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Beware of any WSJ stories posted here. If the Murdock/News corp/ Fox News blood and the wonder of Wall Street and the economy aren't enough to make one expect serious misinformation from the WSJ, check out some previous stories.

A Classic is "There's no such thing as nuclear waste"
It's almost as warm and fuzzy as when James Watt of the Reagan administration bragged about material being so harmless he could sprinkle it on his cereal.
(It was something like polonium, the stuff that may have killed Arafat)

https://www.google.com/search?q=there's+no+such+thing+as+nuclear+waste+William+Tucker

It seems there's been an effort to flood Slashdot with misinformation for a while.
And you thought propaganda was illegal in the U.S.

Preventing childhood disease is a laudable goal, but that just brings more misery in the long run from overpopulation -- unless you also bring them up to First World standards in education, economy and infrastructure. And I don't think Bill has enough money to do that. There's probably not enough money on the planet to do that actually.

...

A common belief, but one that is disproved by the example of Bangladesh, where the fertility rate has plunged to below the replacement level recently without requiring economic advance to First World standards: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:BGD&dl=en&hl=en&q=bangladesh+fertility+rates

It is possible to bring birthrates under control simply by improving the relative socio-economic status of women, even in a country that remains poverty-stricken.

This developer is shady. Check the reviews for this game on Google Play. Apparently you can't get very far in the game without buying weapons/upgrades that cost real money. There are a fair number of complaints from people spending $5 for in-game credits, not receiving the credits, and getting no response from the developers.

Thank you! And I've noticed comments like that for.many apps. This is a case of the dev wanting to draw attention to his game, then get your "in app purchase" money. Having said that... These app stores are still in the "wild west" phase, not mature and not reliable enough yet to trust putting my credit card # out there. Maybe in a couple years when this new business has shaken out a bit more, but I can't trust this system as it is today.

This developer is shady. Check the reviews for this game on Google Play. Apparently you can't get very far in the game without buying weapons/upgrades that cost real money. There are a fair number of complaints from people spending $5 for in-game credits, not receiving the credits, and getting no response from the developers.

I've noticed this myself after they made this change, and found others with the same problem. So it looks like they decided to punish you if you don't, unless you delete G+: making it even more senseless as people have deleted their G+ profiles to get around it. Good move on making a move that reduces users for a service you're trying to increase usage for.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/d7XKETauIH4

Google, you may want to read those privacy guidelines that your own employees have written concerning real names.

From That FA: "Never post things like your name, phone number or where you live."

Sincerely,

Drawoc Suomynona. And yes, that's my real name.

Captcha: swains

We call him Barraca Abana in Portugal!

It's a Nexus so install the su.apk and apply this.

With this app and an HTC MedialinkHD, you can stream movies and music though you can't actually mirror the full display.

It's not as convenient as an actual SD slot, and you have to root, but it will give more storage... Google Play Store

http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

Or the 1970 (?) climate models which predicted global cooling.

What was the nature and sophistication of climate models back in 1970? [Citations gratefully received].

It is true that of the papers published in the 1970s where a prediction was made as to future change, a minority predicted cooling (Petersen et al. 2008). Oddly enough the majority who were predicting warming, even back then, were proved to be right. This is weird, because the story of the lone scientist, standing up to the corrupt orthodoxy in the field, who is proved right over time, makes for a far more compelling narrative.

Though I don't use it myself, notify my android looks very good. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.usk.app.notifymyandroid&feature=search_result

Also, it integrates with tasker. And once you get tasker into the game, there's not much you can't do.

SL4A and Python on Android: http://code.google.com/p/python-for-android/

How about a native (ARM) linux distribution. To name some (semi-)automated installation tools

Linux Installer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galoula.LinuxInstall

Debian Kit
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dyndns.sven_ola.debian_kit

Complete Linux Installer (NEW)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid

How about a native (ARM) linux distribution. To name some (semi-)automated installation tools

Linux Installer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galoula.LinuxInstall

Debian Kit
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dyndns.sven_ola.debian_kit

Complete Linux Installer (NEW)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid

How about a native (ARM) linux distribution. To name some (semi-)automated installation tools

Linux Installer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galoula.LinuxInstall

Debian Kit
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dyndns.sven_ola.debian_kit

Complete Linux Installer (NEW)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid

Scripting for Android seems to fit the bill nicely. It allows you to use several common scripting languages and provides an interface so they can create make Android do things (e.g. show an alert).

