That is probably associated with the fact that 25% of them are forced to use it:

Given how obviously horrible the beta design is, this sentiment on the best way to test drive it is quite galling. OTOH, I am thankful they are not responsible for design airplanes or automobiles:

It has occured to me that maybe they trying to alienate the slashdot community

Welcome to the new USA-beta!

We've had only a few major redesigns since 1776; we think it's time for another. But we really do take to heart the comments you've made about the look and functionality of the beta government that will control our country's future.

Excellent comment. OTOH, my cynical side is suspicious of how tone-deaf the site owners seem to be. It makes me wonder if the following item was on an NSA todo list somewhere:

AC opined:

Prime Minister John Key, who is in charge of GCSB said:

Key's office confirmed that Key was talking about the video that his lawyers had claimed was deleted.

AC opined:

Here are some links from the fine article showing that the government and the police have already admitted malfeasance:

Police Admit That NZ Spy Agency Illegally Spied On Kim Dotcom

NZ Prime Minister Admits That The Government Illegally Wiretapped Megaupload Employees

Oddly enough you are correct that these admissions of malfeasance do put the credibility of the police and the Prime Minister at risk although that is probably not what you meant.

And in conclusion: FUCK BETA!

The fine article claims:

I am a physicist and I don't think a useful quantum computer will ever emerge. The problem is very simple. In order for a quantum system to calculate exponentially faster than a classical system, it must contain exponentially more useful information which makes it exponentially more sensitive to noise. An early computer researcher (perhaps Jon von Neumann) used a similar argument to conclude that digital computers would eventually supersede analog computers because the precision of analog computers is limited by the noise floor which is very hard to beat back while you can make digital systems arbitrarily more precise by simply adding more circuits (or more time).

In simple terms, for every extra decimal digit you want to add to the size of a number you can factor with a quantum computer you need to reduce the effect of noise by roughly a factor of 10. I don't think this is greatly different from the limitation of classical computers where for every decimal digit you want to add to the size of numbers you want to factor you must multiply the time/size of computation by roughly a factor of 10.

Despite this reservation, I think we should continue funding research in quantum computing.

Saying freedom is more important than safety does not imply that safety is unimportant just like Saying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is taller than Shaquille O'Neal does imply Shaq is not tall.

Again, you are confusing heat and temperature. The input is energy (heat), the input is not temperature. No one who has grasped basic thermodynamics would take your argument seriously after that fundamental mistake. You seem to be just stringing together scientific jargon in a nonsensical way to reach a conclusion you like.

In a different post you claim that convection plays a significant role in the heat loss of the Earth. The upper atmosphere is close to being a vacuum. At a high enough altitude the amount of heat transfer due to conduction and convection is negligible. Do yourself a favor and Google(thermosphere).

You claimed the fine Nature article was wrong because it was based on radiative forcing yet you have never defined what you mean by that term. Your definition seems to be at odds with the definition given by the Wikipedia. The term was never used in the article nor was it used in the two references you gave to back up your claim that radiative forcing had been debunked.

Again, I ask, in the Earth-Sun system what is the "input" temperature if it is not the temperature of the surface of the Sun?

And BTW I do have a Ph.D. in physics. A Nobel Laureate was the chairman of my thesis defense and I've study thermodynamics with some of the leading experts in the world.

***click***

0) Requiring your arguments to be in accord with basic physics is not nit picking.

1) The Earth is not in thermal equilibrium with the Sun. If it were then it would be at the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. The only reason life can exist on Earth is because of the gradient caused by the Earth not being in thermal equilibrium with the Sun.

2) A black body is not the same thing as a perfect insulator. They are opposites in a way. A perfect insulator would block all radiative cooling (or else it would not be a very good insulator). My point is that the limiting temperature is a function of the insulating properties of the Earth. It is not an intrinsic property of the strength of solar heating.

If you treat the Earth as a black body you are explicitly ignoring all insulation effects. IOW you are ignoring all greenhouse effects. In simple layman's terms, how hot something gets when it is left out in the sun depends greatly on how well it is insulated. Even the temperature inside a conventional greenhouse is highly dependent on how well it is insulated.

