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Comment Re:I actually think this is a good idea (Score 1) 599

by Ohmaar (#31148574) Attached to: Gov't Proposes "National Climate Service" For the US

Since climate science really is a science, it's going to have to make predictions. It's good to put consensus predictions on record and then see how good they are. I have enough faith in climate science to think that they will be quite good. Of course they will have big error bars, but that's unavoidable. Also, it's not uninformative. I think it will be important in 5 years to say: We've got a climate model that's made correct predictions for the last five years, so you should trust that model as a good guide to the future. It's not a perfect argument, but I think it will be more persuasive than what we can say now.

Your optimism is no doubt fueled by all the most recent publicity the rigor of their scientific method has garnered.

Comment Payback (Score 1) 418

by Ohmaar (#28439747) Attached to: DoE Considers Artificial Trees To Remove CO2
How many REAL trees could you plant for the cost of one of these stupid artificial trees? Real trees absorb carbon dioxide using NO electricity, there's no carbon storage problem they produce oxygen and beautify the surroundings to boot! This whole "artificial tree" solution sounds more like some business with a politician in their pocket.

Comment Re:hmmm (Score 1) 693

by Ohmaar (#26438161) Attached to: iTunes DRM-Free Files Contain Personal Info

so what happens when you send it to someone else in a "hey check out this song" kind of way, then that person is stupid and sticks it in their lime wire folder?

That sounds like file sharing to me. Why wouldn't you just send them a link to the song on lala.com where they can listen once for free?
Cellphones

An App Store For iPhone Software 531

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-run-me-now dept.
Steve Jobs demonstrated a new "App Store" that will be pushed out to all iPhones in June. It's available now in beta. This will be the exclusive avenue developers will use to get their iPhone apps, written to the newly released SDK, to customers. Developers will get 70% of the proceeds from sales of their goods on the App store, with no further charges for hosting, credit-card processing, etc. Jobs called this "the best deal going to distribute applications in the mobile space."
Censorship

The Cuban Memory Stick Underground 427

Posted by kdawson from the digital-samizdat dept.
circletimessquare writes "The NyTimes has an aticle describing how students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the Internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive."
Transportation

Underground Freight Networks 284

Posted by kdawson from the yesterday's-tomorrow-today dept.
morphovar writes "The German Ruhr University of Bochum is conducting experiments with a large-scale model for an automated subterranean transport system. It would use unmanned electric vehicles on rails that travel in a network through pipelines with a diameter of 1.6 meters, up to distances of 150 kilometers. Sending cargo goods through underground pipelines is anything but new — see this scan of a 1929 magazine article about Chicago's underground freight tunnel network (more details). Translating this concept to the 21st century would be something like introducing email for things: you could order something on the Internet and pick it up through a trapdoor in your cellar the next morning."
Robotics

A Modular Snake Robot 103

Posted by kdawson from the snakes-in-a-pipe dept.
StCredZero writes "Researchers at CMU are working on a Modular Snake Robot. A video from this site is up on YouTube. In addition to being able to traverse a wide variety of terrain, the robot can also climb poles, the inside of pipes and conduits, small grooves in walls, and probably more. It can also swim. Many robots can do one of those tasks. This one can do them all. That's quite an accomplishment. This has tremendous potential for the maintenance of fiber optic networks, pipelines, and plumbing in large buildings; and also as a spy device. (I wonder how loud it is?)"
Security

Controversial Security Paper Nixed From Black Hat 144

Posted by Zonk from the keep-it-under-your-hat dept.
coondoggie writes us with a link to the Network World site, as he tends to do. Today he offers an article discussing the cancellation of a presentation which would have undermined chip-based security on PCs. Scheduled during the Black Hat USA 2007 event, the event's briefing promised to break the Trusted Computing Group's module, as well as Vista's Bitlocker. Live demos were to be included. The presenters pulled the event, and have no interest in discussing the subject any more. "[Presenters Nitin and Vipin Kumar's] promised exploit would be a chink in the armor of hardware-based system integrity that [trusted platform module] (TPM) is designed to ensure. TPM is also a key component of Trusted Computing Group's architecture for network access control (NAC). TPM would create a unique value or hash of all the steps of a computer's boot sequence that would represent the particular state of that machine, according to Steve Hanna, co-chair of TCG's NAC effort."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Can cryptography prevent printer-ink piracy? 1

Submitted by Zack Melich
Zack Melich writes: Cryptography Research Inc. (CRI), a San Francisco company, is developing chip technology aimed at helping printer manufacturers protect this primary source of profit. The company's chips use cryptography designed to make it harder for printers to use off-brand and counterfeit cartridges. CRI plans to create a secure chip that will allow only certain ink cartridges to communicate with certain printers. CRI also said that the chip will be designed that so large portions of it will have no decipherable structure, a feature that would thwart someone attempting to reverse-engineer the chip by examining it under a microscope to determine how it works. Its chip generates a separate, random code for each ink cartridge, thus requiring a would-be hacker to break every successive cartridge's code to make use of the cartridge. "You can see 95 percent of the [chip's] grid and you still don't know how it works," said Kit Rodgers, CRI's vice president of business development.

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