You should check out Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A).

Check out Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A).

And if you want to develop the app right on your mobile phone, you can use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en

Android Scripting Environment is a layer that allows various scripting languages interact with the Android API. It supports a bunch of languages and allows for a decent level of control over the Android device. http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

Don't know who the dumb fuck was going through modding all these posts down, but (s)he needs to have their head smacked.

This is what I was going to suggest. Using sl4a allows the use of Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, Tcl, and shell. That pretty much covers all the good scripting languages except Rexx, and I haven't heard much about Rexx in years.

Of course, if you stop and think about it, Android's entire API is a scripting language, so...

and something similar from Izzi https://tv.izzi.lv/

Both seem to have a decent selection of channels so it's hard to fault them on the selection. Yes, they don't have quite as many channels as you might get with Comcast or TW, but lets face it a lot of those channels are very niche and were forced on the cable/satellite providers in order to get the channels they really wanted. (As with all of the extra VH1/MTV channels that very few people ever watch.)

The blog author provides the coordinates (and not a link) so you can view the formation on Google Earth not Google Maps. Google Earth has the timeline slider.

That being said, it's relatively easy to create a link to Google Earth. This should open the lake in Google Earth, if you have it installed.

Google says it's 0.238584003 light-seconds... not that heavy, I suppose.

This was a bug that was corrected (it was a problem in cache flushing). All my testing occured after the bug was addressed, and pulling drive data cables while actively writing, as well as pulling drive power cables, was part of my testing. No data loss occurred in any test. The btrfsck and btrfs scrub/balance were able to correct all errors that resulted following the drive recovery.

IDK about that, my sister had a bunch of trolls growing up back in the 90s, so i guess SHE liked trolls. After all, look at these things! https://www.google.com/search?q=troll+doll

Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:

        Pornography, adult or mature content
        Violent content
        Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group or organisation
        Excessive profanity
        Hacking/cracking content
        Gambling or casino-related content
        Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia content
        Sales of beer or hard alcohol
        Sales of tobacco or tobacco-related products
        Sales of prescription drugs
        Sales of weapons or ammunition (e.g. firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, stun guns)
        Sales of products that are replicas or imitations of designer or other goods
        Sales or distribution of coursework or student essays
        Content regarding programs which compensate users for clicking ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites or reading emails
        Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
AdSense program policies

I don't see what Google's problem with the Sex party is, and considering the constraints with election dates, OOPs we're sorry isn't going to work in this case either.

Well, ignoring the obvious job security worries for mainstream economists stepping out of line, maybe the issue is more "religious" at this point?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/
"A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar.
Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of deja vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies."

And:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html?pagewanted=all
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""

These are people who essentially deny that economic alternatives exists (or are viable, which is the same thing); contrast that with:
"The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization" By Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dictionary_of_Alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC

How many millions of people have been harmed by the essentially "religious" market fundamentalism of so many mainstream economists, who turn a blind eye to externalities, systemic risks, and wealth concentration? (To be clear, it is also a weird sort of market fundamentalism in the USA mixed with protectionism for favored already "worthy" wealthy groups.)

See also:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue21/Stanford21.htm
"I am an economist. It is seventeen days since I last uttered the phrase "supply and demand." But the demon still lurks untamed, within me. Economics is an addiction. Every other addiction has a Twelve Step program, laced with tough love and blunt self-honesty. Why not a Twelve Step program for economists? God knows, we have done enough damage with our arrogant, drunken prescriptions. Here's how each and every economist can face up to their inner demons, and make their own small contribution to setting things right.
Step 1: Admit you have a problem. Like they say at the AA meetings, this is half the solution

Please show us a source where Apple claims to have patented the concept of a 'rectangular portable touch screen'.

[Citation Needed]

US Patent D504,889

So this patent supposedly patents "the concept of a 'rectangular portable touch screen'"? What about the patents it cites? They would do the same thing, esp. this IBM patent: http://www.google.com/patents?id=b34mAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Please show us a source where Apple claims to have patented the concept of a 'rectangular portable touch screen'.

