NOAA's hurricane satellite politics

Slashdot post + commentary: Say Nothing About the Failing Satellite

Article from the Miami Herald: Candid storm chief gets a lashing

There's some informative discussion on Slashdot between former NOAA folks and JPL folks regarding the design, launch and technical details on the QuikSCAT satellite, in addition to political commentary.

Dell now shipping PCs with Ubuntu

Dell is (finally) shipping PCs, specifically Dimension E520 N + XPS 410 N desktops and Inspiron E1505 N laptops with Ubuntu Linux installed as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Cool.

While it may be hard to find the links to the Ubuntu systems from their front page, you can go to http://www.dell.com/open to order their non-Windows systems.