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Comment Preparation for the coming famine (Score 2, Interesting) 99

The Chinese government is trying to punish Australia for having a free press by blocking trade. China imports a lot of food and commodities from Austrakia, so they are now preparing for the famine that they will cause by the resulting rises in prices. Their self imposed coal blockade is also leading to power outages in many coastal communities.
Businesses

EPA Proposes Limits To Science Used In Rulemaking (reuters.com) 314

Posted by BeauHD from the open-book dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulations, an apparent concession to big business that has long requested such restrictions. Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data. The measure was billed by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as a way to boost transparency for the benefit of the industries his agency regulates. But scientists and former EPA officials worry it will hamstring the agency's ability to protect public health by putting key data off limits.

The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back. Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA's often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted. But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.

Comment Try the CQRS design pattern (Score 2) 274

I suggest you look at the CQRS pattern. A good Java implementation is http://www.axonframework.org/. The advantage is the CQRS pattern that it is fairly simple, but highly scalable. So you can start small and simple with the confidence that you can tweak and optimise in the future to scale as required. There are good tutorials and support too. My team is using it for an industrial application and we have found that it has been very robust. It might take a bit of work to get your head around the concepts, but it is worthwhile in the end.

Comment Re:Firebreaks are a simple solution. (Score 2) 79

by Lairdsville (#42578491) Attached to: Bushfire Threatens Major Telescope
That helps, but in severe conditions, as we are having now, it is still no guarantee. The problem of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ember_attack after people are evacuated means that even building that are hundreds of meters from the fire can still burn down. The strategy in NSW is to evacuate if there is any risk to life, so we have the situation where many buildings have been lost but so far no lives.
Censorship

Zero Errors? Spamhaus Flubs Causing Domain Deletions 170

Posted by timothy from the damn-yankers dept.
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: After I sent 10 new proxy sites to my (confirmed-opt-in) mailing list, two of them ended up on one of Spamhaus's blacklists, and as a result, all 10 domains were disabled by the domain registrar, so the sites disappeared from the Web. Did you even know this could happen?"

Comment It will all be OK (Score 1) 195

by wgmari (#34360582) Attached to: Computer Glitch Leaves Some Australians Without Cash

I can guarantee that all late fees incurred will be paid by NAB. This is a MAJOR news story here in Australia - the bad publicity is huge. If they reneg on any fees, there'll be blood in the water while the reporters circle.

I incurred some fees from a third party once when my main bank set my account up incorrectly. A simple letter was enough to get them to refund all of the fees. If they didn't, the banking ombudsman has the power to force them.
Idle

Paleontologists Discover World's Horniest Dinosaur 109

Posted by samzenpus from the overcompensatesaurus dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Guardian reports that paleontologists have uncovered the remains of an ancient beast called Kosmoceratops richardsoni that stood 16 feet tall with a 6-foot skull equipped with 15 horns and lived 76 million years ago in the warm, wet swamps of what is now southern Utah. 'These animals are basically over-sized rhinos with a whole lot more horns on their heads. They had huge heads relative to their body size,' says Scott Sampson, a researcher at the Utah Museum of Natural History."
Space

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."

Comment Mine training simulation goes one better (Score 1) 158

by Lairdsville (#26757619) Attached to: First-Person Shooter Modified For Fire Drill Simulation
The guys at http://www.virtualrealitytrainingsystem.com/ have created an interactive 3D simulation to evacuate entire coal mines (and other things). As far as I know, this is the only full 3D 360 degree simulation in the world and it is designed so that a group of 10 or 20 miners can work through detailed simulations with a trainer in their full equipment. I have seen a lot of virtual reality systems, and this is by far the most realistic one that I have seen. The users report that it is more like a coal mine than the concrete mock ups that they also use for training. Disclaimer - I did some work on it!
Moon

Chandrayaan M3 Instrument Confirms Iron-Bearing Minerals On the Moon 67

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-no-...-wait-yes-that's-a-moon dept.
William Robinson writes with news that the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument developed by NASA and sent aboard India's Chandrayaan-1, has confirmed the presence of iron-bearing minerals on the moon. This marks the beginning of an extensive examination of the composition of the lunar surface. "Isro officials said M3 would help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals to ultimately understand the moon's early geological evolution. 'The compositional map that will come out of M3 will have fantastic data on geological formation of the moon,' the official said. Researchers said the relative abundance of magnesium and iron in lunar rocks could help confirm whether the moon was covered by a molten, magma ocean early on in its history. Iron and magnesium will also indicate melting of the moon, if it happened and how it formed later. This metallic element has been found in lunar meteorites, but scientists know little about its distribution in the lunar crust."

Comment Re:Sounds like a market opportunity. (Score 1) 816

by wgmari (#24148581) Attached to: The Very Worst Uses of Windows

They wouldn't make the lathe's chassis out of cardboard, why would they build their control systems on windows?

So many of us here at /. are software professionals that we find it hard to believe that other people don't see the software as being vitally important. If a company makes lathes, they would have specialists in making lathes, and the software is probably an afterthought at best. I wouldn't be surprised if it were outsourced, even.

After all, a machine making company's core competency isn't going to be software, is it?

AIM Now (Mostly) Open To Developers 187

Posted by Hemos
gregsblog writes "Today is a historic day at AOL as we announced a software development kit for AOL Instant Messenger. Open AIM will empower you, as the developer, to write custom clients and plugins. For now, lets concentrate on the Open AIM SDK and get into what it can do for you. First, the development kit is written using COM, so plugins and custom clients can be written for Windows in languages like C++, VB, C#, and eventually J-Script. In the near future we will have solutions for LINUX, MAC and Windows Mobile devices. Why is this important? We now have a solution to provide all AIM users and consumers to build their own IM clients and to extend the features of Triton via plugins. Of course all of this is free of charge. How do I get started? Well my team has provided a quick start guide, and tutorials, in addition to numerous coding examples, from the simple to the complex. Our examples are in C++ and C#. What are the limitations? Basically anything goes, with the exception of writing multi-headed clients."

Comment Re:Perl vs. Python (Score 1) 436

by Lairdsville (#14450864) Attached to: Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional
Ahhh - that is just tooo evil. I can just imagine the worst of both worlds
But worse than that is http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~jbehren/fpx3.html. At attempt to "simplify Fortran source code development with an integrated set of macros, directives and embedded Perl/Fortran. Wow - someone has combined my two least favourite languages in an attempt to make a 'better' one!

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