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+ - New SEC Chairwoman Met Her Match in Carmen Ortiz

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Senator Charles Schumer called newly-confirmed SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White "tough as nails". Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson praised her as "a strong leader". Sen. Jerry Moran cited her "impressive record in both the public and private sectors." And President Obama warned, "You don't want to mess with Mary Jo". However, despite the near universal acclaim, Mary Jo White was for some reason unable to convince U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz's office to drop the charges against Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide less than two weeks before the President nominated White. So, considering that there were two ongoing congressional investigations into Aaron's death and a petition seeking Ortiz's removal (still awaiting an official White House response), shouldn't the Senators have asked Mary Jo a question or two about what went wrong?"

+ - Mendeley Acquired by Elsevier

Submitted by alexgieg
alexgieg writes "Academic reference manager Mendeley has announced they're joining Elsevier. They say this won't change anything for Mendeley users and that they're still committed to their Open API efforts, all the while acknowledging that Elsevier's reputation hasn't been the best as of late. If you're currently a Mendeley user will you continue using it from now on? Or will this move prompt you to start evaluating alternatives such as the open source, Firefox-based Zotero?"

+ - Cloud's real ecological timebomb: Wireless, not data centres->

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes "New research from an Australian university argues that increased carbon emissions from powering data centres aren't the biggest environmental threat from the growth of cloud computing. Instead, the problem is the Wi-Fi and cellular networks increasingly used to access cloud services. By 2015, the energy used to run data centres will be a "drop in the ocean" compared to the energy used to power wireless access to services. By 2015 the energy consumption associated with 'wireless cloud' will reach 43 terawatt-hours, compared to 9.2 terawatt-hours in 2012 (an increase in carbon footprint from 6 megatonnes of CO2 in 2012, up to 30 megatonnes of CO2 in 2015). Data centres will comprise only 9 per cent on this increased energy consumption, compared to up to 90 per cent for wireless access."
Link to Original Source

+ - Eerie, Humanlike Petman Robot Walks, Dances and Tests Clothing->

Submitted by Otiluke
Otiluke writes "Robots can do some amazing things. They can venture into dangerous locations, they can speed up industry, they can test vehicles for safety and now, apparently, they can dance. Boston Dynamics has created a life-like anthropomorphic robot that can walk, dance and move like a person.

Check out the story at Science world report or the original report at Boston dynamics"
Link to Original Source

+ - Lawmakers Propose Revisions to CISPA to Ease Privacy Concerns->

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes "Backers of the controversial Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA), said they would propose amendments to the bill, under which Internet companies can give the government information about what they see as potential security threats and they are protected from liability for providing the information.

The measure has provoked a storm of protests, with civil libertarians claiming such laws could allow too much government snooping and conservatives say they would create new bureaucracy.

The lawmakers claim to be listening to those concerns, but explained that the issue has become more pressing recently with revelations about new cyber threats.
Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the changes failed to address one key concern — that information could be accessed by the NSA. The lawmakers said they would insert a more narrow definition of national security in the bill.

Lawmakers are expected to meet Wednesday to vote on the issue, which passed the House last year but died in the Senate."
Link to Original Source

+ - "Dark Lightning" Could Expose Airline Passengers To Radiation

Submitted by mbstone
mbstone writes "Lightning researcher Joseph Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology claims that thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays which could cause airline passengers to receive in an instant the maximum safe lifetime dose of ionizing radiation — the kind that wreaks the most havoc on the human body. Dwyer hopes rove hopes his sensor aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, will provide more data."

+ - Women Find Men With Bigger Penises More Attractive, Study Shows 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "There might be a lot of men out there who will not react well to the results of a study released Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science: penis size and attractiveness are related. "Penis size does affect attractiveness," the study's lead author Brian Mautz, a University of Ottawa post-doctoral researcher of evolution and sexual selection."

Comment: Re:Tesla will be next. (Score 2) 276

Electric car technology is not competitive, period. Unless you artificially tax gasoline

Full stop. If you're going to discuss economic feasibility due to artificial taxes, you should first discuss how the artificially LOW state at which the gas tax currently resides acts as a detriment to such investment.

