My dad is a photographer (doing archival work for museums and the like) who uses a Hasselblad. I can verify that at least one of the older models came with a 40GB hard drive attached to the camera, and I think the newer model that he got uses a hard drive as well.

While it would depend a lot on what the photographer is doing, he also tethers his camera to his PC most of the time (since he only shoots stationary things in controlled environments), and the images get saved directly to the computer rather than getting stored anywhere on the camera, so the hard drive space isn't really an issue.

*ignores low UID*

Original? you must be new here.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/

After seeing the pictures on their website http://www.peratech.com/qtcscience.php (the ones at the bottom), this technology looks a whole lot less friendly than an etch-a-sketch.

Sure, I know these are tiny particles, but if most consumers see a giant spiky ball shooting lightning I think they might be a bit weary of this new technology.

I have to wonder a few things after seeing that video:

What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their vehicle?
How accurate can that sort of gun be? Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
Is there a way to shield the car with a faraday cage to prevent this sort of thing from happening? And if not, wouldn't this just mess up the police cars? What's going to stop the police (or **AA) from "accidentally" frying your computer with one of these?

This is certainly cool technology that I'd love to get my hands on.. but more info would be nice...

I think this graph in the wiki links sums the problem up nicely.

These copyright extensions are simply ridiculous. It's pretty obvious that the copyrights are going to continue being extended indefinitely, even though this clearly wasn't the original purpose of our IP laws. What gives?

I'm definitely willing to say that I have had bad experiences with Ubuntu upgrades breaking things in the past, mostly in the way of my monitor set up.
However, the 15 minutes it takes to get three monitors each with virtual desktops back up and running vastly outweighs the Windows alternative of one giant screen with no virtual desktops.
I also don't know how anyone familiar with package repository systems can see that as anything but a huge time saver with respect to an operating system like Windows.

Very truthfully, cost of an operating system isn't that important to most tech-savvy people. If I want to use Windows 7, I can either pirate it, or get a free student copy. There is some time investment in getting a Linux setup that works for you, but after that's done, you can be far more productive than you ever would be with Windows.

It says in the article that one of the project goals was to be able to see Saturn's rings, and I know personally that one can see Saturn's rings with a fairly small telescope.
(Of course it depends on the orientation of Saturn and its rings, but assuming they are ideally situated, I don't see why someone wouldn't be able to see its rings, although IANAA)

An interesting benefit in living in poorer countries is that there is far less light pollution.
Maybe they could make these even cheaper by making some of the optics smaller (reducing the aperture), since something good enough to see Saturn's rings in rural America should be far more capable in an area with almost zero light pollution, like rural Africa.

Lame, my processor is restricted to the reals.

I think it's important that this NEVER happens.
Would it be convenient? Oh sure, definitely, but that's when people start clicking on things they don't know, and accidentally installing viruses.
Central repositories provide much more security, and if users have to take time to add the application's repositories to their own, or compile the software, maybe they'd think twice and make sure they aren't just downloading some sort of malware.

Not exactly the same, but... http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/story.aspx?storyid=111489&provider=top

http://xkcd.com/221/
It's cool, it's different because you used a 5.

A singular possessive usually has an apostrophe before the s? Like hers and his? Or theirs?
Possessive pronouns do not have an apostrophe, so its fits in just fine. I agree that it isn't that intuitive for some strange reason, but it's not so bad to remember.

There is a great little circuit for something called a "Drawdio" http://web.media.mit.edu/~silver/drawdio/ that kids really love, basically it's an astable 555 that makes a noises with pitch proportional to how long they draw pencil marks. (it's a bit hard to explain quickly, just try the video on that website)
I teach middle school aged kids electronics at a local workshop, building things such as that, and I can tell you it's very doable to make projects for cheap that kids can build and understand.
The main issues that I have found is the board on which you lay out projects. Breadboards are expensive, and not permanent. PCBs don't allow kids to experiment with their own circuit designs, and unless you are going to take the time and money to let them design their own boards that might not work and then etch them, it's more trouble than it is worth. We use a more traditional breadboard concept that is just an actual, wooden board. Then we have kids use copper tacks and strips to lay down the circuitry, and then they solder things directly to that.
As other people have mentioned, soldering irons are a bit annoying, and a couple kids might get some mild burns, but as long as you don't mind the initial cost, it's totally doable.
One of the great things about the drawdio project, is it allows you to hook it up to a oscilloscope and show the kids more about sound, or hook the piezo speaker up to a computer and run some FFT software, so they can see and hear how the resistance changes the pitch.

Other things to look into are basic transistor circuits, things with opamps, counters, or things with binary to decimal or binary to seven segment LCD chips.