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Comment Re:Fahrenheit: It's for telling temperature (Score 2, Interesting) 1233

"Fahrenheit also has more descriptive power due to smaller degrees"

Maybe so, but can you tell the difference between 72 F and 74 F? I highly doubt it, and that is a larger difference than one degree Celsius. Anything that needs more precision than that can use decimals.
100 F being "pretty hot" and 0 F being "pretty cold" doesn't really help anyone too much, whereas 100 C being, "don't go outside because you'll boil to death", or 0 C being "it could snow at this temperature", seems like a much better arrangement.

No one should ever need to use Fahrenheit, or god forbid, Rankin, which is even worse, and I am of the opinion that Fahrenheit and Rankin should not exist, and therefore no one will need to use them interchangeably. Same goes for the imperial measurement system. It also does not allow "more descriptive power", since it can only be subdivided by multiples of 8, or 12, or whatever you felt like at the time before it just gets ridiculous.

Comment Re:This Legislation Needs More Youtube Justificati (Score 1) 620

Great video. But at least one of the cars was driving on the wrong side of the road.

The girls and the first car they hit were both driving on the left, but the third car was driving on the right hand side of the road. Also, he had to be at least a few hundred metres out when the crash first occurred. That driver must have been texting too.

Comment Re:Missed one: (Score 1) 397

All nice and well, but that's still not understanding women. You just have the operators manual. It's similar to knowing how to drive a car, or knowing that you can run. Most people can (somewhat) drive, but they probably couldn't tell you how it worked. They can give you an explanation like "the gas goes through the pipes to the engine and then it goes vroom!", but they won't understand how it works. It just does; much like your explanation on how you understand women. You don't. You simply know how to push the buttons in the right way to get them to do what you want.

Comment Re:Wow. This is the only poll which tells you. . . (Score 1) 315

"An answer between the most and least popular" depends on whether "most popular" refers to the option of most popular or the option with the most votes. Being ambiguous, you could decide whichever one makes you right (the latter), however, being a dick and having voted for the least popular, I'm going to decide that it's the former option, and that everyone's wrong.

Comment Re:Money laundering made easy? (Score 1) 472

"considering the very high melting point of gold"
Gold has one of the lowest melting points of all metals. Just over 1000 degrees Celsius. Clearly this is still very hot, but something as easy to find as a charcoal or natural gas can reach this temperature. A blowtorch is even hotter.
Now, I'm not sure how tight the security is around these things, but if you wear a ski mask, that could possibly be enough, and as long as you're not doing anything suspicious to the machine, very few people will pay you mind.

Comment Re:Uhhh... (Score 1) 485

well, yes and no. when the police look at something, it either has to be in plain sight, or they need a warrant for it to be admissible in court. something similar /should/ apply to regular people too, so, if the photos were just there, then it's fine, but if they were in an envelope, he'd need a valid reason for actually looking through the guys stuff and finding it.
Power

Submission + - Future of LED Lighting is Looking Bright

Hugh Pickens writes: "LED lighting was once relegated to basketball scoreboards, cellphone consoles, traffic lights and colored Christmas lights but the NY Times reports that as a result of rapid developments in the technology, LED lighting is now poised to become common on streets and in buildings, as well as in homes and offices. Some American cities, including Ann Arbor, Mich., and Raleigh, N.C., are using the lights to illuminate streets and parking garages and dozens more are exploring the technology as studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years. LEDs are more than twice as efficient as compact fluorescent bulbs, currently the standard for greener lighting and unlike compact fluorescents, LEDs turn on quickly and are compatible with dimmer switches. Thanks in part to the injection of federal cash, sales of the lights in new "solid state" fixtures — a $297 million industry in 2007 — are likely to become a near-billion-dollar industry by 2013. Wal-Mart Stores has started selling a consumer LED bulb that uses just seven watts of electricity and claims to last for more than 13 years. It costs around $35 — a daunting price tag for a light bulb. "We're kind of testing the waters," says Rand Waddoups, Wal-Mart's senior director of strategy and sustainability. "This is a behavior change, and that requires some work.""
Announcements

Submission + - Tesla Recalls 345 Electric Roadsters (informationweek.com) 1

viyh writes: "Tesla Motors has recalled the $109,000 version of its electric Roadster because of bolts improperly installed by contract manufacturer Lotus.

The recall covers all 345 of the luxury automobile built before April 22, the Silicon Valley company said. No accidents have been reported as a result of the flaw.

The problem came to light after a Roadster owner complained of "uncharacteristic handling," Tesla said. An investigation found that the rear inner hub flange bolts on a small percentage of the vehicles were improperly torqued during assembly. A similar problem is behind Lotus' current recall of its Elise and Exige vehicles.

Tesla said it would send technicians to car owners' homes or offices to inspect their vehicles and take them to a repair facility, if needed. Customers will not be charged for the repair.

The Sport sells for a staring price of $128,000.

In March, Tesla unveiled a prototype of its "mainstream" $57,400 electric sedan called the Model S. Tesla expects to start production of the vehicle in late 2011."

Medicine

Submission + - How Common is Scientific Misconduct?

Hugh Pickens writes: "The image of scientists as objective seekers of truth is periodically jeopardized by the discovery of a major scientific fraud. Recent scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk's fake stem-cell lines or Jan Hendrik Schön's duplicated graphs showed how easy it can be for a scientist to publish fabricated data in the most prestigious journals. Daniele Fanelli has an interesting paper on PLOS One where she performs a meta-analysis synthesizing previous surveys to determine the frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct. A pooled weighted average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once -a serious form of misconduct by any standard- and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behavior of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others. "Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct," writes Fanelli. "It is likely that, if on average 2% of scientists admit to have falsified research at least once and up to 34% admit other questionable research practices, the actual frequencies of misconduct could be higher than this.""
Space

Submission + - Discovery: Even Tiny Stars Have Planets (space.com) 2

Paul server guy writes: "From a story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090528-exoplanet-small-star.html — A Jupiter-like planet has been discovered orbiting one of the smallest stars known, suggesting that planets could be more common than previously thought.
"This is an exciting discovery because it shows that planets can be found around extremely lightweight stars," said Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is a hint that nature likes to form planets, even around stars very different from the sun."

Astrometry was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, but the method requires very precise measurements over long periods of time, and until now, has failed to turn up any exoplanets.
The technique involves measuring the precise motions of a star on the sky as an unseen planet tugs the star back and forth.
The discovery will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

The newfound exoplanet, called VB 10b, is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila (a light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers). It is a gas giant, with a mass six times that of Jupiter, and an orbit far enough away from its star to be labeled a "cold Jupiter" similar to our own.

In reality, though, the planet's own internal heat would give it an Earth-like temperature.

The planet's star, called VB 10, is tiny. It is what's known as an M-dwarf and is only one-twelfth the mass of our sun, just barely big enough to fuse atoms at its core and shine with starlight."

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