[Citation Needed]

US Patent D504,889

So this patent supposedly patents "the concept of a 'rectangular portable touch screen'"? What about the patents it cites? They would do the same thing, esp. this IBM patent: http://www.google.com/patents?id=b34mAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false.

No AD support

Not true anymore. Chrome Browser for Business.

I am a Denver resident. I've seen my last three movies at that very theater. This act has chilled us all to the bone. It's like Columbine, but without any parents to blame. The suspect was a post-grad working on his doctorate; in fact, he was in the process of dropping out.

TP quotes one news article, but that news correspondent made an incorrect assumption. Those doors are steel construction with 1/4" thick bang-plates; you can't simply kick them in.

The gunman did not "sneak in"... he sneaked out after buying a ticket! His white car was parked strategically by those exit doors at the back of the building. He propped those doors open on his way out and geared-up for a few minutes before going back in through the same door. He basically used the same loophole that employees use to get high during a shift. (Plz... that's not a generalization; I'm sure most cinema-trons are hard working and honest.)

So, for anyone that's going to say that theater rules or municipal code would have prevented it, you're full of it. This may have been prevented with better building security at the exits, more attentive staff (or just more staff for an important midnight event) or even a person that notices this douchebag propping open a one-way exit and just closes the door behind him. At least then, the gunman would have had to walk around the building or drive his car fully-armed and quite obvious. The police response that night was so quick because they were already at the mall to help direct the increased traffic. If his route back into the theater was blocked, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to stun with gas or have his "fish in a barrel" target range. Sure, it wouldn't have stopped him from making trouble, but it very well could have prevented a massacre of this scale.

One thing has been made very clear; there is no legislation or body of intelligence that prevented James Holmes from owning, loading and carrying a devastating firearm into a crowded theater. Up until he started shooting people, James Holmes did everything by the book. That's the scariest part of all. How many states ban assault weapons? Care to guess? Just five. How many limit or regulate the sale of assault weapons? Three. What does that leave us, Mr. Wizard? That leaves us with forty-two states that don't do anything about the sale of assault weapons.

You guessed it. Colorado is one of those forty-two states.

A massacre has never happened simply because we were missing a specific law. An armed victim is still a victim. A massacre cannot be prevented by passive technological security measures or even active security screening, for those are simply patterns and obstacles to a persistent attacker.

A massacre happens because the attacker knows that people just don't give a damn.

Please show us a source where Apple claims to have patented the concept of a 'rectangular portable touch screen'.

[Citation Needed]

US Patent D504,889

USPTO page

The CPU is an Allwinner A10, designed and built in China and selling for about $7. It's an impressive piece of technology.

That board, though, looks like the guts of a tablet or notebook, not a development board. There are a number of development boards available at various price points. For $70 you can get an A10 in a box with connectors, suitable for entertainment applications.

I believe a relevant policy page is here, basically unless you're a charity you can't use the donate button or they can freeze your account. The buy now button is available for others but is only supposed to be used for physical goods apparently, not sure whether intangibles like subscriptions or software qualify. I know some places just use the buy now button and sell crummy little tokens or somesuch and people basically make donations that way. Still, political parties should definitely be eligible for the donate button and it seems like an oversight on google's part that they're not.

In any case google's policies with their ad services are pretty dreadful. I know several (by which I mean at least 2 I can recall) sites/people that had their accounts/funds frozen after their site was linked by a big site (slashdot, reddit, digg, etc) or made the news. The sudden big spike in traffic was deemed suspicious since such a spike in traffic clearly could only be the result of trying to defraud google. Both cases the people just ditched google for ads because they couldn't get their accounts unfrozen (or at least not easily enough that they gave up first), got a different ad provider and considered the money that was in the account a loss.

GIYF: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+sbc Come back and complain about my stating the obvious once you've finished reviewing those 1.7M results (this query just scratches the surface - try linux+arm, linux+mips, or linux+[processor model] to get even more options, ranging from SoCs through SoMs and SBCs).

