10 reasons not to buy an iPad for students With summer coming slowly to a close, that means back-to-school shopping is in full swing. Your college-bound child is probably in the midst of asking for more and more money to buy the "essentials" they’ll need for class and dorm life. And it’s very likely that they’ve also mentioned needing a device called the "iPad," a little-touted tablet computer manufactured by a small, independent company called Apple. You then may be wondering if, in this day-and-age, the iPad should be considered instead of a laptop... Dealnews
EA says it can't guarantee SW:TOR pre-orders Thursday we reported that EA and BioWare will release three editions of the upcoming MMOG, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which includes the Standard, Digital Deluxe and Collector's editions. Gamers can now pre-order all three editions from EA's online store Origin or via a participating retailer although Origin will sell all digital versions exclusively. Tom's Hardware
PayPal, IFPI and police collaborate to strangle pirate music sites According to an announcement by IFPI, online payment provider PayPal has agreed to help strangle the finances of sites offering unauthorized music. While it appears that the initial targets are Russian and Ukrainian MP3 services, the deal will also be of concern to torrent sites that rely on PayPal to accept site donations. TorrentFreak
Linux 3.0 released; Linus Torvalds explains why you shouldn't care The Linux 3.0 kernel was officially pushed out Thursday night, a milestone that even Linus Torvalds says you shouldn't care about. Torvalds made the announcement Thursday night on Google+, after the release was delayed four days after the discovery of an "incredibly subtle" pathname lookup bug, in Torvalds' words. PC Magazine
Are you listening, Steve Jobs? The Western news media is replete with pithy descriptions of the rapid changes taking place in China: China has the world’s fastest growing economy. China is undergoing remarkable and rapid change. This represents a unique moment for a society changing as quickly as China. You probably read such things in the paper every day -- but if you have never been to China... BirdAbroad
Open-source graphics driver comparison Following last week's benchmarks of Intel's New Sandy Bridge Acceleration architecture with the very latest open-source driver code, it was decided to throw a few Nvidia and ATI/AMD graphics cards into the mix to see where the open-source driver performance is comparatively at for some other hardware. Phoronix
Astronomers find largest, most distant reservoir of water Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away. NASA
Hilarious and surprising predictions of the future…from the 1960s! Nothing should make a futurist more wary than looking at the history of the profession and seeing how hilarious its mistakes have been. Jetpacks, flying cars, death rays…the future isn’t quite what the past hoped it would be. Singularity Hub
Police to begin iPhone iris scans amid privacy concerns Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company's already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. Reuters
Bulletstorm didn’t make money, but it was worth it Mike Capps, president of Gears of War development studio, doesn't regret Bulletstorm. That game got a lot of hype—and some extraordinarily odd press coverage—when it was released earlier this year. Kotaku
