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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 92 declined, 33 accepted (125 total, 26.40% accepted)

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Politics

Submission + - Newt Gingrich's Amazon Book Reviews (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Newt Gingrich has written 156 book reviews on Amazon, at one point becoming ranked in the site's top 500 list. Most of the books are cheesy political thrillers, but the newly announced presidential candidate is also trying to learn about quantum physics, and shows good taste, 'strongly recommending' Richard Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter."
Privacy

Submission + - Your Electricity Meter is Spying on You (eff.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "If you have a 'smart meter' it is collecting data that can reveal when you wake up, when you leave for work and come home, when you go on vacation and when you take a shower. This data is commercially valuable and, if sold to third parties, can lead to privacy invasion on a massive scale. The California Public Utility Commission is reacting to the gas & electric company's mass installation of these meters with new proposals for strong privacy protections."

Submission + - Activists May Use Their Targets' Trademarks (eff.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Sometimes political activists use a company's trademark as part of a campaign to embarrass it or call attention to an issue. And sometimes the company sues, claiming that they own the mark and its satirical use is prohibited. Now a Utah court has ruled that such suits must fail because the parodic use of the mark is not commercial and is a form of protected speech."

Submission + - Moving data at the speed of light (berkeley.edu)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Due to the 'interconnect bottleneck', sometime in the next decade, computers, regardless of their processing speed, will be incapable of moving data any faster. UC Berkeley engineers have recently developed a possible solution: a way to grow nanolasers directly onto a silicon surface and take advantage of the superior data carrying capacity of photons. The new technique could lead to highly efficient silicon photonics. As well as leading to faster computers, the nanolasers are expected to allow the engineering of new types of on-chip nanophotonic devices such as lasers, photodetectors, modulators and solar cells."
Technology

Submission + - Intel Designs Faster, 3D Transistor (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Intel has found a way to keep on the Moore's Law track by making smaller, faster and lower-power computer chips by building 3D transistors. They are already manufacturing microprocessors using this new design, called a FINFET (for fin field-effect transistor), which incorporates a small pillar, or fin, of silicon that sticks up above the surface of the chip. Intel said that it expected to be able to make chips that run as much as 37 percent faster in low-voltage applications and use as much as 50 percent less power. Products based on the new technology may appear some time later this year."
Google

Submission + - Google's South Korean Offices Raided (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Seoul police raided Google’s office in Seoul, S. Korea today on suspicion that they have illegally collected users’ location data, without consent, for advertising purposes. Google claims to be cooperating with the investigation."

Submission + - Controlling Light with an Optical Event Horizon (aps.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Two German scientists have developed the theory for an all-optical transistor. In their words: 'This concept relies on cross-phase modulation between a signal and a control pulse. Other than previous approaches, the interaction length is extended by temporally locking control and the signal pulse in an optical event horizon, enabling continuous modification of the central wavelength, energy, and duration of a signal pulse by an up to sevenfold weaker control pulse.'"
Google

Submission + - Does Google Encourage Book Piracy?

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "David Flanagan, author of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and other reference works, has for 15 years been, as he says, ‘one of those lucky authors who has been able to support himself and his family almost entirely on book royalties.’ But now he his looking for a salaried job, because royalties are declining. He believes this is due in part to piracy of his books, which he sees as being actively encouraged by Google. The search giant ranks results leading to illegal copies of his works above legitimate results, such as reviews, and features illegal download sites prominently in its interactive list of search suggestions. Flanagan even found that the latest edition of his JavaScript book was available as an illegal download before he received his own copy."

Submission + - Hookers, Gambling, and Business School (philly.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Students at La Salle University business school have described a lecture
featuring scantily-clad women on hand to provide lap dances to the
students and professor. The class, on "the application of Platonic and
Hegelian ethics to business", taught by Jack Rappaport, was finally
broken up by Paul Brazina, dean of the business school and all-around
killjoy, when he happened upon it. Prof. Rappaport has been suspended.
On the website RateMyProfessors.com, one student described Rappaport in
2004: "Extremely strange man. Loves gambling, horse racing, and strip
joints. Talks about all of the above all the time." Prof. Rappaport
served on the university's committee on academic integrity."

