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Comment Re:reasons this may not catch on in the US (Score 1) 533

by TomorrowPlusX (#30994916) Attached to: Electric Bicycles Surging In Popularity

Hey, I just want to thank you for a good & sensible writeup.

I am one of those people who architect his life about sensible transportation. I recently bought a house in washington dc, and ride my bike to work daily. I've been a bicycle commuter for 10 years, and have made my living arrangements favor bike commuting accordingly. It's actually pretty wonderful, I spend 15 minutes on my bike every morning and evening to get to work ( and if necessary, to stop at the grocery store on my way home ).

Frankly, it's an absolute joy. My colleagues bitch and moan about traffic, yet they insist on living as far as possible from where they work and spend more than half of every day.

Anyway, I had to comment simply because so many internet discussion threads about cycling tend to devolve into name calling and internet-tough-guy-ism.
Transportation

The Year of the E-Bicycle 494

Posted by kdawson from the daisy-daisy dept.
theodp writes "Electric bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they have never quite captured the imagination of auto-obsessed Americans. That may be about to change. At CES this month, Sanyo showed off its sleek, lightweight Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle. Priced at $2,300, the e-bike sports a black lithium-ion battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat. Press a button on the left handlebar, and a 250-watt motor kicks in, providing about twice as much power as your own pedaling. Some basic e-bike models, like the Ezip Trailz can be had for as low as $500. Both Trek and Schwinn began selling e-bikes last year, and Best Buy is offering e-bikes in three test markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, OR."
Science

Human Males Evolve At a Faster Pace Than Females 454

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-say-i'm-surprised dept.
Tisha_AH writes "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production."

Comment Re:It's a Free Market (Score 1) 553

by TomorrowPlusX (#30493444) Attached to: Microsoft Seeks Patent On Shaming Fat Gamers

You know, I just wanted to let you know that we yanks know perfectly well what an arse is, we don't need to have your mystical moon-man speak translated for us.

Yes yes yes, it must make you feel all high-falutin-etc to condescend to let us in on your colloquialisms. But it's not a secret. We know what arse means. We also know that you call a car's trunk a "boot", and that you like to spell color with a 'u'.

We get it. Carry on.
Mozilla

Firefox Mobile Threatens Mobile App Stores, Says Mozilla 278

Posted by timothy from the race-to-the-bottom-price dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla claims that its new Firefox Mobile browser could be the beginning of the end for the hugely popular app stores created by Apple and its ilk. Mozilla claims Firefox Mobile will have the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, and that will allow developers to write apps once for the web, instead of multiple versions for the different mobile platforms. 'As developers get more frustrated with quality assurance, the amount of handsets they have to buy, whether their security updates will get past the iPhone approval process ... I think they'll move to the web,' Mozilla's mobile VP, Jay Sullivan, told PC Pro. 'In the interim period, apps will be very successful. Over time, the web will win because it always does.'"
Cellphones

"Nexus One" Is Google's Android Phone 233

Posted by CmdrTaco from the better-than-the-oculus-one dept.
xchg writes "It's still not called the 'Google Phone,' but the Nexus One — to be made by HTC — is as close as I think we're going to get. The WSJ cites sources familiar with Google's plans and says that Google has designed this handset and plans to sell it directly to consumers, unlocked."
GUI

Will Tabbed Windows Be the Next Big Thing? 528

Posted by timothy from the oh-for-the-love-of-gimp dept.
kai_hiwatari writes "The recently released KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1 has introduced tabbed windows as a new feature. It is now possible to tab together windows from different applications. This looks like it will be a very good productivity tool. Like the tabbed browsers, this may well end up as a feature in all desktop environments in the years ahead."
Medicine

Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss? 978

Posted by timothy from the that-would-be-too-easy dept.
antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"
Space

