erktrek - Slashdot User

Submission + - Most Dangerous Tornados on Google Maps Mashup

Submitted by

cfaslave

on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:33PM

cfaslave writes: "GeoCommons has made a Google Maps Mashup showing where the strongest and most fatal tornadoes have hit. There are definitely places where Tornadoes have hit several times hence the term "Tornado Alley". This map on GeoCommons shows you where those places are. Very Cool use of a Google Maps Mashup! Tornado Alleys on Google Maps"

Submission + - Flying Dog Brewery releases Open Source Beer

Submitted by

Brianne Covel

on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:25PM

Brianne Covel writes: "Denver, CO — May 29, 2007 — Denver's Flying Dog Brewery today announced plans to release what is believed to be the first "open source" beer to hit the market in the U.S. "Open source" is a term most commonly used in the software industry and refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit. In this case, Flying Dog's Open Source Beer Project will allow beer drinkers and homebrewers to create or recommend modifications to the recipe. The Open Source Beer Project will start as a Dopplebock but the style may evolve as participants offer ideas and tweak the recipe. "We are encouraging input on every part of the recipe, down to how what variety of hops we should use, how much we should use and when we should add them," said Flying Dog's Head Brewer, Matt Brophy. Flying Dog's Director of Marketing, Neal Stewart says that this is a unique way for consumers to participate in the creation of a new beer. "The Open Source Beer is a truly collaborative project and gives our loyal fans the opportunity to buy a beer that they actually played a major role in creating." The Open Source Beer will be Flying Dog's latest "Wild Dog" release and will hit stores in October. Wild Dogs are extremely limited edition beers that come exclusively in hand filled, corked and labeled 750ml bottles. Only 5000 bottles of the Open Source Wild Dogs will be available to the public. Flying Dog's current Wild Dog is a whiskey barrel-aged version of their popular Gonzo Imperial Porter. For more information on the Open Source Beer Project, please visit www.opensourcebeerproject.com . About Flying Dog Flying Dog is Denver's largest brewery and the second largest craft brewery in the state of Colorado. Their award-winning "litter of ales" are available in 45 states. The Brewery is located at 2401 Blake Street, just 2 blocks north of the baseball stadium. Flying Dog's core values of "purposeful, provocative and irreverent" flow through the veins of the brewery's founding owners, George Stranahan and Richard McIntyre. George and Richard were friends with the "Gonzo Journalist," Hunter S. Thompson who coined the brand's tagline "Good People Drink Good Beer" and with the "Gonzo Artist," Ralph Steadman, who illustrates the brand's packaging. For more information, log on to www.flyingdogales.com. ### Contact and Photos: Neal Stewart, Director of Marketing Flying Dog Brewery 720.272.8325"

Submission + - Portland's Municipal WiFi Tested Independantly

Submitted by

matthew_t_west

on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:01PM

matthew_t_west writes: "The City of Portland released a report of findings earlier in May about their newly launched Municipal WiFi provided by MetroFi. More interestingly, Unwire PDX Watch has posted findings of their test of the same network. Will Portland's Municipal WiFi succeed? Not with 90% extended availability it won't."

Submission + - Brains - Size DOES matter.

Submitted by erktrek on Saturday May 19, 2007 @12:18AM

erktrek writes: According to this article from PhysOrg — Bigger is smarter: Overall, not relative, brain size predicts intelligence.
Not to worry too much about our place in line though — from the article:
"We didn't have data on enough species to address this question conclusively," Deaner said. "But the human brain imaging data indicate that some correction for 'neural traffic maintenance' is probably needed. If it wasn't needed, then we would be stuck with some real puzzles, such as the fact that there are no consistent sex differences in IQ, yet men generally have larger brains. And, of course, elephants and whales possess larger brains than we do, yet it's hard for us to imagine that they are smarter than we are."

Submission + - Al Gore uses 20 times more electricity than you

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @09:09AM

An anonymous reader writes: [The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh — more than 20 times the national average.]

This is according to the latest press release from The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which used FOIA laws to retrieve the data. Al Gore stated in his Oscar accepting speech; "It's not as hard as you might think. We have a long way to go but all of us can do something in our own lives to make a difference."

Hypocrisy? Or an unfortunate smear campaign?

Google Ads Are a Free Speech Issue 148

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:56AM from the free-as-in-not-speaking dept.

WebHostingGuy writes "A US Federal Court recently ruled that ads displayed by search engines are protected as free speech. In the case at issue, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft were sued by an individual demanding under the 14th Amendment that the search engines display his advertisements concerning fraud in North Carolina. The Court flatly stated that the search engines were exercising their First Amendment right of free speech in deciding what ads they want to display."