Here's a site that posts press releases about embedded Linux devices/SBCs/etc all this time (and has for at least a decade, I believe): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/

The only thing these new products have are marketing departments that can catch the attention of a big tech press site or two. The spin from there is incredible, considering they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done thousands of times before.

Raspberry Pi presold sight unseen over 350,000 units while restricted to one-per-customer. They ramped up the factory to 4,000 units a day - a run rate of 1.5 million units a year. They're little bare project boards. We're not even sure what we can do with them yet. Now that the schools they were intended for can order them in the bulk appropriate to the use of entire school districts full of students they may ramp quite a bit. School districts order in the dozens of units for test/dev and for deployment up to tens or hundreds of thousands so in the launch enthusiasm for RPi they were pretty much shut out so far. It doesn't hurt at all that their HDMI video output is standard input for flat panel monitors and TV's these past few years, so displays for them are everywhere and likely to last far longer than the PCs they came with.

If a bunch of hardware OEMs aren't snapping to attention over this they should be. The march of tiny low power ARM platforms seems to not want to stop. Now we have the Android TV dongle, five of these SBCs including the one in the fine article, a Kickstarter for OUYA that raised $5.3 million so far in 11 days from 41,000 backers who have no guarantee the product will ever even be made, on the strength of the reputation of the participants and the description of a product that isn't anticipated even being made until 9 months out - if they succeed in making it at all. That so many would put so much of their own personal money on only the promise of a thing is evidence of immense underlying demand for something.

Of course over in China and India they're making about a thousand different kinds of low-cost Android devices including a 7" tablet that costs $40 and runs Android ICS. Then there's the Nexus 7 tablet which sold out in retail stores around the planet on launch day and the 16GB version is even sold out on the Google Play store until further notice and the 8GB version probably soon will be - most of them were presold before they even hit the shelves. This one alone may move 10 million units the first year or more. Maybe much more. It's a product that may have buyers camped out at retailers awaiting fresh shipments like they were iThings.

The iThings are going great by the way, moving about a 500,000 units a day between iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch - every one a neat little ARM PC. And they just opened up the China market, which is like a whole third of everybody.

At last report little Android ARM PCs that also happen to have cellular phone capability are also doing well, activating 1,000,000 units a day - a run rate of 365,000,000 per year and still growing at a 2.5x pace year over year. And early next year come little ARM SOCs with 75% more processing power and 2x the graphics power for about the same price - and the SBCs that are made from them. Wow, the pace of progress here is stunning. It's like the early '90s again in PC land.

The traditional PC is stagnant. If you have one that's not too old you probably can suffer through another couple years with it, or until it fails completely, and save the money you would have put to a new one on one of these amazing new things. It's not like your laptop isn't already overpowered for what you're using it for. People have a certain budget for neat new gear anyway, and with adequate laptops costing $300 it's not like there's not money left over in the US market even if it is time to update your PC. The traditional PC market isn't going to collapse right away but I think it has peaked, plateaued, and begun its long gradual decline. In time, all things end.

All of these new things work wonderfully together, a

That's why I said that it's "a practical impossibility." How do you propose to find (estimates vary) about a quarter billion pieces of easily-concealable metal scattered around 3.8 million square miles? Hint: when guns become illegal, criminals don't say "Damn, I can't rob anyone anymore. Time to go turn in all my guns to the police." Anyone who thinks "once something is illegal, no one does it anymore" does not have a grasp of reality at all.

News for Nerds

http://google.com/ Here is where you can start learning.

• Gun ownership and gun murder are uncorrelated or slightly inversely correlated.
• Gun ownership is strongly inversely correlated with population density.
• Murder rates are slightly correlated with population density, gun murder slightly moreso. (I'd guess the relation would be stronger if I did a by-county comparison instead of by state)
• Gun ownership is weakly inversely correlated with overall murder rates.

Note, the gun ownership data is from 2001 - if someone can find something more recent, I'll update it.

That's why you use a mnemonic device.

For instance, to remember my prepositions in school, I was confronted with the following list:
(wrote memory was the method dujour at my gradeschool)

about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, beyond, but, by ...

Thats a pretty long list of seemingly unrelated words. (the full list is even longer.)