LaserMotive Finds Success In Space Elevator Competition 258

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-still-take-the-stairs-for-now dept.
Bucc5062 writes "LaserMotive has achieved the first step towards the creation of a working space elevator by qualifying for the $900,000 prize in a contest sponsored by NASA. To achieve this first level, LaserMotive needed to propel a platform up a cable dangling from a helicopter at over 2 m/s. They hit a top speed of 4.13 m/s. The next level of qualification will be to achieve a climb speed greater then 5 m/s. LaserMotive beamed roughly 400 watts of laser power to a moving target at a distance of 1 kilometer, as part of the vertical laser alignment procedure. The target was a retro-reflective board a little larger than 1 meter on a side. The contest will continue for another two days with at least two other teams challenging for the prize. To win the Power Beaming competition, the LaserMotive system uses a high-power laser array to shine ultra-intense infrared light onto high-efficiency solar cells, converting the light into electric power which then drives a motor. 'Our system will track the vehicle as it climbs, compensating for motion due to wind and other changes. Building on our experience from last year’s competition, we are designing an improved system able to capture the full $2,000,000 prize.'"
Security

In Test, Windows 7 Vulnerable To 8 Out of 10 Viruses 843

Posted by kdawson from the take-your-shots dept.
As Windows 7's market share passes 3.6%, up from 1.9% the day before launch, llManDrakell notes an experiment they did over at Sophos. They installed Windows 7 on a clean machine — with no anti-virus protection — with User Access Control in its default configuration. They threw at it the next 10 virus/worm samples that came in the door. Seven of them ran; UAC stopped only one baddie that had run in the absense of UAC. "Lesson learned? You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7."
Cellphones

Gaming the App Store 217

Posted by kdawson from the burning-your-knees-on-astroturf dept.
space_in_your_face writes "Want to boost the popularity of your latest iPhone app? Ask Reverb Communications! 'When it comes to winning in the App Store, this PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy: throw ethics out the window. Reverb Communications, a PR firm that represents dozens of game publishers and developers, has managed to find astounding success on Apple's App Store for its clients. Among its various tactics? It hires a team of interns to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client's applications. ... Reverb claims that their clients have sold over $2 billion of product under their watch.'"
Power

The Rocky Road To Wind Power 281

Posted by timothy from the must-save-many-megawatts-to-outweigh dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an interesting story on the logistical problems involved in transporting disassembled towers that will reach more than 250 feet in height from ports or factories to the remote, windy destinations where the turbines are erected. In Idaho trucks laden with tall turbine parts have slammed into interstate overpasses requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs. In Texas the constant truck traffic is tearing up small roads in the western part of the state where the turbines are being rapidly erected. And in Maine a truck carrying a big piece of turbine got stuck for hours while trying to round a corner near Searsport."
Internet Explorer

Is IE Usage Share Collapsing? 575

Posted by kdawson from the war-rejoined dept.
je ne sais quoi writes "Net Applications normally releases its statistics for browser and operating system usage share on the first of every month. This month, however, the data has not shown up — only a cryptic message stating they are reviewing the data for inexplicable statistical variations and that it will be available soon. Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a blog post that might explain what is happening: Statcounter has released some data that shows a precipitous drop in IE browser use in North America, to the benefit of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. At the end of May, StatCounter shows IE usage share (for versions 6, 7, and 8 combined) at around 64%; at the beginning of June it is now about 56% — an astounding 8% drop in one month. We should keep in mind the difficulties in estimating browser usage share: this could very well be a change in how browsers report themselves, or some other statistical anomaly. So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations. Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"

Comment Re:Free Energy, what I would do if I invented it. (Score 1) 213

by TomorrowPlusX (#28458567) Attached to: Steorn's "Free Energy" Jury Comes Back To Bite Them

2 things:

1) You'd better figure out how to keep the world from just getting hotter and hotter. That free energy's being turned into work, after all.

2) You're using what would be the greatest advancement in the entirety of human history, to play a prank? On all of humankind?

Sir, you have my respect.

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