The Media

What Does It Actually Cost To Publish a Scientific Paper? 166

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the one-trillion-dollars dept.
ananyo writes "Nature has published an investigation into the real costs of publishing research after delving into the secretive, murky world of science publishing. Few publishers (open access or otherwise-including Nature Publishing Group) would reveal their profit margins, but they've pieced together a picture of how much it really costs to publish a paper by talking to analysts and insiders. Quoting from the piece: '"The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.' There's also a comment piece by three open access advocates setting out what they think needs to happen next to push forward the movement as well as a piece arguing that 'Objections to the Creative Commons attribution license are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible.'"

Comment: Samsung image tarnished with Android (Score 4, Interesting) 107

by Silentknyght (#43233755) Attached to: Poking Holes In Samsung's Android Security

Say what you will about Apple & the iPhone, but I appreciate the tight integration of OS & hardware and their desire to provide a consistent & reliable user experience. I own and use a (Sprint) Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, and it was a series of broken promises on ever getting ICS. When finally rolled out, it wasn't the true android experience, but some half-baked Samsung-proprietary interface aka "Touchwiz." Great, that wasn't what I was sold when I purchased the device. I want android, not Samsung's half-baked, bug-filled, garbage-software-filled version of it.

Eventually, I rooted and installed JB, because Samsung sure as heck wasn't going to do that. And then, as you venture deeper into the rooting environment, you find out a bunch of hardware/software issues directly caused by Samsung, including but not limited the EMMC super-brick bug. These security issues in TFA are just more of the same. For me, their handling of their android phones and my experience with them has tarnished their image across their entire product fleet. Will I buy a Samsung brand washer/dryer? There's a lot of digital tech in even washing/drying machines nowadays. Before this, their name wasn't an issue. Now, maybe I consider some other brand.

Comment: Re:The problem with most environmentalist ideas (Score 5, Informative) 466

by Silentknyght (#43205823) Attached to: Why Earth Hour Is a Waste of Time and Energy

well instead of developing the green tech to compete we must artificially increase the cost of the dirty fuel! we cant use plain old light bulbs anymore, that use more power (and give off heat, thus meaning one could in theory keep their heater lower) and now we are stuck with CFLs that are worse for the environment than the old bulbs!

You should have stopped before this sentence.

Insofar as "cheap" "dirty" vs "expensive" "clean" environmentalism is concerned, the problem is that it is difficult to capture (i.e., within a product's price) the cost of all the externalities ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality ). Therefore, we have "cheap" "dirty" fuels, which are actually more expensive than the clean fuels, but the costs of all of their negative externalities have not been included, and therefore only perceived as cheap by the average individual. For example, super-fine particulate matter (i.e., 2.5 microns in diameter), most commonly generated as a fuel combustion byproduct, is a serious contributor to adverse health effects and mortality rates; these health & life effects do translate into costs, though they aren't currently well-reflected in the prices of the products and/or energy choices you can select.

Therefore, we raise the cost of these "dirty" energy sources through artificial means in an attempt to better account for the non-artificial (but hard to encapsulate) externalities.

Comment: Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! (Score 1, Insightful) 249

by Silentknyght (#42821479) Attached to: LibreOffice 4 Released

= LibreOffice doesn't read or write the constantly mutating, rubbish file formats of MS Office the way only MS Office can.

While I recognize it's perhaps not a fair judge of LibreOffice, life isn't fair. I use LibreOffice and like it, and can handle the quirks when using non-native documents. But when even faced with "it's free vs. it costs you money", even ridiculously frugal people like my father WILL NOT SWITCH. His primary concern is his clients are able to read & use the documents he provides--and that conversely, he's able to read & use the documents his clients provide--without any hassle whatsoever. Let's face it, perfect interoperability with zero hassle is a big seller these days; look at Apple.

Only some people will comprise on price vs functionality. But nearly EVERYONE will switch to Libreoffice when they can save big on price without any compromise on functionality.

One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin

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