MonorailCat - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hansen argues for meter scale sea level rise (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

mdsolar

on Thursday July 26, 2007 @11:12PM

mdsolar writes: "NASA climatologist James Hansen has published a paper on Scientific reticence and sea level rise attempting to explain why reports such as the IPCC 4th Assesment tend to lowball climate change consequences. Now he has a writeup in New Scientist which summarizes the paper giving his reasons for thinking that a 5 meter sea level rise by the end of this century could easily happen. Pictures of the effects of such a rise are included. Hansen:

So why do I think a sea level rise of metres would be a near certainty if greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing? Because while the growth of great ice sheets takes millennia, the disintegration of ice sheets is a wet process that can proceed rapidly.
"

Submission + - Hell Has Frozen Over: Dvorak Has a Mac 1

Submitted by

sjaskow

on Thursday July 26, 2007 @11:51AM

sjaskow writes: "It appears that Dvorak has taken the plunge. He's got a Mac and, horrors, actually seems to like it!"

Submission + - I have a 3000 pound band saw... (bii1.com)

Submitted by

Sottilde

on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @11:29AM

Sottilde writes: "And nothing to destroy. I'm holding a contest. Mail me anything you like that will fit in a 21" wide by 18" tall vise, and I'll cut it. You can send anything from a Nintendo to a computer to an engine block. I'll pick the top 10 videos and post them up on my site. Cash prizes for the top three! $200/$75/$25. Top three will be decided by community vote."

Submission + - Wooden PC reduces carbon footprint by 85%

Submitted by StonyandCher on Monday July 23, 2007 @10:51PM

StonyandCher writes: A supposedly zero carbon PC is being developed by U.K. retailer PC World, featuring wood casing for keyboard, screen and mouse. Use of recycled materials and low electricity needs will reduce its carbon footprint to 85 percent of a standard PC.

Dixon Stores Group International (DSGi) says its new own-brand PC will draw just 45 watts, 23 percent of a standard PC's 200 watts, and have the same capacity as a current PC, enough DSGi says, to run Vista. There has been criticism that Vista is a resource-hungry OS and shouldn't have been chosen.

Submission + - Internals of the OLPC (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by adrianbaugh on Monday July 23, 2007 @02:06PM

adrianbaugh writes: The BBC has an article examining the internals of the OLPC device. The article mentions how the hardware was designed to solve the problems of robustness and operability in a very low-tech environment. It also covers the choice of OS and how the project leaders hope this will inspire children to take up computer programming.

Submission + - Favorite application of all time? (just-think-it.com)

Submitted by

justthinkit

on Monday July 23, 2007 @11:52AM

justthinkit writes: "Slashdot readers, you are the most technical people on Earth. You probably average a decade or more of computing experience. What, in all your years of hacking, have you found to be your favorite application of all? What is the one program you would like to have with you on a desert island? And why?

The catch is it has to be a single file and no dependencies other than what the OS of its day provided by default. This is a blast-from-the-past seeker. I am sick of OSes today shipping with hundreds of thousands of files, on install DVDs. I am looking for the most useful yet tiniest ever. Small is indeed beautiful (and Word.exe's chief architect should be President).

I'll kick things off by stating mine — Microsoft Word for DOS, version 5.0a [Version 5.5, patched for Y2K, is available from MS for free]. My choice: Word.exe, 622,428 bytes.

Some of the reasons I love Word.exe? Ran native on OS/2, had a shallow mouse-and-keyboard accessible menu tree (that negated the need for obscure WP-like macros or keyboard templates, although it had one of the best keytemps ever), integrated support for a powerful yet readable macro language, RTF support, embeddable images, CR or CR-LF text file support, changeable screen resolutions (including a half readable graphics mode), first DOS application with native mouse support. And practical things like a hefty 8MB file size limit, auto-created backup files, auto-generated "DOC" file extension, automatic on-screen pagination and absolute 100.0% stability. Pity that XP broke the clipboard access...

At one point I worked at a 500 person engineering firm that was still running Word.exe right into the Windows 98 era. I've written applications that depended on automated calls to Word.exe. Low tech, high age friends of mine use Word.exe to write, manage contact lists and convert documents — for almost 20 years now [timeline]. They bought a new printer 6 or 7 years ago and the dealer installed Windows to install the printer drivers. On their next trip to British Columbia, on route to Hawaii, I was called upon to put it back to "just DOS + Word" for them. Word.exe keeps on keeping on.

If we allow more than a single file but still limiting things to what shipped with the core application, then I would also cite: postscript support (30KB), superb help file (105KB), the most complete spell check database at that time — that allowed user and global add-on dictionaries (180KB), full thesaurus (320KB), excellent tutorial system for mouse and keyboard (900KB)]. Heck, if you excluded the thesaurus & tutorials you could be fit it all on a single bootable 3.5" floppy.

Ok, I think I set the bar pretty high but I am really looking forward to other all-star submissions."

Submission + - HIV vaccine ready for clinical trials (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Saturday July 21, 2007 @07:05PM

amigoro writes: "A vaccine that is capable of delivering a double whammy against AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus by both providing immunity against the infection while at the same time destroying cells infected by the virus is ready for clinical trials, a group of Russian researchers announced today."

Submission + - Oil (or Not) in Your Future (connectlive.com) 1

Submitted by

mdsolar

on Saturday July 21, 2007 @10:52AM

mdsolar writes: "Over at The Oil Drum there is an interesting discussion going on about a report released (in draft form) by the National Petroleum Council. The report is a response to questions from Secretary of Energy Bodman about the ability of oil companies to meet projected demand for oil (at a reasonable price). The report seems to say that this cannot be done and recommends that the government 1) force conservation through efficiency regulations, 2) shift to other energy sources, 3) reduce regulation on drilling in the US, 4) use US power to force open markets in oil, 5) pay for the education of engineers in the oil field, allow retiring workers to consult without tax penalties and raise H1-B quotas and 6) pay the oil industry to accept carbon dioxide from coal use for sequestration.

The discusion at The Oil Drum is finding that the report is fudging on the peak oil issue while at the same time predicting a greatly increased oil supply mainly from the Middle East using new technologies and discoveries. My own acerbic take on the report findings can be found here."

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