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Canada

Fake IPad 2s Made of Clay Sold At Canadian Stores 265

SpuriousLogic writes in with a link to a story about some Canadian consumers who thought they were getting an iPad 2 but instead got the makings of the world's oldest tablets. "As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there's no mistaking the iPad for one of the world's oldest 'tablet devices.' Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging. Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers."
Image

Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project Screenshot-sm 687

garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"

Comment Re:Atheists Unite... as a religion (Score 1) 845

Atheism is a religion. Atheism has everything in common with other religions. Set beliefs, morality, purpose in life, etc. Agnosticism is not a religion because it has no definite beliefs, morality or purpose. Atheism does.

No, the key difference is that religions appeal to the supernatural or some true essence to explain the universe, while atheism appeals only to the natural world. Atheism does not require some Daddy figure (or figures) nor does it need some essentialist background. It rejects those. Its beliefs are based on logic, something religions can't claim (except coincidentally).

Comment Re:Ugh. (Score 1) 309

If you read the article, you'd realize it was a very significant wake up call. Death was narrowly avoided because the reactor containment vessel was over-engineered compared to the typical design.

Are you talking about the reactor vessel or the containment? These are different things. The containment is designed to keep fission fragments from being released to the public following a design basis accident. It is typically a hemispherical shell made of about a 5 ft thickness of reinforced concrete attached to a concrete base mat and lined with a stainless steel shell. The reactor vessel simply houses the core, forms part of the primary coolant pressure boundary, has a flange for connection to the vessel head, and contains connections for the hot legs, cold legs, and safety injection system. The reactor vessel is typically carbon steel with a stainless steel liner that is heat treated to reduce any stress at weld points. The reactor vessel is one of many things that fits within a containment.

Comment Re:CO2 causes Global Warming? (Score 5, Informative) 397

I guess that you fail to consider that the "shitload" of CO2 (from all sources, including man-made) account for a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So if 0.5% constitutes a "shitload", what would you call the other 99.5%?

And since you brought up observations of Mars and Venus, perhaps you can explain how the recent warming trend has also been detected on Mars? That would lead the cause of warming to be something the planets have in common - the Sun. Empirical measurements show solar output higher, so wouldn't you think that the most likely explanation would be the most logical one, rather than simple-minded "explanations" of processes that we don't nearly understand?

First, the Earth's atmosphere consists of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, and trace other gases (including water of about 0.5% and CO2 of about 0.05%). Nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas, oxygen is not a greenhouse gas, and argon is not a greenhouse gas. Thus, of the 32 K greenhouse effect, CO2 plays a very important role. Water is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it primarily serves to amplify the effect of other greenhouse gases since warmer air can hold more water. Additionally, water isn't as significant as it may appear (having a tenfold higher concentration than CO2) because it will precipitate out at colder elevations. Thus, CO2 and methane are the primary greenhouse gases that are really driving the greenhouse effect (with their effect amplified by the water vapour).

Second, the possible effects of a slight increase in solar intensity have been noted. They are too small to account for the increase in atmospheric temperature if they exist. And even the largest potential effect could only account for about a quarter of the warming that has been observed.

Comment Re:CO2 causes Global Warming? (Score 5, Interesting) 397

Climate change isn't the theory. It is the effect. The theory is that greenhouse gases raise the temperature of the atmosphere of a planet. This has been well tested with small scale experiments and large scale observations (such as observing the atmospheric composition and temperatures of Mars and Venus). There are a lot of details that go into climate change, but the general idea is very common sense:

Step 1: Shine some light in the visible spectrum on an object through a gas that doesn't absorb a huge amount of energy at most of those wavelengths (for example, from any random object that you might see that has a 5780 K blackbody temperature).
Step 2: Choose an appropriate gas (like CO2 or methane) that will absorb a lot of energy from the blackbody emissions of that object (Stefan's Law).
Step 3: Watch the temperature of that gas rise.

Do you get the gist? It isn't rocket science. If you add a shitload of CO2 to the atmosphere, the temperature of the surface of the planet is going to rise.

