Comment Re:Yes, you want, too. (Score 1) 103
Umm, I guess you didn't think of putting it in a plastic baggie?
Submission + - Earth's Evil Twin (esa.int)
Riding with Robots writes: "For the past two years, Europe's Venus Express orbiter has been studying Earth's planetary neighbor up close. Today, mission scientists have released a new collection of findings and amazing images. They include evidence of lightning and other results that flesh out a portrait of a planet that is in many ways like ours, and in many ways hellishly different, such as surface temperatures over 400C and air pressure a hundred times that on Earth."
Submission + - Alcohol and tobacco more dangerous than ecstasy
GBC writes: The Lancet [lancet.com — free registration required] has published an article about a rational system for drug classification in the UK.
The article claims that "In the UK, the total burden of drug misuse, in terms of health, social, and crime-related costs, has been estimated to be between £10 billion and £16 billion per year."
It proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm they do, rather than "A", "B", and "C" divisions in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. The three main factors that determine the harm associated with any drug of potential abuse are: physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug; tendency of the drug to induce dependence and addiction; and effect of drug use on families, communities, and society. Each of these factors is further broken down into three sections.
Based on assessments from independent experts and specialist addiction psychiatrists, drugs were then ranked according to these nine parameters. Alcohol and tobacco are considered alongside other drugs in the rankings.
Of the twenty substances examined, alcohol was ranked fifth most harmful (behind heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methodone) and tobacco came in ninth (behind ketamine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine).
4-MTA, LSD and Ecstasy (all considered "Class A" drugs under the Act) all ranked lower than alcohol and tobacco. From the article: "Overall there was a surprisingly poor correlation between drugs' class according to the Misuse of Drugs Act and harm score."
As someone who supports an end to the "War on Drugs", it would be nice if this article leads to a more rational examination of drug policy both here in the UK and abroad; I am not holding my breath though.
The article claims that "In the UK, the total burden of drug misuse, in terms of health, social, and crime-related costs, has been estimated to be between £10 billion and £16 billion per year."
It proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm they do, rather than "A", "B", and "C" divisions in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. The three main factors that determine the harm associated with any drug of potential abuse are: physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug; tendency of the drug to induce dependence and addiction; and effect of drug use on families, communities, and society. Each of these factors is further broken down into three sections.
Based on assessments from independent experts and specialist addiction psychiatrists, drugs were then ranked according to these nine parameters. Alcohol and tobacco are considered alongside other drugs in the rankings.
Of the twenty substances examined, alcohol was ranked fifth most harmful (behind heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methodone) and tobacco came in ninth (behind ketamine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine).
4-MTA, LSD and Ecstasy (all considered "Class A" drugs under the Act) all ranked lower than alcohol and tobacco. From the article: "Overall there was a surprisingly poor correlation between drugs' class according to the Misuse of Drugs Act and harm score."
As someone who supports an end to the "War on Drugs", it would be nice if this article leads to a more rational examination of drug policy both here in the UK and abroad; I am not holding my breath though.
Submission + - XM and SIRIUS Radio Merging
Journal Journal: Concurrently Running Firewalls 2
I'm the Security Manager for one element of a multi faceted organization. That said, some of the dimmer lights around the table want to run both Windows firewall (XP) and another third party vendor's solution at the same time. I've come out against this as I think it's stupid and potentially problematic. I've had both yes and no responses from MS on this issue. Can the Slashdot user community provide reasons pro/con for this solution?
Submission + - New Tools Appearing Based off of Long Tail Concept
miklevin writes: "If you haven't heard of the term "the long tail" over the past year, you've had your head in the sand. The long tail concept is now spawning tools to help webmasters improve sites. http://www.hittail.com/ reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the long tail of your natural search results, which are then presented to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site. Your only job is to create original content from those suggestions. It's that simple."
Submission + - Second Life's Open Source Fairy Tale
darthcamaro writes: Apparently things are going really well for the open source version of the Second Life viewer. So well that there are not multiple builds for different Linux distros and a new open source plug-in architecture is being developed.
From the article:
"What has happened is the fairy tale version of what people hope to have happen when they make proprietary code open source," Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's director of open source development said. "Which is people download; start adding features. It's crazy cool all the things that are happening right now."
"What has happened is the fairy tale version of what people hope to have happen when they make proprietary code open source," Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's director of open source development said. "Which is people download; start adding features. It's crazy cool all the things that are happening right now."
Submission + - Take your spare room off-grid
An anonymous reader writes: So, you want to go off-grid? Or maybe you want to find out what it's like before taking the plunge? How about taking one room of your house off grid? It's a less expensive way of learning the technology, before committing yourself.
We suggest starting with a bedroom. Look around your bedroom and see what devices you have that run on electric. As I look around my room, I see one table lamp, two floor lamps, wall lamp, digital TV, Stereo, satellite box, portable dvd player, vcr, and XBox. I also have a battery powered clock, powered by rechargeables, so I'll add the battery charger to our list. There is also a curling iron, hair dryer, and ceiling fan with lights, but we will leave those items off our list for now.
