Slashdot Mirror

I'm not certain how much google is contributing upstream, but they are certainly using and improving clang.

The 17th of January is Michelle Obama's 50th birthday. On this day in 1961 President Eisenhower issued the clarion call for all citizens to be vigilant against oppression from the Military Industrial Complex. It is the anniversary of a decisive victory in the American Revolutionary War in 1781, the Battle of Cowpens. It is the anniversary of the overthrow of the monarchy in Hawaii in 1893 thus allowing the President to be born into an American state.

Will the President venerate the date and thank Edward Snowden?

> I don't share her atheism, but I certainly share her ideals on capitalism.

In other words, you share her atheism. Else that, or you share her God.

http://caimbhriainmyrddin.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/hal-crowther-alarming-revival-of-ayn.html

I think the spy tool disclosure may be a step too far. Whilst the details (many of the full sized slides) are good tech porn, I don't think such information should be revealed. Snowden really should not release unnecessary information such as this. He is right to disclose breaches of the constitution but other disclosures are attention seeking. Some attention seeking may be necessary to promote and agitate the cause but the release of much of this detail is perhaps not warranted.

Snowden is a flawed hero, but a hero nonetheless. Slap him lightly, thank him, pardon him and bring him home.

Yes in a way you are correct.

"Thus, at non-relativistic energies the EDM [electric dipole moment] corresponds to a shift of energy levels of the electron in an external electric field E that depends on the direction of electron's spin Se. "

More details:
http://resonaances.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/electric-dipole-moments-and-new-physics.html

I don't know about you, but if my email provider suddenly added an 'attach money' option and stored my card details I'd be thinking of moving to another provider that didn't integrate everything. I'm sure there's more checks and balances and probably a 'verified by visa' stage each time (please god, I hope so). But my gut feeling is not good on that one.

It does look as if google have some good systems in place to detect hijacks, but the sheer amount of 'my gmail account has been hijacked" tales you hear don't add up to a warm fuzzy. At least with the system here (and the Canadian forebearer) they're separate entities.

• Of the 106 missing episodes, no more than 75 are realistically recoverable from anywhere in Africa
• If by some miracle, all 75 of those episodes were to be found in the one place, that place would be Zambia.
• It's possible that the wild claims of 90 or more episodes recovered could be true, but only if the stash also included large numbers of episodes that the BBC already holds in its archives.
• The claim that these episodes come from Ethiopia and the claim that they include Troughton stories are incompatible. Pick one.
• If they do come from Ethiopia, they might complete seasons 1 and 2; Ethiopia was the last place on earth known to have transmitted these stories.

My guess -- a trove of Troughton material has turned up in Nigeria that includes a big chunk of season 5; some of which the BBC already has, much of which it doesn't. (But I still hope it's 75 missing episodes from Zambia...) ;)

If by evolution you mean the addition of information via useful mutations in the human genome, it is yet to be observed. What *has* been observed instead is functional deterioration of the genome - see http://rt.com/usa/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-531/ .

(For a more - vigorous - view, see http://evolutionsciencenow.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/are-humans-getting-better-what-is.html )

So crystallisation via cooling is a "spectacular decrease in entropy", capable of disproving the papers referenced earlier. How did you assess this? By seeing regularity in simple repeating crystal structures versus the liquid blob? By this logic, the regularity of molecules in a solid is evidence of the same thing. But no one calls cooling of a liquid to a solid a "spectacular decrease in entropy".

So the similar size of the earth and the moon are a coincidence...

> There are only a handful of trees left of that age. No way an exponential curve would be smooth with that little data.

You must be very familiar with the details. Anyway, the point is not that there is a smooth curve. The point is that there is a curve which stops abruptly at a time which matching the date of the Genesis flood. There are no trees with more rings. But the oldest trees are *still* growing. So there is no reason that there should not be trees with more rings.

If the ages of the oldest trees is another coincidence, it roughly coincides also with the the span of recorded history and the time since the ancestors of the Danes separated from the ancestors of the Turks.

There are other coincidences.

You can't really argue managed code isn't several orders of magnitude slower than native code.

Actually you can, and quite correctly too unless you dont know the meaning of the term 'orders of magnitude', a quick google search turns up a myriad of results that prove you have absolutely no idea and are just making baseless claims. Here is just first one i happened upon.

I suppose you can argue that, if you really are that stupid. Where's the source? I can draw a chart, too, you'd be a moron to draw conclusions about language throughput without seeing what's actually being written. It's very easy to write inefficient code in any language and stuff the ballot box for such a "benchmark." If you weren't a mouthbreather you'd know that.

The defending of managed code because the difference between a user waiting 0.2 seconds versus 2 milliseconds for a window to open

Yet another unsubstantiated random bullshit number.

