Are you saying that an appendix has the same value as a 8 week old fetus. Why then would an assault leading to a burst appendix get somebody a year or two in jail (at most) whereas the same exact assault leading to the miscarriage of an 8 week old fetus could lead to more than a decade in jail in many states?

The Spartans drew the line on abortion some time shortly after birth, I don't imagine you would advocate practice that even if it was conclusively proven that infants are not sentient. What about 1 day before birth? Seems kinda arbitrary doesn't it? If the baby is viable would it not be more humane to just extract it and give it up for adoption, it wouldn't be that much more dangerous medically. Let's go the other way now; should we draw the line on abortion at the moment of conception? That's a tough sell, especially since it would make murderers out of ever woman using an IUD.

What I'm trying to say is that nobody will get anywhere in this debate if we use the slippery slope argument and hyperbole to attack the other side. As a wise man once said, the slippery slope argument works both ways.

Actually, spilt gasoline is a big deal. Aside from it's detrimental effects on the environment, it's also has mildly toxic fumes and it is highly flammable. Every year many people are burned while pumping gas, we just don't hear about it much because, like car accidents, it is one of those risks that we just accept.

As for 'grandma' using a 300 amp plug. I think a clever engineer could come up with a relatively safe plug that doesn't sacrifice as much efficiency as inductive charging does.

I suppose when you only need a few watts of energy for a cellphone or something, I can understand the use of inductive charging. But if you lower your efficiency by a significant amount in a single step while charging a car (a few dozen kWh), and this is multiplied across a population of EV owning people, this is potentially adding a lot of unnecessary strain to the electric grid.

Is it so hard just to plug the dang thing in? We don't have tubeless fuel transfer do we?

Neither of those metals are cheap, even in minuscule proportions. Indium is about 80 times the price of copper at current rates, and gallium is not much cheaper.

I suppose in some mission critical applications this would work, but I don't see this coming to consumer electronics, I'll bet it would just be cheaper to replace most devices than it would be to add this technology.

I just learned how to encrypt email for the first time in response to this posting;

my method (it's long):
install Mozilla Thunderbird
install GnuPG for windows
install Enigmail extention for thunderbird (a GnuPG plugin)
Make yourself a key using GnuPG
Use that key to sign outbound messages. Distribute it to everybody you know who also uses PGP standard encryption (all zero of them) so you can have two-way signed and/or encrypted messages.

Best of luck finding other people who know how to use it, now I realize how pointless it really all is. If it were more user friendly it would have a chance. That's not happening soon.

Attitudes like yours are the reason it took so long for us to get around to curing this disease in the first place. As many of you know, for a long time AIDS was known as as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency). Who would want to cure GRID? Who would want to cure any disease if we can justify that those suffering the disease somehow 'deserved' to get it through karma or some sort of cosmic justice?

I know what you said was a joke, but it highlights a real issue. I hope it's modded up; if only to show people that this mindset still exists even down in the region of our brains where we mask our prejudices with humor.

Essentially apple patented a method where an 'analyzer program' checks text for patterns (such as phone numbers and email addresses) and makes them actionable with a click.

The patent goes on to discuss that arbitrary patterns can be searched for using a plugin and that the analyzer software allows for users to select the program that handles the type of link. It seems that Android does indeed violate this patent in every way possible. I wonder if automatic hyperlinking of email addresses count as prior art; although this does not include the user interface element asking which program to use.

Either way; I think this is a sucky patent to have to contend with. It reminds me why I don't like software patents to begin with.

Slashdot has become an RSS feed for the Raspberry Pi blog

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/supplies/e769/?srp=1

Even if Thinkgeek wasn't already selling a similar product, how is this news?

Tests can be a good measurement of quality when the test is material that can be studied for. In school you have a test at the end of a class. For certifications, tests are meant to measure knowledge gained during training. In graduate school, qualifying exams are done to second year students who have time to prepare and hone their skills.

Testing somebody from a cold start, on subjects they have no practical way to prepare for seems like a good way to hire a trivia expert, but the productivity of an employee should be evaluated by his resume and portfolio.

This product is no more suitable for microcontroller applications than an eee-pc.

Arduino's appeal is that of low level electronic access. It can take voltage readings or output PWM and digital voltage signals. More advanced projects use serial or I2C communication with peripherals but it is all really low level access. As they say, Arduino is for physical computing.

Raspberry Pi is meant to be an inexpensive computer.... an application platform where the primary input and output are a keyboard and a monitor.

They may both be small, green, and electronic, but they are no more competitors than donuts are to potato (starchy brown food?).

I agree that the report is primarly an informative piece with a few suggested policies. I disagree with your conclusion; you seem to think the inclusion of moderate language and statements somehow offsets the damage that these policies, and this mindset, would do to our freedoms. Policy is often a one way street and it is hard to regain freedoms once lost.

Yes, cyber-bullying is an issue. No, this guys extreme view on the 'privilege' of free speech isn't going to help prevent kids from being bullies.