Comment Re:It's a space salesman race! (Score 5, Interesting) 82

If the Ares I design is to be replaced, it would be by the Delta IV Heavy, not the Falcon 9 Heavy. The Delta IV Heavy is already flying, its payload fairing size is an almost perfect fit for the Orion spacecraft, and it uses the RS-68s that are planned to be used on the Ares V. NASA would also be extremely skeptical of the Falcon 9 Heavy because it would be using a total of 27 Merlin engines in its first stage! The failures of the N1 rocket (with 30 engines) would make any high engine rocket a tough sell. The Falcon 9 may work, but I'd be very surprised if the Falcon 9 Heavy is ever built. Man-rating a rocket like that would be well-nigh impossible.

Privacy

Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do 369

An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."
Role Playing (Games)

10 Years of Baldur's Gate 63

RPGVault is running an article commemorating the 10th anniversary of acclaimed RPG Baldur's Gate. They sat down with members of the Dragon Age: Origins team, some of whom worked on Baldur's Gate, to talk about their experiences with the game and what made it so popular. "The other thing I was responsible for was balance testing. It was a constant fight between me and the Interplay testers; they were always trying to make it easier, and I was always pushing back to make it harder. At one point, I got so frustrated with the final battle with Sarevok that I created a 7th level Minsc, gave him some weapons and armor, and then began to spawn in Sarevok's — mowing through them like a hot knife through butter. After I'd killed six or seven of them, I spawned in a final one and took a screenshot, with the fresh one standing among all his slaughtered predecessors. I edited it and put a bubble above Minsc's head that read 'Sigh... another one of those pesky Sarevoks' and then e-mailed it out to the company. Growing up playing D&D with James Ohlen (the Lead Designer on BG, and now on our new MMO), I knew that would piss him off to no end, and suffice to say he was much tougher when I tried to fight him the next day."
Image

Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored Screenshot-sm 93

More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.
Science

Another Way the LHC Could Self-Destruct 367

KentuckyFC writes "Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the LHC (though it won't be for a while yet), another nightmare scenario has emerged that some critics worry could cause the particle accelerator to explode. The culprit this time is not an Earth-swallowing black hole but a 'Bose supernova' in the accelerator's superfluid helium bath. Physicists have been playing with Bose Einstein Condensate (BECs) for over 10 years now. But in 2001, one group discovered that placing them in a powerful magnetic field could cause the attractive forces between atoms to become repulsive. That caused their BEC to explode in a Bose supernova — which they called a 'Bosenova,' a name that fortunately did not catch on. This was little more than a curiosity when only a microscopic blob of cold matter was involved. But superfluid liquid helium is also BEC. And physicists have suddenly remembered that the LHC is swimming in 700,000 liters of the stuff while being zapped by some of the most powerful magnetic fields on the planet. So is the LHC a Bose supernova waiting to go off? Not according to the CERN theory division, which has published its calculations that show the LHC is safe (abstract). They also point out that no other superfluid helium handling facility has mysteriously blown itself to pieces."
Earth

Submission + - Beijing Pollution Control Efforts Failing

Aglassis writes: It appears that the emergency pollution control efforts instituted by the Chinese government for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing are failing. Despite significantly reduced pollution levels over the weekend due to a rainstorm, the pollution levels in Beijing have once again climbed upwards. Kenneth Rahn, a professor emeritus at the University of Rhode Island, has noted that pollution levels in Beijing are highly dependent on meteorological cycles and that a significant amount of the stagnant pollution in Beijing that comes from the provinces south of the city has to be periodically flushed out by Mongolian cold fronts, which occur unpredictably. IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist has stated that the quality of the air in Beijing is safe and that the haze over Beijing is "mist." There has been no comment yet from the IOC on recent pollution readings (PM10) as high as 432 micrograms per cubic meter, over 8 times the World Health Organization air quality target of 50 micrograms per cubic meter (the Chinese target for the Olympics is 100 micrograms per cubic meter).
Censorship

Submission + - Google Faces Criminal Charges Over Video (timesonline.co.uk)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Italian prosecutors are filing criminal charges against four Google executives over a submission to Google Video depicting a kid with Downs syndrome being taunted by his peers, on the grounds that it violates the child's privacy and is defamatory. The four executives charged were, at the time of the incident, the chairman of Google Italy, a Google Italy board member, the executive responsible for the European privacy policy, and the head of Google Video in Europe. A Google spokesman said that Google had complied fully with the police investigation and they do not believe themselves to be responsible for user submissions, only for taking such videos down once they're reported. The four kids who filmed the video also face criminal prosecution. It would be interesting to compare the verdicts."

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