Comment Re:Victim never knew a thing? (Score 5, Funny) 186
As someone on Vodafone in Australia, this should immediately have started ringing alarm bells.
No way they'd have the problems fixed in 24 hours.
Comment Re:How long... (Score 1) 185
I'd have thought 3D televisions were by definition - in 3D mode they have a left image and a right image. Send different sources to the left and right channels and the TV won't know the difference.
All you have to do is instead of having two pairs of glasses each with a left and right filter, have one pair with two left filters, and another with two right filters. Surely it's been done before.
Comment Re:photovoltaics require silicon (Score 1) 835
It's not a lack of silicon in the Earth's crust that pushes recycling into making economic sense, it's the tremendous amount of energy that is required to refine silicates into solar-grade silicon, as well as the associated chemical processing and carbon dioxide emissions.
To get metallurgical-grade silicon, the SiO2 is reacted with carbon in an arc furnace, producing carbon dioxide directly, but more importantly indirectly from the energy input to the arc furnace. To purify it to the point of solar-grade silicon, there are several more high-energy steps involved (reacting it with HCl and back again, then melting and recrystalising it for the more efficient crystalline silicon, etc.).
It generally takes a few years of output to make up for the energy put in to make the panels, and most of that is the processing of silicon itself. Recycling the silicon at the end of its life cycle would cut down on that by quite a lot.
OSHA App Costs Gov't $200k 234
itwbennett writes "How much does it cost to make a phone app to tell local temperature and suggest how not to get heatstroke, such as drink water and avoid alcohol? If you're the U.S. Government, it'll cost you a pretty penny. Using MuckRock to file a Freedom of Information Act, Rich Jones of GUN.IO discovered the Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid $106,467 for the Android version; $96,000 for the iPhone version, and an additional $40,000 for a BlackBerry app that never got distributed."
Comment Re:64-bit? (Score 1) 383
They'll have to move to 64 bit soon - at this rate, Firefox 4294967296 will be released some time around January.
Cloned Drug-Sniffing Dogs Prove Successful In South Korea 125
Rexdude writes "A prized drug-sniffing dog at Incheon Airport in South Korea was cloned four years ago, and now the clones have proven to be much more successful at becoming sniffer dogs themselves compared to regular dogs. Not as controversial as human cloning, but are we going to see genetic copyrights on prized animal breeds in the future?"
Comment Re:Propaganda or Bad reporting? (Score 1) 898
Ah, okay... subtle difference, but I see your point.
Thanks for clarifying.
Comment Re:Propaganda or Bad reporting? (Score 4, Interesting) 898
If they get enough evidence to justify questioning someone as a suspect or person if interest and that person isn't smart enough to shut the fuck up until they have a lawyer to do the talking for them, the authorities will probably get all they need to continue prosecution from there. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law" is not a concept unique to the United States.
However in the UK, it's more a case of "Anything you say will be used against you in a court of law, and anything you don't say may harm your defence".
The right to remain silent can be used to make "adverse inferences", unlike the US. So unfortunately "shut the fuck up" doesn't always work too well.
Microsoft 'Ribbonizes' Windows 8 File Manager 951
CWmike writes "Microsoft said today it will 'ribbonize' the file manager in next year's Windows 8, adding Explorer to the short list of integrated applications that already sport the interface in Windows 7. Microsoft's Alex Simons, director of program management, released screenshots of the new ribbon interface planned for Explorer (scroll way down). 'We evaluated several different UI command affordances including expanded versions of the Vista/Windows 7 command bar, Windows 95/Windows XP style toolbars and menus, several entirely new UI approaches, and the Office style ribbon,' explained Simons. 'Of these, the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals.' Plans by Microsoft and others to ribbonize applications have often met resistance. 'We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power users, but there are clear benefits,' Simons said."
Comment Re:New app (Score 1) 666
I might be mistaken, but I think qik allows that.
You can stream live video to an account (much like the related app for ustream), and/or download it later. If you set the privacy options properly, no-one else will see it, but you'll still be able to download it afterwards.
Upscaling Retro 8-Bit Pixel Art To Vector Graphics 325
An anonymous reader writes "Two researchers — Johannes Kopf from Microsoft, and Dani Lischinski from The Hebrew University — have successfully created an algorithm that depixelizes and upscales low-resolution 8-bit 'pixel art' into lush vector graphics. The algorithm identifies pixel-level details (original paper — PDF) to accurately shade the new image — but more importantly, the algorithm can create smooth, curved contour lines from only-connected-on-the-diagonal single pixels. At long last, we might be able to play Super Mario Bros. on a big screen without stretching our beloved plumber's pixels to breaking point. You really must look at the sample images." Scroll down in the paper to see how their technique stacks up against some others, including Adobe's Live Trace.
Comment Re:At which height? (Score 1) 148
Not once you take general relativity into account.
The equator is whizzing about faster, but it experiences a weaker gravitational field, and a subsequent decrease in gravitational time dilation.
At sea level, the weaker gravitational time dilation and stronger kinematic time dilation cancel. Although GP is correct in pointing out that altitude must be taken into account.
Comment Re:Units (Score 1) 392
Becquerels are actually the easiest to understand - they're dimensionally equivalent to Hz. It's a straight count of the number of disintegrations per second. In the ideal case of a detector that registers every disintegration event, the radioactivity of the sample in Bq is the average number of counts on the detector per second (but because detectors/geometry/samples aren't ideal, you have to apply correction factors because many of the disintegrations aren't detected). The curie is the obsolete equivalent, based on the radioactivity of Radium as a reference.
Roentgens are a measure of the ability of radiation to ionize air. I think the SI equivalent is C/kg (ionizing 1 C worth of charge per kilogram of air), but Roentgens are based on the increasingly obsolete (and annoying, as a scientist) cgs system, corresponding to another awkward conversion factor.
The gray is 1 J of energy absorbed per kg. The rad is again a cgs equivalent, but the conversion factor is simpler. 100 rad = 1 gray.
The sievert and rem are the weighted equivalents of the gray and rad respectively.
Comment To the High Court it is... (Score 1) 131
In a sense, the actual verdict here was somewhat irrelevant, given that both sides were certain to appeal the outcome if they lost.
It's a little uncertain where things will go from here. The fact that one of the three justices was willing to give AFACT members the power to force ISPs to disconnect their customers based on mere allegations is extremely troubling, but the proposals by the majority justices appear to constitute what would be seen by the High Court as a reasonable compromise, making the rather extreme position held by AFACT less likely to win (particularly having lost twice already).
Could go either way, I guess, given how backwards our country is on digital technology.
