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Power

Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes 599

MTorrice writes "NASA researchers have compared nuclear power to fossil fuel energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution-related deaths. Using nuclear power in place of coal and gas power has prevented some 1.8 million deaths globally over the past four decades and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes their study. The pair also found that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say."

Comment Re:So many differences (Score 1) 90

Cancer can take many years before symptoms appear. An example is people in Ukraine and Belarus who were subjected to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Diagnoses of thyroid cancer (for all age groups) peaked in 1996, ten years after, but people are still being diagnosed with it. ... and this was is ionizing radiation that mutated genes directly during a few days in 1986.

If there are health effects from cell phones, we will probably not see the diagnoses for twenty years. (However, by then the collapse of the world's eco-systems will be a more pressing issue....)

Comment Re:idiocy (Score 1) 90

No, it is not idiocy. There are other things that could go on than just ionizing or heating. There have been numerous studies that have shown that various things can happen inside human tissue from exposure to microwave radiation ... but science does not yet understand exactly what these effects imply, or if the harm as a result of "normal" cell phone use would be significant enough to bother.

For instance, one study showed that if you dope glucose with isotopes and take a PET scan of a person head while talking in a 2G (CDMA or GSM) phone held next to the ear, you will find that isotopes will centre around the phone's antenna. Why those (brain) cells consume so much more energy than other cells is unknown.

There have also been several tests with lab rats that have shown ruptures in the blood-brain barrier, causing death of nerve cells and loss of cognitive function.

Another issue is that not all microwave radiation is equal, and with the frequency bands of 3G and 4G, we don't know that much yet.

Comment Re:Exactly what Windows 8 needed at launch (Score 1) 108

It is not exactly like a touch screen. There is no way to detect touch -- you can only wave your hands in front of the screen.
Also, because there is no eye-hand-coordination in the system, there will have to be proxy objects (like mouse pointers) on the screen for your finger tips.

Comment Teensy 3.0 maybe? (Score 1) 273

If all you want is a USB and a bunch of pins with it, then the Raspberry Pi is overkill where a simpler microcontroller board would do.

One example of such a board is the Teensy 3.0 USB Development Board. It has a 48MHz ARM cpu (Cortex-M4), is only 1.4 by 0.7 inch large, has 28 pins and a micro USB port.
By default, it gets its power from a host computer, but you could also wire up its own power supply. There is also an optional Micro-SD card board for storage.
However, I don't think that it would run Linux like the Raspberry Pi, only your own code.
It is definitely in a small form factor.

Comment All religions are made up (Score 1) 196

Well, I think that all organised religions are in some way made up. Most religions are based on powerful experiences that influential people have had, but these people would have had to make up systems in which to place their experiences so that they can make sense for themselves and to be able to get their message across to others.

I have had a long talk with a minister in the Scottish Jedi religion about his faith, because I had found it fascinating.
The point that he made about his faith is that he had held his basic beliefs about spirituality for a long time and for many years he had been searching for a congregation that shared these beliefs. He had been part of various "New Age" groups but in the long term, none of them had felt right for him.
After many years, he found the Jedi church, and discovered to his astonishment that the basic beliefs were the same to his. He also told me that while they have adapted the spiritual and ritual content from Star Wars, there is no mythology from the movies. For instance, they don't believe that Darth Vader had existed -- that would just be weird ...

Comment Did Lenovo Think when designing the new ThinkPad? (Score 3, Insightful) 271

Like all ThinkPad's before it, it has a trackpoint, but how the L did the Lenovo designers think that trackpoint users are going to be able to click with no mouse buttons?

Apparently, you are supposed to click by pressing on the top of the trackpad...
However, there are quite a few users out there who are used to disabling the trackpad in the BIOS because it is too easy to nudge it by mistake. With such a large trackpad (twice as wide than before) and practically no space between the Space Bar and the trackpad this is bound to happen more often.

Comment Re:Never Mind the Model M.... (Score 3, Informative) 298

I would love to try one of these beam-spring keyboards sometime. I have heard that they are awesome.

Apparently, the beam-spring was designed to emulate the feel of the IBM Selectric typewriter.
... and the buckling spring switches in the Model M were designed to be a lower-cost version that achieved the same feel, except that they weren't as good.
... and the clicky Cherry MX switches were made to emulate the feel of the buckling springs, except that they weren't as good.
...

Comment Not at all the same as MX Greens... (Score 4, Informative) 298

Marketing on Slashdot again, huh... *sigh*

The Cherry MX Green does not feel like a buckling spring from the Model F or Model M keyboards, really.
While it is a stiff clicky switch, it is far less tactile, and the tactile point is different.
The Buckling Spring on a IBM Model M or Model F has a slow progression in resistance followed by a sharp drop at the actuation point at around 2/3 - 3/4 way down the stroke.
The Cherry MX Blue and Green have a small bump at the actuation point, which is higher up, at about 1/2-way down the stroke.

As other posters have already written, the MX Green is just like a MX Blue with a stiffer spring. It was made to be used for the Space Bar on a keyboard that is otherwise populated with MX Blue.
Compared to the Blue, with the Green's stiffer spring you tend to press harder on it and that diminishes the feel of the tactile bump somewhat.
The Green has always been used as the space bar switch on Cherry's own keyboards with Blue switches. The only new thing is that it is used on a whole keyboard.
Having a stiffer switch on the space bar is common. Ordinary rubber dome keyboards often come with coiled springs under the space bar to make it stiffer.

If you want a Buckling Spring keyboard, you could buy a new Model M from Unicomp. They are built using the same machines and tooling that the old IBM keyboards were. They even cost less than many gaming keyboards with Cherry MX switches.

BTW. This post was typed on a Dolch keyboard (Cherry G80-1813HFX) with Cherry MX Blue switches, except for the Green switch on the space bar.

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