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Comment Soon to be Grad. (Score 1) 450

The numbers being spread around for unemployment are quite unsettling to me. I can only hope things turn around enough to get a decent starting job this spring. Several of my friends could not find internships this past summer due to companies decreasing the amount of students they hire. I myself could only get several odd jobs scraped together to give me a reasonable income for the summer.

The Internet

Submission + - 4chan Does Something Nice (nytimes.com)

Hugh Pickens writes: "Members of 4chan aren't known for doing things that are cute and heart-warming and when they decide to go after someone, it's typically to subject them to ridicule. But not this time. Someone at 4chan decided that the Internet should get together and wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday, and soon Lashua's local branch of the American Legion was deluged by birthday calls from people as far away as Sweden. The account someone set up for Mr. Lashua's birthday on facebook had 3,956 "likes" and over 500 comments, most of which wished him a happy birthday and thanked him for his military service. It's not clear how 4chan originally came across a photo of Lashua, but a member of the site posted a snapshot of a flyer that was on the bulletin board at a store in Ashburnham, Massachusetts asking for guests to attend the nonagenarian's birthday on at the American Legion hall and the post took off. In contrast to their usual behavior, 4chan members "were giving him nice phone calls and sending him nice notes" and discouraging those who wanted to do something stupid or mean. "They were all being.. well, shucks, awful nice.""

Submission + - Researchers develop "tea bag" water filter (bbc.co.uk)

cybernanga writes: A group of researchers in South Africa has developed a filter that can purify water straight from the bottle.

It sits inside a tube that can be fitted on top of a bottle and purifies water as it is poured on a cup.

Comment Re:Just go to a religious school already (Score 1) 989

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

Oh please use your brain for a moment...and try not to distort historical context with your own personal ideologies.

One can only wonder for 2 seconds why this is in the first amendment. One of the main reasons the Puritans left England was because the English government was corrupting the church and bending it to fit the will of the king.
Anyone remember the issue with King Henry? He had problems getting his wives pregnant with sons and therefore would get an annulment sanctioned by the Pope. Well finally the Pope said "No More Annulments". Henry was like "up yours Pope, I'll make my own Church." Thus the Anglican Church of England was born. The puritans didn't like this and felt that religion should not be controlled by a government but by the will of God. So they got a charter to move to the new land of America and left England.

The whole reason for that section in the first amendment is to prevent the U.S. government from controlling a church. There is nothing related to religion being in school. In fact the puritans were actively involved in keeping a life in line with their religious beliefs and actively promoted faith based education. The Puritans prospered because of it, especially when compared to their fellow colonists in the Chesapeake Bay area.

Comment Re:I wish... (Score 1) 213

Haha, Google was like my primary teacher. I am predominantly an auditory learner, so while Google was good for providing information. I wasn't able to fully grasp the concepts that were being taught. I spent many a nights on various websites trying to understand the material.

The book that I had for the class seemed to expect full knowledge and understanding of the concepts before they were brought up in the book. It didn't make much sense to me.

Comment I wish... (Score 5, Informative) 213

I had knowledge of this site sooner. My Linear Algebra professor was horrible at giving lectures.(I wasn't the only one who thought so) After reviewing some of the linear material, Khans videos are helpful even after several weeks of summer. In fact the videos on the Gram-Schmidt helped explain what I completely missed the first time.

I congratulate you Khan for your hard work to help educate the people of the world. I know it will serve me well in the upcoming year.

Biotech

Submission + - Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life" (ted.com)

spiffydudex writes: Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they've created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.

I guess Zombies will walk the Earth sooner than I thought.

Submission + - Is Internet Explorer 6/7 support actually required (frozenrails.eu) 3

k33l0r writes: Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, has me wondering whether we (web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and 7?

Especially when creating web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade?

Recently I (and my colleagues) had to decide whether it was worth our time to try and support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separately set up page explaining that the site is not accessible with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For us this was easy once we saw from our analytics that under 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all.

Have you had to make choices like this and, if so, what was your reasoning behind the decision?

IBM

Submission + - IBM launches eight-core Power7 processor (goodgearguide.com.au)

angry tapir writes: "IBM has launched its latest Power7 processor, which adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up time. The Power7 chip has up to eight cores, with each core able to run four threadsM. A Power7 chip can run 32 tasks simultaneously, which is quadruple the number of cores on the older Power6 chip. The Power7 will also run up to eight times more threads than Power6 cores."

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