Comment Brightness Control (Score 1) 266
So it's a "brightness control" that allows you to turn down the intelligence?
Comment Please mod up (Score 1) 156
The "one-time use content vs risk" idea is very insightful, from an economic perspective.
Ubuntu 9.04 Is As Slick As Win7, Mac OS X 871
An anonymous reader writes in with an opinion piece from ZDNet Australia. "Here's what the official press release won't tell you about Ubuntu 9.04, which formally hit the streets yesterday: its designers have polished the hell out of its user interface since the last release in October. Just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well even on older hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game."
Yahoo Pulls the Plug On GeoCities 427
Mike writes "It's official: Yahoo is pulling the plug, and GeoCities is dead. GeoCities had suffered a long and drawn-out battle with its health over the past decade. An antiquated service model and outdated technology are widely blamed for the struggle. An official cause of death, however, has yet to be determined. Awful, eye-punishing graphics, lack of relevancy, and 'lowest-common-denominator design' are believed to have contributed to its demise. GeoCities was 15 years old." There is doubtless a lot of funny and informative stuff on there that's worth saving (not just Jesux, which pudge has now migrated). If some of it belongs to you, perhaps you should move it sometime in the next few months. Update: 04/24 18:10 GMT by T : And if you know some GeoCities page owners who aren't especially computer savvy, you could point out to them how easy it is to slurp down their pages for re-hosting elsewhere.
Submission + - Peak Coal in 15 years?
mdsolar writes: "Richard Heinberg has written an opinion at Energy Bulletin on two European studies which look at
available data on proven coal reserves and consumption patterns which conclude the the 155 year figure for coal use is badly over estimated. Apparently, growth of coal use in China implies peak production there in 5 to 15 years while the US is already in decline in terms of energy extraction though not yet in terms of volume extraction owing to substitution of lower quality coal.
Heinberg discusses a number of implications including for climate change, suggesting that sequestration efforts may be seen as too expensive as coal prices begin to rise. Another idea is that
Heinberg discusses a number of implications including for climate change, suggesting that sequestration efforts may be seen as too expensive as coal prices begin to rise. Another idea is that
Very few replacement technologies are scalable on this kind of time-scale: bio-fuels are already impacting food prices while the nuclear industry faces permiting, construction and training bottlenecks. Even solar faces a two year energy investment cost despite rapid monetary cost reductions, and , together with wind faces intermittancy issues. This news is unsettling and merits further consideration."There is no "business-as-usual" option, even ignoring environmental impacts, given the resource constraints. Nations that are currently dependent on coal — China and the US especially — would be wise to begin reducing consumption now, not only in the interests of climate protection, but also to reduce societal vulnerability arising from dependence on a resource that will soon become more scarce and expensive.
Disk Drive Failures 15 Times What Vendors Say 284
jcatcw writes "A Carnegie Mellon University study indicates that customers are replacing disk drives more frequently than vendor estimates of mean time to failure (MTTF) would require.. The study examined large production systems, including high-performance computing sites and Internet services sites running SCSI, FC and SATA drives. The data sheets for the drives indicated MTTF between 1 and 1.5 million hours. That should mean annual failure rates of 0.88%, annual replacement rates were between 2% and 4%. The study also shows no evidence that Fibre Channel drives are any more reliable than SATA drives."
Submission + - Pioneer anomaly
KellyYoung writes: "The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft gave us some of the earliest close-up pictures of the outer planets. They also gave us a curious puzzle now known as the Pioneer anomaly. http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11304-comp uter-sleuths-try-to-crack-pioneer-anomaly.html Even though both spacecraft were heading in different directions, both experienced a tiny deceleration. It was as if the Sun's gravity was pulling a little harder than Newton's laws predicted. Scientists are hoping to know within a year whether the Pioneer anomaly is due to an issue with the two spacecraft themselves, namely the heat generated by their onboard nuclear generators. An international team of scientists are re-analyzing the tracking and telemetry data to look for clues."
