compact_support - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Maybe so, if you never had to take physics. (Score 1) 299

by Smitedogg on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:01AM (#38570200) Attached to: Earthquakes That May Be Related To Fracking Close Ohio Oil Well

I logged in for the first time in 5 years just to point out that A) I have a degree in physics B) I live in Trinidad CO where we have regular fracking induced earthquakes C) The Natl Earthquake guys from Golden CO have done tons of research which has only confirmed this, and D) How the FUCK is this obvious personashit upvoted on /. ? Oh yes, shills get upvoted by other shills.

Comment Re:Pedantic griping on your reading comprehension (Score 1) 222

by compact_support on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @05:20PM (#25738849) Attached to: Mars Rover "Spirit" In Danger

TFS refers to watt hours

Missed that all important "hours" when I read TFS. Oops.

Comment Pedantic griping on the units (Score 4, Insightful) 222

by compact_support on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @04:49PM (#25737287) Attached to: Mars Rover "Spirit" In Danger

During a day, solar panels don't produce any watts of energy. Watts are a compound unit, specifically joules per second. Joules are a measurement of energy, and what would be produced in a a time period. Watts represent the instantaneous rate of power generation.

Mesons Flip Between Matter and Antimatter 150

Posted by kdawson on Thursday September 28, 2006 @04:16PM from the make-up-your-mind dept.

steve writes "A team of over 700 physicists at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator have observed the B-sub-s meson oscillating between matter and antimatter states at 3 trillion times a second. From the Fermilab press release: 'Immediately after the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago, equal amounts of matter and antimatter formed. Much of it quickly acted to annihilate the other, but for little-understood reasons, a bit more matter than antimatter survived, providing the universe with the planets, stars and galaxies visible today.' The Standard Model predicted the oscillation, and Fermilab has been working for 19 years to confirm it. The announcement is good press for Fermilab, which is pushing Congress to build a new 18-mile-long International Linear Collider."

US Air Force to Test Hi-Tech Weapons on Americans? 670

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 13, 2006 @04:17PM from the people-for-the-ethical-treatment-of-americans dept.

GayBliss writes to tell us CNN.com has an article about how the US Air Force secretary proposes testing new 'non-lethal' weapons on American citizens before deploying them to the battlefield. New weapons like a high-power microwave device are designed to incapacitate people or sometimes even electronic devices. From the article: "The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne."

Transcript of Talk with Richard Stallman 220

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 31, 2006 @11:15AM from the something-to-read dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This is the transcript of the talk with Richard Stallman, the father of GNU in the background of the 4th International GPLv3 Conference being held at Bangalore where RMS is a prominent delegate. He answers questions related to GPLv3, DRM and a couple of other queries."

The Future of NetBSD 407

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 31, 2006 @03:00AM from the keep-the-netcraft-comments-to-a-minimum dept.

ErisCalmsme writes "In this email Charles Hannum (one of the founders of NetBSD) tells us that 'The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. It has gotten to the point that being associated with the project is often more of a liability than an asset. I will attempt to explain how this happened, what the current state of affairs is, and what needs to be done to attempt to fix the situation.' What will happen to NetBSD?"

ESR Says Linux Followers Should Compromise 540

Posted by Zonk on Friday August 25, 2006 @04:29PM from the wake-up-and-smell-the-penguin dept.

jpheasant writes "Eric Raymond argues time is running out to win over the iPod generation. To get there, he says the Linux community will need to make 'compromises.' For starters: 'Linux believers will have to reach out beyond self-absorbed geeks who learns Klingon and attends science fiction conventions in his spare time.'" From the article: "I mean that we need to be prepared to go to the rights holders for these proprietary codecs and say, we'll give you money, give us a license; and this is something that the Linux community has a huge antipathy to doing because we've got all this idealism about open source. And in the long run, I think that's true, I view comprising with the proprietary codec vendors as a tactical move designed to get us larger end user market shares, so that in the end we can push more things to the open."