Correction, a mouthbreather that is incapable of understanding examples and hyperbole. If I was going to use actual numbers, it would be addressed in number of cycles for a given platform. But, hey, believe what you want. You dragging down the average intelligence of all humans has nothing to do with me.

You can't really argue managed code isn't several orders of magnitude slower than native code.

Actually you can, and quite correctly too unless you dont know the meaning of the term 'orders of magnitude', a quick google search turns up a myriad of results that prove you have absolutely no idea and are just making baseless claims. Here is just first one i happened upon.

The defending of managed code because the difference between a user waiting 0.2 seconds versus 2 milliseconds for a window to open

Yet another unsubstantiated random bullshit number.

Petition by American who have earned degrees in science fields including a few PhDs with an actual statement that the science is not solid with a short review of pertinent data - http://www.petitionproject.org/review_article.php

That is not even a remotely interesting. it ends in a conspiracy theory statement about some sort of shady UN conspiracy for "global taxation", cites an article from the "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine" , a crank organization ran out of a back shed, that once actually featured a couple of members who did biomedicine, but since its found its notoriety in creationism and far right conspiracy theorizing. The site also claims the paper is peer reviewed. It isn't. And it wouldn't pass peer review either, it makes elementary errors that a high school student wouldnt make, let alone a real science-by-post-doctorates type paper.

Finally, almost all of the "scientists" (and ALL of the PhDs) that signed it are not even remotely qualified to give an expert answer in it.

If the site is can't even get fundamental stuff like that in order, why on earth quote it on slashdot.

Which brings me to this....

An Aeronautical Engineer's look at global warming (and yes he has earned his chops in that arena) - http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.3.pdf

Why would an "Aeronautical engineer" have an opinion anymore itneresting than, say, a computer programmer, or a dentist? Being "A scientist" doesnt mean jack shit if the qualification isn't relevant.

NEHTA's not the one I'm not going to name, but yeah.. NEHTA seem to do some crazy stuff. They've been accused of being overly secretive, of ignoring advise from experts in the field, of trying to overstep their original brief as a "transitional" authority. But at least someone is having fun with it all: http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/search?q=nehta

Ebno another good site is http://stevej-on-nbn.blogspot.com.au/ "NBN Issues, Commentary & Opinion. 30 yrs in I.T. and Telecomms"

Do you really think Larry Page is so dumb to get rid of something if it were making a lot of money? Implying this is an insult to Larry Page's intelligence, and quite frankly, an insult to your intelligence.

Companies usually will not go out and say "This isn't making enough money, we're getting rid of it" (Google's official reason is that, while reader had devoted followers, readership was declining.)

The main point is that no one makes money from a bunch of freeloaders -- and my experience with Slashdot, being here since near its beginning, is that its posters are by and large freeloaders. There's a reason why RSS readers are falling left and right -- because it isn't paying the rent. As another poster has pointed out, for an RSS reader to survive, it needs a business model to sustain itself. To quote another post, If you want a good product, pay for it you fucking cheapskates.

France had "Hans Schmidt", he gave both encrypted and clear texts to France.
Other ww2 fun was the German side: Mustard via German OKK-5 efforts from a Soviet codebook captured in Finland.
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-finnish-cryptologic-service-in-wwii.html

IBM here ... did someone call me?

Get off, IBM... Oracle leased this line some time ago.

Maybe this is defamatory, but I can't see in any way that PETA actually serves to achieve its ostensible goals. Greenpeace, another vocal media-loving special interest group, at least managed to bring its concerns into the mainstream. PETA won't be happy until we all canvas-shoe wearing vegans.

Not going to happen.

PETA used to make me hate vegans - until I realised how many vegans hate PETA.

This is not defamatory. This is opinion. I could be wrong. Is that enough of a disclaimer for you?

Hmmm, CalDAV - you mean that thing Google is sun setting on the 16th of September 2013 in favour of their own, proprietary API?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html

Doesn't look as tho Google is being the nice guy here, however you like to cast the other parties...

> To prove the point, here are before-and-after photos from one San Francisco household (mine) where the herd of digital devices has been thinned from about three dozen, eight years ago, to just 15 today.

