Comment My favorite seasoning is... (Score 1) 346
Sage
Obama Reveals Climate Change Plan 577
Today President Obama gave a speech outlining the administration's plan to take on climate change. (Video of the speech available on YouTube, and the White House published an infographic as well.) Most significantly, Obama's plan would have the EPA set limits on carbon pollution from all U.S. power plants, a goal already meeting resistance from Republicans. The plan also sets the goal of funding enough solar- and wind-based energy projects on public lands to power over 6 million homes by 2020. By 2030, it aims to use efficiency standards to reduce carbon pollution by 3 billion metric tons. Obama called for new efforts to deal with extreme weather like Hurricane Sandy. He also pointed out the difficulty in getting emerging industrial economies to be environmentally conscious. To that end, the plan calls for the end of U.S. support for financing coal power plants in foreign countries, unless those plants use carbon capture and sequestration technologies. The speech addressed the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry up to 800,000 gallons of oil per day from Canada into the U.S. Obama indicated that approval for the pipeline would be tied to emissions goals.
Comment Family Tech Support Unsupported Clause (Score 1) 519
Being the typical Slashdot geek, I'm the default tech support for most of my family. I have very few "rules" in place seeing as this is informally helping out family members, but I've had to make it VERY clear to them that if iTunes is on the computer, I will not support the computer.
Comment Upgrading from W8 to W7 (Score 5, Interesting) 675
The sheer number of friends and relatives bringing their shiny new computers to me (The resident geek) begging me to upgrade them from Windows 8 to Windows 7 says otherwise...
I suspect most of these people did not voluntary opt into Microsoft's "Track Me" program either.
Climate Contrarians Seek Leadership of House Science Committee 518
An article at Ars examines three members of the U.S. House of Representatives who are seeking chairmanship of its Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said in an interview, "My analysis is that in the global warming debate, we won. There were a lot of scientists who were just going along with the flow on the idea that mankind was causing a change in the world's climate. I think that after 10 years of debate, we can show that that there are hundreds if not thousands of scientists who have come over to being skeptics, and I don't know anyone [who was a skeptic] who became a believer in global warming." James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has a similar record of opposing climate change, as does Lamar Smith (R-TX). Relatedly, Phil Plait, a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer, has posted an article highlighting how U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has declined to answer a question about how old the Earth is, calling it "one of the great mysteries."
2.4 Million Ontario Voters' Private Info Compromised 81
An anonymous reader writes "Elections Ontario, an agency tasked with the organization and conduct of general elections and by-elections in Canada's Ontario region, is warning voters about the loss and potential theft of two USB sticks containing private information of 2.4 million voters from approximately 20–25 electoral districts. The information at issue is limited to full name, gender, birth date, address, whether or not an elector voted in the last provincial election and any other personal information updates provided by voters to Elections Ontario during that time, as well as administrative codes used solely for election purposes. The information does not include how an individual voted."
Comment I'm a libertarian, so..... (Score 2) 639
I'm a libertarian, so I'm so far to the right, I'm actually on the left.
(or so far to the left, I'm actually on the right, if you prefer.)
Japanese Build Pocket Robot-Cellphone Hybrid 81
An anonymous reader writes "Japanese researchers unveiled yesterday a pocket-size telepresence robot called Elfoid. The device, which looks like a little ghost, transmits voice and motion over a 3G network to convey a person's 'presence' to a remote location. It's a creation of Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University who is known for his lifelike teleoperated androids. The Elfoid has a limited range of motion, but its creators are planning to equip it with mini-actuators so it can imitate the movements of the person on the other end of the line. With vaguely formed features, the device is designed to be a surrogate of people of any age or gender."
Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 496
cnn.com had been my home page since the early days of the internets, but after their latest redesign made my eyes bleed I couldn't take it anymore... Using news.google.com as my homepage now, although I'm casting about for alternatives... Tried BBC for a while, just didn't click with me...
Comment Download Microsoft "autorun" and turn stuff off (Score 4, Informative) 583
Autorun, by Mark Russinovich at Microsoft, gives you a complete checklist of everything that's started at bootup or login. With checkboxes that turn it off. This is worth running just to see what's in there. You may turn too much off and break something, but you can run Autorun again and turn it back on.
There's plenty of stuff worth turning off, like those useless programs that keep polling to see if Adobe Acrobat or Sun Java came out with a new version. Some of those programs are too aggressive, too. Adobe's poller seems to try to re-associate PDF files with Acrobat, after I'd changed the ".pdf" association to launch Sumatra PDF.
It's annoying that even legitimate updaters seldom schedule themselves as periodic tasks, which Windows does well and which have no overhead when they're not running. No, they have to have their own little executable in memory.
Comment Re:Why segregate? (Score 1) 266
But, see, you keep talking about Gmail's downtime which I've tried to explain is relatively arbitrary to me.
Ah but GP is acknowledging both ways whereas you're concentrating on what works for you. I'd prefer to keep local access and control myself but I can understand why others may prefer to use cloud computing.
Falcon
Comment Re:Maybe people should be more well-rounded (Score 1) 401
How clearly I remember the captain of the wrestling team accosting me in gym class in my sophomore year, throwing me against the wall, and sneering, "You know, you could really benefit from a more diverse set of interests."
Of course not. But part of why nerds are picked on is because they don't relate well to others. If you like computers, but also literature, soccer, skateboarding, backpacking, or whatever, it's more likely that you'll make friends and not be "that kid who sits alone reading fantasy novels."
Flying Car Flies From London To Africa 148
krou writes "It may not be exactly what people have envisioned or tried over the years, such as the flying car in Bladerunner, or the previously reported Terrafugia Transition, but the BBC is reporting that a flying car (creatively dubbed the Skycar, but different from this Skycar) has flown from London across into Africa. They modified a parajet fan that can fly a man into a bigger fan with a canopy that is capable of flying a car."
Windows Vista and XP Head To Head 364
thefickler sends in an article comparing Windows Vista and Windows XP in the areas of security, home entertainment, GUI, parental controls, and networking. The author clearly believes that Vista wins across these categories.
Journal Journal: LOL
At the end of the USC-UCLA game, a few of the UCLA players were asked a couple of questions. One of the guys says "They overlooked us; they thought they were on their way to the national championship. Lee Corso; Kirk Herbstreit; we had another thing coming! Thank you, and that's all I got to say."
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