Comment Re:People are dumb panicky animals (Score 1) 373
What? I don't think the DSM is about to redefine delusion, as a psychiatric term, to include truthers, chemtrail-believers and AGW denialists.
Comment Re:Stop with the conferences (Score 1) 773
The original iPhone was pretty groundbreaking for what it was (usable touchscreen input), and the iPhone 4 introduced really nice screens, probably the main reason why resolution has been pushed by all other manufacturers since then. Both technologies were available to other manufacturers, but they all followed Apple's lead. Same with tablets, although I think no one in their right mind would get it blown away by the iPad (or any other tablet since then).
The original MacBook Air probably started the whole race to thinness, too. Even though they're no great innovators, Apple certainly have been leading the industry the last ten years. It's a bit funny that it probably started with the iPod, which Apple delivered late to a market in which everyone else insisted on producing utter crap.
Comment Re:Free market, LOL! (Score 4, Insightful) 688
Socialism, lol.
Comment Re:not good enough (Score 4, Insightful) 244
Like they said, it's a fashion accessory. Did you see the presenter at the event, with those hideous white glasses? Fashion. So they made a giant, cumbersome watch with insultingly poor battery life and some crazy advanced technology that they couldn't find any practical use for. Fashion. You wouldn't understand. Neither do I.
Comment Re:Pseudoscience debunked? (Score 1) 374
I'm close when saying you know nothing about science, yes. I'll add that you don't know how to make an argument.
Comment Re:Pseudoscience debunked? (Score 1) 374
True, psychology, like any other science, isn't about individuals. But seriously, you know nothing about science. Educate yourself, preferably not on Slashdot.
Comment Re:Pseudoscience debunked? (Score 3, Insightful) 374
Your ad-hoc definition of science invented to exclude psychology fails due to the fact that you evidently know nothing about psychology, dictionaries, English majors and pretty much everything else you wrote about.
Comment Re:But but (Score 2) 156
Truth is, hardly any self-proclaimed AGW 'sceptic' is actually a sceptic. Most of them are True Believers, repeating oft-debunked nonsense in hope of making it stick.
Comment Re:Disagree (Score 2) 633
Despite their failures, they've turned record profits several times the last few years. I'm not arguing that Ballmer has been a great CEO, just that he hasn't been running the company into the ground like some claim. Although Windows 8 seems like a nice try.
Students At Lynn University Get iPad Minis Instead of Textbooks 192
Dave_Minsky writes "About 600 students will enter Lynn University's freshman class this year, the largest since 2007, and they will all be using iPad Minis instead of textbooks. The iPads will cost $475, saving students up to 50% of what a semester's worth of textbooks would cost, estimates Lynn. Students will be able to access core curriculum classes on their iPads that are 'enhanced with custom multimedia content,' and will come with 'at least 30 education, productivity, social and news-related iOS apps — some free and some paid for by the university.' This seems to be the beginning of a new era for American colleges. The Boca Raton university is not the first to give iPads to students instead of textbooks. Back in 2010, New Jersey-based Seton Hill University announced it would give students the tablets rather than books."
Comment Re:Disagree (Score 3, Insightful) 633
If stock price is anything to go by, then Microsoft has been a stable multi-billion dollar corporation throughout Ballmer's reign. Microsoft needs to change, but their presumed failure has, so far, been a mighty success compared to most other survivors of the
Ubuntu Edge Draws Nearly $13M, But Falls Short of Indiegogo Goal 125
Nerval's Lobster writes "The crowdfunding campaign to build an Ubuntu-powered smartphone has fallen short of its ambitious goal. Canonical, which works with the open-source community to support Ubuntu worldwide, decided to fund its Ubuntu Edge smartphone via crowdfunding Website Indiegogo. The funding goal was set at $32 million, and at first it looked as if the project had enough momentum to actually succeed: within the first 24 hours of the project's July 22 launch, some $3.45 million had poured in. But that torrent of cash soon slowed to a trickle. In the end, the campaign managed to amass $12,809,906 by its August 21 closing. Nonetheless, Canonical did its best to put a brave face on the situation. 'While we passionately wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on phones, the support and attention it received will still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start to arrive in 2014,' the organization wrote in a posting. 'Thousands of you clearly want to own an Ubuntu phone and believe in our vision of convergence, and rest assured you won't have much longer to wait.'" Update: 08/22 16:14 GMT by T : Oops -- headline edited to reflect that the Edge was an Indiegogo project, rather than Kickstarter.
Comment Re:When a secret is a criminal act, it's evidence. (Score 4, Insightful) 491
Torture was in fact illegal. It was just approved by the government.
Comment Re:I'll still take my chances with Tizen on Samsun (Score 1) 80
What makes you believe Samsung will be any more open source friendly than Google? They have no history of that, quite the contrary. Also, https://developer.tizen.org/forums/sdk-ide/tizen-sdk-licensing-makes-whole-tizen-not-open-source
Comment Re:Dog and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!!! (Score 1) 416
Wrong. There was one article. One. That's not harping. If there were more than one, then surely they would have been escavated by the denialists by now. Yet they cling to that Newsweek article as if it were referenced by everyone else, every day.
As for scientific articles, you've got access to Google Scholar right now, and guess what? It's got year delimiters. If you want to "teach the controversy", at least use readily available data. Here is a review article to get you started. It's a review article, an overview of the then current research on the subject, so you'll see that it actually has something to say about soot and aerosols:
Several studies in the past have concluded that if these aerosols were distributed uniformly over the earth they would increase the earth's overalll albedo by scattering sunlight and thereby cause a general cooling (Rasool & Schneider 1971, Yamamoto & Tanaka 1972, Bryson & Wendland 1975, Budyko 1977). The reason why this is almost surely not the case are summarized by Kellogg, Coakley & Grams (1975) (see also Kellogg 1977), and they are briefly restated. First, such industrial aerosols (and the same would apply to agricultural slash-and-burn smoke) do not remain airborne in the lower levels of the atmosphere for more than about five days on average (Moore, Poet & Martell 1973). That means they are a regional phenomenon and are limited for the most part to the land areas where they were created.
I'm a bit impressed that the referenced article by Yamamoto and Tanaka (1972) is also freely available on the interwebs, and can be found here. And even that one accepts global warming due to CO2, and the local variability of aerosols.