Awesome. Once burglary was a real hit and miss. Now your victims case their places for you. Even lists his dog. Google tells me his dog it is an Australian Sheppard. Sound docile enough. I can always get it drunk lol.
http://www.wikifido.com/page/Rhody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Shepherd#Temperament

Now when will Wade be out of town?
Xconomy robotics event 4/11 https://twitter.com/wroush
"Far too many people have too much information online as to their schedules and what they will be attending and where." http://protectitnow.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/your-home-security-never-before.html

I'll just have to arrive early to beat the crowd. I have dibs on the Canon Powershot S5 IS and the iPhone5.

ugh, forgot to provide link: http://themusicsalon.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/now-i-have-to-buy-white-album-again.html

This is not necessarily true. See http://evoandproud.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/genetic-pacification-in-medieval-europe.html for a discussion of Clark's theory on the reduction of violence due to selection.
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox for an example of faster evolution.

A blog post from an astronomer who regularly uses this observatory: here. The on-site accommodation that astronomers usually use has been destroyed. The blogger is offering to camp out there in a tent for her next scheduled telescope-using timeslot.

It's not central Australia that's the issue. Have a look at some of the images from the Black Saturday fires in Victoria, Australia in 2009. 1.1 million acres burned and 173 people died. Victoria is Australia's most densley-populated state. Melbourne's temperature reached over 46C, (115 F).
If you have a look here you will see the cloud of smoke from the fires, the land mass on the right of the picture is New Zealand, and the cloud is covering most of the South Island. Entire towns were virtually destroyed by the fires. So the issue isn't just central Australia, it's the populated areas.

Andy Rubin (Co-founder of Android before Google bought it, and current VP of Mobile) posted this a few months ago in relation to Aluyin OS. https://plus.google.com/112599748506977857728/posts/hRcCi5xgayg (which links to the official Android blog: http://officialandroid.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-benefits-importance-of-compatibility.html).

It sounds like this modification of the SDK might be another move toward Google defending against this Aluyin OS-style modification of Android. While Android is commonly cited as being "fragmented" due to the %'s of handsets that have older versions of Android on them (see the Development Dashboard); what these links talk about is a very serious, more dangerous style of fragmentation. Currently all Android apps are forward compatible with future versions and most are backward compatible (unless the develop chooses to use a new API and not include any graceful degradation in their app for older versions). But Google's flavor of Android is also sideways-compatible with the likes of Amazon such that if you write an app intended for the play store and later decide to distribute it to an Amazon-flavored device (via their app store or other various means), you can do this.

The implications of allowing such activities to continue are that Android could turn into a true wild-west of operating systems. From a technical standpoint, a budding Chinese developer modifies some core Android source code which work with the apps being developed by his company, but suddenly break every other app developed for their flavor of the Android OS -- and then suddenly developers for that hypothetical OS can no longer pick up their app and take it to Google's (/Amazon's) flavor of Android without resorting to hacks and workarounds. Suddenly that Android Development dashboard needs to represent that data in more than 2 dimensions - and Google's got a world of new problems to deal with.

See this Architecture Diagram for some further context. Basically the various Android OEM's and custom ROM developers such as Cyanogenmod should only really be modifying the blue bits and maybe some of the green (I'm sure ROM developers would argue on the red bits, but in a perfect world..). Seems like Google is trying to stop the messing with of the yellow "Android runtime" section.

Let us wipe this persons name from the face of the earth. Let us not speak his name. Let us and his family, friends, and anyone else forget that this killer ever had an identity. Do not speak his name.

Google Apps Free Edition

Starting on December 6, 2012, Google will no longer offer new accounts for the free edition of Google Apps. Google Apps free edition is sometimes referred to as "Standard Edition."
If you already have the free edition, you can continue to use it for free. This change has no impact on existing users of the free edition.

Please see the Google Enterprise Blog for additional details.

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com.au/
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=2855120

Have a read of ISO OOXML convener: Microsoft's format "heading for failure", from which I quote:

Microsoft's failure to adopt the standard version of the format after two years has drawn criticism from Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34). Brown was consistently supportive of Microsoft's push to obtain fast-track approval for OOXML during and after the ISO review process, but his optimism appears to be waning. In a recent blog entry, Brown contends that Microsoft is not fulfilling its commitment to adopt the ISO's edited version of the standard.

I would quote directly from Alex's blog, but sadly the "Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3634; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3634" serving the blog post has NullReferenceException.

Some other thoughts come from OOXML is defective by design, where this post Backwards compatible? One more lie by omission is worth reading.

Have a read of ISO OOXML convener: Microsoft's format "heading for failure", from which I quote:

Microsoft's failure to adopt the standard version of the format after two years has drawn criticism from Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34). Brown was consistently supportive of Microsoft's push to obtain fast-track approval for OOXML during and after the ISO review process, but his optimism appears to be waning. In a recent blog entry, Brown contends that Microsoft is not fulfilling its commitment to adopt the ISO's edited version of the standard.

I would quote directly from Alex's blog, but sadly the "Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3634; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3634" serving the blog post has NullReferenceException.

