You ever watch an episode of New Yankee Workshop? Wander through an art fair? The handbuilt, custom, top of the line stuff. Ikea just uses plywood for everything and slaps a layer of laminate on the parts you see. No sane furniture builder would ever waste good wood on the back of a piece of furniture where a sheet of…

Commodore 64 (as in 64kB), and it was awesome.

That carpenter analogy is way off- great furniture does indeed often use plywood on the back instead of the "pretty" wood used on the front, top, and sides. Plywood is structurally stronger and less subject to wood movement and warping with changes in humidity. If something is not going to be seen, sensible people…

Cool, but this looks like a budget Heliodisplay. These are just projectors projectors aimed at a curtain of water vapor, but people don't have to stand as still as a cardboard cutout. You can also walk right through the image and use it as a touchscreen.

Lots of alumni and students would care about a bitter rival getting credit for their accomplishment. At least the author cared enough about it to fix his mistake.

Are you trying to piss people off? That's the University of Michigan, not Michigan State!

If they were truly obsolete people wouldn't still want them. Old tech, yes. Inefficient, yes. But not obsolete.

Current prosthetic technology can work fine for double above-knee amputees, this person's residual limbs (stumps) were just "too short" to put them on.

In Firefox I just right-click the image to open it in a new tab, then right click in that tab to save it.

@siwex80: The problem here is that the internet is everywhere, and the laws aren't the same everywhere. Libel laws in the UK are widely regarded as among the worst in the world- soundly putting the burden of proof on the accused rather than the accuser and costing them millions regardless of the outcome. It is quite…

Actually, the most efficient small four-stroke motors are only around 43% thermal efficiency while electric motors can easily get over 90% efficiency. What you're actually getting at is the energy density of the fuel. It doesn't matter that internal combustion engines are so inefficient because gas is so much more…

Awesome! You've given me hope that I'll eventually be able to retire my poor old Treo 650. Don't laugh- I get two phones with all the minutes I need for only $60/month after fees! Now that you've given me hope, could you give me some ammo too? Can you tell me which specific android phones you've activated and gotten…

@timgray: Are you saying that you can buy an unlocked Android phone and then activate it on a plan that does not include data? Because Sprint has been specifically telling me that this would not be possible (although that's exactly what I would expect someone trying to sell me a new phone and contract to say).

@BazookaJoe: They're filled with NO2. Here's how the balloon is used- [www.urbandictionary.com]

@FlyingAvocado: IANAL, but US patent law also requires that inventions be novel. For Apple to file a patent on an invention on 6/17/2008 when it was posted on YouTube on 12/21/2007 seems to negate any claims of novelty. But I also don't know how prior art applies to first to invent. Apple may claim to have invented it…

@Curves: That's what I usually do, but every now and then ca.gizmodo.com reverts to old articles from one day (iPhone needs to steal this from Android, etc.). Any idea why I keep getting this and if there's anything I can do to stop it?

1Password sounds great, but my employer blocks Dropbox, so I doubt it will work. KeePass sounds possible, but they also don't let most of us use flash drives. Does anyone know if LastPass or any other password manager will function in an overly-restrictive IT environment like this?

I would love to use a password manager like 1Password, but my employer blocks Dropbox for security reasons, so that won't work. KeePass also sounds good, but they also won't let most of us use flash drives. Would LastPass work for me? Anyone know of any other password manager that might work in this kind of…

Probably otters. When you get a couple of otters in a row it looks even more like a long "multi-humped creature" swimming really fast.

I've seen and used wheelchairs like this that are already on the market ([www.nu-drive.com] is one of them). All of the currently-available ones use proprietary (and expensive) hubs and handles rather than conventional cycling gear- I think that's the cool part about this one. These systems roll forward when you push…