Comment android-x86.org? (Score 1) 153
I am suddenly struck by the urge to dual boot on my 8.1 laptop. Is Android-x86 prefect and wonderful?
Comment Our rule (Score 1) 417
No phones at dinner, period. Dinner equals any meal with more than one person. It's the slow time to talk and be people instead of electronic network nodes.
Comment Geeks Without Borders (Score 1) 260
Geeks Without Borders in Eugene, OR rebuilds and redistributes old computers to those who need them. Maintains them too. They operate mostly in North America.
The web site seems to be down at the moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeks_Without_Borders
The web site seems to be down at the moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeks_Without_Borders
Comment Different strokes... (Score 1) 368
My oldest high school friend earned his PhD and is now on tenure track at a branch of UT. He paid for it all by working like a demon. He had a good chunk of savings when he graduated. He is the most productive person I have ever met. This is including raising two children and GMing several multi-year pen-and-paper RPG campaigns. He's smart enough, but not a mad super-genius. He's done it all with an inhuman work ethic.
A 19-year-old girl I have known since she was in her mother's womb danced (read: stripped) her way through college, graduated with a 4.0 average too early for her nursing program (they won't take her 'til she's twenty). So she has a year off, with no debt. New car. She already makes as much as I do, and I'm a software architect with a decent job.
I have another friend with four bachelor's degrees, is a professional dancer, masseur and piercer. He owes over $100k in school debt, mostly to the federal government, a bit to private parties. He earns his living doing amazing custom carpentry. Never plans on paying the federal stuff back, he can't, realistically, unless he devotes a good chunk of his life to it, and you only get one.
A 19-year-old girl I have known since she was in her mother's womb danced (read: stripped) her way through college, graduated with a 4.0 average too early for her nursing program (they won't take her 'til she's twenty). So she has a year off, with no debt. New car. She already makes as much as I do, and I'm a software architect with a decent job.
I have another friend with four bachelor's degrees, is a professional dancer, masseur and piercer. He owes over $100k in school debt, mostly to the federal government, a bit to private parties. He earns his living doing amazing custom carpentry. Never plans on paying the federal stuff back, he can't, realistically, unless he devotes a good chunk of his life to it, and you only get one.
Comment Tilings and random objects (Score 1) 373
My notes are usually 1% good information and 99% geometric doodles. I like to use hex because I can make better doodles without thinking about them too much.
MIT Unveils First Solar Cells Printed On Paper 125
lucidkoan writes "MIT researchers recently unveiled the world's first thin-film solar cell printed on a sheet of paper. The panel was created using a process similar to that of an inkjet printer, producing semiconductor-coated paper imbued with carbon-based dyes that give the cells an efficiency of 1.5 to 2 percent. That's not incredibly efficient, but the convenience factor makes up for it. And in the future, researchers hope that the same process used in the paper solar cells could be used to print cells on metal foil or even plastic. If they're able to gear efficiencies up to scale, the development could revolutionize the production and installation of solar panels."
Supermodel Signs Petition To Save Porn Browsing Man's Job 27
An anonymous reader writes "Following worldwide attention after being caught looking at pictures of Miranda Kerr at work while a colleague was being interviewed on TV, a petition to save David Kiely's job has started. Stated motives: He seems like a nice bloke, the pics weren't hardcore, he has suffered enough, and, maybe more important, there's just too much political correctness in this world anyway. Showing class and sense of humor, miss Kerr said she will sign the petition."
One Variety of Sea Slugs Cuts Out the Energy Middleman 232
dragonturtle69 writes with this story, short on details but interesting: "These sea slugs, Elysia chlorotica, have evolved the ability to gain energy via photosynthesis. Forget about genetic modifications for sports enhancements. I want to be able to never need to eat again — or do I?"
Antarctic's First Plane, Found In Ice 110
Arvisp writes "In 1912 Australian explorer Douglas Mawson planned to fly over the southern pole. His lost plane has now been found. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team's camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water."
Open Source In Public K-12 Schools? 323
MissMachine writes "I'm a computer science major who has been recently getting involved in local grassroots politics in my county and state. I've been discussing the idea with some of my state legislatures of submitting a couple of resolutions, opening up to the idea of switching to open source software in our state's K-12 schools. I'm looking for more information/literature about this topic, open source solutions in public K-12 education, pros and cons, studies that prove or disprove many of the assumptions of open source and linux in public schools. Any help in this field?"
Yoko Ono/EMI Suit Exposes Fair Use Flaw 409
Ian Lamont writes "Yoko Ono and EMI Records have backed down from their suit against the makers of a documentary film who used a 15-second fragment of a John Lennon song — but only after a Stanford Law School group got involved. Even though the use of the clip was clearly Fair Use, the case exposed a huge problem with the doctrine: It's becoming too expensive for people to actually take advantage of what is supposed to be a guaranteed right. Ironically, the song in question was Imagine."
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"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell
