liedra

The Dyson ones basically sluice the water off. They're excellent and so much quicker than traditional driers.

There's also E-3s for Australian citizens, which I only just found out about! Probably about the only good thing about the US-Australian FTA :P

Some providers, I think you mean.

It can cost extra money in many places? Also, hooking it up to the mobile phone network requires more hardware or reliance on a SMS gateway.

This is a cute service but doesn't handle images that are 404 :( Perhaps it should test for 500 status before displaying?

This is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, not a course. So of course, philosophy of technology is in another entry: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/technology/

However, a course in general philosophy of computing and technology should include a far wider range of topics than just the ones listed in the original entry. It should include ethics and applied philosophy as well.

I'd have to agree with this. I also use the iTunes music store, so it'd be nice if Enqueue kept up to date with music downloads (and synced music imports to Enqueue back to iTunes too).

Glad I could help! Weather conditions are so different across the globe - I came last week from London where everyone was sweltering in 28 deg C heat to Sydney where 28 deg C was only just comfortable in a t-shirt, and I felt like I should take a jacket with me just in case it got a little chillier. I can only put that down to other aspects - humidity, wind, cloud cover, etc. rather than simply raw temperature.

I grew up in Sydney, Australia, where humidity is reasonably variable. And you can definitely feel it some days, definitely not others.

You can see some graphs here: http://www.gids.nl/sydney/weather/ - notice how it fluctuates between about 25 and 100% humidity, particularly on the month-by-month graph.

I dunno about that - been metric all my life and I know the difference between 23 and 28 degrees C. Since it's something you generally grow up learning about, the practical usability (by lay users) in terms of dealing with estimating temperatures is something that is picked up along the way too.

Additionally, weather reports will usually qualify the temperatures (with things like "warm and sunny" or "hot" or whatever), which is needed regardless of measurement - 25 degrees C in humid conditions is a very different "feel" from 25 degrees C in dry conditions. Add in wind chill/warm factors and temperature by itself is not actually that useful by itself to determine the weather practically.

Well, see it's weird, I already thought I was pushing the envelope at that price, given that you can pick up a knit hat from a shop for a couple of bucks. (I guess it's not the same sort of hat, but still - I've often had people ask me why I would knit something when I could buy it for so much less than it would cost to knit it.)

If I were to do it again I'd definitely charge more, because a) I'm not desperate for cash, b) I have better things to do, and c) the exchange rate to the US dollar is not very favourable ;)

I like the idea of a "queue jumping price" though. I think I might use that next time! I actually also got pretty good tips (which I'm not used to, not being American), which was flattering :)

I'm a female programmer and I have a problem with this.

You're absolutely right. I used to hand-knit hats to a particular nerdy gamer theme, and was very quickly overwhelmed with orders (even at US$65/hat, which is a lot for a knit beanie!).

I had to institute a "slot" system where I'd open up orders for a short time, get a bunch, then knit my way through them. Once they'd all been shipped out, I'd open up for more orders (if I wasn't sick of knitting the damned things by that stage ;). It worked pretty well and kept me in pocket money through the last stages of my PhD.

One thing I decided was that I'd never compromise in quality - I used very fine wools (malabrigo for those who know) and each hat was made to order from a "menu" of options. Throughout the process I'd keep the customer up to date on what I was doing and where they were in the "queue".

It worked really well, but I wouldn't want to do it for a living since I was underselling my time as far as labour costs go. And I got sick of knitting so many hats. :)

It's a bit of a shame that the "just hotlink the css" thing doesn't actually work very well - it actually means that some parts won't function (such as the Dropdown menu). My partner and I have just spent the better part of half an hour trying to work out why this didn't work (the documentation didn't mention any javascript necessity).

Docs could use some serious clarification - which parts are CSS-only and which require what js files.

I couldn't agree more. Universities shouldn't be for everyone - they should be for people who are in it for the learning, or for highly skilled research, not degree factories for entry level positions.

What breaks my heart in academia in the UK is seeing courses being dumbed down so that students are "happy" in their courses (i.e. not failing) so that the university gets a good response in the National Student Survey. The other thing I see is an increasing sense of entitlement - "we pay your wages so you should pass us". Going to uni is like going to the gym. You don't get fit by simply having a gym subscription - you have to work at it. Same goes for a university education. Higher fees are only going to make that sense of entitlement worse, which means for more dumbing down... and the cycle continues.

I know what they are, but I don't think that any such thing justifies the sweeping generalisation the previous commenter made. The police have been employing a range of tactics, and some have worked better (in terms of public opinion too) than others. Kettling, as far as I have seen since the public outcry over its use in the student situation, has not been used against peaceful protesters since.

That's a sweeping generalisation. I participated in the big march against cuts and the police were very respectful and only moved to contain those who were participating in violent behaviour (trashing shops, etc.). The vast majority of protesters were peaceful, treated well, and not kettled or horse-charged - a direct response to the previous condemnation of those sorts of tactics used against the students in the previous marches.

Not that I agree with the knee-jerk reaction put forward by Cameron, but actually, protesters will protest. There's a big difference between rioting and protesting, and it's important to make that clear.

Oh, sorry for delay in response, but original iPad. It was the full version too.

Really fun! I quite enjoyed going back to my childhood and colouring in :D Only one small problem - the app regularly crashed after attempting to "buy" patterns.

eta: it was patterns, not stickers.

The EU isn't Schengen, that's why.

I suspect they're using "second hand" Apple products. If you know what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

This looks absolutely terrible in Firefox on Bodhi (Ubuntu) Linux. I like the concept though!

I thought in aDwD that "leal" was just yet another Kindle OCR mess-up for "loyal" until I found out it actually really is a word - an old English word for "loyal"! Goes to show... something, I guess! :)

Customers are not stupid for not knowing about duty cycle in the slightest. The scheme you described above is completely incomprehensible. Perhaps if you tried to explain it in more engaging and inclusive ways, "most customers" would not be "stupid". Defining "20% duty cycle" and "bandwidth minutes" and "auto-throttle" in non-technical terms would probably be a good start.

Until then, stop being patronising and calling people outside of your area of expertise "stupid". It's not going to win you any arguments.

Have some sort of alternative sign-up that doesn't require a pre-existing social network account?

The article hit the nail on the head - this community was built from within, by people who know and love their craft.

It's hard to see a similar thing becoming a more "general" community - reputation is a strongly guarded thing in these tighter-knit communities (woe betide you if you rip someone off on a pattern or steal money/etc. from other knitters, or don't come through on a swap).

Also it's a great way to get involved in the indie craft scene. Crafting materials can be hard to acquire, especially good quality and variety of fibres and yarns, so it's great to be able to go to the source of indie dyers and spinners to get hand-made and custom work done. I know of several indie dyers who would not exist if it hadn't been for Ravelry. Anyone can have an immediate audience for their related goods and services, and there is a great appreciation for quality work (whether it is dying, spinning, or pattern-designing). This sort of immediately accessible feedback is really good for community building.

I don't think it'd be a good idea for all communities to copy Ravelry piece for piece, since it's such a contextual site, but you can certainly think of Ravelry as a case study for an excellent design and response to user needs.

I was wondering the exact same thing. Is there a limit or something? If so I've never seen one.

Well, apart from the ramen bit. :)

I used to work as an editor for freshmeat.net and we would get hilarious submissions like this quite frequently. For example, the "revolutionary new file compression algorithm" that quite literally converted a file into binary and removed all the 0s. Such a shame that the author "hadn't gotten around to" writing a de-compression tool!

We were often quite sad that we couldn't publish some of these gems, they were brilliant.