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Comment Re:So what is the purpose of this? (Score 1) 226

You should check out just what exactly you do when you distill a drink. Basically, you evaporate all the alcohol out of the mash (which is where the urine and meds are in this), collect it via an inverted funnel at the top which has tubing going through a barrel of cold water. The cold tubing condenses the alcohol vapors, which comes out of the bottom as alcohol. This is basically moonshine at that point, and takes on the flavor of whatever you put it in as it ages for years. Given that the type of sugar usually defines the type of drink you're making, I'm not really sure how this qualifies as "whiskey", though.

Comment What's the big deal? (Score 1) 192

This seems to be the equivalent of bragging about getting increased range in a normal car because you put another fuel tank instead of having a trunk and removed everything else that makes a modern car modern. Like important safety equipment, or air conditioning. I don't get it. Tesla has already done what these guys are trying to do ten times over without sacrificing all of that. And good luck getting through the southern Mexican parts of the highway in that thing. You'll need it.
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."

Comment When done correctly... (Score 1) 404

Just like anything else, if it's done correctly, it can be great. The problem is most people don't bother to spend the time at it and throw out a half-assed system. To date, Fallout 3 is the only one where the scaling isn't horribly done. The first time I played through Bioshock (PC) I had adaptive difficulty turned on. About 1/2 way through the game, I began wondering why every enemy I came across took 5 or 6 headshots with anti-personnel rounds to bring down. Unfortunately, it took them a while to patch it so that the difficulty would turn itself back down if you weren't doing as well. Oblivion was horribly done. Enemies would scale up as high as your level, but your ability to scale up your damage was often cut short long before that. A level gained due to speechcraft and alchemy would net the same increase in monster stats as a level in blades and repair. In the end I wound up editing the game via the construction set just so I could actually enjoy it again. Ultimately, companies need to hire players rather than play testers. Someone who's going to go through a game because they enjoy it will find many more problems than someone who's told specifically what to test for and look at.

Comment Re:They can either do it openly or covertly (Score 1) 353

You're forgetting the obvious "Upgrade their network to handle the capacity using the massive profits they've been reaping in for the last 5 years" option. Their network was in place to handle everything up until now, and they've done nothing to try and keep it up to date. Like hell I'm going to support a company that's going to charge me more for something I'm already getting than one that's going to charge me more but guarantees I'm getting better than what I'm currently getting.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Carbon transistor possible Silicon successor?

dave_the_dodo writes: New Scientist are reporting on a new carbon transistor[newscientisttech.com] 4 times smaller than the smallest silicon transistors. The transistors can be made from sheets of carbon just one-tenth of a nanometre thick. From the article:

The transistors are made of graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms in a flat honeycomb arrangement. Graphene makes graphite when stacked in layers, and carbon nanotubes when rolled into a tube. Graphene also conducts electricity faster than most materials since electrons can travel through in straight lines between atoms without being scattered. This could ultimately mean faster, more efficient electronic components that also require less power.
Hardware

First Graphene Transistor 83

An anonymous reader writes "UK researchers are announcing the first ever workable transistor made of graphene — that's one layer of carbon atoms. It's thinner and smaller than a silicon transistor can ever be, and it works at room temperature. When silicon electronics are dead, this is what many speculate is going to take over. There's slight controversy as they decided to announce their results via a review article, rather than wait for their (submitted) peer review paper to come out."
Music

Submission + - RIAA slams FAIR USE Act

Tyler Too writes: The RIAA has weighed in on the just-introduced FAIR USE Act, and to no one's surprise, they're not at all happy with it. 'The FAIR USE Act "would repeal the DMCA and legalize hacking," says the RIAA. "It would reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Grokster and allow electronics companies to induce others to break the law for their own profit."' Looks like the CEA's lobbyists and the RIAA's lobbyists will be battling it out on Capitol Hill.
Data Storage

Submission + - Online Tool to Test for Weak File Formats

AmBirkieboy writes: "Acumetric has released the first online file format rating tool to help individuals, businesses and governments anticipate technical, legal, or economic threats to their information.
Acumetric is calling the free service the One Minute File Format Audit. The founder of Acumetric, John Nesbitt, has described the site as the first of its kind to help people evaluate everything from family photos to reports for the SEC. 'Everyone's valuable electronic assets are stored in file formats that are like cars — there are some big lemons out there when it comes to sharing, archiving, securing and pricing. Our tool is the first step in understanding what is parked in your computer."
The audit tool is available at www.acumetric.com"
Databases

Submission + - Free global virtual scientific library

An anonymous reader writes: More than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world came together to support free access to government funded research, "to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe. The European Commission responded by committing more than $100m (£51m) towards facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year. From the BBC article: "Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication. That requirement — called an open access principle — would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe." Isn't this the way its suppose to be?

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