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Comment Don't we have this already? (Score 1) 113

"Green Power describes its process as a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP) where municipal solid waste or a wide variety of organic wastes are 'cracked' at the molecular level and the long-chain polymers (plastic, organic material such as wood, etc.) are chemically altered to become short-chain hydrocarbons with no combustion. Combustion requires oxygen or a similar compound, but according to Green Power the CDP occurs in an anaerobic environment, exposed only to inert gases like nitrogen."

This sounds very similar to a heavy oil conversion unit, which takes long chains of hydrocarbons (organic materials) and breaks them into smaller molecules. Refineries have been doing this for decades! I'm not saying this isn't good to reduce overall waste or anything like that, but unless I'm missing something, this is hardly new technology...

As a couple examples of conversion units:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coker_unit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_catalytic_cracking

Medicine

Study Shows TV Makes Kids Fat, Computers Don't 276

Xemu writes "Computers don't make children fat, but watching TV for the same length of time does. This is shown by a recent Swedish study of all school children in Lund's county conducted by RN Pernilla Garmy. The results were clear: The child's obesity was directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room, but placing a computer in the room had no effect at all. One theory is that it's common to have a snack in front of the TV, while a computer requires a more active user, for example when chatting or playing games."

Submission + - School spying on student webcams

jargon82 writes: A Pennsylvania high school is using laptops they issued to students to spy on them in homes and outside of school. According to a class action filling the webcams and microphones in these laptops could be remotely activated by school officials, and have been used in this role. One student was accused of "improper behavior in his home" and the school provided a photo taken via his laptop as proof.

Comment Re:Actually you're the one who is mistaken (Score 1) 236

Actually, the parent is correct. Fractional reserve banking means that the banks keep a fraction of what they loan out as a reserve. A bank will have 10 dollars and loan out 100 or more dollars. This is OK as long as too many people don't want their money at once (a run on the bank); the bank simply cannot repay all of the people who deposited money with the bank because they only keep a small fraction of what is actually deposited.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

Comment Re:Google Maps (Score 1) 1188

That's nothing - wait until Version 2.0 comes out and not only will it tell you when the nearby rich person lives, it will show you their personal schedule for when they will be out of town, display the best method of entry into their house, and send all the police out to the opposite side of town!
Businesses

"Cyber Monday" Expected To Draw Virtual Crowds 133

Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from PCWorld: "Last year, consumers spent $733 million on Cyber Monday, and it's expected to be even bigger this year. According to a survey by online shopping site Shopzilla for the National Retail Federation's Shop.org, nearly 84 percent of online retailers plan to have a Cyber Monday promotion on December 1. That's up from just 72 percent last year and zero percent in 2005, says Shop.org executive director Scott Silverman."

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