Submission + - Renewable Energy Might Not Be 2

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Physicist Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
in Jena, Germany has shown that it is a mistake to consider the wind and
waves to be truly renewable energy sources. Build enough wind farms to
replace fossil fuels, he says, and we would reduce the energy available
in the atmosphere and actually accelerate climate change. We know from
thermodynamics that only a modest fraction of the solar energy reaching
Earth is available as 'free energy' we can use, taking the form of
winds, ocean currents, and lifting of evaporated water. The rest becomes
heat, which is not available to do work. By building wind and wave farms, we
will be converting part of the sun's useful energy into thermal energy.
The effects of this would probably show up first in the wind farms
themselves, where the gains expected will be less than predicted as the
energy of the Earth system is depleted. Kleidon’s calculations show
that the amount of energy which we can harness from the wind is reduced
by a factor of 100 if you take this into account. In addition, sucking that much energy out of the
atmosphere will alter precipitation, turbulence and the amount of solar
radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The effect
will be comparable to the results of doubling
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Even current photovoltaic
designs will contribute to global warming, because they
convert only a small fraction of the light that hits them converting the rest to heat that warms the environment."

Submission + - Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Physicist Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
in Jena, Germany has shown that it is a mistake to consider the wind and
waves to be truly renewable energy sources. Build enough wind farms to
replace fossil fuels, he says, and we would reduce the energy available
in the atmosphere and actually accelerate climate change. We know from
thermodynamics that only a modest fraction of the solar energy reaching
Earth is available as 'free energy' we can use, taking the form of
winds, ocean currents, and lifting of evaporated water. The rest becomes
heat, which is not available to do work. Some of the free energy
harnessed by wind and wave generators will be lost as heat, since they
can not be perfectly efficient. So by building wind and wave farms, we
will be converting part of the sun's useful energy into thermal energy.
The effects of this would probably show up first in wind farms
themselves, where the gains expected will be less than predicted as the
energy of the Earth system is depleted. Kleidon’s calculations show
that the amount of energy which we can harness from the wind is reduced
by a factor of 100 if you take into account the depletion of free energy
by wind farms. In addition, sucking that much energy out of the
atmosphere will change precipitation, turbulence and the amount of solar
radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The magnitude of the changes
will be comparable to the changes to the climate caused by doubling
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Even current photovoltaic
solar cell designs will contribute to global warming, because they
convert only a small fraction of the light that hits them, and absorb
most of the rest, converting it to heat that warms the environment."
The Internet

Submission + - The First Paywall

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: The Elizabethen explosion of playwriting talent came to a sudden halt with the abolishment, by the authorities, of the first paywalls: actual walls that excluded the public from hearing Shakespeare’s plays unless they coughed up the penny to enter the theater. And according to a trio of Authors Guild officers writing in the NY Times, we might never have had Shakespeare’s plays had it not been for that bold experiment: the first paywalls, which created a market that connected writers with the public. This led to the first copyright laws, also in England, and their expansion in the new United States; rules that led to the enlightenment suffusion of books and widespread learning. The authors contend that internet-inspired calls for the weakening of copyright protections risk another collapse of culture that depends on serious investments of time and effort by creative people: ‘We tamper with those rules at our peril.’

Submission + - Deep Galaxy Surveys and Gravitational Lensing

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Astronomers who survey galaxies in the distant universe are getting some
unexpected help, and interference, from gravity. Analysis of images
from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field survey, a collection of the furthest
images of the universe ever taken, revealed a mystery: many of the
faraway galaxies they observed appeared to be located near the line of
sight to galaxies in the foreground. Through a statistical analysis,
they determined that strong gravitational lensing is the most likely
explanation. This arises from the bending of light in a gravitational
field, first predicted by Newton and, more accurately, by Einstein’s
general theory of relativity. It turns out that as many as 20 percent
of the most distant galaxies currently detected appear brighter than
they actually are, due to the lensing effect. In fact, many galaxies in
the remote universe will only be visible to us because of the bending of
their light by the gravitational fields of other galaxies."

Submission + - Harvesting Body Heat to Warm Buildings 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "About 250,000 people a day pass through Stockholm Central Station in
Sweden, going about their frenetic business and generating a great deal
of waste heat that had, until recently, just been ventilated away. But
now, heat exchangers in the station's ventilation system convert the excess body heat
into hot water that is pumped into a neighboring office
building, lowering its energy costs by as much as 25%. Harnessing body
heat works well in Sweden because of their low winter temperatures and
high gas prices, making it worth spending a little bit of money on
electricity to move heat from building to building, rather than spending
much more on heating with gas. But as a dwindling fossil fuel supply
affects economies worldwide, this and similar ideas might find wider
application."
Media

Submission + - Top Five Traditional Journalism Failures of 2010 (lee-phillips.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "In 2010 citizen journalism on the web began to increasingly trump traditional news sources. While they struggle to find a workable business model, institutions like the New York Times continue to undertake important investigations and produce excellent articles on both world affairs and local concerns. But 2010 seemed to mark a turning point, where several important stories were covered more deeply, objectively, and reliably by what are variously called blogs, citizen or online journalism, new media, or various other things, often by traditional journalists struggling to come to terms with their new competition."

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