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Comment Re:Forcing people into impoverished lives (Score 1) 822

Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.

So most of 'them' must be much older than a hundred plus years... Global warming has been around since 1895 or older.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

They demand the power to do this, but they refuse to release their data.

This should do for a start:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

They refuse to publish the code for their computer models

Really. Did you try SourceForge? And why not??

http://sourceforge.net/projects/climate-model/>

And this one has been public since 1983. 1983 was a long time ago...

http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/

They refuse to rationally refute skepticism.

You mean like giving pointers to climate data and climate models that you claim are not public? Or pointing out that this isn't an new theory?

They refuse to address the question of whether warmer may be better than colder.

Ah yes. A little warmer might very well be better. You have a point. The problem is that we are unlikely to stop at a little warmer.

--

This is not a sig. If this was a sig, the "--" would be closer. If it was a sig, it would say something witty. If it was a sig, it would be meaningful. If it was a sig, it wouldn't be nearly this long.

Comment Well... (Score 1) 1127

We work from home, so about the most hazard we experience would be a cat jumping on the keyboard.

OTOH, in the realm of just annoying, is that a device emulator we use frequently takes about 90 seconds to load and can't just be left running -- you have to restart it for each recompile. It's like the testing cycle is make as many changes as possible, compile, go get a beverage or take a pee, come back, it should be just about ready to run.

Comment Re:I always wondered (Score 5, Insightful) 367

And blasting it into little pieces would most certainly have an effect, since smaller pieces have more drag, they would be more likely to burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere (same total energy, much wider dispersion).

For a small object, yes.

For a object big enough to seriously worry about, no. Think of it this way. Take a rock the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs. It had roughly 300 million nuclear weapons worth of energy. Break it into a million equal size pieces, and there are a million rocks with 300 times the energy of a nuclear weapon, each of which would be more than large enough to punch through the atmosphere. The damage would be more focused on the surface of the Earth, and less would be "wasted" on deep layers of rock.

Small explosions are much more effective at destroying things than large explosions. That's why cluster bombs were invented.

Education

Submission + - MBA 'Fuqua-Up' at Duke

theodp writes: "Prompted by Duke's B-school cheating scandal, The Christian Science Monitor questions if business schools are training honest corporate leaders when so many MBA students cheat. Looking beyond the 10% of the '08 class at Duke that was caught cheating, The Monitor notes that a recent study of 54 universities found 56% of MBA students admitted to having cheated. Wonder what this portends for Google, the new #1 darling of the MBA-set."
Announcements

Submission + - Nano Light Bulbs for Your Shirt

moscowde writes: Craighead Research Group at Corenll University created a so-called "Nano-Lamp" — a microscopic collection of light-emitting fibers with dimensions of only a few hundred nanometers. The fibers are made of a polymer that is spiked with light-emitting molecules using technique called — electrospinning. The nanofiber glows bright orange when exposed to an electric field and can be seen in the dark by a naked eye. A professor at Princeton University called this "a breakthrough in the way nanosize light sources are made". Since the nanofibers are flexible they can be potentially used in clothing and flexible computer display.
Programming

Submission + - Get Closure with JavaScript Memory Leaks

An anonymous reader writes: Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are the two Web browsers most commonly associated with memory leaks in JavaScript. The culprit in both browsers is the component object model used to manage DOM objects. This article explains how circular references can lead to memory leaks in JavaScript, particularly when combined with closures. You'll see several common memory leak patterns involving circular references and some easy ways to work around them.
Communications

Submission + - AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers

Proudrooster writes: In the past two-weeks AT&T sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service would be suspended in 30-days and permanently disconnected in 60-days. AT&T cited E911 service as the reason. Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their AT&T VOIP phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to provide a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those that are unable to transfer their old AT&T VOIP phone numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers, we are turning off your phone in 30-days, goodbye, and good luck. AT&T does not appear a corporation that values customer loyalty, especially of those who hung on during the experimental days of the AT&T VOIP service

Many longterm subscribers are extremely upset at the AT&T cold shoulder and short notice. It is also interesting AT&T is unable overcome this E911 technical hurdle, since AT&T is also the local landline company (SBC/AT&T) in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.
Patents

Submission + - Brazil voids Merck AIDS drug patent

JoeBackward writes: "Merck has this useful anti-AIDS drug Elfavirenz, and Brazil has lots of poor people with AIDS. So, after trying really hard to get Merck to cooperate on pricing, the Brazilian government has decided to take a "compulsory license" to the patent, and get the drug from a factory in India. This "compulsory license" is basically a way to take the patent by eminent domain. Check out this story from the Reuters news agency."
Security

Word Vulnerability Compromised US State Dept. 207

hf256 writes "Apparently hackers using an undisclosed (at the time) vulnerability compromised the State Departments network using a Word document sent as an email attachment. Investigators found multiple instances of infection, informed Microsoft, then had to sever internet connectivity to avoid leaking too much data!"
Linux Business

Submission + - HP: "Massive Deals for Linux Desktops" ahe

Doener writes: "Will the critical mass für Linux on the Desktop soon be reached? LinuxWorld writes :

'Last month, HP revealed that it is involved in 'a number of massive deals for Linux desktops' and called such deals 'an indicator of critical mass.' This is according to Doug Small, the worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. Small cited a potential sale that could put thousands of Linux-based HP desktops into an enterprise organization.'

Ist this — as LinxWorld reckons — the "news that open source fans have been waiting for"?"
Republicans

Submission + - Conservatives buy VT Professor's domain name

overlook77 writes: "I wanted to make a website honoring the life and bravery of Liviu Librescu, the Engineering professor slain at Virginia Tech this week. However, a WHOIS reveals that LIVIULIBRESCU.COM was purchased on April 17th by Politech Consulting, a conservative fundraising organization. This raises the ethical question: should a political group buy this man's own name for what could easily be interpreted as a strategic move to deflect a website advocating gun control laws? I am very curious to know what the rest of the Slashdot community thinks of this. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp? domain=LiviuLibrescu.com"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Linux runs into a scalability problem

jcaruso writes: "What happens when you try to run Linux on a 4,096-processor system? You get some "interesting kernel behavior," says this article, which lays out the problems and some potential solutions."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Fight Fraudulant Disaster Domains

UnderAttack writes: "The SANS Internet Strom Center (ISC) setup a web page listing about 500 domains that use keywords related to the Virginia Tech shooting. Turns out that most of them got registered just the last 2 days. While some are used for innocent purposes, others are used for fraud. The page allows everybody with an ISC or DShield account to help categorize the pages. The ISC did the same after Hurricane Katrina, which spurred a lot of these scum-domains."

Feed Google Makes It Easier For Sites To Cut Off Free Publicity (techdirt.com)

Google's found itself on the end of some lawsuits from people who aren't happy that it links to their web content, usually making the off-base accusation that Google's somehow stealing their content, rather than realizing it makes it more valuable by making it easier to find. While a robots.txt file or the use of meta tags already gave web masters a relatively simple way to keep their content out of Google and other search engines, that apparently wasn't enough, so Google has beefed up its site removal tools, giving webmasters several new ways and options to control how their pages are indexed and displayed in its results. Will this stop the lawsuits and complaints? That's doubtful, since the existing ability for site owners to get themselves taken out of Google's results wasn't enough. Furthermore, it seems like this could open up a new avenue of complaints for Google, since it gives third parties the ability to have pages removed from Google's cache or have pages that contain personal information removed from the index. Anything Google does is unlikely to make much difference, since its power and riches makes it an attractive target for lawsuits. Meanwhile, it would also seem that anything Google does won't make some site owners understand how it and other search engines are their friends, not their foes.

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