I could possibly understand poorly written firmware (or some other "embedded software") damaging the hardware. If something at the driver level is capable of damaging the hardware, you need to fire your EE (and all reviewers and quality folks that signed off on the design). I don't remember any OS install updating device firmware.

Which leaves me thinking - is the HW in modern PCs that haphazard or is newegg (and others) trying to conserve a profit margin? I hope it's the latter.

ummm...I wouldn't submit this for peer review just yet.

Hey - get off slashdot and get back to work!! :) Good point though...

Technically, wind power is solar power. I agree, non-news.

Thanks for bringing up this point, it's something that is often overlooked. I think in some cases the rate at which the vaccine doesn't work can be >10% (often it has to do with how the vaccine is administered and less to do with it no working on a chemical/biological level - but it doesn't matter for my point).

So there is effectively some significant number of kids that are un-vaccinated, but not by choice. The only way to prevent THEM from getting the illness is to ensure that as many other kids as possible are vaccinated to minimize exposure and reduce the chance of spreading.

To put it in other terms, there is a real possibility that the only reason you haven't gotten some debilitating (yet preventable through vaccines) disease isn't because you were vaccinated as a child, but instead because you've actually never really been exposed to it because everyone else is vaccinated.

So even for the parents of the vaccinated kids, it's important to encourage all the other parents to vaccinate, because there is some real chance your kid isn't as fully covered as you think!

Just for the record, there's a fair amount of software and electronics onboard those things as well. The EEs and Comp E's want our chance to be responsible for the engine failure!

Why do I hear this crap from catholics all the time? They must teach it at seminary or something. Always referencing that same tired blog i might add. Depending on your def'n of science, the origins of the scientific method start with either the Greeks or the Arabs. Additionally, essentially the same methods were co-discovered by both the Asians and in India. Yes, some catholic priests moved humankind forward on a few topics, but it's not as if without them those areas would have languished long (see Darwin/Wallace for example). Given the damage the church caused in astronomy, I find it hard to believe the Catholic church has even had a net positive impact on science much less believe the church is responsible for it.

I don't always write GUIs, but when I do, I prefer wx. But in all seriousness - I hate writing GUIs. I write embedded C for a living and am lost when it comes to the differences between window manager(s) on Linux or Windows or whatever. When I need to whip something up quick (and it's not embedded, and we're not going to sell it) sometimes I switch over to Python, and if that quick thing needs a GUI, wxPython (the port of wxWidgets from C to python) is something you can tack on there with minimum hassle. If you need a portion to be fast for your math calcs or whatever you can write that part in C. There's a boatload of tutorials via google (and youTube).

..and randomly "blacklist" Google, FB, Yahoo, YouTube, etc. on it with some notice of copyright infringement.

1. Get 10 people together, everyone buy an iPad on the same day (maybe over 2 days). 2. Take the iPads home, remove iPads, replace with clay. 3. Return the iPads claiming you found clay in the box when you bought it. 4. Receive new iPads, sell on eBay. Same net effect, 10 iPads. But this way you don't have to try and reseal the box in a convincing way, and you don't have to get the store clerk to take back a box of clay.

I have Ubuntu 11.04 or 11.10 (can't remember which) with Unity 2D running on an 8" touchscreen powered by a 800MHz Arm Cortex 8 with 512MB ram. The trick is to dump the 3d and get the 2d version. It's not blazing fast but it's certainly useable.

Doesn't this already exist as the beagleboard? Arm cortex A8 @ 1GHz, 512 MB RAM, USB host/OTG, DVI out, SD slot, Ethernet, RS232... It's not as small as a Rasberry Pi or a PCMCIA but it's still pretty small (about the size of a 3.5 inch floppy). Draws about 1/2 amp at 5V at full load. Can be powered off USB as long as it's own USB host is not used. Lots of projects already going on it and it's open HW, schematics for everyone! It's trivial to get one up and running with several flavors of Linux (I've been using Ubuntu). Plenty of other options as well.

With all the rabid budget cutting going on, we'll be lucky if NASA is still around in 2020.

Well, you have a very good point there.

IAANE -- 2nd law of thermodynamics. That Carnot will get you every time. The plants need to dump about 60-75% of heat produced to reduce entropy. For plants of this size that is a considerable amount of energy. Dumping to seawater, river or lake water is easy, cheap, and typically a non issue. I'm not sure there are any other solutions that are better than what they are doing now, even with the sea critters clogging the condensers.