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Comment Travel (Score 1) 336

I bought an Asus Eee PC 1001PX for a couple hundred bucks mainly as an overseas travel computer. Back up pictures to it, blog, check e-mail, etc. If it gets stolen, no big loss. Currently running Peppermint (Lubuntu variant) on it quite nicely.

Comment Re:Whats up with the Unity obsession? (Score 1) 202

Or could it be that the people complaining about Unity doesn't know how to change to to Xubuntu, Kubuntu and so on? A lot of the comments are "Unity is crap" bla bla. I just don't get it, If you don't like Unity, just use Xubuntu or whatever. Unity has been here for over a year now, it's here too stay, just use Xubuntu or whatever if you don't like it.

I imagine many of them have moved on to something else. Doesn't mean they stop griping about the reason they did.

Comment Eyes On The Road (Score 1) 335

I can understand how talking while driving wouldn't have that much statistical effect on accident rates. Texting is the real problem. It's much more dangerous and hard to detect/enforce. I'm pretty sure the lady who t-boned me last year would have seen my rather large pick-up had her eyes not been on her phone.

Comment Experiment (Score 1) 257

Just as a time passer on the bus last week I counted up cars whose drivers were using their phone. Not with scientific rigor or anything (though it would be interesting to do so). Out of about 20 cars, 6-7 were texting, 4-5 were talking on the phone, and one person was kicking it old school and reading a paperback. On I-5. In rush hour traffic.

Comment Re:Engineering shortage? (Score 1) 375

It's quite likely you'll waste your entire career doing nothing of real note, and nothing you worked on will be remembered by anyone.

This. A lot of the engineering work out there is boring as hell, and if you do manage to latch on to an exciting project there's a good chance that fact will be held over your head like a carrot on a stick to distract you from the whippings. I've been lucky to work on many relatively exciting projects, but have been on the turd projects as well. It doesn't feel good.

Earth

Submission + - Rainfall calms storms (nature.com)

ananyo writes: Rainfall soothes the atmosphere, atmospheric scientists have found. They calculate that a substantial portion of the energy that drives wind and air circulation in the atmosphere is dissipated as friction by raindrops falling through the air.

The atmosphere acts like a heat engine, generating mechanical energy by moving heat from Earth’s surface, where air has been warmed by the Sun, to the colder air above. Some of that becomes kinetic energy of air, driving movements ranging from large-scale flows such as the jet streams down to small gusts and eddies. Ultimately this energy is dispersed in turbulence: air molecules swirling around chaotically ‘rub together’, warming up slightly. But a news study (abstract http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1215869) demonstrates that a surprisingly large amount of the dissipation of mechanical energy happens when falling raindrop experiences friction as it passes through the surrounding air.

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