To keep the list, I imagined it as a series of cryptic announcer panels in a cheesy comic book. Our hero first swings somewhere "About above" the perp, "across 'after'" (rather, a large neon sign which features the word), "against 'along'" (where he scales up some graffiti on a wall saying "cant we all just get along?") , "Among; Around" (where he disperses among a crowd to get around the security forces patrolling a media event), and then "Beyond, but by." where he sneaks backstage behind the perp-- beyond observation, but near his mark.

I can remember the narrative structure, and so can remember the list. It got really complicated for the full list of prepositions though, which has over 50 words in it.

A list of prepositions has structure that could be defeated, because all the words are prepositions, and it's alphabetized. However, the approach to storyboard the obscure and seemingly disjointed and unrelated words into a coherent mnemonic will (or at least should) work with any long list of random words if you are imaginative enough. It helps you move "nonsense" out of short term memory, where it cant possibly be preserved, and into long term memory.

Another technique is to remember cadence and pitch along with the written words, so its like reciting a poem or a song. Humans are wired for music, even if they cant sing or play an instrument. Musical progressions are powerful tools for remembering bits of data. The lyrics dont need to make sense. Take for instance, the false lyrics to hiakugojuichi, "TV says donuts are high in fat, kazoo. Found a hobo in my room. It's princess leiah, the yodel of life, now give my sweater back or I'll play the guitar." While certainly more cogent than say: "Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce tuple bastard wood", and therefore easily attacked, the latter can also be recorded musically/ through cadence. Observe:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord
{Apples blessed toroid gamma crochet gingerbread}

He has opened up the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored
{ tickling robot coffee watermelon ex-wife lead}

He has struck down all our en'mies and has put them to the sword, his truth goes marching on
{emergence confound listless goofball union applesauce, tuple bastard wood}

Eg, if you "sing" the incoherent words to that tune, you will find the cadence matches sufficiently that you can then use the familiar song to recall the obscure list. Lyrics do not have to make sense, nor does the music have to be original, for the memory improving effect to manifest itself.

Another, less contrived set of lyrics that seems incoherent are the actual lyrics to Lemon Demon's "Word disassociation"

Good luck as an attacker, trying to figure out that my passphrases are all cadence based mnemonic devices. Even with the plaintext in front of you, if I didnt point it out, you would never see it.

That "Glory haleluja" one was 21 words long. You can remember a list of almost indefinite length, if you properly cross-link it with other information in subtle and obscure ways like this. I used that musical score, because it is frequently lobbed at people from a young age, and gets a strong hold, and is fairly commonly known.

Still, its pretty clear how music can help you remember even secure passwords.

There's stuff out there for iOS and Android that you can tweak to your own application For Android, there's osmdroid. MapBox has an SDK out there as well for iOS. There's others, but hell if I can think of em off-hand right now.

> But what if experiments were to conclusively prove that all aspects of personality can be explained by neurological processes? Then, consciousness would be tied to an observable, physical mechanism

You fallacy is assuming brain = mind.

Prove to me that :
  a) numbers are physical
  b) time is physical

Our mind deals with meta-physical objects all the time. Our brain _represents_ these concepts and ideas mechanically, but you are confusing the representation with the actuality.

See Peter Russell in the documentary "The Primacy of Consciousness" which points out the absurdity in Materialism
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7799171063626430789

So http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704630004576248600469362440.html and http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-646126.html and http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_eEAC03XCJX2eCY9xSIDd4qDzdA just didn't happen?

If you actually go to the page, they specifically say it was inspired by Google Summer of Code. so they give credit where credit is due.

What? You want me to RTFA? :-)

Anyhow, if they say that it was inspired by GSoC, doesn't that mean that they realize that they're capitalizing on the name?

In regards to the viewer comment, 99.9% of space launches put up satellites for practical purposes. So to say that viewers aren't necessary for those organizations in actually wrong.

Now you're just puting words in my mouth -- when did I say that viewers/data visualization tools aren't useful for the ESA? I think the ESA has a great idea here, and both a number of FOSS projects, the ESA, and a number of space-related organizations can benefit from the result. The whole point I was making is that the name portrays this as putting stuff (code?) up in space, and all of the links I clicked on didn't show that.

