1) It encourages new members to stay new.

It's been 2 days since the massacre and the gun control debate has been revived again with all the deaf loud people screaming the stuff that no one hears. As important as that might be, I think that the debate that needs to be promoted is how to communicate effectively in an emergency. Although plenty of unfounded rumors were mongered last Monday, the most effective communications among the Virginia Tech Community, the loved ones at home, and the rest of us were by new technologies such as

Tyson Foods, one of the largest meat processors in the United States, is currently making a deal with ConocoPhillips, one of the world's major oil companies. C|Net News reports that Tyson's waste animal fat could be processed into 175 million gallons of biodiesel a year, and that ConocoPhillips plans

For a long time I have been convinced that there wouldn't be a real problem with people using their mobile phones in airplanes. Figuring that wiring ought to properly insulated and frequencies not necessarily interfering between plane and ground communications, I'd have figured we were safe. A discovery that I made yesterday made me not so sure.

The startup R&D organization "Team SmartFish" has come up with a design for a performance aircraft that's inspired by a tuna fish, which is evidently (one of?) the fastest fish in the sea and has been clocked at 85 km/h. Their model-sized prototype is powered by a fuel cell stack with a pusher prop. The full scale version calls for a 900-1000# turbofan in the tail.

SQL-Ledger changed its license away from the GPL to a license that many of us feel meets neither the FSF's definition of Free Software nor the OSI's definition of Open Source. Perhaps the reason is that DWS is afraid of the competition.