Out of curiosity I looked at your link to Node. Then at the explanation about what the project is. It fits in half a line: "evented I/O for v8 javascript" and I have no idea what that means, even after 25 years of pro programming.
Actually it says:
evented I/O for v8 javascript - Read more
http://nodejs.org/
Surely clicking one of those links would be faster than asking for it on Slashdot and waiting for an answer? When you click the "Read more" link that is not even half an inch from what you've quoted you can find a big "Resources for Newcomers" section with links to the wiki and the home page.
JavaScript is of course the programming language. V8 is its high-performance implementation developed by Google for Chrome. I/O means input/output and evented means that it is asynchronous I/O based on event loops. I think that after 25 years of pro programming you should know that, and if you don't then you should at least know how to follow the hyperlinks to find it out.
Fairly typical of undocumented open-source projects, unfortunately.
Well if the only place where you look for documentation is the title of the project on GitHub then yes, it is fairly typical.
Before anyone has a knee-jerk reaction and says that it is bad because it's about nuclear power and genetically modified life forms, let me summarise for you the most important result of this research in the most straightforward way possible:
nuclear energy + genetic engineering + nanoparticles = clean planet
Now, if those so called environmentalist are really fighting for cleaner planet and healthy energy then they must support this technology. If they oppose it, then it is a clear proof that their motivations are not as clear as they wish us to believe. Anyone who is truly concerned about our environment must admit that there is no cleaner energy source then nuclear and using genetically modified microbes to clean up the nuclear waste is the last nail to the coffin of the opposition to the use of nuclear energy. I don't care about CO2 because this is what plants are breathing, and quite frankly I'd prefer having a little bit warmer climate, but I do care about polution and using clean, not necessarily renewable, energy sources is the answer to that problem.
This is an example of great research. I am proud that it was all done by a team of female researchers.
For at least 15 years I've been hearing that various postal services all over the world are "losing battle against e-mail age" while in fact that scary "e-mail age" (or Internet age, as I would call it) should be the best thing they should hope could possible happen. Never before in human history we were buying so many goods from remote locations all over the world to be delivered by
The "proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services" should have been started by USPS because they already had the infrastructure to do that and the client base. If back in the nineties everyone paying bills at USPS were told that they could do the same faster, cheaper and more conveniently at USPSpal.com then people would do that. The problem is not that the world is not friendly to postal services but that they don't want to change. They missed the train and now they want our help to survive. This has never worked in the long term before.
Well, according to Wikipedia, HP's Office of Strategy and Technology has four main functions: (1) steering the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment, (2) fostering the development of the company's global technical community, (3) leading the company's strategy and corporate development efforts, and (4) performing worldwide corporate marketing activities. Under this office is HP Labs, the research arm of HP. Founded in 1966, HP Labs's function is to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community.
It is hard to say at this point what could it mean to WebOS but I've heard rumors about some experiments with Android at HP. Some speculate that HP is thinking about making the WebOS just a thin UI layer on top of Android, just like Mac OS X did with UNIX. It may seem strange at first but after thinking about it for a while it could be the only way that HP could survive in the not so distant future after the Apple-Google war is over and still have original software advantage without the hassle to develop and maintain the entire operating system stack.
I clicked the link and here's what I got: "Server Error 500 - An unexpected error seems to have occurred. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact us if the problem persists." with a cute parallax scrolling animation of GitHub logo falling down the Grand Canion. I've never seen 500 error on GitHub before.
Linus writes: "since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?"
Why not? Because you just broke GitHub! That's why!
And now let's all remain silent while the instant, distributed, cpu-intensive, encrypted https slashdotting of GitHub starts in 3... 2... 1...
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion