Comment Re:When did an open mind become political death? (Score 1) 727
Senator Claude Pepper was once accused of "Celibacy before marriage, and being addicted to monogamy ever since"
Comment Re:methods with lasers, or... (Score 1) 91
Oh that's a classic
Comment Re:The headline lists two states of the US (Score 1) 84
It makes more sense when you realise that Australia is the 51+Nst state of the US, so the headline is actually just listing the states of the US, not implying cartographical closeness.
Pfft, like we'd ever accept them into our Union, what with all their monarchism.
Comment Re:yeah. better chinese workers die (Score 1) 84
and we pretend we have a 'green economy' with our space-ship apple headquarters that run off of sunshine and unicorn farts.
fucking US hypocrisy is astounding.
But your hypocrisy is just A-OK because you're edgy, right? Sitting there posting on the electrically-powered Internet with your computer made from petroleum by-products and rare earth minerals, powered by coal, natural gas, petroleum or nuclear. What's astounding is your stupidity regarding your own situation. Nobody's pretending we have anything other than what we have, which is not an optimal or efficient system. If you don't like what's going on, get an education and invent something better. Give it away for free if you're that worried. Otherwise my suggestion would be to dial back on the rhetoric and the America-hate and start advocating real solutions. Otherwise, you're just another douchebag troll.
Unicorn farts contribute to global warming, by the way.
Comment Re:The reason for the question... (Score 1) 292
is because this is some of the earliest snow, EVER, f
Citation needed. And even then, given the length of recording snow fall in that area, how could we trust the citation?
The Buffalo metro area was hammered by a snowstorm October 12-13, 2006. It was smaller in scale, but much larger in terms of precipitation, with nearly four feet falling in some areas. We remember it as a bad storm, but nowhere near the worst that's ever hit. There's always '77. A new generation of downtown workers learned the hard way to get the hell out of Dodge when the snow starts falling thick, though. Plenty of folks were trapped in either their offices or their cars that Thursday afternoon.
Comment Re:The reason for the question... (Score 1) 292
is because this is some of the earliest snow, EVER, for the northeast, the amount of snow (3" - 22") and it was the heavy, wet kind which is worse than regular, powdery snow because it brings down branches which are several inches thick or entire trees.
How heavy is the snow? Imagine someone putting 3 - 4 gallon jugs of water on the end of your snow shovel and trying to toss the stuff. You get tired very quickly. Even shoveling small amounts is tiring because of the weight.
As to bringing down branches and trees, I helped my dad clear the collected snow off tree branches from around his house to prevent them from snapping. In fact, some of the branches, which you can normally walk under with ease, were all but lying on the ground from the weight of the snow on them. Once the snow was removed they bounced right back to where they should have been.
While doing this, we both heard and watched as branches from pine trees in other peoples yards snap and crack off.
York, PA was on CNN showing the effects. One guy had a large branch (4" diameter) fall on to his windshield while driving. I saw in Yonkers, NY, a tree came down and destroyed both the guys truck and took out half his house. I heard of similar situations around me.
That's the reason this made news. It is out of the ordinary, the amount was very significant and the damage it caused. My local power company said the amount of damage from this storm was worse than when Irene came through early this year.
Sure, Buffalo and Erie get more, Minnesota likes to brag about the amount they get because they have nothing else to talk about during the winter, but this is newsworthy because it's one of those odd occurrences.
Quit yer cryin', downstater.
A real shame about the trees though. We still haven't recovered much of our distinct greenery here in the Queen City, some five years later.
Comment Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score 1) 292
I've heard there's a third sport, something called "basketball".
Consider yourselves lucky to have these three. In Brazil, all we got is soccer (or football, whatever!).
Your national basketball team is generally quite competitive. I remember them beating USA once or twice.
Comment Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score 1) 292
Comment Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score 1) 292
Boy, that's some real flamebait. Most rugby players can probably run rings around most American football players.