First Phase of AIDS Vaccine Trials Successful 554

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday August 20, 2006 @03:57PM from the baby-steps dept.

rbarreira writes "Xinhua online is reporting on the success of the first trial phase of an AIDS vaccine, which was started on March 2005. From the article: '"Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe," said Zhang Wei, head of the pharmaceutical registration department of the SFDA. "The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body's immunity," he told the press conference.' After the results are further analyzed, 800 more voluntaries may be needed for the second and third phases of the vaccine's trial."

ESR Advocates Proprietary Software 422

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday August 19, 2006 @10:39AM from the well-not-all-the-time dept.

mvdwege writes "Apparently, Eric Raymond has decided that proprietary software is now a good thing, according to The Register. I must say it is rather revealing how easily he is willing to compromise on this particular freedom. Is his earlier vocal proclamation of the importance of freedom (still visible on his homepage) mere posturing? And if so, how about his vocal support of other freedoms?"

Turing Equation Explains how Leopard Spots Develop 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday August 06, 2006 @01:44PM from the spotty-research dept.

BilZ0r writes "A slight modification of an equation developed by Alan Turing in 1952 has been used to show how the patterns of big cats change from kitten to adult markings. Sy-Sang Liaw of National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and colleagues set out to replicate these patterns using Turing's equations. But they found they had to do more than just tweak the parameters of the reaction-diffusion equation. Instead they had to assume two stages of spot growth with different rules: the first to get the baby cats their spots, and the second to create the final configurations. It took them a year to find a final solution."

Astronomers Awaiting 1a Supernova 204

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday July 23, 2006 @03:49PM from the really-excited-space-geeks dept.

Aryabhata writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that astronomers have sighted a star on the brink of a "1a" supernova. This opportunity presents the first chance astronomers have ever had to view a supernova of this magnitude up close. From the article: "They are so rare that the last one known in our galaxy was seen in 1572 by the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who first coined the term nova, for "new star", not realizing he was in fact witnessing the violent end of an unknown star. It has long been believed that type 1a supernovae are the death throes of a white dwarf star. But all modern ones have been so distant that it has not been possible to see what had been there beforehand."

Open Source About the People 91

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday June 18, 2006 @02:46AM from the shiny-happy-people dept.

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWorld has a nice look at what defines an open source venture. It seems that the main area of interest, and difficulty, rests with the personnel surrounding the project. From the article: 'But the muddier waters are around the personalities and commitment of the engineers who created the code. How long do they intend to stay? What is their level of commitment? These are fuzzy types of questions - but we know from history that when the core team of engineers that best understands the code up and walks out ... it tends to send a company into a death spiral.'"

Ozone Layer Improving Faster Than Expected 325

Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 27, 2006 @04:23AM from the go-ozone-go-ozone dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes "Since the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which limited ozone-destroying gasses like CFCs, the Earth's ozone layer has been recovering. However, new studies show that the ozone in the lower stratosphere is actually recovering faster than the Montreal Protocol alone can explain." From the article: "It's a complicated question. CFCs are not the only things that can influence the ozone layer; sunspots, volcanoes and weather also play a role. Ultraviolet rays from sunspots boost the ozone layer, while sulfurous gases emitted by some volcanoes can weaken it. Cold air in the stratosphere can either weaken or boost the ozone layer, depending on altitude and latitude. These processes and others are laid out in a review just published in the May 4th issue of Nature: 'The search for signs of recovery of the ozone layer' by Elizabeth Westhead and Signe Andersen."

Well I'll Be A Monkey's Uncle 648

Posted by Zonk on Thursday May 18, 2006 @11:14AM from the blame-killproc-for-the-title dept.

killproc writes "A new report suggests that interbreeding between humans and chimpanzees happened a lot more recently than was previously thought. The report, published in the most recent issue of the journal Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest, and probably less than 5.4 million years ago."

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