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Comment Re:lol (Score 1) 59

You do realize hat ozone depletion and global warming have literally NOTHING to do with each other right?

One is a build up of CFCs due to things like aerosols. The other is build up of CO2 due to things like burning coal.

I hope you're just trolling...

Actually, CFCs are also highly potent greenhouse gases.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 290

I hear Bing is doing quite well, getting hundreds of millions of searches every day for "google" by people who don't know how to change their home page. Apparently they also get a lot for "google.com" from people who don't know what an address bar is.

Gee, I heard the same thing happens at Google itself. So what's your point, that people who want to use Google aren't the brightest bunch?

Comment Re:define (Score 1) 290

They are paying with their personal data, which Google hoards and then sells to third parties.

Google doesn't sell or otherwise share data with third parties. Google uses it to decide who to show third-party ads to.

Let's put it this way: advertisers have complained that Apple doesn't share enough private data with them. They never had the same complaints about Google.

Comment Re:Talking Point (Score 1) 427

The existence of an outlier in noisy data is NOT THE SAME THING as ending a trend. The trendline for the last 15 years is flat. http://cosmoscon.com/2013/03/1... gives some pictures so I don't have to.

By the last 15 years you mean "The 15 years from 1998 till (January) 2013". That is actually missing the last 1.5 years. Not to mention that it starts in the cherry picker's most favorite year. That sure was a good year for cherries.

Comment Re:Dynamic CO2 Absorption (Score 1) 427

Historically, about half of the pollution from human sources has been absorbed by the oceans and by terrestrial plants

Interesting. That means that as human emissions have increased, so have the CO2 sinks....so back when we were emitting 2x, the environment magically knew to absorb 1x, and now that we're emitting 20x, it absorbs 10x.

Here's the question - if the CO2 capacity of our sinks is upwards of 10x today, why did it only absorb 1x when we emitted less?

Here's a hint: "Historically" means "not anymore".

Comment Re:No comments here yet... (Score 1) 471

Their iPhone is stolen from Sony's blue-prints, for example.

I saw this a while back and the similarity is certainly striking. It raises the question as to why Sony hasn't seen the same success as Apple, if the iPhone is a mere copy of Sony's design.

Maybe because that's a fairytale made up by Samsung and constantly repeated by people who either get paid by Samsung or are simply too dumb to think for themselves.

Cellphones

Under the Apple Hype Machine, Amazon Drops Fire Phone Price To 99 Cents 134

Whatever it is that Apple's going to announce a few hours from now, it seems Amazon has decided it's probably not going to send people rushing to buy its Fire phone. Amazon's cut the price of the phone from $199 to 99 cents. At that price, the Fire phone comes with free Amazon Prime membership, too -- but also a 2-year contract with (exclusive carrier) AT&T. Writes ExtremeTech: Whether that’s going to be enough to stimulate sales is an open question — $450 unlocked is still a tough sell for a device that is overmatched by products like the cheaper Nexus 5, or the recently unveiled $500 second-gen Moto X. In August, adoption data from advertising agency Chitika claimed that total Amazon Fire Phone sales were paltry, representing just 0.015-0.02% of phones in use, or fewer than 30,000 phones. That number will have doubtlessly ticked up slightly since then, and it’s true that Amazon’s partners, like AT&T, have aggressively pushed the phone in online stores.

Comment Re:Where are these photos? (Score 1) 336

There is no such thing as a "convicted monopolist", convictions only happen in criminal courts.

And as including the web browser in the OS formed the very basis of the anti-trust action, my point stands - some people would prefer that Windows would come unable to handle the web out of the box, so why should photos be more important?

And again people ignore the history behind this.

the Department of Justice opened its own investigation on August 21 of that year, resulting in a settlement on July 15, 1994 in which Microsoft consented not to tie other Microsoft products to the sale of Windows but remained free to integrate additional features into the operating system. In the years that followed, Microsoft insisted that Internet Explorer (which, in addition to OEM versions of Windows 95, appeared in the Plus! Pack sold separately[2][3]) was not a product but a feature which it was allowed to add to Windows, although the DOJ did not agree with this definition.

The people preferred them not to bundle because they agreed not to bundle.

Television

Ask David Saltzberg About Being The Big Bang Theory's Science Advisor 226

For seven seasons Dr. David Saltzberg has made sure the science on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory is correct. As science consultant for the show he reviews scripts for technical errors, fixing any problems he finds. He also adds complex formulae to whiteboards on set. Before his life as a science advisor, Saltzberg received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago, performed post-graduate work at CERN, and currently is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. He writes The Big Blog Theory, where he explains the science behind each episode of the show. Dr. Saltzberg has agreed to answer any questions you have about the show or his previous scientific work. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 200

Not a problem if Japan can just its own waste. If it works, everybody else will want one of these reactors too. What the US or Russia tthinkf pf this will be of no consequence.

Most transuranic nuclear waste comes from making plutonium weapons - which Japan doesn't do AFAAK. Nor do all but a handful of states - if that many. The rest comes from the ca. 1% of spent nuclear fuel from NPPs that is transuranic - and that is almost completely Plutonium and will be taken out of that sliver anyway if reprocessed.

Earth

Out of the Warehouse: Climate Researchers Rescue Long-Lost Satellite Images 136

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Once stashed in warehouses in Maryland and North Carolina, images and video captured from orbit by some of NASA's first environmental satellites in the mid-1960s are now yielding a trove of scientific data. The Nimbus satellites, originally intended to monitor Earth's clouds in visible and infrared wavelengths, also would have captured images of sea ice, researchers at the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center realized when they heard about the long-lost film canisters in 2009. After acquiring the film—and then tracking down the proper equipment to read and digitize its 16-shades-of-gray images, which had been taken once every 90 seconds or so—the team set about scanning and then stitching the images together using sophisticated software. So far, more than 250,000 images have been made public, including the first image taken by Nimbus-1 on 31 August 1964, of an area near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Besides yielding a wealth of sea ice data, the data recovery project, which will end early next year, could also be used to extend satellite records of deforestation and sea surface temperatures."

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