The draw was that it's its own social network focused exclusively on snapshots. You may be on to something that Facebook bought it to stifle further growth of the social side of Instagram, now that it's available on Android.

A giant penguin would be cool, and I would go out of my way to stay at a penguin-shaped hotel (which you might guess based on my screen name), but I think a giant flamingo hotel would be more appropriate for Vegas - and would be really cool with the long legs being glass tunnels that the elevators go up. But that has the same structural support questions that an actual full-size Enterprise would have. A penguin would be a lot simpler.

That was very helpful. The only thing I can add is a reiteration of your last point. It sounds like your situation was worse, but I got screwed by my graduate adviser and two years after leaving the school I haven't been able to find a job or another graduate program. It's crucial to stay on their good side.

That's great for you but what can you say to young academics today who will find extreme difficulty in attaining such a position?

Not everyone will get such a position, of course, we understand that. But what can we do to improve the odds?

Just as in every other part of the economy, there isn't enough funding for all the potential grad students and certainly not enough professor jobs for them once they finish. To me there's a huge disconnect being pushed - politicians call for more students in science and engineering, but once the students are there, there's no place for them to go. And it's outrageous that this is the case - we could have a much stronger science and engineering base in this country than we do (not that it isn't already strong). I'm one of several advanced science degree holders in my circle of friends who can't find a relevant job and can't find a professor with funding for grad students to go back to school with.

I realize that you as a professor of twenty years are insulated from all that, but surely you've seen such issues in your department, with more well-qualified students applying than you have funding for, and students finishing PhDs and then not being able to find a position?

It would be nice if you note in the job listing that you won't provide visa sponsorship (if you do and people don't see it or ignore it, that's a different matter).

Though how you expect people to get visa sponsorship from any other source, I'm not sure. I've run into this myself as a geologist who can't find a job - I'm willing to move to whatever random country for a job (in fact, I would enjoy it), and lots of e.g. oil companies have job openings in other countries and post listings looking for US candidates. But they won't sponsor your visa. WTF?

Has The Buffalo News suddenly started printing anything worthwhile since I stopped reading it... when I was 10?

It's not the worst local newspaper I've seen, not by a long shot. But it's pretty bad. I realize I'm an unfair judge as someone who doesn't care about Buffalo - but that includes everyone who grew up there and tried to get away as soon as possible, and most of the people who still live there.

Of course in most east coast states (here in NY anyway) turning your lights on when it rains is traffic law, and since it never rains in SoCal (where I lived for three years recently) even if there was such an unlikely law not even the traffic police would probably know about it.

Can't take a hint? ;)

As someone upthread mentioned, a similar solution that the textbook publishers might go along with would be to have the problem sets completely separate from the book. The books generally don't need to be changed unless the entire curriculum is changed, but for various reasons you might want or need new problem sets, as in the parent's example.

So have a reasonably priced service that provides new problem sets each year. Ideally this would just mean sending the teacher a single copy for them to do with as they please, but realistically the publisher would probably want to sell the school a cheaply-printed booklet for each student. If priced reasonably, it would be cheaper than replacing the actual books as often as they might have to otherwise.

I agree that a computer program that can generate questions would be ideal, but there are a lot of hurdles to get over before reaching that point. Not technical problems, but bureaucratic ones. If such a program were available today, of course, I'm sure many of the better teachers out there would use it with authorization from the school or not.

Speaking as a geologist who would go on that mission in a heartbeat, even if it was one-way: you can do it with robots, and so there's no way you'd be able to convince any funding bodies to fund a manned mission. If a manned mission/moon base is planned for other reasons as well, of course, then it certainly would be a lot easier to do it with moon buggies than with slow robots.

This is a pretty frequent problem. They seem to play with the labeling algorithms occasionally, screwing things up.

I think there's a sound intent behind it, though - if you're zoomed in to where a major city is, presumably you know which major city it is and don't need that label cluttering things up, but you might want the labels for the surrounding small towns and villages.

In practice, you get problems like the one you describe for Swindon. It's frustrating to be browsing around the map in an area you're unfamiliar with, trying to get your bearings, when the labels for the biggest cities and towns don't show up. You have to zoom out way too far to get them to appear.

