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Apple

Private Collector Builds Apple Pop-Up Museum 73

David Greelish, Founder of the Atlanta Historical Computing Society, has taken it upon himself to "tell the story of Apple.” Greelish partnered with Lonnie Mimms, a local computer collector, with a museum-quality exhibit dubbed the "Apple Pop-Up Museum." From the article: "...Mimms wanted to focus specifically on Apple—partly because of Steve Jobs' recent passing, but also because of Apple's 'overwhelming success and stardom.' And so the two teamed together to create the Apple Pop-Up Museum, which will be part of the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 1.0 when it opens in Atlanta on April 20 and 21, 2013. In a twist of historical fate, the show will be held in an old CompUSA store, with 6,000 feet of the CompUSA regional corporate offices being used for the Apple Pop-Up museum. '[Mimms] and his staff are literally building a museum within the separate rooms,' Greelish told Ars."
Power

Solar Impulse Airplane To Launch First Sun-Powered Flight Across America 89

First time accepted submitter markboyer writes "The Solar Impulse just landed at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California to announce a journey that will take it from San Francisco to New York without using a single drop of fuel. The 'Across America' tour will kick off this May when founders Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg take off from San Francisco. From there the plane will visit four cities across the states before landing in New York."
Technology

Gartner Says 3D Printers Will Cost Less Than $2,000 By 2016 170

colinneagle writes "Widespread adoption of 3D printing technology may not be that far away, according to a Gartner report predicting that enterprise-class 3D printers will be available for less than $2,000 by 2016. 3D printers are already in use among many businesses, from manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to consumers goods, and have generated a diverse set of use cases. As a result, the capabilities of the technology have evolved to meet customer needs, and will continue to develop to target those in additional markets, Gartner says."

Comment Re:Walter M. Miller Jr. (Score 1) 1130

His short story "Dumb Waiter" is an excellent object lesson in "computers do what you tell them to do." Also, "Big Joe and the Nth Generation" hits that theme as well. Both stories are rather sexist (strong, heroic male protagonist; weak female character for him to play off against). But then again, that was pretty much the norm in the early 1950s.

Comment Re:Willing to bet.. (Score 2) 1706

I agree that training is absolutely essential. However, I'm not sure I buy your analogy entirely. Although it can be used to kill, the main purpose of a car is to transport people/things from point A to point B. Although it can be used to kill, the main purpose of alcohol is to make people feel good. The main purpose of a gun is to maim or kill. I am perfectly willing to concede that this may be a distinction without a difference.

Submission + - Warp Drives May Come With a Killer Downside (universetoday.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Warp-drives allow rocket ships to travel globally faster than the speed of light, while staying with the rules of Einstein's general theory of relativity. New research has shown that as such warp-drives zip through the universe, they gather up particles and radiation, releasing them in a burst as the warp-drive slows down. This is bad news for family and friends waiting for the ship to arrive, as this intense burst will fry them.

Read more at UniverseToday http://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside/

Hardware

Submission + - Lytro: Why it might succeed in spite of its camera (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "After much hype and furor, the Lytro light field camera is now shipping to those who pre-ordered it. The initial response (from those who haven't been taken over by fanboy fever) isn't fantastic, though. Its odd shape, lack of video, 1MP final resolution, and the effort required to make images that really work well with Lytro’s special re-focusing “Living Picture” viewer, all combine to create the potential for the blogosphere equivalent of buyer’s remorse over initial predictions its camera would come to rule the world. Let's not forget that the Lytro camera only works with Macs for the time being, too; there will be a lot of disappointed Windows as they unwrap their Lytro pre-order cameras later this week. Fortunately, though, Lytro has a lot more up its sleeve than just cameras. To create light field cameras, Ren Ng, the founder and CEO of Lytro, also had to revolutionize lenses — and if you're an SLR user, you'll know that lens technology has been stalled for years. There's no reason that Ng's lenses couldn't be used on the front of an expensive camera. Then there's sensors: Sensor vendors are close to producing gigapixel models, but with conventional lenses diffraction rears its ugly head long before reaching that resolution. The first light field camera might suck, but rest assured that there's better things to come."

Comment Re:Long-term sustainability of this model? (Score 1) 75

http://flatworldknowledge.com/ has an interesting model. You can read the book online for free, and you pay extra for the dead-tree version and extra student material. Their books are CC/BY/NC/SA, and they have, as their site puts it, "an easy-to-use editing platform called MIYO (Make It Your Own)" to customize a book. Full disclosure: I'm using one of their books in a course that I teach.

Comment I work at a community college... (Score 1) 879

...and we still have one or two labs on XP. This is actually a good thing, as some of our students have really old machines, and we need at least some XP machines to test web sites, etc. to make sure they display properly with older browsers (Internet Explorer 7, to be specific).

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