Cost, limited content availability, and it tried to solve a problem that nobody had. This occurred when I was in college, and just a couple of years before, the market was undergoing shocks from the format "victory" of blu-ray over HD-DVD. This was the same timeframe where large ( > 32"), slim LCD and LED-backlit flatscreen TVs were becoming an affordable norm for middle class households. Plasma screens were on their way out. The people most likely to buy a 3D TV did, but it wasn't enough to sustain the up-front investment in dedicated 3D content; content being what draws the "everyday consumer" to upgrade.

This was also the same timeframe when the iphone / smartphone became widespread, and the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video for existing content. Consumers generally were wanting easier access to existing content or everyday content, not a whole new way to experience the same thing.

Because you're one of the few commenting who is actually thinking instead of just reacting.

Gotta have something to defeat Skynet, amirite?

Now I can conveniently ignore any other research!

Helps to make reading generational rants or supposedly newsworthy stories refreshing and enjoyable. Especially the weirdly negative slashdot commentary from those old bitter users. And just generally.

...But it was aliens.

Even the source article quotes it: "[The pod liner] would need to compete with proven and well-established technologies, and, frankly, it is dubious whether the market will be ready for such a radical new concept, even in the long term."

Engineering aside, there's always that fun part where we decide to cheerfully ignore the fact that billions have already been invested in the existing airliner model. And all the fun externalities stemming from them. And retooling airports. Hurrah.

I know, it's amazing, you might actually wake up.

John Scalzi beat you to it, with his book Lock-In: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

At least the recruiter doesn't need to have any social skills!

You're being rather flaky about your stance on this issue, AC.

I had the same question, and found the answer readily enough in layman's terms on wikipedia: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F....

It seems like there are three key reasons (which I am listing also in layman's terms):

1) As a "noble gas" xenon is typically inert, which reduces corrosion in storage and long-term usage as a thruster fuel
2) The gas can be stored in liquid form (more dense) at room temperature, unlike liquid oxygen or hydrogen, which makes it easier to transport and handle
3) It is far up enough on the periodic table that its electron shells can be excited with less energy input than other inert gases, making it more ideal for low-power
systems such as the solar panels that power the ion engine.

Bear in mind that I may be interpreting those wrong, but I do only have two years of university chemistry.

I'm part of that 30% - my phone won't download a recent system update because there is insufficient dedicated system memory to (I assume) unpack and install the update. It's a fun combination problem - the version of 4.4.2 that I have won't let me move all downloaded apps to the SD card, which has 4x the available space as the internal memory. At least some of the software is bloat or crap from Virgin Mobile, and the other half of the problem is the very limited specs of the phone - an LG Tribute.

Just wondering why the main story links to another slashdot article, which itself doesn't track back to any original "source" article. Revolv.com is more concise and without the vitriol. I can appreciate commentary now and again, but reading "news" through somebody else's interpretation and opinions - which I don't necessarily share... Is there an RSS expectation and formatting convention that prevents linking to source pages, or is the slashdot feed automated and posts a link to whatever web address is supplied by a post submitter?

I could see where Sony might gain sales. I play on xbox, and have a handful of friends that bought a PS4 instead of a an xbox1. I know we'd all still like to game together, and if, say, the next Call of Duty or Destiny was something that the PS4-owner friends were on the fence about but wanted to play with myself or others, it would be a great incentive for them to be able to play with me, and vice-versa.

What I don't know and cannot intelligently comment on are: license and royalty fees, implementation costs, difficulties in network coding with cross-platform, and whether the marginal profit exists to to make this worthwhile to a developer or to a publisher, let alone to Microsoft or Sony.

I think it'd be pretty awesome if it meant that historically brand-locked franchises like Halo, Gears of War, Ratchet & Clank, or Resistance became cross-platform. I doubt that it would happen, but for the big multiplayer games, there might be enough monetary incentives from MLG/pro competitions, for titles like Halo, CoD, or Tears of Bore.