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Power

The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms 681

Posted by samzenpus from the gone-with-the-wind dept.
DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of 'superhighways' to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"

Comment Re:Sorry for OT (Score 1) 80

by gigantu' (#20753255) Attached to: Watchdog To Represent eBay Seller In Autodesk Suit
Does working for MS tell you that there's more money and better job security in the IT field in the legal department than in development?

It's not MS, it's the world telling you that. Consider a company going down. Let's say SCO. Don't you feel more secure in the legal department? You can litigate till retirement. If they don't pay you, you can sue. And you already have plenty of experience with that.
Microsoft

Submission + - EU thinktank urges full Windows unbundling

Submitted by leffeman
leffeman writes: An influential Brussels think tank is urging the European Commission to ban the bundling of operating systems with desktop and laptop computers. The Globalisation Institute's submission to the Commission says that bundling 'is not in the public interest' and that the dominance of Windows has 'slowed technical improvements and prevented new alternatives entering from the marketplace.' It says the Microsoft tax is a burden on EU businesses: the price of operating systems would be lower in a competitive market. This is the first time a major free-market think tank has published in favour of taking action against Microsoft's monopoly power.
Security

Submission + - Zero-day exploit in PDF with Adobe Reader (youtube.com)

Submitted by hankwang
hankwang writes: Security researcher Petko Petkov, who is known for his recent discovery of a vulnerability with Quicktime in Firefox, claims to have discovered an exploit that allows arbitrary code execution when a maliciously crafted PDF document is opened in any version of Adobe Reader. Petkov did not disclose any technical details other than a video, but claims on his blog that Adobe has acknowledged the vulnerability. If this exploit goes wild, it could cause some serious problems, as PDFs are usually automatically opened from web browsers and widely used and trusted by corporate users. See also Petkov's original blog post [Coral cache].
Space

Submission + - Do You Need a Permit to Land on the Moon? (slate.com) 4

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes: "With the recent announcement of Google's X-prize for a successful private landing of a robot on the Moon, someone has asked the Explainer at Slate.com if permission is required to land something on the Moon? Turns out that while there is no authority that regulates landing objects on another world, getting there does require the permission of the national government from where the launch takes place. This is in accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by 91 nations, which regulates the uses of outer space by the nations of Earth. Specifically, Article VI enjoins: "The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty." Start your paperwork!"
Robotics

Submission + - A robotic Meridian to fly over the poles

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "The Meridian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a single-engine research aircraft with fixed landing gear designed by engineers at the University of Kansas. According to Technology Review, it will be used to see what happens beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Two units are currently built for a cost of about 3 U.S. million dollars. The Meridian will fly for up to 13 hours over a distance of 1,750 kilometers. The first flight over Greenland is forecasted next summer. And a second flight will take place over the Antarctic later in 2008. Read more for additional details and references, including a picture showing the Meridian design."
Intel

Submission + - DDR3 is a waste of money

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With Intel's motherboard chipsets supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, the question is whether DDR3 is worth all that extra cash. Now that question has been answered, and it seems like the answer is no. Looks like I'll be sticking with DDR2 for a while yet then. http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/review/2007/09/14/DDR2-and-DDR3-Memory-Round-Up/p1
Space

Submission + - Japan launches lunar orbiter mission Friday

Submitted by
Sooner Boomer
Sooner Boomer writes: "Japan launched its first lunar probe on Friday, nicknamed Kaguya after a fairy-tale princess, in the latest move in a new race with China, India and the United States to explore the moon. The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean. The mission consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon. Read the article or see Japanese Space Agency home page (in English) China has plans to launch an orbiter later this year, with unmaanned rover lander mission scheduled for 2010. India and the US also have orbiter missions scheduled for next year."
Censorship

Submission + - Parental Controls 10

Submitted by Orange Crush
Orange Crush writes: .
As the resident computer geek in an office full of accountants, my boss recently asked me how she could reasonably keep her teenage son from using the family computer to "access inappropriate sites." I of course responded "Give up now. There's nothing in this world that can keep a determined teenager from acquiring porn." Sadly, she was dissatisfied with this answer. I mentioned that there was in fact software available for this purpose, but that all of it was trivially easy to bypass for a clever young mind. (Beyond: watch him constantly or just deal with it like the adult you intend to raise him to be.)

I really can't think of another answer. She could password protect the BIOS to prevent booting a different OS, but that's easily defeated with a screwdriver at most. The only solutions I can think of involve upstream firewalls/proxies/etc to which I gleefully redirected her to her ISPs tech support number.

As much as I disagree with her reasoning — and ignoring the obvious "go to a friend's house" loophole — is there really any other way (on a home budget) to netnanny a household computer? (she does sign my paychecks...)
Space

Submission + - Google's $30,000,000 Lunar X PRIZE (googlelunarxprize.org) 1

Submitted by
chroma
chroma writes: "It's been a long time since anyone has explored the surface of the moon. But now Google has teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation to offer a $30,000,000 bounty to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic rover on the moon. Google, of course, has offered the free Google Moon mapping service for a few years now. Looks like the other search engines have some catching up to do in the space exploration department."
Math

Submission + - Kilogram reference losing weight (cnn.com)

Submitted by
doubleacr
doubleacr writes: "Ran across a story on CNN that says the "118-year-old cylinder that is the international prototype for the metric mass, kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing weight — if ever so slightly. Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies.""
Patents

Submission + - MS Seeks Another OS-Level Adware Patent

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Microsoft continues to amaze, this time with a newly-published patent application for advertising triggered by sequences of user actions, which describes how to interrupt game playing, music listening and photo viewing with pop-up ads ('the components may be integrated directly into the operating system'). So will it be thwarted by Windows Defender?"

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