Tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. The millions of people whose lives were directly impacted by that are very much real, I assure you.

I helped start a community wireless network and computer training/donation program for a low-income community in my area; my group (UNC Technology Without Borders) even got some support from the Internet Society. See http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/projects/awards.php?id=10, we're the North Carolina group.

If you're looking to make some more donations this year we could definitely use your support, especially if you had old (less than 5 yrs) computers or monitors you no longer need. twb@unc.edu

It's important to remember NASA consists of more than just Johnson and Kennedy (space centers). Each center focuses on certain areas that are important to NASA's overarching mission. Ames, actually, does a lot of computer science and software engineering research, so this makes sense to do here.

Additionally, NASA deals with a lot of data, for example from their earth-monitoring and climate science missions. There is a huge need for computing infrastructure, and a resource like this that can be shared across NASA centers is a great benefit to researchers across the agency.

Regarding sensitive information: the mindset at NASA (at least among the PHB's) is to be super paranoid about any possible data breaches. PR is extremely important to NASA, and if there were any major embarrassments due to data breach that could result in decreased funding, which as we all know is already incredibly tight. So, by providing services like this in-house, it's much easier for teams at other NASA centers to get access to the resources they need without jumping through hoops to get clearance. I will note that much of this feeling is a result of ITAR, so NASA's concerns are definitely well-grounded.

I feel like almost everyone I know got it -- both my mom and brother had it (verified by tests) and it swept through my campus, affecting many of my classmates. I was amazed I didn't get sick, in fact, with so many people around me who had it. Even accounting for misdiagnosis (which is pretty hard -- the symptoms were pretty distinctive for most people I knew who had it).

I wonder how many other Slashdoters are on campuses or fall in the "young healthy immune system" category that H1N1 seems to affect most. I have to say that I was surprised it turned out to be as big of a deal as it was in my surroundings.

This fellow has been working on his own programming language, also called "Go", for a decade. Even released a book about it. He filed an issue in the tracker for the Google language: http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9

This is a really interesting idea, and I can tell it is well thought out. However, I think it wouldn't work primarily because of its complexity. It's already bad enough for a lot of people to have to select multiple checkboxes in different categories for different elections ("do I select one for each council seat?" "can I vote for President and mayor?"). I think the act of voting can really be no more complicated than picking a box in order for people (even smart people) to not get confused.

Perhaps. Either way, you make a great point in your GP post.

Remember last time an ISP (yes, I know Comcast does more than that) bought a media company? The world was introduced to AOL Time Warner.

Probably don't have too much to worry about.

I have.

Ceteris paribus buddy. Obviously there are other factors than base temperature.

Depending on where you live. I'd say relative to 0 degree "I need a hat, warm jacket, and long underwear" and 100 degree "drink lots of water and wear the lightest fabrics I own", 50 degrees is pretty comfortable ("I need long pants, maybe a light jacket").

True, that is an excellent point. But note that the poll options are divided into 3 degree ranges. I, for one, know the difference between a 72 degree day and a 75 degree day. That said, I guess Celsius captures that difference just fine, so perhaps I've disproven my point. :)

Sorry, I should have said "an American person should be able to use both interchangeably". I of course don't mean the rest of the world should learn a system just because we use it. That said, I don't think there's anything /wrong/ with using Fahrenheit to measure temperature, whereas I do think it's wrong to measure height in, say, feet and inches. Fahrenheit, at least IMHO, has some justification for use.

Optical is great, but it can't deliver power, so I don't see this being used for peripherals (that'll be the role, I'm sure, of USB 3.0). Also, a 10Gb optical link seems a bit excessive to begin with for devices like keyboards and the like, so I couldn't imagine this standard even being used to replace the internal USB buses that are used in most laptops today.

What does that leave? As the article mentions, multimedia in/out and networking, presumably. Can you think of anything else? The obstacle I see with networking is that the world connects with RJ45, so for wired networking you'd still need an adapter.

So, that leaves multimedia. What I really see this being used for is a way to connect audio and video devices in a kind of "multimedia LAN". It seems very much in Apple's interest to develop a standard that would allow you to plug one cable into your device and then access your media from wherever. Consider addressing your desktop monitor and speakers as network devices, as well as your living room TV and speakers in other locations in your home. Baseless speculation? Mostly. But as of now, I'm not sure if there's any way to connect your iPhone to your TV and pump music through your speakers elsewhere, unless of course you're using Apple's wireless access point with a speaker jack, or perhaps the Apple TV.

I know it would come up at some point, but we should all remember the Fahrenheit scale was developed for telling temperature at a scale that made sense for people: 100 is pretty hot, and 0 is pretty cold. Fahrenheit also has more descriptive power due to smaller degrees.

Celsius is better for pretty much all other measures of temperature, of course, and I am of the opinion that a person should be able to use both interchangeably. It's not challenging to tell temperature using Celsius, I know, and I do admit that I would prefer we Americans used Celsius for that task if it would mean that the rest of my countryfolk would take the time to learn SI. That said, Fahrenheit gives us a tool designed for the job: you can remove bike pedals with a crescent wrench, but why would you do that if you had access to a real pedal wrench?