The first thing I need to do, is plug these devices in, one at a time, to my Kill-A-Watt ($30 or £16.20), to determine individual loads and daily run times. This will determine the battery capacity, and size and number of Photovoltaic (PV) panels necessary to support these loads.
Lets assume I need 100 watts to power any devices used simultaneously, and I use that load 6 hours a day. I would then need 100 x 6, or 600 watt-hours (wh's) per day to power that equipment. I would only need a 100 watt inverter, but there is little price difference between that and a 300, so I'll upgrade this item to a 300 watt inverter ($40 or £21.60).
I decide I want to have 1 days worth of power in a battery bank, in case of no sun, so I convert those watt hours into amp-hours (ah's) by dividing by 12, the voltage of my battery pack. 600 / 12 = 50 ah's. I do not want to discharge my battery pack more than 50%, to ensure long life, so I want a 100 ah pack. One deep cycle type 27 battery from Walmart is 115ah and cost $55 (£29.70).
To keep that battery charged, I need to be able to put 600 wh's per day back into the pack. My area of the world gets on average 2.5 sun hours daily, so 600 / 2.5 = 240 watts of PV. A 240 watt array (2 * 120w panels) ($480 or £259.50 each panel) would need a 30 amp (240 / 12 + 50%) charge controller ($180 or £97.30) to keep the array from overcharging the battery.
So there you have it, for less than $1300 (£702.70), you have taken one room off grid, and eliminated $0.09 / day (600wh's x $0.15 kWh) of grid electric, giving you a 40 year payback ($1300 / $0.09 = 14444 days / 365 = 39.6 years). And if electricity prices rise faster than inflation, which they will, the payback is much faster. In fact you get the double benefit of having made one room Kyoto-compliant, AND saving money.
We suggest starting with a bedroom. Look around your bedroom and see what devices you have that run on electric. As I look around my room, I see one table lamp, two floor lamps, wall lamp, digital TV, Stereo, satellite box, portable dvd player, vcr, and XBox. I also have a battery powered clock, powered by rechargeables, so I'll add the battery charger to our list. There is also a curling iron, hair dryer, and ceiling fan with lights, but we will leave those items off our list for now.
The first thing I need to do, is plug these devices in, one at a time, to my Kill-A-Watt ($30 or £16.20), to determine individual loads and daily run times. This will determine the battery capacity, and size and number of Photovoltaic (PV) panels necessary to support these loads.
Lets assume I need 100 watts to power any devices used simultaneously, and I use that load 6 hours a day. I would then need 100 x 6, or 600 watt-hours (wh's) per day to power that equipment. I would only need a 100 watt inverter, but there is little price difference between that and a 300, so I'll upgrade this item to a 300 watt inverter ($40 or £21.60).
I decide I want to have 1 days worth of power in a battery bank, in case of no sun, so I convert those watt hours into amp-hours (ah's) by dividing by 12, the voltage of my battery pack. 600 / 12 = 50 ah's. I do not want to discharge my battery pack more than 50%, to ensure long life, so I want a 100 ah pack. One deep cycle type 27 battery from Walmart is 115ah and cost $55 (£29.70).
To keep that battery charged, I need to be able to put 600 wh's per day back into the pack. My area of the world gets on average 2.5 sun hours daily, so 600 / 2.5 = 240 watts of PV. A 240 watt array (2 * 120w panels) ($480 or £259.50 each panel) would need a 30 amp (240 / 12 + 50%) charge controller ($180 or £97.30) to keep the array from overcharging the battery.
So there you have it, for less than $1300 (£702.70), you have taken one room off grid, and eliminated $0.09 / day (600wh's x $0.15 kWh) of grid electric, giving you a 40 year payback ($1300 / $0.09 = 14444 days / 365 = 39.6 years). And if electricity prices rise faster than inflation, which they will, the payback is much faster. In fact you get the double benefit of having made one room Kyoto-compliant, AND saving money.
Submission + - Zune Executive to leave Microsoft
HairyNevus writes: "Senior Microsoft executive Bryan Lee is quitting the company according to ZDNet. Bryan Lee oversaw the Zune's production and development and is now leaving to pursue "personal interests". J. Allard is slated to take over the Zune development. Maybe he'll fix some of the many glitches the Zune software currently has?"
Submission + - "Clean Install" Vista w/upgrade DVDs
AlHunt writes: "Daltytech.com is reporting a workaround to do a fresh install of Vista from your Upgrade DVD, based on an internal document from Microsoft.
From TFA:
According to the article, Microsoft's requirement is that Vista be installed over a pre-existing XP installation, invalidating the old XP license in the process."Just when everyone thought that all hope was lost when it comes to performing a clean install with a Windows Vista Upgrade DVD, a gleam of light can now be seen at the end of the tunnel. A new workaround proposed by Paul Thurrott (via Microsoft internal documents) has been confirmed to work by DailyTech.
