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Submission + - Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics (simonsfoundation.org)

Lee_Dailey writes: Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

Submission + - New IE Zero Day Found, Exploit Being Used in Targeted Attacks

Trailrunner7 writes: Microsoft is looking into reports of targeted attacks against a new vulnerability that exists in all supported versions of Internet Explorer. The attacks are targeting IE 8 and 9 and there’s no patch for the vulnerability right now, though Microsoft has developed a FixIt tool for it. The bug is a use-after-free in the Microsoft HTML rendering engine and there is a fully working exploit being used in attacks right now.

“The exploit we analyzed worked only on Windows XP or Windows 7 running Internet Explorer 8 or 9,” Neil Sikka of Microsoft Engineering said. “The exploit was attacking a Use After Free vulnerability in IE’s HTML rendering engine (mshtml.dll) and was implemented entirely in Javascript (no dependencies on Java, Flash etc), but did depend on a Microsoft Office DLL which was not compiled with ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) enabled.

Attacks on the vulnerability are ongoing in Japan right now, but may spread quickly now that details of the problem are public.

Submission + - World first digital laser invented in South Africa by CSIR (greenitweb.co.za)

khabza writes: Researchers at South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have developed a world-first digital laser that could be a game-changer in the field, paving the way for new laser applications in areas ranging from medicine to communications.

Submission + - Obama Directs FCC to Mandate All Cell Phones Be Unlocked (washingtonpost.com) 1

globaljustin writes: "Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers."

This move should be met with universal acclaim from cell phone users, right?

Comment Re:Reviewer is not a photographer (Score 1) 90

Framing the picture differently affects how the exposure settings are chosen by the auto-exposure algorithm since the sample points will be distributed differently in the scene than with the other cameras. If one of the exposure sample points happens to be significantly brighter than the others, then the sensitivity of the sensor could be tuned down to ensure that the picture is not saturated (the upper right of the image seems brigher than the rest of the image). This calls the validity of the test into question.

Comment Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons" (Score 1) 1862

New Hampshire has a lower murder rate than France.

This is irrelevant because murder rate is not the same statistic as the rate of gun violence. The latter would be a more useful comparison.

And where is the most murder in the US? In the places with the most gun control, like Chicago. Places like New Hampshire prove unequivocally that you can have freedom and low murder rates at the same time.

This demonstrates correlation, not causation. In fact, you confirm this and contradict the premise of your argument (that gun control does not decrease the occurence of gun violence; either that or you changed arguments half way through) in the sentence that follows:

The problem of violence is not one of tools (guns, knives, hammers or plain old hands and feet) but one of economy. The most violence happens in the poorest places, this is UNIVERSALLY true, in every city, state and nation. It doesn't matter if the homicides are gun-induced or not.

What is the rate of poverty in Chicago vs. that in New Hampshire? Not to mention the fact that you're comparing an entire state with a single metropolitan area. If you're going to accuse someone of being disingenuous, at least use a more coherent argument. Gun control alone won't stop people from murdering each other. Reducing the divide between rich and poor would likely be a more effective solution. However, I suspect this idea would be rejected as "socialism" by a large number of the US electorate.

Comment Re:We'll probably still do it (Score 1) 179

As far as I know, the energy input of sunlight in fossil fuel is ignored because that energy was input millions of years ago when the fossil fuel was organic matter. So it's probably fair to omit this factor when doing an analysis of the energy yield of ethanol (assuming of course that its total contribution is equal in all cases).

Comment Re:Dawkin's is a piss poor social scientist (Score 1) 862

I would be interested to see more evidence, other than the "god gene", as to the genetic basis for religion. From my understanding, the genetic predisposition has more to do with determining whether or not someone is susceptible to believe in religion, but does not predicate what that belief is. If religious belief was largely predicated on genetics, we would probably see a more random distribution of belief systems.

Most of us do have a genetic predisposition to adopt a sexual orientation, it is possible that social influence is a factor in deciding what that orientation is. However, I believe the body of evidence points to genetics as the determining factor.

Comment Re:Valve finds Intel's driver to be great. (Score 1) 159

Their main business is not consumer graphics cards. I believe their focus is on building specialized imaging hardware for industrial systems and providing the associated image processing software (ML if I recall correctly). I imagine the margins are far greater than what they were getting building consumer GPUs.

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What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928

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