dmendanor - Slashdot User

Submission + - Earth's Population to Hit 7 Billion This Year (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by MikeChino on Monday July 18, 2011 @06:39PM

MikeChino writes: The UN Population Division just announced that the world’s human population will hit 7 billion by Halloween 2011. The increase of one billion people in the past 12 years is worrying, especially since the global population only reached one billion total in the early 19th century. In the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to rise to 8 billion people as our demand for food increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent.

Comment Re:so what (Score 1) 193

by dmendanor on Sunday June 26, 2011 @08:36PM (#36579692) Attached to: Is Google Playing Fair With Groupon, et al?

Agreed. Between this and the pending FTC investigation, it seems like everyone has it in for Google right now. Personally, I don't see anything unethical in what they're doing here. A little annoying? Perhaps. But nothing out of bounds.

Comment Another reason to hate cable companies... (Score 1) 1

by dmendanor on Sunday June 26, 2011 @08:28PM (#36579648) Attached to: Top Home Energy Hogs Are DVRs and Cable Boxes

On top of all the price gouging and pseudo-monopolistic practices that they've been engaged in over the last 10 years, now they're also sticking it to consumers by foisting these energy hogs onto us. Nice.

Submission + - Flood berm collapses at Neb. nuclear plant (cbsnews.com) 2

Submitted by

mdsolar

on Sunday June 26, 2011 @03:30PM

mdsolar writes: "A berm holding the flooded Missouri River back from a Nebraska nuclear power station collapsed early Sunday, but federal regulators said they were monitoring the situation and there was no danger.

The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station shut down in early April for refueling, and there is no water inside the plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Also, the river is not expected to rise higher than the level the plant was designed to handle. NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said the plant remains safe.

The federal commission had inspectors at the plant 20 miles north of Omaha when the 2,000-foot berm collapsed about 1:30 a.m. Sunday. Water surrounded the auxiliary and containment buildings at the plant, it said in a statement."

Submission + - Top Home Energy Hogs Are DVRs and Cable Boxes 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday June 26, 2011 @12:02PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that cable setup boxes and DVRs have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, causing an increase of over $10 for a home with many devices with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator. The set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are running full tilt, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use consuming $3 billion in electricity in the US with 66 percent of that power wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. “People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” says John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.” The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Similar devices in some European countries can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half and go into an optional “deep sleep,” which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent (PDF) compared with when the machine is active but cable companies say US customers will not tolerate the time it takes to reboot the system once the system has been shut down or put to sleep. Although the EPA has established Energy Star standards for set-top boxes and has plans to tighten them significantly by 2013 cable providers and box manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Samsung and Motorola currently do not feel consumer pressure to improve box efficiency. When Wilson asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer was: “Nobody asked us to use less.”"

Submission + - WikiLove to encourage newbie editors? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk on Sunday June 26, 2011 @10:29AM

mikejuk writes: Wikipedia has a cunning plan to make wikipedians nicer to each other — its all about WikiLove. They can click on the Love button to make each other feel good about contributing anything from an article to an edit. The idea is that this will encourage newbie editors to stay and contribute rather than slink away into the rest of the web because their contributions get deleted and derided.
Perhaps all we need for world peace is a big enough love button.

Comment Is this really a surprise? (Score 1) 131

by dmendanor on Thursday June 23, 2011 @10:39PM (#36550660) Attached to: FTC To Open Antitrust Investigation Against Google

Given how clueless American legislators have proven themselves to be about online business in the past (e.g., the failed attempts to apply state sales taxes to Amazon which resulted in Amazon dropping their affiliates in those states - ooops, no sales = no sales tax!), is it really any surprise that they're now going after the big G?

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