Submission + - Cheap desalinisation using waste heat

Submitted by

hcdejong

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:39AM

hcdejong writes: "Dutch research organisation TNO has developed a desalinisation technique that at last, promises to be inexpensive enough to be used on a large scale.

The process is called Memstill (a contraction of Membrane and deStillation). Salt water is run through a condensor, on which water vapour condenses. Energy from the vapour is transferred to the salt water, which warms up. More energy is then added from an external heat source, making the salt water warm enough for evaporation. In a membrane array, the evaporation escapes through a membrane that allows the vapour to pass through, but which stops liquid water. The vapour ends up at the condensor.

The external heat source can be just about anything. The required temperature is only 50-100 C, which means that e.g. cooling water from an industrial plant can be used. Solar heating also works.

Thanks to this 'free' heat, TNO estimates that a production plant will be able to make freshwater for only $ 0.30-0.40 per cubic metre, lower than any other desalinisation technique, see this PDF for a comparison. The current price for potable water is about 1.50 Euro/cubic metre in the Netherlands.

Memstill is currently in use in a few pilot projects."

Submission + - Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming

Submitted by

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: Global warming is a dramatically urgent and serious problem. We don't need to wait for governments to solve this problem: each one of us can bring an important help adopting a more responsible lifestyle: starting from little, everyday things. It's the only reasonable way to save our planet, before it is too late.

There's an handy list of the Top 50 things to do to fight Global Warming that gives useful advices that everyone can follow in order to help the environment: some of them are at no cost, some other require a little investment but can help you save a lot of money, in the middle-long term!

Submission + - Swiftness of Dow Drop Due to Computers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: Sorry I dont know where to file this but "A computer glitch triggered a sudden plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average at mid-afternoon Tuesday, turning an already bad day in stocks into a head-turning spectacle. Dow Jones & Co., the media company that manages the well-known index of 30 blue chip stocks, said it discovered shortly before 2 p.m. that its computers weren't properly handling the day's huge volume in trades at the New York Stock Exchange. It switched to a backup computer, and the result was a massive swoon in the index as the secondary system took over processing shortly before 3 p.m. " Interesting how NAsdaq, which uses Microsoft SQL didnt have any issues http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070228/dow-jones -computers.htm

Submission + - NASA put a man on the moon then lost the videotape

Submitted by

sr0tu

on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @07:13AM

sr0tu writes: "Wired has published a story "One Giant Screwup for Mankind" on the search for the missing Apollo 11 moon tapes.

The goal of the Apollo 11 mission wasn't merely to get a man on the moon. It was to send back a live television feed so that everyone could see it. Not long ago, Stan Lebar who had developed the camera that could capture the most memorable moment of the 20th century learned why the footage had looked like mush: The transfer and broadcast had degraded the image badly, like a third-generation photocopy. "What the world saw was some bastardized thing," says Lebar, now 81. "Posterity deserves more than that."

Now Lebar and a crew of seasoned space cowboys are trying to get that original footage and show it to the world. There is just one problem: NASA has lost the tapes."

Submission + - Ballmer To India: Cut Piracy, Create 50,000 Jobs

Submitted by Pranjal on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @05:02AM

Pranjal writes: In an interview in Tuesday's edition of the Times Of India, Ballmer says piracy is having "a huge negative impact" on economic growth in India. He also cites an unnamed study indicating that 70% of all software used in the country is pirated. Reducing that number by 10% would lead to the creation of 50,000 new jobs in India, Ballmer says in the interview. InformationWeek.com has a commentary on the news item — "...the concern, of course, is that a larger Microsoft presence in India would come at the expense of programming jobs in the U.S. Microsoft employees in Redmond may be hoping that India doesn't take its piracy problem too seriously — it may be the best job protection they have."

Submission + - How "Open" Does "Open Source" Soft

Submitted by jg21 on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @04:46AM

jg21 writes: In this follow-up article — sparked by Nat Torkington's rhetorical question "Is 'Open Source' Now Completely Meaningless?" — Sun's Chief Open Source Officer, IONA's Director of Open Source Programs, Hyperic's community manager and Interface21's CEO and founder Rod Johnson express their views, joined by the Executive Director of the Center for Open Source Investigation at Carnegie Mellon West, the CTO of Hippo, analyst Raven Zachary from The 451 Group, and others. [From the article: "In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' — or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'?"]

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