Comment Insulation is a better option (Score 4, Insightful) 168
What's the point of heating if it goes straight out a poorly insulated wall or roof?
Follow the passive house standard and you won't even need extra heating.
Comment Keychain (Score 1) 415
I use keychain and Safari's automatic password generator. It's extremely convenient and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it here.
Serious question: are there any reasons why this isn't a good idea?
Submission + - US Navy's high-resolution radar can see individual raindrops in a storm (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "The US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers said recently that a Navy very high-resolution Doppler radar can actually spot individual raindrops in a cloudburst, possibly paving the way for new weather monitoring applications that could better track or monitor weather and severe storms"
White House Correspondent Tweets His Heart Attack 77
Tommy Christopher, who writes for mediate.com, has reporting in his blood, so much so that he livetweeted every part of his recent heart attack. "I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!" and "This is not like the movies. Most deadpan heart attack evar. Still hurts even after the morphine," were among his updates as he was rushed to the hospital. Christopher is now in stable condition after recovering from emergency surgery.
Ranking Soccer Players By Following the Bouncing Ball 142
sciencehabit excerpts from an interesting report on statistics for soccer, in the stats-obsessed world of sports: "Only a handful of soccer ranking systems exist, most of which rely on limited information: the number of goals scored in a match, the number of goals assisted, and some indices of a match's difficulty and importance. ... So researchers turned to an unlikely source: social networks. Applying the kinds of mathematical techniques used to map Facebook friends and other networks, the team created software that can trace the ball's flow from player to player. As the program follows the ball, it assigns points for precise passing and for passes that ultimately lead to a shot at the goal. Whether the shot succeeds doesn't matter. Only the ball's flow toward the goal and each player's role in getting it there factors into the program's point system, which then calculates a skill index for each team and player."
Beaver Dam Visible From Space 286
ygslash writes "The
Hoover Dam
no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam.
Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families
of beavers have apparently
joined forces
to build a dam 850 meters
wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."
Girl Claims Price Scanner Gave Her Tourette's Syndrome 558
Attorneys for Dominica Juliano claim that she was burned and developed psychological problems after a store clerk aimed a hand-held price scanner at her face. Store attorneys say their scanners uses a harmless LED light and that the girl had serious health problems before she was scanned. From the article: "Dominica Juliano was 12 when she and her grandmother entered the Country Fair store in Erie in June 2004. A clerk allegedly called the girl 'grumpy' before flashing his hand-held bar code scanner over her face and telling her to smile. Attorneys for Ms. Juliano and her guardian say the girl was sensitive to light and burned, and later developed post-traumatic stress and Tourette's syndrome."
Comment Technical solution to internal issue (Score 1) 62
What I've been saying for ages is that the biggest problems for the open data movement are mostly found inside Government agencies. Until the open data promoters can establish a cohesive pitch, based around solving goals for the agency in question, then these technical solutions are a waste of time. Nat's latest 'open source' model for open data will only excite those already sold on the idea.
Most of the people who need convincing as to why they should get on board the open data train, need to be sold on the benefits to *them*, not the benefits to the technical community.
Microsoft Facing Class-Action Suit Over Xbox Live Points 107
An anonymous reader tips news that a lawyer in Pennsylvania has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that the company's handling of Xbox Live transactions is, in some cases, fraudulent.
"Samuel Lassoff, of Horsham, PA, said an invoice he received earlier this month from Microsoft included charges for purchases he couldn't complete due to a balky download system — and he claimed it wasn't an accident. Microsoft 'engaged in a scheme to unjustly enrich itself through their fraudulent handling' of his account, Lassoff charged in papers filed earlier this week in US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania. ... 'Microsoft breached that contract by collecting revenues for digital goods and services which were not provided,' Lassoff said in his lawsuit."
Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final 145
CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."
Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115
feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."
Comment Re:New Zealand (Score 1) 180
Yes, but with PSTN integration you can use your standard Telecom phone number and direct it to your computer or VOIP-enabled device. On an iPhone for instance, you would be able to receive phonecalls through a standard phone number, at local calling costs (ie, free) anywhere in the world.
For some strange reason, the telcos don't want to enable such a service.
Comment New Zealand (Score 1) 180
The main telcos were supposed to get together to create a registry for ENUM records which would let New Zealanders use PSTN phone numbers over a VOIP service, but they were all conveniently distracted with the number portability task, that required the skills of everyone who would have been able to create an ENUM registry.
Not surprisingly, number portability was done and no one was interested in getting started on the ENUM job.
InternetNZ was supposed to be leading the charge, but for some reason they're not too interested either.
VOIP is legal here, but there is little enthusiasm for integrating it with the PSTN network.
