GO OUT OF BUSINESS. Not become a millionaire. Not become a business tycoon. Simply stay afloat. I think that's all he really wants.
Graphics

What to Fight Over After Megapixels? 596

NewScientist has a quick look at where the digital image crowd is headed now that the megapixel wars are drawing to a close. Looks like an emphasis on low-light performance and color accuracy in addition to fun software tools are the new hotness. "For years, consumers have been sold digital cameras largely on the basis of one number - the megapixels crammed onto its image sensor. But recently an industry bigwig admitted that squeezing in ever more resolution has become meaningless. Akira Watanabe, head of Olympus' SLR planning department, said that 12 megapixels is plenty for most photography purposes and that his company will henceforth be focusing on improving color accuracy and low-light performance."
Hardware

What Does a $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway? 495

justechn writes "Tom's Hardware has an article about custom PC maker Puget Systems, who had just finished a custom $16,000 PC for one of their clients. So what exactly goes into a $16,000 system? How about: Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case. In addition to all that hardware, it also runs very quiet and very cool. The temperature of the CPUs is 36 C at idle, 45 C at load."

Comment Re:Life starts getting pretty weird... (Score 1) 605

I had a crazy sleep schedule during my last year in the military. It was generally 140+ hour work weeks. I hit 40+ hour "days" a few times a month and had similar hallucinogenic experiences. I would see or hear things not quite there. Sometimes I would get an out of body style feeling. Doing hard labor in hostile conditions for two days straight is a completely different experience from partying, studying, or doing office work. I've done them all, and there's no comparison. You may have gotten more sleep than me, but I'm guessing it was a much more comfortable sleep.

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