You burn an EEPROM so I was using the same terminology. It's still usually called "burning" even though you can re-burn the same device with different code.

...cannot build it into silicon.

Isn't the whole point of an FPGA being able to "burn" a design into a chip rather than "building" it? Are they saying you can only run your modifications through a simulator instead of burning an FPGA to test it?

If so, what's the point of the exercise? Wouldn't it make more sense to have students play with an open sourced or freeware design that they can actually implement and test?

I'm stunned at how many sports channels I had to block even with basic IPTV from SaskTel here in Saskatchewan, Canada. I have ZERO interest in sports, and I'm kind of pissed off that some of the money I pay is going to support that crap, which I do not and will never watch.

I'd much rather have something like BBC News or BBC1 than a bazillion sports channels.

Given a choice, more is always better.

Even though my Lenovo Z580 has four USB ports, I often find myself wishing I had a couple more so I wouldn't have to swap devices. In particular, I'd appreciate another USB 3.0 port for an SSD (seeing as the "second" hard drive tray slot is occupied by the DVD drive, which I *do* use.) Sure USB 3.0 isn't as fast as I'd get with SATA, but it'd be a darned sight faster than the 5400RPM drive that's built in to the unit.

Normally I have the printer, mouse, and external HDD plugged in. That leaves one slot for a keyboard (I have no room for another one on my desk, though, so I rely on the built-in keyboard), camera, MP3 player, and charging the ole' eCig.

See OpenRISC, which IMO provides a better path for academia.

It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.

The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.

It also happens to give me a wicked case of the shits.

Seriously, WTF is an article about energy vectors doing on /. without even a hint of how these guys achieved radical breakthrough advances in energy efficiency for both hydrogen-from-water and CO2-from-air?

Gah! That'll undo all the ongoing natural oil spill cleanup they've been doing in Northern Alberta for the past few decades!

LPFO?

We used to vent ShitTons (an actual engineering term used by cold box designers) of GN2 (called waste nitrogen) to atmosphere from oxygen plants.

You can get round these problems by sticking it to chains of carbon.

I've even heard rumors that some of this stuff is actually available by drilling into Earth's surface!

Nitrogen is not normally a component in diesel fuel.

Did I miss something? For the combustion of diesel fuel, you need air, and air is composed of 78% nitrogen.

But ... the administration says that slightly reducing the rate at which we add on trillions more in debt is a proud accomplishment. So, this has to be similar.

All well and good, but doesn't exactly solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

The most interesting application of things like this is if they can take advantage of spikes of excess energy availability-- essentially making them a battery.

I get it. It's just too much trouble for you to choose between multiple ways of saying something in order to be succinct instead of vague. People who don't value clarity never realize that they people they're talking to - every time that happens - value that communication (and the person attempting it) less and less over time.

What's so hard to understand? This forum is full of people correcting others' poor use of communication when talking about everything from natural selection to global warming to employment demographics. Someone makes a sloppy choice of phrase, and the simple thing they're trying to convey turns into a four-step back and forth during which everyone from trolls to the merely dim decide to screw up the thread or just rant because the OP couldn't trouble themselves to just speak clearly in the first place.

This particular lapse in clarity, which comes up regularly in lazy science and technology reporting, isn't the point. The larger point is the grinding erosion in careful communication, and the erosion in clear and critical thinking of which that is an indicator. You think this is about ego? It's about understanding the power and value of properly nuanced communication, especially in the shortened format that venues like this tend to encourage.

I need to learn English? What you're really saying is, I need to forget English, because it's just too much trouble to quickly sort through the differences found in several ways to say the same thing, each of which contributes to a more quickly digested communication of different ideas. You're cranky because I'm not a fan of lazy thinking, and the fact that you think "learning English" means forgetting how to distinguish between different words is exactly the larger problem I'm pointing out.