I haven't read all of the posts since the original story hit the front page, so I may be touching on something that's already been discussed, but ...

I don't understand how this is different from people just being unaware of their surroundings. I have been to many places in the last 20 years where people will just stop right in the middle of the sidewalk/thoroughfare/pathway to have a conversation or family dispute. The concept of stepping to the side out of the way so that the other 1000 people who aren't having a family issue doesn't seem to occur to them. Cell phones? Just the latest distraction. Oblivious people are forever.

I'll second this - currently running OpenWRT flashed on to a TP-Link WDR-4300. It replaced a very old beige-box PC running IPCop and has been doing very well for the past year.

Not quite (though maybe that's more common now than a decade ago). If the work is already done, you can be sure it's being prepared for publication, since published work is even more valuable than grant money (because it gets you more, possibly bigger grants, plus tenure). What usually goes into a typical grant proposal are the obvious next steps following up on recently published work (used to illustrate why awarding the grant money is a good risk). Work that hasn't been done yet, but is likely to be successfully completed by a typical grad student. Then there are the more speculative "stretch goals" which are less certain, but probably the most fun if things work out. And by the time the next grant deadline rolls around, the scientist can describe how well that worked (to justify the next speculative leap) or how it didn't quite work out, but how this alternate theory ('based on what we have since learned') will likely yield good results (ie. the "new" obvious follow-on steps to the previous work).

Smart scientists generally have several somewhat boring but steady grants running (often funded by the government and possibly with eventual military applications) to keep the lights on, and use a little bit of that funding to support the more speculative, but more fun work.

Maybe long-term Kickstarter success will involve a similar strategy: get funding for less exciting but predictably do-able games that are turned out on schedule while diverting some time to work on getting a working prototype produced for the revolutionary game that was the real goal all along.

Nope. This is a varied community, so people here believe lots of things, but probably not as many believe this simplistic view as you think.

FLOSS applications have the *potential* to be more secure than proprietary/closed source. They also have the potential to become more secure over time if the community/contributors have more resources available to fix security problems than a proprietary vendor. Most importantly, FLOSS applications can be scanned by anyone for bugs and security problems, and fixed by anyone. Those activities are limited for proprietary code to those who have access to it and allowed (by privilege or managerial decree) to fix it or even publicise that there's a problem in the first place.

Depending on the situation (skillset of the development team, size of the team, interest in maintaining and fixing the code), this can either lead to a particular piece of FLOSS or proprietary code being more secure. *In general*, it seems that FLOSS code tends to be more secure because greater resources can be brought to bear, particularly over time as proprietary vendors stop supporting code for older products and move their teams on to something new (gotta keep paying the bills). In some cases that doesn't hold true and proprietary code is more secure.

Yeah, that's pretty much the only use of the phrase I found when searching as well. One other was this: http://laschoolreport.com/comm...

Indeed. I first started reading ebooks on my original Motorola Droid (the backlit screen allowed me to read in bed without disturbing my wife with the bedside lamp on). It was a decent enough experience with the phone held in landscape position and using a reasonable font size. I had quite a little library on the microSD card. And plenty of apps and games too.

The only problem was not being able to have most or all of the text equating to a printed page on the screen at once, which prompted me later to get a tablet, which is a much better form factor for reading. But I still have books on my current smartphone (bigger screen than the Droid, but much smaller than the tablet) for those times when my tablet isn't with me.

Sigh. Another /. response that opens with a veiled insult in the form of an ad hominem argument. I hope your self esteem got a little boost, person who is clearly better than I.

The problem wasn't determining the intended meaning of the phrase. That was pretty clear: it implied that "many" areas in the US are literary wastelands devoid of life and nourishment (for the mind) with haggard readers thirsting for relief crawling slowly along in the dirt, bathed in the harsh life-sapping light of modern media, hoping to come upon an oasis. I get it.