Being able to visualize where your satellite could impact given a worst case scenario is considered when developing these satellites. Additionally, visualizing the trajectories of 1000 other satellites is also important. There's a lot of space junk up there.

Sure, that's helpful, but it seems more of a "mission control" piece than an "in space" piece.

Finally, not everything is a viewer.

Perhaps I was too general in my depiction of the stated projects. It was my understanding, based on clicking on a half-dozen links, that the planned projects were to be used as either visualizers of data on the ground (not in any kind of active tracking, etc..), or as general mapping/modeling tools. Everything looked ground-based.

After reading through a bunch of the other links (the "Selected mentoring organizations" page is super-dense), it looks like there are actually a number of software projects will make it to space (or at least high altitudes). Some, like OpenCube nano-satellite hardware/software stack describe the project in plain English, but some are very technical from the get-go, e.g. pyNastran with the tag line "Nastran BDF Reader/Writer, F06 Reader/Writer, OP2 Reader, OP4 Reader & GUI," but no description or link or About page giving us a hint about what 'Nastran', 'BDF', 'F06', 'OP2', or 'OP4' means. It would be really great to have a blurb about each project on the mentoring organizations page, just so that we could see at a glance the purpose of each project, and what specific tasks they were aiming to complete for SoCiS

The ESA funded engineering projects that they believe are useful, not general computer science projects. There's a huge difference. Engineering is all about understanding a problem and finding a way to solve it. Viewers are for understanding your data.

The ESA funded a number of projects in various different areas. I just wish that they had chosen a more inclusive name so that both the projects that were going to space (hardware, software control, etc..) as well as the ground-based projects were both covered. "ESA Summer of Code" would have been short and descriptive. If they want to make it "in space," they should hire that sign painter from Kickstarter to paint a nice sign with a bold offset section for the "In Space!" portion of the sign.

Sorry friend but for a good 90%+ of the population Linux is not an option, because 1.-It wears obtuse and fiddly as badges of honor, 2.-Torvalds will never allow an API as long as he has a pulse, so drivers WILL break with every update, 3.-Too many treat FOSS as a religion and WANT the drivers to break because they are "Teh evil binary blobs ZOMG!" when the FOSS drivers break just as much, and 4.-The entire system is doomed because a small group will NEVER be able to properly QA and QC the amount of code in your average distro, much less the repos which are a mess of half baked crap.

You might want to read these articles, the first of which is actually written by one of the devs at Red Hat, which shows frankly why Linux hasn't gone anywhere on the desktop and frankly won't. the current design just doesn't work and the egos involved simply won't allow change, nor will the religious zealotry, so things simply stagnate. Its sad, but MSFT could put out lousy OSes for the next 3 versions and people will just stick with the last good one, no matter how creaky it gets, rather than deal with Linux. See how many are running XP rather than take Linux for free as a good example.

http://www.manufacturing.net/blogs/2012/07/google-made-in-the-usa

http://www.google.org/

http://www.google.com/landing/givesback/2011/

but the point requires an adult mind to bring adult judgement to a real world situation which is not black and white- something you're just not cut for apparently. Comcast and Verizon and ATT have REPEATEDLY shown themselves to be rapacious ,exploitative and dishonest. If Google wants to protect NN by laying down fiber and bypassing that group of assholes then I say bully for them and more power to them. You have to be a bigger cynic than I am to just make blanket statements based on one or two selected data points. Sometimes in a war both sides do very bad things, but that doesn't make both sides morally equivalent. Sometimes when you fight a war you have to give a go at engaging Communist China, or save big money the way your competitors are doing , or do something else unsavory That's life in war time. But the real question is not answered by those bad actions unless like ATT and Comcast and Verizon they become so persistent and pervasive that they have, in fact, turned evil. The real question we're trying to get at is "what's in their heads? Where are they trying to get to by doing this?" That is effectively the state in a hidden Markov model and we can only approximate and build more or less good models to try to get at it . My HMM tells me that Google is acting in accordance with their value system in seeking to lay down fiber and establish NN once and for all.

Sorry, but you can't separate me from my well honed capacity to form accurate judgments about the world and people in it by flinging some sophomoric "et tu" feces at me like an angry little monkey.

The article is wrong. Android 4.1 SDK has been released three weeks ago