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Comment Re:In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamic (Score 1) 145

Look at this in another way: there is some planet with different objects placed on its surface, and these are well--isolated from each other. It would not be surprising, that each of these objects has a different temperature, would it? Because of e.g. its colour or its radiation surface. Now, let one of these objects be the air, and the other be some well--isolated, well--radiating building. Would not it be cool to put a thermodynamic engine in that building, in order to produce energy by reversing the greenhouse effect?

Comment Re:Pet Peeve (Score 5, Informative) 147

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species:

When ducks suddenly emerge from a pond covered with duck-weed, I have twice seen these little plants adhering to their backs; and it has happened to me, in removing a little duck-weed from one aquarium to another, that I have unintentionally stocked the one with fresh-water shells from the other. But another agency is perhaps more effectual: I suspended the feet of a duck in an aquarium, where many ova of fresh-water shells were hatching; and I found that numbers of the extremely minute and just-hatched shells crawled on the feet, and clung to them so firmly that when taken out of the water they could not be jarred off, though at a somewhat more advanced age they would voluntarily drop off. These just-hatched molluscs, though aquatic in their nature, survived on the duck's feet, in damp air, from twelve to twenty hours; and in this length of time a duck or heron might fly at least six or seven hundred miles, and if blown across the sea to an oceanic island, or to any other distant point, would be sure to alight on a pool or rivulet.

Technology

Unicode 7.0 Released, Supporting 23 New Scripts 108

An anonymous reader writes "The newest major version of the Unicode Standard was released today, adding 2,834 new characters, including two new currency symbols and 250 emoji. The inclusion of 23 new scripts is the largest addition of writing systems to Unicode since version 1.0 was published with Unicode's original 24 scripts. Among the new scripts are Linear A, Grantha, Siddham, Mende Kikakui, and the first shorthand encoded in Unicode, Duployan."
Google

Google Fiber Is Officially Making Its Way To Portland 153

An anonymous reader writes This week the Portland City Council has approved a franchise agreement with Google to bring its fiber service to Portland. "As a result of the unanimous vote, Google will be subject to a five percent 'franchise fee' on its video revenues. It won't have to pay a three percent 'PEG' fee that Portland otherwise charges rival Comcast, but it will offer free Internet service for Portland residents for a $300, one-time fee. It'll also provide free Internet service to some to-be-determined nonprofits, in addition to providing a total of three free Wi-Fi networks in various parts of the city."
Open Source

How Does Heartbleed Alter the 'Open Source Is Safer' Discussion? 582

jammag writes: "Heartbleed has dealt a blow to the image of free and open source software. In the self-mythology of FOSS, bugs like Heartbleed aren't supposed to happen when the source code is freely available and being worked with daily. As Eric Raymond famously said, 'given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.' Many users of proprietary software, tired of FOSS's continual claims of superior security, welcome the idea that Heartbleed has punctured FOSS's pretensions. But is that what has happened?"

Comment It is art (Score 5, Informative) 276

It is art, no prediction. It is obvious from the first glance. And the article confirms it:

If you're tempted to assume that the image was actually a serious depiction of what a future wrist computer might look like-well, no. Inside the magazine, which only had a brief editiorial about future computers, the editors pointed out that it wasn't a coincidence that it happened to be the April issue of Byte.

News

$30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow 653

An anonymous reader points out a post at the blog of Sparkfun, a hobbyist electronics retailer. They recently received a letter from U.S. Customs saying a shipment of 2,000 multimeters was being barred from entry into the country. The reason? Trademark law. A company named Fluke holds a trademark on multimeters that have a 'contrasting yellow border.' Sparkfun's multimeters are a yellowish orange, but it was enough for Customs to stop the shipment. Returning the shipment is not an option because of import taxes in China, so the multimeters must now be destroyed. At $15 per item, it'll cost Sparkfun $30,000, plus the $150/hr fee for destroying them. Sparkfun had no idea about the trademark, and doesn't mind changing the color, but they say restrictions like these are a flaw in the trademark system. "Small business does not have the resources to stay abreast of all trademarks for all the products they don't carry. If you’re going to put the onus on the little guy to avoid infringing IP then you shouldn't need an army of consultants or attorneys to find this information."
Power

Environmentalists Propose $50 Billion Buyout of Coal Industry - To Shut It Down 712

cartechboy writes "What's $50 billion among friends, right? At least Felix Kramer and Gil Friend are thinking big, so there is that. The pair have published an somewhat audacious proposal to spend $50 billion dollars to buy up and then shut down every single private and public coal company operating in the United States. The scientific benefits: eliminating acid rain, airborne emissions, etc). The shutdown proposal includes the costs of retraining for the approximately 87,000 coal-industry workers who would lose their jobs over the proposed 10-year phaseout of coal. Since Kramer and Friend don't have $50 billion, they suggest the concept could be funded as a public service and if governments can't do it maybe some rich guys can — and the names Gates, Buffett and Bloomberg come up. Any takers?"
Education

Ask Slashdot: What Essays and Short Stories Should Be In a Course On Futurism? 293

Ellen Spertus writes "I'll be teaching an interdisciplinary college course on how technology is changing the world and how students can influence that change. In addition to teaching the students how to create apps, I'd like for us to read and discuss short stories and essays about how the future (next 40 years) might play out. For example, we'll read excerpts from David Brin's Transparent Society and Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. I'm also considering excerpts of Cory Doctorow's Homeland and Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. What other suggestions do Slashdotters have?"

Submission + - Alternatives to Slashdot post beta? 8

An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I intend to stop visiting Slashdot after the beta changeover. After years of steady decline in the quality of discussions here, the beta will be the last straw. What sites alternative to Slashdot have others found? The best I have found has been arstechnica.com, but it has been a while since I've looked for tech discussion sites.

Submission + - Video of Britain's Taranis supersonic drone (abc.net.au)

chrism238 writes: ABC News (Australia) is presenting vision of the of a state-of-the-art drone touted as the future of British warfare, showing it soaring over what is thought to be Woomera in remote South Australia — "'Australia's Area 51". The Taranis drone is a joint project between UK defence and BAE Systems. The test drone cost 185 million pounds ($AUD336.5 million). It is designed to carry a payload of guided bombs and missiles, travel at supersonic speeds, and fly undetected by radar. The UK military says the Taranis will be operable via satellite from anywhere in the world.

The first test flight is being hailed as a "major landmark for UK aviation". The vision shows the sleek Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, making a seamless take-off and conducting a number of manoeuvres over red desert during its first test flight. The British Military of Defence (MoD) will not confirm where the footage was shot, but in a submission last year to a UK parliamentary hearing, revealed that the Taranis Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator had indeed conducted initial test flights at the Woomera test range.

Submission + - Gates returns to Windows 7 after being unable to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade 3

Artem Tashkinov writes: According to rumors Bill Gate's first day at his office in Redmond turned out to be a complete disaster mixed with ostensibly curse words no one had expected from him. He tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade but the updater failed continuously asking to reboot the PC. Microsoft's new C.E.O. Satya Nadella who came to help resolve the situation couldn't sort it out. In the end Gates said he would be returning to Windows 7 for the foreseeable future.

Submission + - Induction stove not compatible with Iphone

dovgr writes: There is a story in the Swedish news paper Dagens Nyheter, Google translation at http://translate.google.com/tr... , telling the story of a woman who bought an induction stove, that caused a noise in her phone whenever using the phone. When complaining to stove service company, she was told that the stove is only compatible with Samsung, and recommended her to switch phones.

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