When folks want to learn to program, or in fact do pretty much anything, I usually suggest they pick an arbitrary project idea in the general field and simply start working on it. *What* exactly they're working on matters less than that they are working on something and learning from the process. (The scope of the project ideally grows naturally on their existing knowledge base).

In this case anybody working on this is developing (hopefully better) technology for finding stuff. That technology will go into our lexicon and when the aliens arrive we'll be all set to "quick, see if you can find them on the deep space scanners".

Its just an onboard battery. You can probably even replace it with replaceable batteries if you want to put the work in. Or use an external power pack that runs off of store bought batteries to recharge it.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/

Microsoft has been letting "backwards compatibility" restrict their innovations for too long. Sounds like they learned a lesson with the Vista fiasco and are finally willing to move forward without continuously coddling all those customers that won't upgrade anyway. You all are scoffing but this is their turn around in action.

Either that or internally they can't convince any developers to install Vista for compatibility testing & development.

This guy looks like a young accomplished pilot (and scientist?) of experimental rockets that he straps onto himself and then flies around with. He may not be widely known to 8yr olds but they'll dig the youtube videos. There are other crazy birdsuit base jumpers out there you could point to. Start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HMdioj6kng

In a similar vein there are people like Dean Potter or any of the extremel rock climber slacklining nutters out there.

What these have in common is that they involve physical prowess in addition to mental abilities. Frankly I just don't see an 8yr getting excited about a boring hero that is really good at doing homework. But there is no reason the sport has to be a boring one.

You might find it interesting to read Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Cory_Doctorow_novel)

"[The protagonist] helps develop a clandestine wireless network, X-Net [so named because it is built on Xboxes], that avoids DHS monitoring using anonymity and encryption. Using the X-Net as a secure communications medium, he organizes teenagers and twenty-somethings who are upset with the police state tactics imposed after the [plot elements]. They develop innovative uses of existing technologies to foil DHS monitoring and cause mass confusion and embarrassment to law enforcement."

I'm positive Homeland Security has read this book. They're probably just cracking down now before things get out of hand.

From TFA: "Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said there is no voter fraud, although the issues do come up because the screens are sensitive. For that reason, a person may not want to have their fingers linger too long on the screen after they choose their candidate."

It is interesting how the options work out; but the real issue here is a lousy hardware/software implementation. I wonder if any individual can control the layout well enough to purposefully take advantage of this. (Obviously the original submission implies such: but I doubt they were thinking about it vs just being a troll).

Posted Anonymously for obvious reasons. The computers will never get me!

Not to worry ... I'm sure iTunes will automatically 'like' songs based on what you listen to on your home machine. You needn't lift a finger to be an active member of ping. Oddly they could be creating a fully automated social networking site - no direct user involvement needed.

Because the proposed shutdown process is so blatantly wrong that any inhibition that blocks misguided developers from copying it is a good thing.

What should happen is that the apps all shut down and go away without any IF/AND/ORs/BUTs about it. If they need to save some state or or whatever then they should get a chance to do so. They should NOT EVER get to communicate with the user or otherwise delay the shutdown process. The OS layer should chose, prior to sending the message, if there is any opportunity for GUI interactions (and should not normally do so).

In an ideal world this would force application developers to maintain proper state and properly deal with auto-save and other features to make the user's life easier. The current model, as detailed in this patent, just pushes the problem off to the end user (which is wrong).

Your conclusion that the iphone4 drops "twice as many calls" as the 3GS doesn't pass the sniff test. If things were that bad I think it would be a much more obvious problem and would have taken a much more proactive fix by Apple. I suspect you're reading the Apple messaging wrong. The actual wording from the apple slide is, "(less than) 1 Additional calls dropped per 100 calls compared to iPhone 3GS".

You took this to mean 3GS drops 1/100 calls and that the iphone4 was dropping 2/100. But I think what they actually meant to say was "1 additional calls dropped per 100 dropped calls compared to the 3GS", e.g. that for any location and any number of successful calls if the 3GS would have dropped 100 of them the iphone4 would have dropped 101 of them. This is about a 1% degradation in performance.

Although still a PR problem for Apple -- particularly given that they bragged about this new antenna system. I don't see this as being earth shatteringly worse.

Creative spelling does help expand the number of ways 1 can right the same dam sentence!

A good reason for the OS to support multitasking: Assume you hit 'upload' in your favorite application and now want to do something else while the data is slowly streaming out to the server. This allows you to move on to do something else.

You aren't the one multitasking though because, from your perspective, you're done with that previous task. This lets the application/OS do the multitasking that allows you to move on and do something else. Apple would argue this "good" vs making you think about it as a new task: "I want this upload to complete so I'll run this application in the background while I do something else then I'll come back and close this application when it is done". In the latter case you truly are doing the multitasking.

Similar to your story I was out shoveling snow one day last winter... and after I was done my iPhone was missing.

I tracked it down in the tracks of my truck -- I'd moved it to finish shoveling and driven over my phone. As in your case all was fine -- didn't break the screen and it's been working just fine for at least a year since then.

This is a technical "solution" to a non-technical problem. The ability exists today but is predominately blocked by the cell phone providers.

This quote from the article shows how deluded these people are: "it seems likely that carriers would give the SIMFi away as long as you took out some sort of mobile data contract". If that was the case then I'd be able to use tethering on my iphone RIGHT NOW.

Sure, neat technical hack. Nice miniaturization there. But making this functionality available in a smaller form factor isn't the problem.

Oddly, I've recently moved to Wisconsin and many conversations about the weather turn to global warming. Apparently plenty of WI folks feel that recent winters are proof of "Global Warming". Anecdotal discussions aside, people around here seem to be very aware that the world is changing around them and, if anything, seem to be more willing to take these changes as signs of climate change.

Heck, I'd have argued that these strong seasons with a long history of "how cold does it get" and "when do the lakes freeze" and "when do the lakes thaw" and "when do the birds come back" make these midwesterner folks more interested in, and realizing of, the potential/risk of climate change. As opposed to the folks on the coast where small changes in weather/temperature hardly make a difference.