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Comment Re:Time out (Score 1) 712

by bishop32x (#28116739) Attached to: Painting The World's Roofs White Could Slow Climate Change

The climate isn't a boolean.

We know the climate is going to change, the question is now how much is it going to change?

If we stop all human green house gas emissions now (last year actually) the average global temperature will increase by roughly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. If we maintain our current level of green house gas emissions for the next 100 years we should see an increase of 9 degrees. If we bring India and China up to western emissions levels it'll be 12 degrees.
The Courts

Pirate Bay Trial Ends In Jail Sentences 1870

Posted by timothy from the even-non-commercial-use dept.
myvirtualid writes "The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, 'Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was "commercially driven" when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.' The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. 'Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,' Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter." Update: 04/17 12:16 GMT by T : Several updates, below.

Comment Re:sure it is (Score 1) 1079

by bishop32x (#27588625) Attached to: College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior
The guy is being accused of a lot of things, but the only evidence provided is from his room mate (the one he outed). Having read the warrant it sounds like the room mate threw the kitchen sink at him, accusing him of:

-using stolen laptops

-having "hundreds" of illegally downloaded movies and songs

-being a hacker

-jail breaking iphones

-altering other people computers so that illegal files would be hidden (I'm not sure what this even means, the closest I can come is that he set up partition on other students computers)

-telling his roomates about all the systems he's hacked into

-Changing grades.

Frankly it's ridiculous that they got this search warrant based on one morons testimony.
Privacy

ACLU Creates Map of US "Constitution-Free Zone" 979

Posted by kdawson from the stay-well-inland dept.
trackpick points out a recent ACLU initiative to publicize a recent expansion of authority claimed by the Border Patrol to stop and search individuals up to 100 miles from any US border. They have created a map of what they call the US Constitution-Free Zone. "Using data provided by the US Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders. The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This 'Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.'"
Music

Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support 231

Posted by Soulskill from the enjoy-your-rights dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."
Yahoo!

Security Flaw In Yahoo Mail Exposes Plaintext Authentication Info 66

Posted by Soulskill from the who-needs-encryption-anyway dept.
holdenkarau writes "Yahoo!'s acquisition of open source mail client Zimbra has apparently brought some baggage to the mail team. The new Yahoo! desktop program transmits the authentication information in plain text. The flaw was discovered during a Yahoo 'hacku' Day at the University of Waterloo (the only Canadian school part of the trip). Compared to the recent news about Gmail exposing the names associated with accounts, this seems downright scary. So, if you have friends or relatives who might have installed Yahoo! desktop and value their e-mail accounts, now would be a good time to get them to change the password and switch back to the web interface."
Google

Google Reveals Wireless Vision — Open Networks 90

Posted by Soulskill from the optimizing-the-ethertubes dept.
Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from CNet: "Google's vision of tomorrow's wireless network is in stark contrast to how wireless operators do business today, setting the two sides on a possible collision course. Earlier this week, the search giant filed a patent application with the US Patent Office describing its vision of an open wireless network where smartphones aren't tied to any single cell phone network. In Google's open wireless world, phones and other wireless devices would search for the strongest, fastest connection at the most competitive price. Essentially, wireless operators' networks would be reduced to 'dumb pipes.'" The full patent application is available as well. Google founder Larry Page recently asked the FCC to free up portions of the broadcast spectrum for this purpose.
Biotech

Submission + - Cooking Stimulated Big Leap in Human Cognition

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "For a long time, humans were pretty dumb doing little but make "the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years," says Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. Then, 150,000 years ago, our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials. We started creating art and maybe even religion. To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, researchers examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years. Comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism. The finding suggests that increased access to calories spurred our cognitive advances although definitive claims of causation are premature. In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains. Today, humans have relatively small digestive systems and allocate around 20% of their total energy to the brain, compared to approximately 13% for non-human primates and 2-8% for other vertebrates. While other theories for the brain's cognitive spurt have not been ruled out, the finding sheds light on what made us, as Khaitovich put it, "so strange compared to other animals.""
Transportation

$500,000 Prize for Faster Airport Security Checks 517

Posted by timothy from the more-logical-would-help-too dept.
coondoggie writes "A security company is willing to fork over $500,000 in prize money to the person or company that comes up with an innovative technology to speed airport security lines. The company making the offer, Clear, says the winning technology must meet a number of criteria including TSA approval and it must reduce inconvenience by, for example, allowing for no divesting of shoes or outer garments."
Space

Intergalactic Missing Mass Missing Again 171

Posted by kdawson from the yesterday-upon-the-stair dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at the University Of Alabama In Huntsville have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of 'warm' gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons — leaving the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter (in terms of its ordinary matter) than previously calculated. In 2002 the same team reported finding large amounts of extra 'soft' (relatively low-energy) x-rays coming from the vast spaces in the middle of galaxy clusters. Their cumulative mass was thought to account for as much as ten percent of the mass and gravity needed to hold together galaxies, galaxy clusters, and perhaps the universe itself. When the team looked at data from a galaxy cluster in the southern sky, however, they found that energy from those additional soft x-rays doesn't look like it should. 'The best, most logical explanation seems to be that a large fraction of the energy comes from electrons smashing into photons instead of from warm atoms and ions, which would have recognizable spectral emission lines,' said Dr. Max Bonamente. The work was published Oct. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal."
Robotics

STriDER, a Three-Legged Walking Robot 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the they-call-him-tripod dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a short article, New Scientist reports that researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a tripedal experimental robot. With its three legs, this robot, named STriDER — short for 'Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot' — is actually more stable than 2- or 4-legged robots. As said another researcher, 'It's like a biped with a walking stick.' This robot is intended to deploy sensors and cameras in difficult-to-access areas."

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