Submission + - New York teen sues RIAA
Awod writes: "Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, have raised 32 defences against the music industry's charges. Santangelo and his lawyer demanded a trial by jury and are filing a counterclaim for allegedly damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees.Santangelo also claims that the record companies, which have filed more than 18,000 piracy lawsuits in federal courts,
"have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States.".
Santangelo's mother was also sued in 2005. However, The RIAA dropped its case against her in December but sued Robert and his sister Michelle instead. Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit."
Santangelo's mother was also sued in 2005. However, The RIAA dropped its case against her in December but sued Robert and his sister Michelle instead. Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit."
Submission + - Dell back as CEO
666 writes: "http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/31/rollins_le aves_dell/
Michael Dell ousts Rollins, back in charge.
After 30 months at the helm, Kevin Rollins is leaving Dell, following years of decline that might rival the great fall of the Roman empire. The disclosure came as the company said its fourth-quarter results fell below analysts' consensus estimates.
Michael Dell — the visionary who as a college student conceived the idea of selling directly to computer buyers — will resume his title as CEO while remaining chairman. Rollins, who took over the top spot in July 2004, is also leaving the company's board of directors."
Submission + - How Sony Can Save the PS3
Janice Ferragamo writes: "Gameworld Network has an interesting piece on exactly what Sony must now do to save the PS3. Adam Urbano writes,
"While Blu-Ray might not be able to beat HD-DVD without the Playstation 3, the Playstation 3 has no chance of surviving while the dead weight that is the costly Blu-Ray drive brings it down. Sony is going to have to make a decision on which product is more vital, because if things stay as they are, both products could lose.
Even the most jaded Sony fan has to recognize that the current state of the PS3 is less than ideal. Sony and the PS3 couldn't have had a worse year in 2006, whether it was exploding batteries in laptops, missed deadlines, very poor public relations, a format war, poor initial Blu-Ray comparisons versus HD-DVD, missing sales targets, an uphill battle against the 360, no scaling hardware, broken backwards compatibility, the unexpected demand for the Nintendo Wii, production issues, losing exclusive titles, delayed titles or slipping demand.
The PS3 is expensive, very expensive. Despite former Playstation head honcho Ken Kutaragi's statements that the PS3 is "too cheap", it appears that consumers do indeed care about the cost. Many felt the 360 was extremely high-priced at $300-$400, but the jump to $500-$600 for the PS3 brought back images of the 3DO.
This is the point where "fan boys" like to introduce the "feature-for-feature" cost analysis. The argument is that in order to create a system comparable to a PS3, specifically by including the HD-DVD drive and the 360 wireless adapter, an Xbox 360 actually costs $100 more than its PS3 counterpart. While this argument may be technically accurate, the simple fact of the matter is that this is generally not how the public sees the issue."
Read the full article!"
"While Blu-Ray might not be able to beat HD-DVD without the Playstation 3, the Playstation 3 has no chance of surviving while the dead weight that is the costly Blu-Ray drive brings it down. Sony is going to have to make a decision on which product is more vital, because if things stay as they are, both products could lose.
Even the most jaded Sony fan has to recognize that the current state of the PS3 is less than ideal. Sony and the PS3 couldn't have had a worse year in 2006, whether it was exploding batteries in laptops, missed deadlines, very poor public relations, a format war, poor initial Blu-Ray comparisons versus HD-DVD, missing sales targets, an uphill battle against the 360, no scaling hardware, broken backwards compatibility, the unexpected demand for the Nintendo Wii, production issues, losing exclusive titles, delayed titles or slipping demand.
The PS3 is expensive, very expensive. Despite former Playstation head honcho Ken Kutaragi's statements that the PS3 is "too cheap", it appears that consumers do indeed care about the cost. Many felt the 360 was extremely high-priced at $300-$400, but the jump to $500-$600 for the PS3 brought back images of the 3DO.
This is the point where "fan boys" like to introduce the "feature-for-feature" cost analysis. The argument is that in order to create a system comparable to a PS3, specifically by including the HD-DVD drive and the 360 wireless adapter, an Xbox 360 actually costs $100 more than its PS3 counterpart. While this argument may be technically accurate, the simple fact of the matter is that this is generally not how the public sees the issue."
Read the full article!"
PS2 Controller Suit Goes Badly For Sony 197
Immersion Corp, which owns the patent on 'rumble' technology, has won another round in its suit against Sony. Sony's 'dualshock' controller has used rumble technology for years, and in 2005 a judge awarded $82 Million to the patent-holder in payment. From the article: "Sony's defence was the alleged nondisclosure of some of the inventions of key employee Craig Thorner. who has been a consultant both for Immersion and subsequently for Sony. But, according to the report, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken was unhappy with Thorner's testimony supporting Sony, given that he had also been paid by Sony, and so dismissed this line of defence."
