Comment Rdio :( (Score 1) 316
Rdio was my jam. I suffer with Spotify these days.
Music has become too social for me to go back to buying. Same reason Google Music is useless to me. I look at what my friends are listening to, frequently.
Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space 226
knwny points out this lofty proposed power plan in China. "The battle to dispel smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve the energy crisis is moving to space. If news reports are to be believed, Chinese scientists are mulling the construction of a solar power station in a geosynchronous orbit 36,000 kilometres above ground. The electricity generated would be converted to microwaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth. If realized, it will surpass the scale of the Apollo project and the International Space Station and be the largest-ever space project."
Comment Re:Rate of use (Score 1) 328
> Sorry, pot is as much a drug as meth. So is alcohol. It's disappointing to see my tax money going to support the use of either.
ITT I learned that science has an agenda.
Comment Re:Rate of use (Score 1) 328
> It is "much more difficult to get pinched smoking a doobie while driving around".
There was an implicit "[more difficult] than smoking a pipe" that makes AC's post much more sound. Hence his invocation of "roll n toke."
> It is an impossible distinction to make when attempting to determine who is a hazard on the road under the influence, and who is not.
Except that this study is saying that those under the influence of cannabis are much less dangerous than those under the influence of alcohol. So we can make that distinction.
Comment Re:Can't help plugging Atwood (Score 1) 410
[good sci-fi] asks what effects abstract changes would have on how people live and think.
This guy gets it.
I tell people my favorite sci-fi movie is a tie between Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and they look at me funny.
Comment Re:I would write my own with LDAP (Score 4, Insightful) 98
I would be terrified if you were my co-worker.
HIV Tracking Technology Could Pinpoint Who's Infecting Who 203
Daniel_Stuckey writes "No man is an island, but evolutionarily, each person functions like one for the HIV virus. That's according to Thomas Leitner, a researcher working on a project aimed at creating technology for tracking HIV through a population. The technology, which is being studied at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, may allow people to identify who infected them with the virus, a development that could have major implications in criminal proceedings. "If you're familiar with Darwin's finches, you have a population of birds on one island and they keep moving and evolving as they spread to other islands so that each population is a little different," Leitner said. "With HIV, it's the same. Every person infected with HIV has a slightly different form of the virus. It's the ultimate chameleon because it evolves this way.""
Comment Re:+1 (Score 1) 190
Those we supposed to be bil, not mil.
Fuck that's a lot of money.
Comment Re:+1 (Score 1) 190
You might turn down 22% of 6mil if you think you can get 22% of 30mil.
Groupon just doesn't smell right. They need a lot more people than your normal start-up. They can't scale as well.
A Hyper-Velocity Impact In the Asteroid Belt? 114
astroengine writes "Astronomers have spotted something rather odd in the asteroid belt. It looks like a comet, but it's got a circular orbit, similar to an asteroid. Whether it's an asteroid or a comet, it has a long, comet-like tail, suggesting something is being vented into space. Some experts think it could be a very rare comet/asteroid hybrid being heated by the sun, but there's an even more exciting possibility: It could be the first ever observation of two asteroids colliding in the asteroid belt."
Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."
Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
Android Application Development 74
stoolpigeon writes "Google's mobile OS Android has received plenty of press. As with a lot of Google products, there was much anticipation before any devices were even available. Now a number of phones are available, with many more coming out world-wide in the near future. Part of the lure of Android is the openness of the platform and the freely available tools for development. The SDK and accompanying Eclipse plug-in give the would be creator of the next great Android application everything they need to make their idea reality. The bar to entry in the official Google Android Marketplace is very low and it doesn't seem to be much of a stretch to predict that the number of developers working on Android is only going to grow. As with any hot technology the number of books will grow as well and O'Reilly's Android Application Development has jumped into the fray, promising to help budding Android developers what they need to get started." Read on for the rest of JR's review.
Censorship Struggle Underway In Iceland 251
jon jonson writes "Information from the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing has been leaked to WikiLeaks, revealing billions in insider loans, and the bank has been working day and night to censor the information contained in the document. Last night at 6:55pm GMT, they served an injunction against the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, five minutes before the 7pm news was due to be aired. The TV station just displayed the WikiLeaks URL instead. They've also injuncted Iceland's national radio, banning all discussion about the contents of the document, and they are actively trying to censor the rest of the Icelandic media along with WikiLeaks."
Increasing Stem Cell Production For Faster Healing 67
Wandering Wombat tips a BBC story about researchers from Imperial College London who were able to stimulate stem cell production by a factor of 100 in the bone marrow of mice. Such stem cells are released by the marrow to help with the regeneration of damaged bone and tissue. "Techniques already exist to increase the numbers of blood cell producing stem cells from the bone marrow, but the study focuses on two other types — endothelial, which produce the cells which make up our blood vessels, and mesenchymal, which can become bone or cartilage cells." The scientists hope that the increased production rate could be used to greatly speed tissue repair and to allow recovery from wounds that would otherwise be too severe. "There are also hopes that the technique could help damp down autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, where the body's immune system attacks its own tissues. Mesenchymal stem cells are known to have the ability to damp down the immune system." The full research paper is available at Cell Stem Cell.
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One possible reason that things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan in the first place.
