This is interesting:
More like this
The American Association of Physics Teachers just published a study of 1,000 likely U.S. voters about science, religion, evolution, and creationism. The results are frightening. Here are some of the "highlights" of their study:
Making good ethical choices in the real world is hard, in large part because it requires us to find the best balance in responding to interested parties whose legitimate interests pull in different directions.
"I'd like to open a savings account," you tell your banker.
"Excellent!, the banker says, "our savings accounts have an interest rate of 5% and an annual percentage yield of 5.127%. It's a great deal and I think you'll like it."
In case anyone's interested, I'm currently fooling around with Twitter. If you're interested, I'm user-id MarkCC. Feel free to ping me if you've got an interesting twitter feed that you think would interest me; I'm still building up my list.
Why is this better than an actual docking station like a BlacX?
because of it's features!
a) made out of cardobard
b) when not in use, is a box to keep your stuff in.
Instead of reducing packaging, the packaging is the device's box.
If this was combined with this: http://goo.gl/usyrS
... then you could potentially have this delivered as a spore, thus reducing shipping cost and transport related carbon footprint. And when you are done with it, you have a ready made pizza garnish.
I have 5 drives and I store them in a shipping box from sparkfun.com. It's a great fit for 8 drives and it cost me nothing and it's heavier cardboard. BytePac costs over $6 PER DRIVE in boxes and sleeves (14⬠for 3). The actual connector kit costs more than a BlacX and the BytePac looks more susceptible to getting the connectors messed up in the long run because you plug it by hand instead of mating the drive to a rigid dock.
I'm not convinced. :)
The thought of cardboard cases makes me queasy, although rationally, they're probably not any more likely to catch fire than a plastic case is to melt.
Which is why I'd go with metal.
The flashpoint of paper is 232°F and melting temperature of ABS plastic is 105°C and 250°C+ for PET. If you're worried about heat then paper would be a better bet. However, if any of your drives remotely approaches 100°C then you have serious problems and a drive lifetime comparable to the attention span of a 3 year old.
I save even more as I connect my drives without the superfluous cardboard. No box, and 100% radiant cooling. Done so for years but now don't bother as USB sticks are bigger, faster, and cheap.
One environmental advantage is the reusage factor for my hardrives that are not currently being used for anything except to take up space in computer cases that I no longer use. Saves disposal space for old hard drives.
I just can't help thinking about how that would be absolutely forbidden in our computer labs -- paper is a notorious static generator. ;-)