The problem is, this isn't a poem or creative piece of prose where such imagery can provide a more engaging reading experience. It's a summary set in the real world about a cheap smartphone with ereader software installed and a statement about the potential impact of said phone (in the real world). So dramatic language isn't warranted unless there are actually many places in the US suffering so horribly from lack of real books that this phone and ereader meets a pressing social need. I see little evidence in the real world (via much traveling, talking to people, watching the news, reading the news, listening to the news, reading books and magazines, visiting used bookstores swimming in donations, looking around me at parks/on the bus/at the beach/etc.) that this is actually true.

So it comes across as overly wrought handwringing with no real basis in fact. It should read in the voice of the sad persona of the Mayor of Halloween Town to help people really feel the intended emotion.

If there is some truth to it, another solution might be for some enterprising socially minded entrepeneur to come up with a viable way to move books from where they are in oversupply to places where there's a dearth (and more importantly, demand). Or people could just, you know, order cheap used books from Amazon and have them delivered right to their doorstep.

Inside Edward Snowden’s Life as a Robot

Citation needed. I've never heard of this phenomenon. Sounds like a made up term to add extra drama.

Oh snap, you got me, you clever lad.

Perhaps your online time would be better spent actually reading the stuff than tossing out sophomoric zingers.

I mean, put a little work into it and bring in the source material. Feynman was a funny guy - work that into your act. Here are some quotes to get you started: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/...

Better yet, show that you actually spent your time reading the stuff and work that into your schtick. THAT would be impressive.

Come on, show me what you got, funny guy. Stop phoning it in. :-)

Personally I feel that was uncalled for, but your nick suggests that perhaps you can't help it. Please learn to distinguish between 'bitching' and 'discussing critically'. The latter is intended to point out how things might be made better, while the former is more about complaining for the sake of complaining. They are very different things. It seems to me that these days anything outside of Pollyanna-ish optimism and praise is being lumped into the "bitching" or "complaining" or "being negative" category, often as a technique to quash discussion, belittle or shame. Or worse, to avoid the effort needed to make improvements to the status quo. The end result seems to be a general lack of improvment where it might be warranted or even slow deterioration over time as attitudes shift from a roll-up-the-sleeves-we-can-make-it-better to a shrug-why-bother.

I should point out that my final comment about updating some of the figures only applies to some of them - the majority of the updated SVG versions are actually quite nice as they are, which I noticed as I looked through volumes 2 and 3.

I was thinking in particular of the monochrome photographic images such as Fig 52-1 from http://www.feynmanlectures.cal..., which could probably be updated with a photo of the same models using a modern camera, or perhaps a nice 3-D rendering of the same molecules. Another example would be figure 51.4 from http://www.feynmanlectures.cal..., which I can't really make out at all.

Not to mention the implied requirement that an always online connection is required to read these 'free' editions, rather than being able to read from a local copy offline.

Yes, yes, we all know that in the modern day everyone has an internet connection to the cloud all the time, so this is an old-fashioned sentiment. Or wait - maybe it isn't so old-fashioned. It's still quite common that in situations where there is enough idle time to read something like this (on a plane, train, boat or automobile; in a remote vacation cabin in the woods etc) there isn't an internet connection available. Not to mention the times I deliberately set my tablet to airplane mode just so I can read a book or magazine without being distracted by notifications or tempted to look at something else online.

I'd also think that these lectures would be quite useful to those in poorer countries that don't have the funds to have an always on internet connection available personally at home, but might have access to a library or other venue where a public internet connection is available.

I appreciate their graciousness in making these lectures available gratis, but that front page warning does seem to be a bit counter to the spirit that probably drove this effort.

Personally, after glancing through some of the chapters in the first volume, I think that maybe releasing the material under whatever Creative Commons license allows them to retain the rights they want but enables people to share and contribute updates might be preferable in the long run. I'm thinking not so much of the text itself, but many of the figures seem rather outdated (eg. a poor photograph of some old ball-and-stick atomic models) and could benefit from some cosmetic updating to make them more suitable for modern eyes.