A couple more little relevant details. I work for a large aerospace firm and see a lot of good computing equipment just get thrown away. I've made contact with the necessary people to start a stream of it towards me. I'm also going to talk to a couple other firms that I work closely with and see if I can get them on board as well. My company is also interested in giving me some money and maybe donating a little new equipment once in a while. As for how I get the computers to kids who need them I'm working with teachers directly and having them give me names of students who work hard but have a hard lot in life.

You're missing the point. If you install Android on it, you are effectively making it not a PSP gaming system anymore. You would not be able to play the games on it. You could however use all the hardware for Android based games, and do whatever it is that Android does. Installing custom firmware is not as delicate a process as you seem to think either, I've been using it since 2.52 with no problems at all. I also do not think that it would be all that hard to do this either, there are several PSP firmwares out there that are completely custom with minimal to no Sony code in them. Check PSP hacks if you would like to learn a little more about it.

Origin 3000 series servers did this a long time ago. The bricks in the system were just fans on the front and a base plate to mount the hardware onto. They were pretty easy to work on in this configuration, you could pull the brick out and replace anything inside within a couple minutes. IRIX on the other hand.........

Funny story, I was talking to my 92 year old grandfather and told him that I was an engineer. He immediately thought railroad, I tried to explain that I'm a software engineer but he didn't really get it. Finally I explained that it is similar to a modern watchmaker and he understood that as he has a degree in horology.

You know what's interesting about that? I work for a Fortune 50 company engineering all things *nix, so I'm a big supporter of your idea. I recently was talking to our IT department and found out that the majority of perfectly good desktops that get replaced on a regular cycle are just thrown out. To me this is unacceptable, so I went to a couple of schools in rough neighborhoods and talked to the superintendents. What I wanted to do was take these computers and put Edubuntu on them for the kids and work with the schools to put them in homes that need them. All I needed from the schools was a tax code so my company could write off the computers and a list of kids that needed them. I was given an emphatic no from every one of the schools I talked to. Some gave reasons, mostly borne out of ignorance and others didn't. It just astounded me how narrow minded these people were when I was offering my time and a pile of computers to kids that need them. I'm currently looking into doing something like Helios and just working with teachers directly. Still, it just blows my mind that they don't want these kids to succeed like I did. Even when presented with a former free lunch kid who has come up through the world and wants to help other kids do the same they resist having these kids aspire to something different.

Well, they do have android. I think that it would be pretty trivial for them to make an app for it that is an ebook reader.

Were you in the Army? While not injured I had shit get really weird after a few days without sleep in 2003 during the roll in to Iraq.

Let's see here. The guy that invented a good security system (nerd) is hired by a large corporation (news). So far we have nerd and news covered. Now let's see, how does this matter? As macs gain popularity they also garner the interest of people looking to make exploits for them. Apple is trying to head off the tide a little so they can still market as being more secure than their main competitor. Personally I'm a Freebsd/Linux fan, but for all the mac users out there I think that it matters. So there you have it, News for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Or maybe News about a Nerd, Stuff that Matters.

You know, you just have to make the time. I work 40-70 hours a week depending and sometimes I'll work stretches of nights, but I still make the time to grow a large garden. Part of it is that I make it educational and fun for the kids so it's something to do other than go to the movies, parks, etc.

You have a good point, but remember the boy who cried wolf.

That's where Microsoft's greatest strength becomes its greatest weakness. They are strongly entrenched in the business side of the house which is great for their profits. However since they do not have an incremental upgrade path and, in the case of Vista, a several year gap between OS upgrades XP is too pervasive in business. IT can still upgrade everything, but it's going to take more time and more resources to upgrade than it's worth. So the IT department is only going to upgrade as far as they have to and Microsoft isn't going to make as much money, just look at their earnings this last year. That boys and girls is why a diversified network built on open standards is great. Users can use what they want and are comfortable with and upgrades can happen at a regular gradual pace.

Yeah, given the choice I'll take Solaris on the server over linux. We have Sun boxes in our shop that I'm almost scared to look at the uptime. I don't know anyone in my shop that even remembers the last time they were rebooted, hell I'm not even sure any of us really know what they do anymore.

It'll also be great on the battlefield. We lost a lot of soldiers just do to the fact that they were being pumped full of saline and by the time they made it to the base their blood looked like pink koolaid.

Sadly this has even moved on into books. For instance, The Wheel of Time dragged on so long that the author died before he finished it. It is sad, and he was too sick to really write. I feel for Robert's family, but there are other examples. Another one is GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, he's not a young man keeps pushing dates back. Authors have lives, as do any content producers, but I think that they may need to look at maybe limiting their scope a little more so their projects can be finished in their lifetimes.