3) When you say a black body in equilibrium radiates the same amount of energy it absorbs, you seem to be repeating the definition of radiative forcing, not debunking it.

If you believe there is a limiting temperature to the strength of solar heating that is much less than the temperature of the surface of the Sun, please tell us what that temperature limit is.

Neither of the fine articles linked to in the summary nor either or your two references even mention radiative forcing. If you have sources that don't conflict with basic physics which debunk whatever it is you mean by radiative forcing I would like to see them. Perhaps part of the problem is that your definition of radiative forcing differs from the definition given by the Wikipedia. So far you have given nothing more than your opinion that the authors of the Nature article made a serious (and probably job-threatening) mistake.

The Slashdotter Jane Q. Public had repeatedly claimed the Nature article was bunkum because it was based on the concept of radiative forcing. For example:

To me, it would be rather earth shattering news if a Nature article was based on a theory that was debunked five years ago. I looked up radiative forcing to try to find out what JQP was talking about. JQP was kind enough to supply references for the so-called refutation which should have made my task easier. The references were utter nonsense that defied basic physics with silly hand waving arguments.

Since JQP's erroneous comments were not moderated into oblivion, correcting their spread of grossly unscientific misinformation which cast aspersions on the fine Nature article is about as far from nit-picking as one can get.

Given the assumptions of a perfect insulator and constant energy input, what is the limiting temperature? What happens to energy conservation when that temperature limit is reached?

As I said before, there are, of course, limits due to imperfect insulation and the finite temperature of the surface of the Sun but these limits are far above the temperatures reached in the upper atmosphere.

What is the limiting temperature of the strength of solar heating?

What is the limiting temperature of a perfectly insulated box with a constant input of energy?

Neither one of the fine articles linked to in the summary mention radiative forcing. Neither do either of the two references you cite as proofs that radiative forcing has been debunked. The Wikipedia describes radiative forcing as:

There is no mention of it being refuted (or even controversial); not in the Wikipedia article and not in the two references you cited. In fact, since radiative forcing is a rather simple definition it is hard to imagine how it could be refutable.

Furthermore, this reference of yours, despite having pretty pictures, seems to be based on utter nonsense with the main point being:

This is utter nonsense because it makes a direct comparison between heat and temperature. It would be helpful if the article mentioned what the temperature limit of the strength of solar heating was. But if they did that, the utter nonsense would be apparent because the temperature of a solar furnace can be many thousands of degrees (either Celsius or Fahrenheit) so if there is limiting temperature, it must be so high as to be meaningless in discussions of global warming.

Another way to see it is that if you can trap solar energy in a box that has perfect insulation (energy comes in but it does not go out) then the temperature of the box will rise without limit. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect insulator so there are limits to how high a temperature you can achieve but these limits are not a direct property of the solar radiation. There is a temperature limit, of a sort, to solar radiation but the limit is the temperature of the surface of the Sun, which again has no bearing on discussion of global warming.

What they are exploiting is that in naive implementations of RSA the amount of computer power needed during en/decryption varies with each binary digit in the key. If the digit is zero then no computation is done and if it is one that a tight loop is executed.

There have been other side channel attacks that exploit this weakness in naive implementations. The obvious fix is to slightly change the algorithm so the same computation is done whether the digit is a zero or a one. This reduces the efficiency by a factor of two but it makes these side channel attacks much more difficult.

In fact, the authors contacted GPG before publicly releasing this exploit and the fix is in place:

A brochure sent out by my power company said the amount of mercury released due to burning more coal for powering incandescent bulbs is far greater that the amount of mercury used in a CFL that replaces them. Popular Mechanics agrees:

1. Quality health care
2. Affordable health care
3. Obscene corporate health care profits

Pick any two.

Assange posted footage of an Apache helicopter crew murdering innocent civilians. How could he possibly have that footage if he wasn't involved in the murders? It is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed the video recording device in the helicopter.