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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.

Encryption

Submission + - Move over, quantum cryptography: Classical physics can be unbreakable too (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "Quantum cryptography? Pah! That’s for newbies, according to researchers from Texas A&M University who claim to have pioneered unbreakable cryptography based on the laws of thermodynamics; classical physics, rather than quantum. In theory, quantum crypto (based on the laws of quantum mechanics) can guarantee the complete secrecy of transmitted messages: To spy upon a quantum-encrypted message would irrevocably change the content of the message, thus making the messages unbreakable. In practice, though, while the communication of the quantum-encrypted messages is secure, the machines on either end of the link can never be guaranteed to be flawless. According to Laszlo Kish and his team from Texas A&M, however, there is a way to build a completely secure end-to-end system — but instead of using quantum mechanics, you have to use classical physics: the second law of thermodynamics, to be exact. Kish’s system is made up of a wire (the communication channel), and two resistors on each end (one representing binary 0, the other binary 1). Attached to the wire is a power source that has been treated with Johnson-Nyquist noise (thermal noise). Johnson noise is often the basis for creating random numbers with computer hardware. For details of how the system works, read the article."
Censorship

Submission + - The Internet power grab (schneier.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: We're starting to see a power grab in cyberspace by the world's militaries: large-scale monitoring of networks, military control of Internet standards, even military takeover of cyberspace. Last year's debate over an "Internet kill switch" is an example of this; it's the sort of measure that might be deployed in wartime but makes no sense in peacetime. At the same time, countries are engaging in offensive actions in cyberspace, with tools like Stuxnet and Flame.

Submission + - Nokia to Cut 10,000 Jobs and Close 3 Facilities

parallel_prankster writes: NY Times reports that Nokia said on Thursday that it would slash 10,000 jobs, or 19 percent of its work force, by the end of 2013 as part of an emergency overhaul that includes closing research centers and a factory in Germany, Canada and Finland, and the departures of three senior executives.

The company also warned investors that its loss was likely to be greater in the second quarter, which ends June 30, than it was in the first, and that the negative effects of its transition to a Windows-based smartphone business would continue into the third quarter.Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, posted a loss of €929 million, or $1.2 billion, in the first quarter as sales plummeted 29 percent. Once the undisputed global leader in the mobile phone business, Nokia has been outcompeted by Apple, as well as by Samsung and other makers of handsets running Google’s Android operating system.

Comment Microsoft had a reason to destroy Nokia (Score 4, Interesting) 257

Microsoft had a great reason to fear, and to conquer, Nokia: the Nokia N900. The N900 was arguably the best device ever: a full computer in a mobile form factor. It just needed some polishing of the user interface. Had the polishing been done, Nokia could have been on top of the smartphone market.

With the planned successors to the N900, people would no longer need separate phones and computers. They would just have their Nokia N900-successor, carrying that with them all the time. At home, or in the office, they would attach a keyboard wirelessly and plug in a screen--and there is their computer. This would have led to a revolution in the way both computers and phones are considered.

The N900 ran Linux. So the N900 was a vector for getting rid of Windows. Microsoft saw the threat, presumably, and moved to destroy it.

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