No, they really can't, and it's not flamebait. Most rugby players wouldn't survive an unpadded go-round against either a college or professional football team. I don't think you comprehend the difference in size, strength, and speed. In pads they'd just get knocked around. Endurance doesn't mean anything when you can't breathe because you've got a punctured lung.
Comment Re:methods with lasers, or... (Score 1) 91
Surely the metal tip of a ballpoint pen (gas propelled or otherwise) is also conductive? But point taken about the limitations of using pencils, although I would think that having a stock of short pencils with soft leads that wouldn't shatter could solve those problems quite easily.
The space pen's tip is retractable, which makes it much less likely to penetrate anything. I'm not sure the Capitalist pen v. Communist pencil debate really matters much, since neither recording system has caused any issues.
However, although I enjoy simple solutions to complex problems as much as the next nerd, an elegant, slightly-less-simple solution that provides more functionality is preferable in my estimation. The pen wins.
On topic, I eagerly await the sorcery that will bring about a tractor beam. Perhaps they should reverse the polarity of the tachyon field?
Submission + - Ikea to Build Micro City in East London (inhabitat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Inter Ikea Systems, owner of the popular furniture chain, recently announced plans to build an enormous 26-acre, suburb next to London’s Olympic Park. Strand East, located in East London, will include 1,200 homes, a 350-room hotel, 480,000 square feet of offices, as well as shops and restaurants. The site is flanked by canals on two sides, and Ikea hopes to create what it describes as a “mini-Venice,” with water-taxi service and a floating cocktail bar.
Submission + - HP Announced ARM Based Server Line (infoworld.com)
sammcj writes: HP's server design packs 288 Calxeda chips into a 4U rack-mount server, or 2,800 in a full rack, with a shared power, cooling, and management infrastructure. By eliminating much of the cabling and switching devices used in traditional servers and using the low-power ARM processors, HP says it can reduce both power and space requirements dramatically.
The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip
The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip
Submission + - HTML5 WebSocket to hasten Web app comms (techworld.com.au)
angry tapir writes: "An HTML5-related standard called WebSocket could cut some of this networking overhead, speeding responsiveness in Web applications, argued a Web app expert. "If you were not constrained by the limitations of HTTP, what sort of truly interactive Web applications would you build?" John Fallows rhetorically asked at the HTML5 Live Conference held Tuesday in New York. Fallows is the chief technology officer and co-founder of messaging software provider Kaazing. The use of the W3C's WebSocket could enable a new generation of real-time, "zero-latency" Web applications whose communications requirements would be too demanding for today's HTTP protocols, Fallows argued."
Submission + - India to build Thorium reactor (guardian.co.uk) 1
slowLearner writes: India will build a working Thorium reactor.
Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.
Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.
Submission + - Duqu Attackers Exploited Windows Zero-Day (securityweek.com)
wiredmikey writes: Taking another page from Stuxnet, it seems the attackers behind Duqu used a Microsoft Windows zero-day as part of their attack campaign.
Researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) — the group that initially discovered the original Duqu binaries — has located an installer for the malware. The installer file is a malicious Microsoft Word document that exploits a previously-unknown kernel vulnerability that allows code execution.
Once the Word file is opened, the malware executes and installs the Duqu binaries.
The revelation that Duqu uses a zero-day is yet another similarity with Stuxnet, the notorious worm discovered in 2010 targeting industrial control systems. In the case of Stuxnet, the attackers used four Microsoft zero-days to infect systems.
Microsoft has been notified and is working on a fix.
Researchers at the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) — the group that initially discovered the original Duqu binaries — has located an installer for the malware. The installer file is a malicious Microsoft Word document that exploits a previously-unknown kernel vulnerability that allows code execution.
Once the Word file is opened, the malware executes and installs the Duqu binaries.
The revelation that Duqu uses a zero-day is yet another similarity with Stuxnet, the notorious worm discovered in 2010 targeting industrial control systems. In the case of Stuxnet, the attackers used four Microsoft zero-days to infect systems.
Microsoft has been notified and is working on a fix.
