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Communications

High-Altitude Balloon Tweets Earth 49

Posted by CmdrTaco from the do-that-yourself dept.
celsomartinho writes "Spacebits is yet another low-cost High-Altitude Balloon (HAB) with a computer probe being launched to near space on 30 May, this time in Portugal. The twist with this project, besides the cool electronics, cameras, and sensors on board, is the fact that the team provided the online community with a real-time web dashboard so that everyone can follow the two-hour journey up to 100,000 feet and back to earth. Real-time data includes measurements from all its sensors, including temperature, pressure, humidity and air quality, altitude, acceleration, and GPS coordinates and a live Twitter feed. The team is also using a public GSM network to send SMS lat/lon/alt coordinates to anyone willing to go on launch site and participate in the probe hunt." The balloon goes off Memorial Day weekend, so bookmark the page if you're on call.

Comment Re:Environmentalism (Score 1) 593

by juancnuno (#32297194) Attached to: BP's Final "Top Kill" Procedure For Gulf Oil Spill

But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard? No, I don't think they should. They're holding themselves to the same standard the average person would.

I do believe large corporations should be held to higher standards than the average person. For starters, large corporations have far more resources at their disposal they can use to handle accidents than the average person. I guess you could argue that an accident to a large corporation is on a larger scale than that of an average person.

Comment Re:Devil's advocate (Score 1) 288

by juancnuno (#31255678) Attached to: Gates and MS Don't See Eye-To-Eye On CO2

The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear, even though it is the only power source that is cheap, safe, and good for the environment.

I'm an environmentalist, and I support the development of nuclear power.

Comment Re:Fooled me once, shame on you... (Score 1) 684

by juancnuno (#31139742) Attached to: It's 2010; What's the Best E-Reader?

I've seriously considered writing to Jeff Bezos and saying I will only buy a Kindle if he will arrange to get me free Kindle copies of all the books I bought, which the eBook industry has rendered useless piles of bits. The word theft gets thrown around rather casually with DRM gets discussed. Well, I feel that denying me access to the books I bought and paid for in good faith is theft. When the eBook industry, as represented by Amazon, is willing to make me whole, then I will start buying eBook devices and content again.

You should! Cut-and-paste that whole comment and send it to him.
Power

Laser Fusion Passes Major Hurdle 354

Posted by kdawson from the twenty-years-out-and-always-will-be dept.
chill writes "The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has performed their first controlled fusion experiments using all 192 lasers. While still not ramped up to full power, the first experiments proved very fruitful. The lasers create a lot of plasma in the target container and researchers worried that the plasma would interfere with the ability of the target to absorb enough energy to ignite. These experiments show that not only does enough energy make it through, the plasma can be manipulated to increase the uniformity of compression. Ramping up of power is due to start in May." The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'"

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