There's at least one app out there that give you read access to USB drives without rooting. It's called Nexus Media Importer and runs $3. Obviously it doesn't apply to anyone installing Ubuntu, but for those who want to stick with Android & don't want to root their device, it can take care of simple use cases like loading photos from a camera, pulling audio files from a thumb drive, etc.

Yes, actually, Los Angeles and its suburbs do have a long history with aerospace. Look up JPL on a map sometime. Or type "Downey Rockwell Apollo" into Google.

I work near LAX, so I was able to watch the landing last month and walk out to see it on the ground today. They let the crowd get a lot closer to the shuttle than I was expecting: just one parking lot aisle away.

My own photos from both events: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/sets/72157631590634138/detail/

Anywhere with clear skies, though as I understand it you can see more in the Northern hemisphere.

This is an event that takes place over several days and is based on the Earth's path through the solar system, so it doesn't matter what time zone you're in. Wherever you are, your patch of land will rotate into the right position at the same local time.

Except they need to randomly turn off the network connection in their test envronment. It's amazing how many mobile apps assume you'll always have a solid connection and never be in an elevator, or walking between tall buildings, or the basement of a convention center, or any other place with a spotty or overloaded signal.

I remember this being something that came up during the fight over SOPA: Namely, that while the entertainment industry is used to lobbying the government, the tech industry was fractured and didn't see lobbying as a high priority, so the success Hollywood had at railroading some of those crazy ideas just blindsided them. (Stacked hearings, deliberately ignoring experts, etc.) It became clear that something would have to level the field, and since we know the RIAA, MPAA and friends aren't going to back off on their lobbying (and we know the government isn't going to stop listening to lobbyists), the solution is a tech lobby.

Blizzard still uses torrents to distribute software updates in their games, right?

From CNet's article:

This is the same committee that wouldn't let any women testify in a hearing on contraception last month.

Apparently, if you know something about the topic at hand, they don't want your input.

It's not about blaming the driver (and if you think the driver is as much or more of a victim than the dead child or the child's parent, you have a really twisted view of reality). It's about giving the responsible driver better tools to more effectively do what he's doing already.

If you don't think the benefit is worth the expense, that's one thing, but you sound like someone complaining that mandating railings on stairways is an abdication of personal responsibility that forces responsible people to pay for those irresponsible people who don't have perfect balance when they climb stairs.

Why assume the kids are unsupervised? Have you ever seen a toddler running around? They're faster than you might expect, and they're not always predictable, even when you *are* watching them.

And in an interesting twist, I read an article about artificial hearts the other day which noted that because of the decrease in traffic fatalities due to all these safety features, the supply of hearts for organ transplants has dropped dramatically, putting more pressure on the effort to build a long-lasting artificial heart.

This is about sight lines. The problem it's trying to solve is backing up over someone who's too short & too close to be seen over the back of the car even if you *do* look in the mirror.

If by "young people without much experience," you mean the toddlers who haven't quite grasped the lesson that they shouldn't walk behind the car to wave bye bye to mommy or daddy or aunt so-and-so because they're too short to be seen over the back of the car using mirrors up at the front, then yeah.

But while that's what the proposal is focused on, that doesn't sound like what you're talking about.

I keep running into local businesses, especially restaurants, that had some designer build the entire site in Flash because it looked cool and they want to make a statement. And then I can't look up their hours or menu ahead of time. With hours you can at least call them, but that assumes you can get at the phone number -- and sometimes *that's* behind Flash as well. Hooray for third-party directories like Yelp.