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Comment Re:I'm surprised... (Score 2) 42

Not sure where you are getting those figures, but I think they are probably a few years old. Virginia has been phasing out coal for a few years, and has been massively increasing renewables (and natural gas) to replace it. Per https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid..., Virginia is currently 45% natural gas, less than 4% coal, and negligible petroleum. 38% is nuclear, 2% is hydroelectric, and 11% is other renewables - a percentage that has been growing rapidly. And a lot of the growth in renewables has been driven by the companies running the data centers investing in solar farms to meet their own goals of being carbon-neutral.

Comment Re:It's not affirmative action. (Score 1) 211

Yes. As a female engineer, I absolutely despise applying looser standards to women because it helps perpetuate the stereotype that women are less qualified than men. On the other hand, programs that encourage women to become better at technical fields can help break the stereotype. I can go toe to toe with most men in my field just fine, and I'm even perfectly content to be the only woman in a room with 20 or more men, but it wears me down every time someone I'm meeting with makes the assumption that a male colleague is the right person to direct technical questions to - especially when it continues to happen after both of us have made clear that I'm the technical lead. Then again, I find I have to consciously stop myself from making the same type of assumption when I'm on the other side. More women in technical fields who are in fact qualified to be there is the answer.

Good: Scholarship programs, outreach, mentorship. Bad: lower standards, hiring/admission preferences, token females.

Comment Re:He is supposed to be "one of the good guys" (Score 4, Insightful) 93

This. Paul is a personal friend of mine and a professional colleague and I will vouch for him as knowledgeable, fair-minded, and a talented lawyer and technologist. I have no doubt that he will perform admirably in the spirit of everything ISOC has done over the years to promote a free and open Internet. Then again, any article that would repeatedly misspell the name of the person being smeared proves itself uninformed and sloppy.

Comment Re:Expensive (Score 1) 439

If it is, in fact, more effective at teaching students, it could potentially lead to larger class sizes, which could easily pay for the device. I am skeptical that it will be effective, but it could be - that's why they do pilot programs. I'm sure they will quickly begin to use it for other courses, too. I can see it being particularly useful for foreign languages (where being able to hear the text is important). I think the interactive textbook idea can also be really useful in science (especially at the early levels of biology, chemistry, and physics, where animations are so useful), geography (being able to pinch and zoom thousands of old maps, and being able to play games to reinforce learning), civics (being able to actually pull up the essential documents immediately). In fact, it's hard for me to think of a class that couldn't benefit from an iPad.

I think this will really turn out to be best for the students who want to move faster than the class and/or learn the material more thoroughly than required. For those students, this could help counter-balance the modern trend to dumb down the curriculum to produce high standardized test scores, rather than deeply examining the subject and teaching students to appreciate learning and thought. For most students, though, I expect this to be an overpriced toy with little educational value.

Comment Re:The question is still absurd... (Score 3, Insightful) 1042

Not really. A typical suburban American family has 2 cars - one sedan and one minivan/SUV and may be looking at deciding which one to replace.

Also, it's not the ratio between the gas mileages - it's the inverse that you have to look at. A car that gets 30 mpg uses 333 gallons for 10,000 miles. A car that gets 40 mpg (a "33% improvement) goes 250 miles - a savings of 88 gallons. A SUV that gets 12 mpg uses 833 gallons but one that gets 15 mpg (a mere "25%" improvement) uses 667 - a savings of 166 gallons.

If you are replacing one car this year, is it the civic or the Yukon?

Communications

Submission + - Undersea cable repair via 19th century technology

An anonymous reader writes: Workers are relying on 19th century technology to fix a very 21st century problem — disruption of the Internet traffic that tech-savvy Asia relies on. "No electronics involved," said John Walters, general manager of Global Marine, one of the firms engaged in the repairs. "It's an old and traditional technique. After arriving at the scene they survey the ocean bottom to assess whether the contour has changed, and the degree of sediment movement. Then the traditional tools are brought out. A rope with a grapnel on the end is played out, down into the depths, and towed over the sea floor until tension registers on a graph on the ship, indicating contact has been made with the cable. Today's fibre optic cables are just 21 millimetres in diameter. The grapnel is a metal tool about 18 by 24 inches (46 by 61 centimetres) which includes a cutter, like a fine razor blade, and a grabbing tool. As tension increases and the cable is slowly pulled up, it is cut, grabbed, and half of it is hoisted to the surface. Dropping the grapnel, dragging the sea bed and recovering the cable can take about 16 hours, Walters said. "It is a tried and tested method." Once the severed half of the cable is on board the boat, debris is cleared from the damaged end, it is tested, sealed and the end boiled off. Then it is attached to a buoy on the water surface while the process is repeated for the second half of the cable before both halves are spliced together and dropped back to the ocean floor. Even before the Boxing Day earthquake, Global Marine had faced a busy year, with about 20 repairs after damage from fishermen or anchors. All those ruptures were fixed using the old grapnel method, he said.
Movies

MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents 579

An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs have been caught trapping people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. The battle between P2P networks and copyright holders seems to be a never ending battle. It will be interesting to see how much the anti-piracy groups practices change once they begin begin selling movies and TV shows legally on bittorrent.com."
Patents

IBM Breaks Patent Record, Wants Reform 130

An anonymous reader writes "IBM set the record for most patents granted in a year for 2006. At the same time, IBM points out that small companies earn more patents per capita than larger enterprises and pushes for reform to address shortcomings in the process of patenting business methods: 'The prevalence of patent applications that are of low quality or poorly written have led to backlogs of historic proportions, and the granting of patents protecting ideas that are not new, are overly broad, or obvious.' And the company has been committing itself to a new patent policy: 'Key tenets of the policy are that patent quality is the responsibility of the applicant; that patent applications should be open to public examination and that patent ownership should be transparent; and that business methods without technical content should not be patentable.'"
Television

Submission + - Senator to FCC: no broadcast flag for you!

Flag waver writes: Senator John Sununu (R-NH) will introduce legislation that will prevent the FCC from creating technology mandates for the consumer electronics industry. As a result, the FCC would be hamstrung in its efforts to revive the broadcast flag. '"The FCC seems to be under the belief that it should occasionally impose technology mandates," Sununu said in a statement. "These misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop."' Sen. Sununu previously tried without success to remove the broadcast flag provisions from the massive telecommunications bill that died before reaching the Senate floor during the last Congress.
Security

Submission + - What constitutes "something you have?"

Steve Cerruti writes: "My credit union is implementing multi-factor authentication for online banking. They are following guidelines provided by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council as outlined in Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment (PDF). As you are already required to enter a password, "something you know" is covered. "Something you are" has significant technical hurdles while "something you have" is familiar to credit unions in the form of ATM cards.

My credit union chose to implement "something you have" as a two dimensional lookup table that they email to an address you supply when you initially log in to the online banking service, further access is blocked until you enter a code from the table. New Measures to Make Online Access Safer describes the plan and a short video (FLV) provides further details.

Their plan can best be compared to single use scratch off cards. However, I am unsure of what constitutes "something you have" in this example. If someone has the capacity to log into your online banking account, it would seem an email account would be equally subject to access. It would therefore be possible for the authorized owner and the attacker to both possess the table simultaneously. Does this system provide multi-factor authentication or is it simply a convoluted mechanism for sharing yet another secret?

Off topic questions:
Is depending on near instantaneous access to email a reasonable thing to do?
If you were dealing with this situation, would you implement a Firefox extension or a cell phone application to reduce the level of effort for banking access?"
Networking

Submission + - Networking in Extreme Conditions?

222 writes: "Mission: Create an intermediate distribution frame. Difficulty: A few feet away, industrial equipment will be generating roughly 2000 degree heat. Bonus: Keep the network switches inside the IDF from melting.
Does anyone have experience in making IT work in such extreme conditions? Is there an enclosure in existence that can handle this type of abuse? This is essentially what I've been asked to accomplish, and now I'm asking my Slashdot brethren the questions; "Can it be done? Do we have the technology?""
Privacy

Journal Journal: NO bugged Canadian Coins! 1

A recent Slashdot story asked: Bugged Canadian Coins?. Now The Globe and Mail has an update on the story - or rather the non-story. "Defence contractors had apparently been give certain special-issue Canadian coins, the unfamiliar look of which caused them to be concerned about the money, a source said. That led to
The Courts

Cisco Sues Apple Over iPhone Trademark 556

lucabrasi999 writes "It appears that Apple may be running out of items that they can prefix with the letter "i". Cisco is suing Apple over trademark infringement. Cisco claims to own the rights to the "iPhone" trademark since they purchased Infogear in 2000. Infogear filed for the rights to the trademark in 1996."

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