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Comment Re:And still (Score 1) 196

by Carewolf (#49157917) Attached to: One Astronomer's Quest To Reinstate Pluto As a Planet

Exactly. There are many categories of planets, including but not limited to:

  * Terrestrial planets

  * Gas giants

  * Ice giants

  * Hot jupiters

  * Superearths

And so forth. Why does the concept of another category, dwarfs, enrage people?

Really, the only categorization issue that I'm adamant about is that Pluto-Charon is called a binary. The Pluto-Charon barycentre is not inside Pluto, therefore Charon is not rotating around Pluto, the two are corotating around a common point of space between them. That's a binary.

I think it might be cultural. In Denmark and probably generally for Europe, I grew up with Pluto either never being mentioned as a planet or not said to be a real planet. I knew of Pluto from comic books and American media, so I always brought it up when we had any material on planets in school and Pluto was not mentioned. I was told over and over that Pluto was either not a real planet, or a planet but not like the others.

You can call dwarf planets, planets. Then we have growing number of planets in the solar systems many without proper names, that would be fun, but confusing, and they would still not be like the other planets.

Comment Re:A different take on this (Score 2) 234

That's bullshit, because the ISPs sold "all you can use" plans, then failed to deliver. The only reason the so-called "cost shifting" went on is because the ISPs outright lied about what they were selling to consumers. To imply that Netflix allowing customers to use what they've paid for is somehow wrong is just plain wrong-headded.

You're basically blaming Netflix for the ISPs mis-selling a service.

It is actually worse. The product they sell is the Internet and specifically all the content on the internet and netflix is a major provider of internet content. Their argument is blaming Netflix for giving them business... Think about that.

Comment Re:Flying Cars (Score 1) 199

by Carewolf (#49141409) Attached to: The State of Linux Gaming In the SteamOS Era

"We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."

Flying cars have been produced for the last twenty years. Drivable aircraft for longer than that. The problem isn't technical, it's political. They can't license and regulate them. The Government systems are just too crude.

That is not the problem. You can fly one if you have a flying license or do it at low altitudes over your own private land. The problem is that they are a stupid idea, the power spend keeping the vehicle hovering is not spend moving it which makes the range ridiculous short, on top of a price set in hundreds if not millions of dollars.
Earth

Lawmakers Seek Information On Funding For Climate Change Critics 394

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
HughPickens.com writes: John Schwartz reports at the NY Times that prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are demanding information from universities, companies and trade groups about funding for scientists who publicly dispute widely held views on the causes and risks of climate change. In letters sent to seven universities, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member of the House committee on natural resources, sent detailed requests to the academic employers of scientists who had testified before Congress about climate change. "My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships." Grijalva asked for each university's policies on financial disclosure and the amount and sources of outside funding for each scholar, "communications regarding the funding" and "all drafts" of testimony. Meanwhile Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies, trade groups and other organizations asking about their funding of climate research and advocacy asking for responses by April 3. "Corporate special interests shouldn't be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy," said Senator Markey, denouncing what he called "denial-for-hire operations."

The letters come after evidence emerged over the weekend that Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had failed to disclose the industry funding for his academic work. The documents also included correspondence between Dr. Soon and the companies who funded his work in which he referred to his papers and testimony as "deliverables." Soon accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work. "What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," says Kert Davies.
Government

The Groups Behind Making Distributed Solar Power Harder To Adopt 374

Posted by Soulskill from the sunsetting-the-sun dept.
Lucas123 writes: Distributed rooftop solar is a threat not only to fossil fuel power generation, but also to the profits of monopolistic model of utilities. While the overall amount of electrical capacity represented by distributed solar power remains miniscule for now, it's quickly becoming one of leading sources of new energy deployment. As adoption grows, fossil fuel interests and utilities are succeeding in pushing anti-net metering legislation, which places surcharges on customers who deploy rooftop solar power and sell unused power back to their utility through the power grid. Other state legislation is aimed at reducing tax credits for households or businesses installing solar or allows utilities to buy back unused power at a reduced rate, while reselling it at the full retail price.
Patents

Jury Tells Apple To Pay $532.9 Million In Patent Suit 186

Posted by Soulskill from the or-remit-821,110-iphones dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Smartflash LLC has won a patent lawsuit against Apple over DRM and technology relating to the storage of downloaded songs, games, and videos on iTunes. Apple must now pay $532.9 million in damages. An Apple spokesperson did not hesitate to imply Smartflash is a patent troll: "Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system." The trial happened in the same court that decided Apple owed VirnetX $368 million over FaceTime-related patents back in 2012.

Comment Re:Wikipedia page (Score 1) 105

by Carewolf (#49107467) Attached to: "Exploding Kittens" Blows Up Kickstarter Records

So a still fictional game get's to have its own Wikipedia page but the Nim programming language, in development and publicly available for years, only got to have a page a few days ago and is still under threat of deletion from rabid mods. WP truly has a fucked up sense of priority.

That is because this game doesn't have similar similar competing project with dedicated editors deleting references to competing projects, which is the primary cause of all deletion of IT projects on Wikipedia.

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