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Earth

Submission + - Diamond CPUs to follow silicon (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Analysts at Gartner have got all excited about the fact that carbon chips are now ready for mass production. The company reported that carbon chips appear destined to supplant silicon as the material of choice for future semiconductors. Gartner's oracles foresee that carbon can surpass silicon's abilities in thermal performance, frequency range and perhaps even superconductivity. Dean Freeman, senior analyst at Gartner, said that diamonds will probably be the first carbon chip seen. Diamond offers 10 times the heat dissipation of silicon and has been used for 40nm to 15 diamond films on silicon wafers.
Power

Submission + - Wind could provide 100% of world energy needs (mongabay.com)

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Wind power may be the key to a clean energy revolution: a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that wind power could provide for the entire world's current and future energy needs.

To estimate the earth's capacity for wind power, the researchers first sectioned the globe into areas of approximately 3,300 square kilometers (2,050 square miles) and surveyed local wind speeds every six hours. They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding "areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban," according to the paper. They also included the possibility of 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbines, but restricted them to 50 nautical miles off the coast and to oceans depths less than 200 meters.

Using this criteria the researchers found that wind energy could not only supply all of the world's energy requirements, but it could provide over forty times the world's current electrical consumption and over five times the global use of total energy needs.
Graphics

Submission + - Augmented reality shaping future of games (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Microsoft's Natal can recognise a player's skeletal structure, as well as doing some sophisticated translation of body physics into in-game movement. As a control mechanism this is fascinating, but next step is to merge the game graphics with the real world. Now basic examples of augmented reality (AR) are being shown using a mobile phone, unlike previous demos which have involved walking around with a large backpack strapped to your body. A game titled Arhrrrr blends live action video overlayed with game graphics. The processing is taken care of by Nvidia's new Tegra platform, while the game's "maps" are generated by pointing the phones camera (in this case 5MP) at a 2D drawing/printout lying on a table. The end result is a 3D world which seems to spring forth in realtime, with buildings popping up, as players move the real world around the game "map". This story shows two other interesting videos demonstrating AR, including the ability to add real life objects into the virtual game world and have the gameplay respond and react accordingly.
Censorship

Submission + - Chinese citizens plan internet boycott (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: Internet users in China are planning a day-long boycott in protest of the country's controversial new filtering laws. Protestors are calling on users in China to log off the internet on 1 July to protest the country's mandated Green Dam filtering tool. The Chinese government is mandating that all computers sold in the country be bundled with the software. While both the government and the software company behind the Green Dam software claim that the tool can be disabled and is only intended to filter out pornographic content, critics have charged that the software will allow the state to gain tighter control on user access and more closely monitor user activity.

Comment Re:long-form reporting...deep investigative report (Score 1) 96

by narfspoon (#28429559) Attached to: Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story

The last thing that I want to do when I get home is stare at a screen for the 40 minute it takes to read an article that is as long as this one.

I found this earlier today: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8uffa/online_journalism_a_few_years_ago_vs_today_pic/

The real gems are the comments on how to improve your online readability with bookmarklets that change font & backgrounds.
Businesses

Submission + - What a Texas town can teach us about health care. (newyorker.com)

Submitted by
rs79
rs79 writes: "From The New Yorker: The greatest threat to Americas fiscal health is not Social Security, President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. Its not the investments that weve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nations balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. Its not even close. "Our countrys health care is by far the most expensive in the world."

"McAllen (texas) calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. Lonesome Dove was set around here.

"McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miamiwhich has much higher labor and living costsspends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.""

Comment Re:The ultimate irony (Score 1) 399

by narfspoon (#28428449) Attached to: Kodak Kills Kodachrome
I thought the post was insightful. However it leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
I took the overall message as "You reap what you sow."

There's folks who carefully sort and organize their photo albums, print hard copies, and spend a lot of time & money doing so.

And others who don't...

It's the same story for other important data backups and security. The number of times there's a front page story on some huge database theft/loss/etc is scary.

He could've also meant that photography is generally a pointless waste of time.
Well, the demand exists, at least.
However on a personal note, I do enjoy digital cameras simply because I no longer worry about "wasting film". I take more shots (extra angles, playing around) and have the luxury of deleting them later if they turn out poor.
Communications

Submission + - Scientists to scale up quantum data breakthrough (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by bfire
bfire writes: Researchers have found a way to simplify the manipulation of light for quantum computing applications and say they will develop the concept further to show it can scale. The research letter, published in Nature Photonics, "experimentally" proved the use of quantum or optical entanglement to convey larger amounts of data. Until now, the amount of information that could be conveyed was limited by levels of complexity — you needed to increase the number of nonclassical light sources, splitters and receivers each time you wanted to add another channel of information. The breakthrough means optical entanglement can be more simply scaled up to convey information across multiple channels.
The Courts

Submission + - Blogger Arraigned on Incitement Charge

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Associated Press reports that a judge has arraigned Harold "Hal" Turner in Hartford Superior Court on a felony charge of inciting injury to persons after the 47-year-old former radio talk show host urged his blog readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested government officials should "obey the Constitution or die." Turner was angry over legislation that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parishes' finances and promised readers he would release state officials' home addresses. Turner also wrote that Catholics should "put down this tyranny by force" and "I suspect we have enough bullets" to stop any prosecutors, police officers or court officials. The crime Turner is charged with, inciting injury to persons or property, carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years. Turner defended himself on his web site by saying that he "is not a citizen of Connecticut and he was not in Connecticut when he published his opinions on his blog" and that he may "find himself jailed literally for years, waiting to win under the clearly established federal case law." Turner's views have drawn scrutiny before. Two years ago, police in New Jersey beefed up security for four state Supreme Court justices whose addresses Turner revealed "to show they can be gotten to" after the court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same rights as married couples. According to Turner's entry in Wikipedia, Turner is a white nationalist and white supremacist who promotes antisemitism, opposes the existence of the state of Israel, and denies the Holocaust."
Handhelds

Submission + - Watch TV on your satnav? (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Satnav firm Mio is launching a device with an integrated TV tuner. The Mio Spirit range includes a digital television tuner that is intended to be used "during breaks in the journey or at their final destination." However, safety campaigners fear there's little to stop the television being used at the wheel. When the system is first turned on a warning message is displayed, telling the user not to watch television while driving. If this is ignored, a secondary warning message kicks in if the GPS chip detects the vehicle is moving at more than 5mph. But that's it!"
Graphics

Submission + - Concrete Comparisons of Theora vs. Mpeg-4 (stanford.edu)

Submitted by
icknay
icknay writes: "With the upcoming Firefox 3.5 and HTML5 video, there's natural interest in Theora vs. Mpeg-4, but without much evidence either way. Here's clips encoded at various rates to provide concrete comparison between Theora and Mpeg-4. Theora performs decently, but requires more bandwidth than Mpeg-4 (although this is an 1.1alpha release of Theora and Theora has a much better license than Mpeg-4). The quality comparisons are very subjective, but you can try the clips yourself and see how it breaks down. There was an earlier discussion about this but which lacked much concrete evidence. (disclosure: it's my page)"

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