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Comment Re:Global warming and you. (Score 1) 895

Indeed, but you're ignoring all the negative feedback elements. Put it this way: if positive feedback was the only factor here, then there would have been run away warming from, lets say, volcanic activity.

Furthermore, CO2 is actively soaked up by the oceans forming calcium carbonate, that is why the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been decreasing over the last 100 million or so years (though, this is obviously a MUCH slower process than our immediate concern, which is the next 100-200 years).

What is being argued in the scientific field is the correlation between an increase of CO2 and the increase in temperature. Using the green house model this will have a logarithmic relationship, where a lighter initial concentration of CO2 has a great slope.

The climate is very very complicated, I would go as far as to say, as complicated as a biological entity. I'm willing to bet that research on it will still be very active a hundred years from now, if we haven't destroyed ourselves until then.

Comment Re:Or not (Score 1) 1136

>difference between global climate and local weather

Care to tell us? Tread lightly, you're now talking to a physicist.

>This stuff really isn't that complicated.

LOL, ok, don't bother telling us. I've heard enough.

Comment Re:Science or Religion? (Score 1) 1136

How does it feel like to be mod'ed -1 Troll? LOL. Judging by the comments I'm reading, it's over for your AGW-religion. I suggest finding out what the other hipsters are all into now. Apparently Nitrogen Dioxide is all the rage.

Insulting people are outright lying won't get you anywhere.

In science you've gotta state your assumptions clearly and be prepared for people to disagree with you. You can't harass people into _believing_ you.

Android

Futuristic Sex Robots Now Just "Sex Robots" 602

High-C writes "With apologies to Futuristic Sex Robotz, the future is here, and her name is Roxxxy. Truecompanion.com has revealed their answer to the Real Doll, and it looks nice. The site is short on details, pictures, pricing info, but wow." NOTE: some of the above links are not work-safe, for many values of work. I stopped by this exhibit today at the AVN Expo (not officially a part of CES, but by curious coincidence scheduled to coincide; the old saw that porn drives tech isn't without merit). Roxxxy, though, was rather unsexily posed on a couch, not moving a bit — downright creepy, in fact.

Comment Re:Terrible analogy (Score 1) 173

You'll need a publisher to sell your game that's true, but its not necessarily an exclusive relationship. Which is what the article describes.

>"If you're trying to make a risky game with new ideas, it's best to wrap the concepts in the familiar. Making new IP is always going to be a battle."

*Shudder* making something new is now "Making new IP".

Comment Terrible analogy (Score 3, Interesting) 173

In a way, you may or may not need a publisher depending on what you're developing. A lot of the generic titles that the "industry" keeps pumping out require a publisher for marketing such a mediocre game. But then you get the unconventional games whose development is actually hampered by having a publisher breathe down your neck and make games easier for the general public.
The Military

Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target 419

coondoggie writes "The airborne military laser which promises to destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage has for the first time actually blown something up. Boeing and the US Air Force today said that on Aug. 30, a C-130H aircraft armed with Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) blasted a target test vehicle on the ground for the first time. Boeing has been developing the ATL since 2008 under an Air Force contract worth up to $30 million."
Build

A New Look At Brain Control 65

one_neuron_two_neuron writes "Researchers at Harvard have taken a new look at how electricity can make neurons fire in the brain. The scientists found some surprising things: if you stick an electrode in the brain and apply current, you don't just make a small group of neurons fire — many neurons fire a long way away from the electrode. That's probably because instead of activating the cell bodies of the neurons, their axons fire. Those axons are the wiring of the brain. Your cerebral cortex is something like a big pile of unwound yo-yos — if you stick an electrode into the cortex, you're much more likely to hit the strings (the axons), and the yo-yo connected to the string can be really far away. So, how will you ever hook up a computer to your brain? This data shows that we need to rethink how to do that with electrical current. If you stick an electrode in one place, neurons in a totally different place will fire. New optogenetic methods (e.g. using viral delivery of proteins) might work. Or possibly we will figure out how to make the brain learn to interpret these sparse, widespread electrical patterns. New optical techniques have made a dramatic impact on neuroscience recently, and this study uses pulsed-laser-scanning microscopy (two-photon microscopy) to take pictures of neurons deep inside the living brain. The academic paper (PDF) is available on the author's site."
Space

Initial Tests Fail To Find Gravitational Waves 553

eldavojohn writes that though gravitational waves are "predicted to exist by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the initial tests run by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (LIGO) failed to find anything. It doesn't disprove their existence although it does rule out a subset of string theory. From the article, 'For example, some models predict the existence of cosmic strings, which are loops in space-time that may have formed in the early universe and gotten stretched to large scales along with the expansion of the universe. These objects are thought to produce bursts of gravitational waves as they oscillate. Since no large-amplitude gravitational waves were found, cosmic strings, if they exist at all, must be smaller than some models predict.' The scientists working in Washington and Louisiana (in tandem to rule out flukes) will now move on to Advanced LIGO which will analyze a volume of space 1,000 times larger. If they don't find any gravitational waves in that experiment, the results will be more than unsettling to many theorists."

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