Maybe the reason those kids aren't paying attention is because they are learning stuff elsewhere and feel you're just wasting their time.
Or maybe it is, as the union suggests, because they realize how lame school is by comparison.

Or maybe kids are paying better attention now then they have in the past, and the union is falling for the golden age fallacy.

From http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/10_02_05.pdf
The limited evidence available also indicates that home computer use is linked to slightly better academic performance.

I'll take that limited evidence over the "no evidence" supplied by the teachers union.

While it might be nice to use a safe(r) language, can't we at least have a compile option in C that adds bounds checking?

And while you're at it, how about making it impossible to execute code that isn't in the code segment and write protecting the code segment.

There's an amazing technology called "seeds".
These "seeds" grow into actual, eatable food.
Even better, they're solar powered and the feedstock is water.
And to top it off, one of the things these "seed" machines can manufacture is more seeds!

Thanks to this technology, the future will be filled with people who grow their own food, and things like supermarkets will become a relic of the past.

Slashdot moderation makes it a lot harder. For example, off topic rants are down modded to oblivion, and the structure of the reply tree make forum sliding much more difficult.
It would be far easier for the NSA to destroy Slashdot by buying it, then changing the way the forum works.

Unable to put Snowden on trial, the NSA has decided to sacrifice three other employees.

I look forward to the circus of their trial, I hear they'll be serving bread.

>Okay, compare a contemporary battery...

No, that's precisely my point - don't compare a tiny subsystem of the car and pretend that's the whole problem.

It's not just the fuel, or the fuel plus the fuel tank.
It's the fuel, the tank, the engine, the wheels, the cooling system, the exhaust system - basically everything.

Gasoline is a fuel.
Batteries store fuel (electricity).
Batteries are roughly comparable to gas tanks, not gasoline.

If for some reason you just want to only compare the fuels, compare gasoline to electricity.
One gram of electricity is more energy than you get from One tonne of gasoline. It's about 9 orders of magnitude better, energy density wise.
It's a completely bogus comparison too, but it at least it is more sensational.

For a fair comparison, compare the weight of everything it takes to make the wheels turn;
The gas, the engine, the cooling system/radiator, tail pipe and muffler, drive train, air filter, and so on, with everything on an electric car.

No, not the idiots who trademarked "candy", the idiots who let them trademark candy.
As in, sue the people in the trademark office that approved an obviously flawed trademark, and force them to make restitution to the public.

High Pressure Sodium street lights are around 100 lumens per watt. HPS can be as low as 50 or as high as 150 depending various factors.
LED street lights are also around 100 lumens per watt, but they vary even more widely.
A theoretically perfect light source with a wavelength of 555 nm would emit 683 lumens per watt, so both LED and HPS are about 15% efficient.

Even the best HPS is less than 25% efficient, and the best LED isn't much better at just over 35%.
At 14.5 lumens per watt, an A19 incandescent 60 Watt bulb (i.e. a "normal" bulb) comes the closest to 97%, but it's 97% inefficient.

Yes, it's you - you are so last year.

We aren't talking about those cheap $10 bulbs from Home Depot that get a measly 84 lumens/watt.

Commercially available LED street lights like Cree's LEDway have been over 100 lumens / watt since 2013-03, making them more efficient than high pressure sodium even without considering their arguably superior focusing and CRI.

If I'm crunching the numbers correctly, 1 gram of Boron produces 25,000 kWh of electricity - assuming perfect capture, 100% boron-11 and no other loses. (Granted, all unrealistic assumptions, but it's a starting point.)

If we replaced all electric generation on the planet (about 20 trillion kWh / year) it would take 800 tonnes of boron per year.

Turkey has the largest known Boron deposits at over a million tonnes or 1,200 years worth. And there are several other countries with large (thousands of tonnes) deposits as well, and that's just the Boron we know about.

All really rough estimates, but I don't think will run out of Boron fuel any time soon.

You want to give me a master copy on tape? Great!
I wouldn't say no to CD either, and pretty much any other format or media.

Just be sure there's at least one a digital copy in a lossless DRM free format included in the pile of copies you're giving me.

From America's finest news source;
http://www.theonion.com/video/experts-agree-giant-razorclawed-bioengineered-crab,14318/

If you are writing characters for a story, you might want them all to have unique, easily identifiable speech patterns.

Also the traits that stand out and identify you most are probably really annoying.
You might want want to reduce them.
For example, you might want to not use the phrase "might want" nearly so much if it was brought to your attention.

A "normal" A19 soft white bulb is about 14.5 Lumens per Watt.
A typical CFL is around 55 Lumens per Watt
A good LED bulb is around 90 Lumens per Watt (and they're getting better)

Fipel bulbs are "Highly Efficient".
Anyone have an idea what that is in Lumens per Watt?