Yeah, never that simple though. Wind/solar on the island obviously requires a lot of space - something there isn't much of. Plus, I think most of it is privately owned. Wind farms out in the ocean (like the ones in the UK) probably aren't an option due to the tourism impact and the desire to keep things "looking like paradise". The islands have various laws that forbid billboards, building aren't allowed to be taller than a palm tree (on Kauai), etc. Not sure that active volcanos are the most stable in terms of building power plants...

Yeah, I live in Hawaii - we pay about $0.33/KWh...it sucks and definitely has an impact on lifestyle.

Yes, hand position plays a significant role in maneuvering if the driver is trained. Take a look at race car driver hand position.

Nice thought in theory, but science and tech has changed. The "low hanging" fruit of science was picked long ago. What remains are are significantly more challenging problems that require significantly more overhead. How much does it cost to put a satellite in orbit and operate it, experiments for fusion, etc? The amount of money necessary is often going to exceed even what "rich" people have. Certainly this doesn't apply to all fields of science, but enough so that funding through external sources is not really optional for many fields. It's unfortunate.

I'm not making any claims about seagate reliability, just something to consider for your next HDD purchase. Obviously I don't know how you're using the drives, but workload plays a huge part in drive reliability. Drives made for consumer space (which a USB drive likely would be) are not equivalent to those made for the enterprise market and will fail earlier if they are overworked. If you take a look at Seagate's spec sheets, enterprise drives have reliability stats for 24x7 usage (consumer grade drives has no such stats because they're not made for this), longer power-on hours, and lower unrecoverable read errors, etc. Like anything mechanical, if it's used improperly it will most likely fail sooner than expected. So, if you're pounding these USB drives with huge amounts of data from a server every day, they aren't going to cut it.

I think you missed the part where he still wants the kids and family around... :)

Another submission to a superficial article from syndeq to drum up traffic for Info World.

I fail to see how this is relevant to the /. audience or how this matters in any meaningful way. It is professional sports after all...quite possibly one to the most useless aspects of our culture.

Yeah, looking at syndeq's submissions...they're mostly links to "infoworld" articles. Looks like he's just trying to get extra traffic from the /. crowd.

You're correct. The terms "strong" and "weak" do not have formal definitions and really aren't related to static or dynamic (which do have specific definitions). The definitions used by the article for functional programming and dynamic type systems aren't accurate/complete either. Furthermore, C/C++ wouldn't be considered a "strongly-typed" language since the type system can be freely ignored by the programmer. In any event, this article is poorly written and can probably be safely ignored.

If you read the article, the police got a search warrant based on other evidence. The dog was subsequently used to locate the device which led to an arrest warrant.

The other comments pointing out that the shells are launched from a minimum safe distance to prevent the shells from making it into a populated area are good points - and I agree with those (except perhaps the operators themselves) . However, applying statistics is a little off the mark I think. The alignment of a few unlikely events is usually what causes unexpected accidents.

It's dangerous because the copter could have collided with the firework before it reached proper altitude. Subsequently, this could have altered it's trajectory such that it went somewhere it shouldn't (such as the spectators) or detonated at a lower altitude than it should. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but you don't add uncontrolled elements to a dangerous environment that is supposed to be highly controlled for public safety.

While it was cool, I can see how this could be considered dangerous. I don't know much about fireworks, but I can imagine that a collision between a UAV and the firework itself could potentially alter the trajectory of the firework leading it to go somewhere it shouldn't. You get enough senseless idiots flying these things around pyrotechnics, something bad will eventually happen.

Of course the usage hasn't changed. Takeoff and landings are the most exciting parts of a flight. You're either a) not yet gone crazy because of being stuck in a sardine can with crying children and big, fat stinky people or b) you're getting close to escape from the same crying kids and fat, stinky oafs. Why would an electronic device be more interesting?