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I am a fat man. I weight 370 pounds. (However, I am 6" 6' tall, but I'm still fat.) Now, this article does state that there are other factors. It names the skinny guy with the high metabolism on the 100 mile bike ride, but there is one factor (among many) that it doesn't consider. I live in a small apartment and drive a Honda Civic that gets 25MPG or better, even around town. (It gets 33 - 35MPG on the highway. All these fuel consumption figures are real measured figures that I've taken.) Lets look at my overall carbon output compared to the little 90 pound skinny woman driving her Chevy Suburban aggressively on her way home to her massive suburban McMansion, while talking on her cell phone no less. What's her carbon impact versus mine? How much more oil does it take to propel her massive SUV, especially when she's stomping on the gas with that big V8, then it does to propel my little 4 cylinder Civic? How much more oil does it take to heat and cool her massive house than my little apartment? I'd bet that we come out about the same, or that she might even end up producing more carbon than I do. There are so many factors that this article doesn't consider. All it really seems to do is give people an escape goat for global warming. Yes its all OK now, we can blame it on the fat people!

prostoalex writes "Forbes magazine doesn't play around with metaphors by predicting impending death of Indian outsourcing. Decent salary growth rates in Indian IT industry — 14.4% in 2006, 15.1% in 2007, and expected 15.2% in 2008, create the status quo where expected savings, which used to be 1:6 (6 Indian employees at the cost of 1 American employee) drop down to 1:1.5. At this point, Sramana Mitra says, employers start looking to US Midwestern states, Canada, and Eastern Europe."
http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2008/02/29/mitra-india-outsourcing-tech-enter-cx_sm_0229outsource.html

There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete."

Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.
We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com — we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/2316633.html

Is this site worth a write-in campaign?

w1z4rd writes "According to an article in the Guardian, scientists and economists have been offered large bribes by a lobbying group funded by ExxonMobil. The offers were extended by the American Enterprise Institute group, which apparently has numerous ties to the Bush administration. Couched in terms of an offer to write 'dissenting papers' against the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds."

BobB writes "Eugene and Natalya Kaspersky, sort of the first couple of computer security (well, they are divorced, but work together), on why China is the real threat and the need for anti-anti-antivirus software to stop the bad guys. A wide-ranging interview with the Kaspersky Lab duo. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/020107-kaspe rsky-cybercrime.html"

jerquiaga writes "My little sister inadvertently signed up for a class on HTML and CSS, but she doesn't have any real HTML knowledge to speak of. To complicate matters, her teacher sent out a syllabus that told the students they need to find their own textbook. So I ask you, the Slashdot crowd, what would be a good book that addresses both HTML 4 and CSS in a way that a beginner would understand?"

boylinux writes "The much anticipated Flash Player 9 for Linux is finally released.
Now Linux users can finally keep up with all the latest time waster sites like the rest of the world.
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.c gi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW"

With all the chatter recently about TiVoToGo coming to Mac users, I'm a bit surprised that nobody mentioned the fact that a significant percentage of TiVo users have not been able to use TiVoToGo since a patch in November broke the functionality on a small (but significant) percentage of Series2 TiVos. This problem was discovered within days of the patch's release, and as of today there has been little official response from TiVo.. save a few messages in the forums when things got downright nasty.

The problem is in the TiVo box, not in the implementations of TiVoToGo, and affects both PC and Mac users. For those considering shelling out the US$100 for Toast 8 Titanium, or any other TiVoToGo solution, you might want to read a few forum posts first to get an idea of the scope of the problem...

Personally, I'm appalled that TiVo could break something this bad and then take two or more months to not fix it. And, what's even worse is, if you read the forums it appears that Tier 1 support isn't completely informed of the problem.

AsnFkr writes "Remember that amazing episode of Futurama, The Sting? Well, this is a (free to download) EP recorded specifically following the storyline of that episode. Thought I'd pass it along as it is...after all....free."

paulius_g writes "This is an article for those of who have been living under a rock for the past few years. In the recent builds of Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, developers have started noticing that there is an option to format a partition using ZFS (Zettabyte file system). There is still no mention from Apple whether this will remain in the final builds, but the file system matches exactly Apple's plans for Leopard. This article will explain you everything that you need to know about ZFS aswell as why I'm so exciting about its inclusion. Read on to learn more."

An anonymous reader writes "According to the New York Times, HP researchers have developed a new type of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The new design will be significantly smaller, consume less power and will be nonvolatile. The "nanotechnology" buzzword is used.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/technology/16nan o.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

From the article:
"Hewlett-Packard researchers have developed a novel way to create flexible electronic circuits that could make it routine by the end of the decade to modify and upgrade the circuitry in computer-based consumer products even after they have been sold."

[...]

"A cellphone using the technology could be wirelessly upgraded to take advantage of improved wireless network standards. Another potential use would be in making ultracheap memory chips, and one early application could be in the ink-jet cartridges which Hewlett-Packard manufactures by the tens of millions.""

Requiring permission to innovate? Feeling entitled to search others' property? Getting the power to act like law enforcement in order to fine or arrest those who are taking part in activities that challenge your business model? Don't these all sound quite familiar? Centuries from now (hopefully much, much sooner), the actions of the RIAA, MPAA and others that match these of the weavers and button-makers of 17th century France will seem just as ridiculous.

An anonymous reader writes "What's the deal with reviews and product comparisons?
My PHB wants independent comparative reviews of proxy and web servers to use to make/justify his decision.
We all know that what the vendors write about their own (and competitive) products needs to be taken with a sack of salt, so I tried searching for 3rd party reviews.
I can find heaps of articles on the web telling us how great IIS is or how good Microsoft's Proxy server is, but nothing showing a back-to-back comparison of Squid vs Sun Java Proxy vs Microsoft Proxy, and the same for Apache vs IIS.
What's happening here?
Are we to assume that all the reviewers have sold out to the big guys? Have they all become shills?
Where can I find an honest back-to-back product comparison?"

Ellen Spertus writes "Please consider adding this to The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap or as a Slashback:

Mills College has a post-baccalaureate program in computer science, which was recently written up in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The program is coed, although the majority of students are female. Graduates of the program have successfully gone on to CS PhD programs and industry jobs."