Comment Re:What about other devices? (Score 1) 421
Android is not free. Googls pays Microsoft a small fortune in patent licensing to be able to sell Android.
Comment Re:The power of bad reporting (Score 1) 129
Lighten up, Francis. This is Slashdot. Nobody expects good journalism or even semi-accurate plagiarism here.
Comment This is not new (Score 1) 129
Crystal light has been around for a very long time.
Comment Re:In other words....Don't look like a drug traffi (Score 1) 462
So, you believe it is okay for the government to confiscate your property, without being able to articulate a _reasonable_ suspicion of criminal activity, without charging you with a crime, and without convicting you of a crime?
Comment Story is bogus (Score 0) 171
I checked Netcraft, and they did NOT confirm it...
Comment Link to App (Score 1) 77
Since neither the submitter nor the editors couldn't be bothered to provide a link to the app in the play store (let's face it, that would be too useful), here it is:
Comment Wrong thinking (Score 1) 499
"Colleagues who decry Barr's fate worry that the incident could make other scientists think twice about coming to work for NSF"
No, her fate will make other scientists think twice about getting involved with terrorist organizations and then lying about it on their background check applications.
Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion 540
First time accepted submitter ltorvalds11 writes Cuba says its economy is suffering a "systematic worsening" due to a US embargo, the consequences of which Havana places at $1.1 trillion since Washington imposed the sanctions in 1960, taking into account the depreciation of the dollar against gold. "There is not, and there has not been in the world, such a terrorizing and vile violation of human rights of an entire people than the blockade that the US government has been leading against Cuba for 55 years," Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno told reporters. He also blamed the embargo for the difficulties in accessing internet on the island, saying that the United States creates an obstacle for companies providing broadband services in Cuba. Additionally, he said that the area is one of the "most sensitive" to the embargo, with economic losses estimated at $34.2 million. It is also the sector that has fallen "victim of all kinds of attacks" by the US, as violations of the Cuban radio or electronic space "promote destabilization" of Cuban society, the report notes. The damage to Cuban foreign trade between April 2013 and June 2014 amounted to $3.9 billion, the report said. Without the embargo, Cuba could have earned $205.8 million selling products such as rum and cigars to US consumers. Barack Obama last week signed the one-year extension of the embargo on Cuba, based on the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, created to restrict trade with countries hostile to the U.S..
Comment Upstate South Carolina and the CATBUS (Score 1) 491
Our area just picked up a few Proterra electric buses for use in the Catbus system, which serves Clemson University and the surrounding areas. There were some huge federal grants involved, and they have been riddled with problems, but have finally started running and carrying passengers. We're mostly a rural area and the bus system is free for all to use - paid for by Clemson University student fees and some taxpayer money from surrounding municipalities (Cities of Clemson, Seneca, Pendleton, and Central, afaik).
The buses are neat. They use overhead inductive chargers that are located at various places around town. I haven't ridden one yet (I prefer to get around by bicycle), but I hear they're pretty nice.
I am sure the impact on air quality is almost unmeasurable in our vast expanse of rural countryside, but in cities the impact could be huge.
UN Study Shows Record-High Increases For Atmospheric CO2 In 2013 427
Figures released Tuesday by a United Nations advisory body reveal that 2013 saw new recorded highs for both carbon dioxide and methane, as well as the largest year-over-year rise in carbon dioxide since 1984, reflecting continuing worldwide emissions from human sources but also the possibility that natural sinks (oceans and vegetation) are near their capacity for absorbing the excess. From the Washington Post's account:
The latest figures from the World Meteorological Organization’s monitoring network are considered particularly significant because they reflect not only the amount of carbon pumped into the air by humans, but also the complex interaction between man-made gases and the natural world. Historically, about half of the pollution from human sources has been absorbed by the oceans and by terrestrial plants, preventing temperatures from rising as quickly as they otherwise would, scientists say.
“If the oceans and the biosphere cannot absorb as much carbon, the effect on the atmosphere could be much worse,” said Oksana Tarasova, a scientist and chief of the WMO’s Global Atmospheric Watch program, which collects data from 125 monitoring stations worldwide. The monitoring network is regarded as the most reliable window on the health of Earth’s atmosphere, drawing on air samples collected near the poles, over the oceans, and in other locations far from cities and other major sources of pollution.
The new figures for carbon dioxide were particularly surprising, showing the biggest year-over-year increase since detailed records were first compiled in the 1980s, Tarasova said in an interview. The jump of nearly three parts per million over 2012 levels was twice as large as the average increase in carbon levels in recent decades, she said.
Comment Consensus does not have a bad reputation (Score 1) 770
In fact, consensus is a very valuable part of the cooperative scientific process.
The bad reputation belongs to those who attempt to use consensus as a substitute for proof. People like the IPCC, EPA, NOAA, NASA, and governments all over the world who are trying to use this climate change bogeyman as an excuse to foist oppressive political and economic regimes on free (and not free) people.
Comment Re:This is BAD. Very very BAD. (Score 1) 254
Not just content control, but complete and total usage control. Using this technology, ISPs could prevent you opening a connection to anyone they didn't want you to connect to, because all of your outgoing connections would have to be "approved" by their router.
This is all about ending the free and open Internet as we know it today and completely privatizing control over it.
Comment Column Position Requirements in FORTRAN 77 (Score 1) 729
I'd say that the column position requirements in FORTRAN 77 take the cake.
NVIDIA Sues Qualcomm and Samsung Seeking To Ban Import of Samsung Phones 110
Calibax writes NVIDIA has filed complaints against Samsung and Qualcomm at the ITC and in the U.S. District court in Delaware. The suit alleges that the companies are both infringing NVIDIA GPU patents covering technology including programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing. NVIDIA is seeking damages and a ban on U.S. import of a number of devices with Snapdragon and Exynos processors until there is an agreement on licensing.
Comment This is BAD. Very very BAD. (Score 5, Interesting) 254
In a nutshell, this is applying DRM to all of your connection attempts. You will only be able to make connections that are "authorized" by TPTB.
No more free and open networking.
