In addition to BOOST, you might want to consider looking at other projects. Some that might be a good fit, and might need developers are :

- GSL : The GNU Scientific Library is a scientific toolset for C and C++. These tools are quite modular, and you might be able to find your own module to code.

- Plotting software : Help to any of the plotting programs would be a real boon for all scientists. This could involve developing non-linear fitting algorithms, GUI, or statistical analysis. Look at SciDAVis and possibly GRACE.

- non-linear fitting : C++ Minuit, or a CERNlib project may be a good match--I'm not sure whether these are only developed internally.

good luck!

I find it frustrating that a more complete list of new features and new versions isn't listed with the announcement. I found this blog posting : http://linux.gauravlive.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-whats-new/

Gnome 2.32
KDE 4.5.0 (QT 4.7)
Default KDE browser Rekonq
Pulse Audio is the default sound server
Firefox 3.6.9
OpenOffice 3.2.1
Evolution 2.30.3
F-Spot => Shotwell
Btrfs now available (though, this is still experimental)
kernel 2.6.35-22.33
X.org version 1.9

I thought this would be an article on Microsoft and Apple.

As noted by another poster, 30000rpm isn't a record. In my field of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, magic-angle spinning rotors can achieve 70kHz--or 4.2M rpm. Samples of 1-30mg of microcrystalline protein (or other sample) are spun in rotors of microliter volume using dry air : bearing gas to create a bed of air for the rotor, and a drive gas to propel the rotor. Spinning the sample suppresses anisotropic magnetic fields in the sample and simulate solution-like conditions.

why not both?

I'm very happy that he won, but is he still married? From the documentary, it looked like his playing was tough on his family life. I couldn't imagine how much more dedication would be needed to beat Mitchell's top score--probably a lot more than what we saw in the movie.

Picasa would be a wonderful solution for pictures that are stored on only one computer, which is is running either Windows or Mac OS X. I've tried to setup Picasa 3.6, through wine, on Linux. The interface is wonderful, but there are two shortcomings that are dealbreakers, in my mind :

1. Any tagging you've done cannot be synced the to other computers. Picasa doesn't store its tagging info locally in each directory; this information is put in the "Program Files". You can, presumably, backup your collection through Picasa (if this function works in wine, which I believe it does not) and restore on another computer, but this doesn't replace a sync.

2. Videos do not work. You can get the video portion of .mov files to play, through an elaborate procedure (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1385837.html). But I have yet to get the sound to work on these videos. Audio works otherwise in my wine installation.

I hope these things shortcomings improve in Picasa, which is officially only version 3.0 on Linux. Picasa really is wonderful.

I got a Dell :(

Both--J and E.

Theistic evolution is a term that Howard Van Till came up with. There are basically three types of "creationists." There are the young-Earth Creationists (YEC), and these believe in the literal intepretation of the book of Genenis. There are the progressive or old-Earth creationists (PEC), and these believe the book of Genesis to be figuratively true, but not literally true--i.e. the 'days' are really astronomical periods of billions of years. The Intelligent Designers fall under this category.

Then there are the Evolutionary Theists (ET), which believe in (1) God, (2) the Big Bang, and (3) all of evolutionary theory--macro and microevolution, as some IDers like to split hairs. Basically, ETs are like Deists (who believe that a God started the universe and took off from it; Paul Davies is a famous example), but they also believe in a personal and providential God that you can pray to.

Van Till's writings are quite interesting. Writings by Dennis Lamoureux * are quite interesting as well. He discusses the different points of view, and decomposes quite rigorously the book of Genesis to show its hermeneutic constructions and context. Lamoureux calls himself an Evolutionary Creationist, but this is basically the same position as ET--not PC.

* Disclaimer : I am a friend of Lamoureux's, and he is an active and prolific player in the Creationism scholarship. I'd recommend reading his textbook title 'Evolutionary Creationism'. His debate with Phil Johnson (head of DI) is quite entertaining too.

I got into programming and computers through video games.

At least my boss and one colleague, who are prominent figures in chemical physics, and who are highly competent and rigorous scientists, are on the list.

“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard–in other words a netbook–will be the mainstream on that,” Gates said. “So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”

source.

I run keepassx myself. It generates strong passwords for you, if you'd like, or it stores all of your passwords in an encrypted file. It gives you the option to copy a password to the clipboard for a given amount of time (10 secs) before it is delete--it removes them on close too.I admit that I was uncomfortable with this at first, but this is no different than decrypting the password, and storing it in memory, before it's shown on screen.

Keepassx also works great on Linux, Macs, and Windows, which I have not yet tried.