Yes, but remember that once Facebook allowed .edu addresses from your institution then any of your friends could join with no hassle. Specifically, I remember when I first joined; a good number of my friends were already members. If any were missing, many soon joined after they heard of the "wonders" of Facebook. So you have to remember that Facebook started with groups where it was natural to have many social connections.

If I'm going to pay for a capped connection that rarely meets advertised speeds why the hell should I pay extra for tethering? I don't understand how explicitly defining a cap for myself justifies the extra cost to use a device either than a phone.
I do have a droid with unlimited but I'm seriously contemplating dropping any kind of smart phone whatsoever; I just don't see the value anymore.

...are the evil baby eaters..?

Too many options is why I was drawn to Linux in the first place.

sigh

B-b-b-ut the terrorists are still out there! We must remain vigilant at home and abroad.

It's not just streaming; a reliable mail service that allows me to watch many of the movies I enjoy is worth the monthly fee.

You must be new here. Welcome to America.

Interesting idea, however, using a lower resolution sensor leads to a more complicated model. SLAM and other mapping techniques are generally probabilistic based. It depends whether or not they have the processing power and energy to find a viable solution using the Kinect or other visual senors.

There is a large subset of the SLAM community devoted to this, Visual-SLAM; check it out.

Google and the hardware manufacturers are both to blame; Google (for the reasons you stated) and the manufacturers for adding in their 'own' elements departing steadily from vanilla android.

I've seen many comments on /. how Android is amazing, especially since it is fragmented (linux and windows arguments) but this is the worst possible case for the mobile platform, IMHO. Unless of course you don't mind upgrading your phone every 'x' amount of years. Some of us don't have the spare $$ and truly want a device that is current without modding.

Henry Ford would disagree.

Very cool. I'm also interpreting it as better image capture in a natural environment, say 'x' meters below sea levels. Of course light won't reach certain depths but using ROVs scientific crews can always stage sub-sea lighting further away. Or here's a relevant project / application: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/09bioluminescence/background/lowlight/lowlight.html

I would rather that they focus on quality software, period. I don't understand their frustration of lacking a market share in almost every aspect of consumer technology. IMHO they need to get back to basics.

What I believe he is saying is where are the articles about NASA breakthroughs in science, whether new technology or general discovery? NASA now is just a dinosaur waiting for ze meteors. When the space program first started the 'geniuses' were fresh out of college grads full of innovation; we can all appreciate the fruit of their labor. I dare you to step in any NASA lab (or in fact any gov't research lab) and find that now.

I wouldn't want my tax dollars to be wasted frivolously...but nowadays that's a moot point.

Sadly, you're right. It is a race for second place. That is all it seems Microsoft is good for; releasing products that emulate others (especially if you believe the fanboys)*.

I just don't understand why M$ needs or even wants to have a great search engine. I just want a freakin' better OS.

*Sidenote: I do like the Zune even with all of the bashing here on /. .

As do I.

Now what would really be nice is allowing the public to access NOAA [http://www.noaa.gov/] real-time data from all of their research sites and present it in a manner than Joe Sixpack himself can appreciate (you can from some agencies but not in a nice parse-able format).

The sheer amount of data these labs have / collect is amazing. IMHO if we present this data so 'everyone' can reach it, then maybe we can excite more youngsters in a science based education or career.