It just needs to be tweaked, though. It's relatively trivial to adjust labeling algorithms and I'm pretty sure that they do notice these things themselves and fix them sometimes - it's gotten better in some places in the US where it used to really annoy me. They're not great about responding to complaints from the public, though.

I'm quite familiar with NYC and primarily use the subway to get around (though I'm not a local, I go there frequently and have many friends there, I'm originally from Buffalo) and the thing that always trips me up is when I need a specific letter train (not just anything on a certain color line). It's not always guaranteed to show up at all on a given day, and the signage at the stations will tell you but are usually quite ambiguous - enough so that someone not familiar with the schedule would not be able to decipher it.

The only way to figure this stuff out is to wait at that station hoping the train will arrive (and being prepared to give up and find another route) or to get the line schedules. If you have a subway map app on a smartphone you can download the schedules, but of course if you're in a station waiting for a train you generally won't have a phone signal.

I've tried the Google route planning and it seems to work, but because I'm familiar in general with the system it's usually not necessary - I just look at the map and quickly plan my route in my head. But then you get problems like the one I describe.

What would help people a lot (including tourists asking when the next train will arrive - and how do you know by the way they aren't waiting for one that won't show up at all that day, or is running every half hour or something?) is more signage. The digital signs at some stations are a huge help - they indicate when the next train is arriving, what letter it is, etc. But at most stations you're lucky if there's even a paper line schedule posted somewhere.

This isn't a fair example, but I have an older model iPhone that I got free (I use the Nexus One I bought unlocked from google) and I've done the jailbreak and unlocked it and everything. Just playing around with it.

In Cydia, the jailbreak app store, if you go to search for an app you're stuck there if you don't want to search. You have to press search to get out of it, or the home button. Usually if you select a text box in other apps, there's a button at the top to exit the keyboard.

As I said, it isn't a fair example because official (or app store approved) apps are supposed to behave consistently... but they don't always. It's been a while since I regularly used my old iPod touch (which I gave away after I got the Nexus One), so I can't give you any specific examples but I found the little inconsistencies in apps incredibly frustrating, because often the only way to get out of something or just go back would be to hit the home button and restart the app.

I do agree that the inconsistency in how the back button behaves in Android can be confusing, but I much, much, much prefer having it (and the other buttons) over the iPhone approach.

When the apps you use all do the UI right, and consistently, I do think iOS does it better - a lot slicker, anyway. It's just that in reality, with the types of apps slashdot readers are likely to use, it doesn't work very well a lot of the time, and Android is superior in handling inconsistencies.

I haven't tinkered with ICS yet (because the bugs or missing features in the current ROMs that are available affect things I need or want) on my Nexus One, but I've had the long-press on home button feature you describe for quite a long time. It's definitely an option in CyanogenMod 7, and possibly earlier.

I use a CM off-shoot with other customizations called Kang-O-Rama, which unfortunately is no longer being developed. So I'll need to find a new one once ICS is worked out. In the mean time I would definitely recommend this ROM over the others (I've tried all of the major ones), and of course it has the feature you describe, which I use all the time.

IANAL but I'm a photographer. You are certainly allowed to take pictures of people on private property, permission or not. Typically you'd want to do this from public space, or someplace you have a right to be standing physically (such as the street) - in which case there's nothing your subject can do about it besides closing the curtains (or whatever).

In this case, I guess it hinges on what altitude air rights extend to. There's no legal problem taking photos of someone in private property with an airplane, but I suppose it's different if your airplane or helicopter is only a few feet off the ground and therefore essentially within the private property. But the details given suggest the helicopter was shot down over the road, which is public.

But even if they were in the property the charge is trespassing, not taking photos without permission, and they can't force you to delete the photos (or ruin the film). You can be forced to leave the private property, of course - and I suppose there is a tradition of farmers shooting shotguns off to scare away trespassers, but I'd like to think one wouldn't get away with actually shooting someone who was merely trespassing. Or, you know, simply watching you from the street.