Holey moley, if I was allergic to buzzwords I'd be in anaphylactic shock right now. Could the have possibly crammed more buzzwords into the summary?

Really all that needs to be said for going to college: "don't be stupid"

Racking up huge debt for a worthless degree when you aren't already rich? Stupid.

Taking gen-ed classes at community college and then transferring into a state college to get your degree? Smart.

is it more than just solar cell efficiency that's preventing the creation of a solar-powered airliner?

Short answer: No.

Why do we keep using fossil fuels really (in a non-conspiracy theory world)? Two words: energy density.

Gasoline has a significantly higher energy density than many (most?) explosives. TNT, gunpowder, etc. Compare that to batteries, solar cells, capacitors, whatever, you aren't even anywhere on the same chart. Jet fuel has an even higher energy density than gasoline. On top of that, the best solar cells ever are something like

Think about those solar planes you've seen. Super light weight, incredibly long wings with a super high aspect ratio (wingspan/chord). Often designed to fly at high altitude (above clouds). The kind of wingspan and PV cell area needed for a many-passenger plane would be astronomical. Maybe if PV cells were hyper-efficient, but even then, you can only optimize so much. I highly doubt that completely weightless 100% efficient solar cells completely covering a modern jet in perfectly clear weather at high noon would generate as much power as those jet engines do.

Measure by joules/floating-point operation, and I bet video cards win hands-down every time over any other kind of computing unit. If you want to perform certain types of calculations (like, I dunno, graphics), a GPU is the most efficient way to do it. Now that's not to say that some GPUs aren't much more efficient that other per op. Especially when you consider the power they use while not cranking out a top-end game, I'm sure the field opens up even more. But measuring a card by total draw is dumb.

Wait in a ground blind with a boomstick and give em a taste of frontier justice (where justice == birdshot)

Seriously though, the comment about trail cameras is right on. Motion activated camera that's self contained and battery powered. Designed for locating and tracking game movements, sounds like it would be perfect for your situation.

Double seriously, trying to wait out for them and firing some blanks and generally appearing to be a totally unhinged redneck might go a long way to scaring them off. Plus it would be a hell of a lot of fun, legal issues not withstanding.

Nothing at all

womp womp

IE10 HAVE RENDER ISSUES ME NO BELIEVE.

I get that it's really hard to make a browser do everything right, but if you're going to push IE as such a major competitor to other browsers, maybe make it less of a steaming pile? The web browser is basically a commodity nowadays, drawing things right is just about the only thing that matters.

I don't think microsoft is doing a whole lot to support mozilla, they just don't actively shut it down. Google doesn't have to pay engineers to help acer if they don't want, microsoft sure doesn't pay mozilla engineers.

Highly advanced cyber-thieves discover method to steal cars with a coat hanger and a screw driver! Everyone cower in terror!

Not that this isn't dumb security on BMW's part, but the thing keeping people from stealing your car is their conscience and the police, not your hyper-powerful super-locks. They might keep some dumb teenagers out of your car, but not car thieves who buy blank keys on the black market and learn to reprogram them.

So if hitler did it that means we can't do it? Goodbye highways, you'll be missed. I guess we'll just kiss interstate trade goodbye until we build a bazillion railroads (what's that hitler? You used railroads too!? Oh Crap.)

You don't want to get vaccinated? Fine, go live in the mountains and never make contact with everyone. For the same reason we don't let people walk around strapped with unstable explosives (it's dangerous), we don't let people not get vaccinated (it's dangerous).

But but but! Almost no one gets that disease anyways, and my little johnny has a one in a billion chance of a bad reaction to the vaccine! NO ONE GETS THAT DISEASE BECAUSE THEY ALL GOT VACCINATED.

Facebook has all kinds of data analysis capabilities - I'm sure they didn't just pull this price out of their butt, but if they did, or if they are being pressured into these prices by investors, they need to nut up and let their data lead the way. What's a couple hundred bucks to a company selling a gigantic multi-million-$-revenue product - especially if facebook can use their data to target it and verify it?

Problems with bot clicks? Whatever, build that into the price. Also, I've never once clicked on a tv or newspaper ad, and yet advertisers seem to have no problem selling those.

I vote tools.
1) Really nice electronics-oriented multimeter. I'm sure he has one already, but it might be cheap/lacking in function/etc
2) O-scope. Super handy and fun too. Old analog ones can be had for cheap. Check craigslist and ebay.
3) Logic analyzer/Bus Pirate. I realize these are two pretty different things, but they fill a similar place in the "debugging digital stuff" category.

Other than tools, I think some kind of audio kit/project would be cool. IMO nothing helps you learn more about how electronics really work than analog audio, synthesizers, amps, etc. It really helps connect the concepts of how voltage/current/power/etc are connected since it all ends up in a very tangible (audible) medium.

Plus: Boom Boxes are sweet. It's a scientific fact.

The Cylons. They have a plan you know.

AOL's CEO today said at a press release: "Although no one uses any of the products or services we provide anymore, we're still able to leech off of a broken patent system to make a huge amount of money for me."

While certainly there are those who will publish findings they know to be false, that's not really the big issue I see here. Good science demands that studies be replicated so they can be upheld or refuted. Sure, there's confirmation bias in science all over the place - the bigger problem I see is that there's very little incentive to publish a paper that simply refutes another. Busting existing studies should be a glorious field, but it's not. If big-name scientist A publishes a result in nature, and no-name scientist B publishes a paper in the journal-of-no-one-reads-it, everyone just assumes scientist B is just a bad scientist (assuming he even managed to actually get published at all).

Another major issue is that the null hypothesis is a very un-enticing story. No one wants to publish the paper: "New Drug does nothing to cure cancer". If you spent a year and a ton of money researching New Drug, you're damn sure going to try and make it work. It's unfortunate, because often the null hypothesis is very informative, but it doesn't get you paid or published. Or how about the psychology paper: "Brain does not respond to stimulus A in any meaningful way", don't remember that paper? That's because it never got published.

I think this is less about malicious behavior, and more about a lack of interest (which can somewhat be blamed on the way universities/journals/grants handle funding, notoriety, etc) in replicating and refuting studies.

Do you want to be the guy who cured cancer, or the guy who disproved a bunch of studies?

What if we could some how extract the protiens from snake oil and make strings with that? snakes are long and tough, and some of them make cool noises. Maybe we could rub snake oil into the wood as well.

Whenever you hear something about violin sound, your BS meter should be going off the scale. Many tests have shown that professional musicians have a really hard time distinguishing between new and old instruments, strativaris or modern copies, etc. Almost all violins are made with the same materials and are copies of the same designs. So long as they meet some baseline of quality in construction and materials, it becomes largely a matter of personal preference for the performer in terms of what sound they like and what instrument they want to play.

Also everytime I hear 'audiophiles' talk about the qualities of a particular sound (i.e. 'soft and profound timbre') it makes me want to gag. What a load of BS. If you can't be specific in the differences in sound quality (better sustain, flatter frequency response) it's probably because there _aren't_ any differences. If it can't be measured with a 'scope, it's probably just not there. Go take some homeopathic medicine for your magic ears.