Comment: Re:What a dick. (Score 2) 155
Yeah! Just leave that to the birds! :-)
Comment: Re:Ron Paul (Score 1) 577
He scares the left because he's basically about leaving the states to their own resources, and most states (especially the Red States), don't generate enough GDP to do anything on their own. Also, state politics are notoriously corrupt and prone to special interest groups (see California). The U.S. Federal government is the easiest institution to create a social safety net, control big corporations, etc. The things Ron Paul wants to let go of.
TSA shuts down airport, detains 11 after 'science project' found-> 3
Submitted
by
OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes "A group of students and a professor were detained by TSA at Dallas' Love Field. Several of them were led away in handcuffs. What did they do wrong? One of them left a robotic science experiment behind on an aircraft, which panicked a boarding flight crew. The experiment 'looked like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding.' Of course, the false alarm inconvenienced more than the traveling academics. The airport was temporarily shut down and multiple gates were evacuated, causing flight delays and diversions."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Microsoft counted as key Linux contributor, for now->
Submitted
by
alphadogg
alphadogg writes "For the first time ever, and probably only temporarily, Microsoft can be counted as a key contributor to Linux. The company, which once portrayed the open-source OS kernel as a form of cancer, has been ranked 17th on a tally of the largest code contributors to Linux. The Linux Foundation's Linux Development Report, released Tuesday, summarizes who has contributed to the Linux kernel, from versions 2.6.36 to 3.2. The 10 largest contributors listed in the report are familiar names: Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google. But the appearance of Microsoft is a new one for the list, compiled annually."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
iPad app that lets mute kids speak menaced by patent lawsuit-> 1
Submitted
by
Mojo66
Mojo66 writes "A company that makes specialist talking tablet computers for speech-disabled children has mounted a patent lawsuit which seems set to kill off an iPad app that does the same thing for a tenth of the price. Prentke Romich's Minspeak touchscreen devices enable mute children to communicate through a speech synthesiser controlled by an on-screen keyboard of symbols. Kids hit buttons to string together sentences. Prentke says a dynamic keyboard of symbols and the ability to redefine these keys have been patented — and Speak For Yourself allegedly violates these patents."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment: He's also the father of Daniel Pearl (Score 5, Interesting) 38
Yes, this Daniel Pearl.
Comment: Re:My grandfather was killed by the Japanese (Score 1) 352
I can understand your point of view, but it doesn't change the fact the Japanese government had begun the process of feeling for surrender. What ground soldiers did is separate from what the politicians wanted to do. Did LBJ want American soldiers massacring civillians at Mai Lai? No, but insane shit happens in war. The soldiers that tortured and murdered your grandfather were war criminals, and one can only hope that those Japanese soldiers either committed sepiku or were brutally beaten & killed by American marines.
Comment: Re:Stanislaw Lem (Score 2) 1244
I find Stanislaw a little hard to read at times (i.e., boring), but after reading a couple of his books from the library and ready to give up on him, I finally read Solaris. And wow, Solaris is different from the movies. It's not really about the planet, or what happens to George Clooney on the planet. It's a question about "Can science ever really know the unknowable?"
The book is more like a future history of research into the planet Solaris and the failure of humanity to understand the how or why of the planet. Humanity meets an intelligence (Solaris), and neither side can understand or communicate with each other. Very haunting for me.
Comment: End of Eternity (Score 1) 1244
Seconding "End of Eternity". In fact, I was scanning the replies looking for just this reply. :-)
Comment: Re:Audiophiles (Score 1) 468
I think you misunderstand the term audiophile here. Originally, it did mean someone like you who liked good sound. Now, it means a pretentious half-twit who measures the quality of his system by the price he paid than the performance it delivers.
There is studio equipment, which is awesome and any true audiophile would have bought, and there is Best Buy/Amazon.com/etc. "audiophile" equipment which is actually sub-par compared to the studio equipment but costs 2 to 5x more than than the studio equipment.