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Comment Re:Americans surrendered in Vietnam (Score 1) 380

Their civilian resistance effort also went down in legend

Indeed, “legend” is the correct term. Many of the most active members of the French Resistance were Jewish, who therefore had little to lose. Their names were changed from obviously-Jewish ones to more French ones, when the history was later written.

Medicine

Bill Gates Promotes Vaccine Projects, Swipes At Google 481

Nerval's Lobster writes "In a new interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bill Gates discussed his Foundation's work to eradicate polio and malaria, while suggesting that vaccine programs and similar initiatives to fight disease and poverty will ultimately do much more for the world than technology projects devoted to connecting everybody to the Internet. While Gates professes his belief in the so-called digital revolution, he doesn't think projects such as Google's Internet blimps (designed to transmit WiFi signals over hundreds of miles, bringing Internet to underserved areas in the process) will do the third world nearly as much as good as basic healthcare. "When you're dying of malaria, I suppose you'll look up and see that [Internet] balloon, and I'm not sure how it'll help you," he said. "When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there's no website that relieves that." Gates then sharpened his attack on the search-engine giant: "Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down." Google focusing on its core mission is fine, he added, "but the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor." The Microsoft co-founder also has no intention of following Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech entrepreneurs into the realm of space exploration. "I guess it's fun, because you shoot rockets up in the air," he said. "But it's not an area that I'll be putting money into.""

Comment Re:Hansen is delusional (Score 1) 605

Moderators, I am the author of the above comment that has been moderated "Troll"; the moderation was apparently done on the basis of replying comments. I ask you to check what my comment said, before moderating it as troll.

Here is what the Slashdot summary said.

the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.

It ought to be clear from this that the Russian heat wave, in particular, is being blamed on putative global warming. Now, check the three links in my comment to confirm that they do indeed say exactly what my comment claims. The second link requires a password or subscription; here is an alternative link, from the American Geophysical Union (which publishes the journal):
http://www.agu.org/news/press/jhighlight_archives/2011/2011-04-13.shtml#five
You can confirm that the quote supplied in my comment is taken from that link.

The real trolls are the commenters who claimed that I was misquoting or misrepresenting. My comment is not a troll, and it should be moderated fairly.

I think that it says something about the current global warming debate that an accurate critical comment such as mine is moderated troll while blatantly false criticisms of my comment get moderated up to 5.

Comment Hansen is delusional (Score 0, Troll) 605

Yet more scaremongering from the statistically-incompetent Jim Hansen. Regarding the heat wave in Russia, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a press release entitled "Natural Variability Main Culprit of Deadly Russian Heat Wave That Killed Thousands"; the press release is based on a paper that was published in Geophysical Research Letters. Another paper, published in the same journal, concluded that "the heat wave falls within the realm of natural variability ... [and] appears not to be the product of long-term climate changes". Also, some researchers in Germany analyzed the data and published a paper, entitled "Large scale flow and the long-lasting blocking high over Russia", which says that the heat wave "appears as a result of natural atmospheric variability".

In short, the claim about Russia is false. The claim about the European summer of 2003 is also debunked. (I am not familiar with Texas.) And why does Hansen not mention extreme cold recently in Alaska?—is that also due to global warming? Bad weather has always existed.
Medicine

Submission + - The camera that can see through frosted glass, and around corners (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "Scientists in Israel have created a camera that can see around corners, or through solid objects such as frosted glass, and skin. The most exciting facet of this innovation is that the camera uses natural light to perform the imaging — such as a lamp, or the Sun — and not lasers or X-rays. Ori Katz, Eran Small, and Yaron Silberberg of the Weizmann Institute have shown that they can accurately resolve an object that’s hiding behind nearly opaque obstacles, or around a corner (or in another room, as long as the door’s open). In both cases, the light is scattered by the obstacle (the frosted glass, the corner wall), creating what appears to be white noise — but their camera, using spatial light modulation, can take these speckles of noise and enhance them "1000-fold" (the scientists' words) to recreate the image with surprising accuracy. Back in March, MIT announced a similar innovation — but it uses a laboratory-sized setup involving a femtosecond laser and complex hardware to discern time-of-flight. The Israeli camera looks like it uses off-the-shelf parts — and the fact that it works with natural light rather than a laser is rather cool. Its primary use will be in medical imaging (it's hard to get a sharp image of inside the brain, or other organs), but wannabe superheroes might find the technology interesting as well."

Submission + - Great Britain to grant free access to publicly funded research within 2 years (guardian.co.uk)

alfachino writes: The British government is preparing to reveal their plans to allow all publicly funded scientific research to be accessed by anyone, anywhere. Although this is the right step in the right direction, there is some criticism as to how this transition should take place, who should pay for it, who benefits the most from it, and whether this will be a catalyst for other EU nations and the US to get their act together and head in the same direction. It seems like the Elsevier boycott may have had more effects after all.
Technology

Submission + - Jolla Mobile Sign MeeGo Smartphone Sales Agreement in China (ibtimes.co.uk)

DavidGilbert99 writes: "Meego has been given a life line by former Nokia employees at Jolla Mobile and the startup has now signed a major deal with China's biggest mobile retailer, D.Phone, to sell whatever handsets it produces. Jolla says it will have its first MeeGo phone on the market by the end of 2012 though it's not clear yet where it will be on sale."
Hardware

Submission + - Student creates world's fastest shoe with a printer (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Engineer and designer Luc Fusaro from the Royal College of Art in London has developed the prototype of a running shoe that can be uniquely sculpted to any athlete’s foot. It’s as light as a feather too, weighing in at 96 grams. The prototype is aptly named, Designed to Win, and is 3D printed out of nylon polyamide powder, which is a very strong and lightweight material. The manufacturing process uses selective laser sintering (SLS), which fuses powdered materials with a CO2 laser to create an object. This process means 3D scans can be taken of the runner’s foot so as to ensure the show matches the shape perfectly. Fusaro can also change the stiffness of the soles according to the athlete’s physical abilities.

The shoe can improve performance by 3.5%, meaning a 10 second 100-meter sprinter could see his time drop by 0.35 seconds, which is a huge time saving relatively speaking. Imagine if Usain Bolt put a pair of these running shows on.

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