Comment clear glass? (Score 1) 239
If UV light is good for drinking water, then why does the CDC recommend against making sun tea? Mmmmm, Alcaligenes viscolactis.
Comment Re:Man... (Score 1) 46
Comment Re:Tax dollars (Score 1) 240
I'll answer both questions with one word and a link to Wikipedia:
Yes
Comment Re:So close ... and yet ... (Score 1) 140
I don't get it. How's a trojan going to read an sms off my cell phone?
Submission + - Twitter survey causes tweet-alanche (skepticblog.org)
JLavezzo writes: Brian Dunning, host of the Skeptoid podcast, decided to combine a survey he needed data for with an experiement into the dynamics of Twitter's social networking. Did it work?
'The good parts worked better than I hoped,' he says 'and unfortunately, undesired side effects ... which rendered your Twitter account nearly useless on September 14 and 15, if you follow me or anyone else who follows me ... were just as potent. Now, before I describe what happened, let me state outright that it was shockingly naive of me not to foresee what would happen. It was dumb, it annoyed a lot of people, and I have no excuse other than failure to think it through very well. So, my apologies, and I offer no defense of what turned out to be a giant mess.'
Read on so you'll be prepared when your marketing director asks you to set up the same thing.
'The good parts worked better than I hoped,' he says 'and unfortunately, undesired side effects
Read on so you'll be prepared when your marketing director asks you to set up the same thing.
Submission + - How Not To Do A Twitter Survey (skepticblog.org)
JLavezzo writes: Brian Dunning posted an article on what he calls his 'greatest clusterfuck of the year: the Skeptoid Twitter Experiment, which rendered your Twitter account nearly useless on September 14 and 15, if you follow me or anyone else who follows me.
I have an upcoming Skeptoid podcast episode for which I want to include some informal survey data. I've also been thinking a lot about Twitter for its potential to virally spread information. So I thought it would be a clever idea to combine my survey with Twitter, which (I thought) would be a lot of fun for everyone and would accomplish two goals:
1. Virally spread awareness of my podcast, Skeptoid
2. Get a huge number of respondents to my survey
Well, it worked. The good parts worked better than I hoped, and unfortunately, undesired side effects were just as potent.'
As one commenter put it:
'Turning Twitter's echo chamber into a denial-of-service attack. How fiendishly clever.'
I have an upcoming Skeptoid podcast episode for which I want to include some informal survey data. I've also been thinking a lot about Twitter for its potential to virally spread information. So I thought it would be a clever idea to combine my survey with Twitter, which (I thought) would be a lot of fun for everyone and would accomplish two goals:
1. Virally spread awareness of my podcast, Skeptoid
2. Get a huge number of respondents to my survey
Well, it worked. The good parts worked better than I hoped, and unfortunately, undesired side effects were just as potent.'
As one commenter put it:
'Turning Twitter's echo chamber into a denial-of-service attack. How fiendishly clever.'
Submission + - Lawyer demands jury stops Googling (itwire.com) 1
coomaria writes: So lawyers want to get juries to sign, on threat of prison, that they won't Google the case they are hearing. Apparently it could influence their decision, and only lawyers are allowed to do that, right?
Submission + - Planck Satellite Releases First Images (wordpress.com)
davecl writes: The Planck Satellite has released its first images. These are from the 'First Look Survey' and show a strip of the sky scanned at a range of radio and submillimetre wavelengths. The results are already better than what was seen by the previous microwave background satellite, WMAP. ESA's coverage of the results can be found here, with more details and images available in English and French. The Planck Mission Blog contains more details of the project and continuing coverage. I maintain the mission blog but even I am impressed with these first images!
Submission + - CERN boss targets linear collider (physicsworld.com)
Hamish Johnston writes: "The boss of CERN wants the next big experiment in particle physics after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to be built at the Geneva lab. Speaking in a video interview with physicsworld.com, Rolf-Dieter Heuer says that CERN should host the experiment, which would collide electrons and positrons in a linear accelerator. Although a design for the machine has not been finalized by the international particle-physics community, Heuer is keen to bring the collider to CERN. "I would be a bad director-general if I did not push for CERN at least bidding for the next global project," Heuer told physicsworld.com. "CERN is a fantastic place. [It] has proven that it can host such a project and therefore I think CERN should do it." However, Heuer is aware that it is far from certain that CERN will host the facility — Fermilab in the US is likely to be a contender — and the CERN chief is looking forward to bids from rival labs. "Competition is always welcome," he says. In a separate interview, CERN's head of communications James Gillies rejects claims that the initial switch-on was over-hyped, putting down the extensive media interests to the fear of black holes and Dan Brown's Angel and Demons. Gillies said, "We didn't over-hype it. The hype was there and we lived with it.""
Submission + - GeoCities closing October 26, 2009 (yahoo.com)
angkor writes: "End of an era: On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files..."
Comment Re:Bad summary (Score 1) 187
I think you're describing PL4 security. That's not the trick here. When they say different sources, they mean different TYPES of sources, geospacial, dates, ip addresses, telephone logs, video metadata, random XML, SQL. Dogpile searches multiple sources of unstructured text.
Comment Re:Not sure it is great news (Score 1) 198
In countries like Malawi, Internet access is limited by price to middle and upper middle class citizens. When ISPs hook up to this fibre, they'll be able to drop their prices and extend services down the economic spectrum.
Comment Oracle anyone? (Score 1) 434
Web 2.0 implies that it's more than just showing some web pages on a domain. They have to design the way the data they display gets into and is stored in their database.
Like most government contracts, it's probably going to use Oracle instead of MySQL or PostgreSQL. That means several mandatory over-paid Oracle consultants to keep Oracle running and navigate the labyrinthine system for setting up Oracle. They'll probably use other Oracle middleware for "security" reasons, though security in this case means job security for Oracle.
Comment See? It's a (Score 1) 695
Jump
To Conclusions!
Submission + - Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming is a Scam (icecap.us) 2
JLavezzo writes: Founder of The Weather Channel, meteorologist John Coleman, has been making headlines with an emotional article declaring, 'Global Warming; It is a SCAM.' The text contains malaprops and is so devoid of facts that some commentators suspect it might actually be amateurish satire. Colman continues, 'Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion [sic] of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims.' Read for yourself.
