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Comment Re:Who needs oil? (Score 1) 305

Fusion would break the stranglehold of petro-exporting countries in the Middle East as well as belligerent exporters like Russia and Iran.

You're assuming said fusion plants would be radically cheaper to construct and operate than existing fission plants...something the anti-nuclear activists would probably complicate despite the obvious benefits of fusion over fission. Never underestimate the public fear of the word "nuclear" even if the processes involved are ridiculously different.

I can hear the rallying cry now: "They want to build a plant that works the same way as a thermonuclear bomb! Do you want a nuclear bomb IN YOUR BACKYARD???"

People are still terrified of fluoride in their water. Can you imagine their reponse to the above?

Comment The power of the future... (Score 2) 305

Fusion power is roughly 20 years away from being viable...and has been for the last 40 years LOL.

Seriously, I'll start worrying about proliferation risks when a commercially viable fusion reactor DESIGN is created. Building one -- assuming it's ever viable to begin with -- would take years, which is plenty of time to address proliferation concerns before it came online.

Comment Re:It's OPTIONAL! (Score 2) 232

I've seen several comments here saying "Well, I'm just CC'ing people who need to be kept in the loop!" Ok, I get that. If it's that important, why don't you just wait until they get back and give them a short briefing? If it's not that important, why did you bother sending it in the first place?

Becaused they asked me to CC them on such issues, and I don't feel like keeping a log of when everyone was gone and what happened that they might care about, so I can resend it when they get back. If it is something I care about I will talk to them when they get back. If it is something that they care about and know about then they can ask me. The problem is the stuff that they care about but don't know to ask about. Skimming an inbox full of CCs works well for that.

Comment Re:Not all documentation is giant documents (Score 2) 199

Absolutely. There are many advantages to this approach:
* Users can get info they need more quickly as they are already in the correct context to get help on that feature, and don't have to search a document.
* Users are more likely to use integrated help than a huge user manual, saving you support time.
* It is easier to enforce a policy of updating documentation when you update code.

The only thing your separate documentation needs to cover are high-level concepts of the application, and common HOWTOs. If you must have a monolithic reference document, then use a system like docbook that generates HTML and PDF, and integrate HTML help into your application.

Of course this is assuming that these are GUI apps. Server apps or anything that needs configuration outside of a GUI must have full reference documentation.

Comment How big is it? (Score 5, Insightful) 184

To put this in perspective, 5,000 sq. mi. is a square about 71 miles on a side. Compare this to the total area of the Gulf (615,000 sq. mi) and you'll see this "dead zone" occupies just 0.8% of the Gulf. Is this something that needs addressing? Absolutely. But it's not some horrific cauldron of death like the headline tries to make it out to be.

Comment Re:It wasn't his fault (Score 4, Informative) 127

Sure, his name was on it as a co-author, but that sounds more like the result of office politics than actually believing what she was publishing. Even his employer seemed like they held him in high regard after the scandal broke.

It was a bit more than that. He recruited Obokata to RIKEN, was her mentor, and supervised her STAP work. As you said, there is not even the slightest hint that he was engaged in any misconduct, but the RIKEN investigation did find that Sasai and Wakayama carried “heavy responsibility” for what happened, and the incident opened questions about how closely co-authors and research advisers should oversee the work of their underlings.

Comment Yes it is. (Score 2) 259

The scientific model is quite simply:
1) Develop testable hypothesis (aka theory)
2) Develop experiments/observations to test hypothesis
3) Perform experiment/observations
4) Repeat
Anyone who participates in any of these steps is performing science. It took a while to find practical tests of String theory given it's extreme generality, but several have been suggested and a few have even been performed, ranging from the scale of planetary motion to LHC data.

Submission + - How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil

An anonymous reader writes: With its trove of knowledge about the likes, histories and social connections of its 1.3 billion users worldwide, Facebook executives argue, it can help advertisers reach exactly the right audience and measure the impact of their ads — while also, like TV, conveying a broad brand message. Facebook, which made $1.5 billion in profit on $7.9 billion in revenue last year, sees particular value in promoting its TV-like qualities, given that advertisers spend $200 billion a year on that medium. “We want to hold ourselves accountable for delivering results,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vice president for global marketing solutions, in a recent interview. “Not smoke and mirrors, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.”

Comment Re:But (Score 2) 110

The quickest numbers I could find say that at the scales of large power-plants, the generator is very efficient, but the turbine not so much, around 50%. This would put the system as a whole at around 40% efficency sunlight -> electricity. That's competitive with the best solar voltaic systems tested in the lab, and 50-100% better than practical systems on the market. Assuming their system really does scale up to power plant sizes, of course.

Comment Re:I don't see the problem. (Score 1) 667

It seems that the launch site has been rather precisely determined. Perhaps you missed that memo.

And no matter how much evidence the US or Ukrainian government produces, no matter how detailed and annotated, Russia will dismiss it with a wave of a hand as fabricated, slanted, biased...whatever they want. They'll never admit responsibility.

Comment Re:I don't see the problem. (Score 1) 667

What they need to do is to organize UN peacekeeper mission there, not wage proxy war with US.

Yes, because UN peacekeepers have such a long, sterling reputation on stopping stuff like this from happening.

But regardless, the UN will never do anything in this conflict. Russia holds a veto in the Security Council, and they will stop any such measures from ever happening.

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