Some other thoughts come from OOXML is defective by design, where this post Backwards compatible? One more lie by omission is worth reading.

See here:
http://viableawesomism.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/viable.html

Silicon valley solves problems. It may not solve the ones you want, but it solves many of them, and with cutthroat efficiency.
Why? because it allows people to take risks with new ideas. I'd transport you 100 years back, or maybe 700 years, and let you try acting out new ideas back then.

Some of them may be world-changing. Others may be fart apps.
But the important thing is that there are many, and there can be many, because the risk is not all worn by government or the taxpayer or some planning comittee of old farts who care more about their seat than about what they can use their power to fix. In Silicone Valley risk is worn by the people who consciously choose to take it.

I find this "war" between people who want to fix the world and people who want to make money one of the dumbest ideas ever concocted.
If you don't like east-coast MBA's being taught that money is the single important product of any business - good on you. neither do I. Money is a byproduct, albeit an important one. The real product of any organisation we build should be the awesome it creates, whatever that may be. If you agree - prove that old-school profit-over-everything MBA culture wrong. Go and DO something awesome.

And why can't you do something awesome for the world AND make a killing?
Money is important. If awesome organisations don't make money, if they don't have a built-in economic engine, it's like giving birth to a child without a heart, who will need to spend the rest of his life carrying around a life-support machine. I'd rather that life-support machine comes built in.

Our societal life support machinery (charity, government funding) is limited and finicky. You want to build organisations that will die the second someone closes a tap? go ahead. I'd rather see us create things with the resilience of Google.

You think Facebook and Google aren't awesome?
Suggest you take your head out of your ass, because you can't perceive the change these technologies made to places elsewhere in the world, outside your nice comfy American bubble. Compare Hama, Syria - 30 years ago and today. Compare India, China or Brazil back then and now. What do you think technology has done to these people? Given a lot of them more hope and dignity and prosperity than they every had in history.
Recognize you are not alone in the world - there are 7 billion of us now. And things that were possible when there were 10 times less people may no longer be possible when there's this many vying for the same amount of resources. If your idea is going back - it's a bad one. If your idea is going somewhere new - stop bagging the existing system and start being very specific about how you want to make it better.

Last, I sense a big disillusionment with "money". Money is not merely a vacation or a new plasma. It's not just a gold star. Money is power to change. Succeeding in Silicon Valley (and anywhere else in the world as an entrepreneur) is about convincing people of ideas and obtaining the resources to make what you can imagine happen. Money gives power to do that. You're not going to change anything by whinging or waxing ethical theories. You need to get off your bum, figure out a vision to do /something/ better, figure out how to connect a "power source" to that vision in the form of an economic engine so your idea isn't a public liability, and go build this organisation that does awesome.

As a society we have a list of problems as long as the eyes can see. Quit wasting people's time by ranting. Society as it hangs together today is stacks better than anything else we ever tried. If there's things you don't like about it - start fixing them, or get the fuck out of the way of those that are doing just that.

Yes, that's a dare.

Exactly. At the very least you'd require an exception for facts. But really : how about we set the standard as such "if someone makes a statement INTENDED to incite SPECIFIC violence against SPECIFIC persons, that can make him an accomplice at worst. The guilty party is ALWAYS the ones who implement the actual violence, and that someone non-violently 'incited' a crime can never even be even factor in the punishment. Burning a store is arson or murder, if someone died, with zero consideration given to how many bombs any disgusting prophet was wearing".

What, by the way, about facts ?

E.g. "islam, both sunni and shi'a, and some subsects even more, pushes paedophilic rape. The prophet was a paedophilic rapist (had sex with a 6-9 year old girl against her will), and worse, she (while not technically a slave) was bought from her parents for exactly this purpose. For years before the actual rape, he molested the girl"

Is that forbidden to be stated ? It's very likely to meet a violent response, but it's also the truth.

This is a well-established historical fact, and has resulted in a trade in young children to be raped that still exists today (in Iran, and as usual, Iran is really quite progressive, as compared to US "allies").

Stating that if you see a moslem, even in America, he is very likely to be in favour of this child rape, is sadly not an exaggeration. If you see a non-American moslem, he'll either be in favour of it, or be afraid of the personal consequences of not being in favour of child rape.

And please before you state that the catholic church also "raped children", keep in mind that we're probably talking more children being raped daily by moslims with the cover of islam, than in the entire history of the west, all by criminals. And frankly, the church is about as pro-paedophilia as the BBC is (the BBC, by the way, also saw fit to hide the crime and to coverup reporting of it, as did the dutch government when it involved public school teachers, as did the UK government when it was reported that >90% of paedophilia was by public school employees, as did Spain ..., and needless to say, neither the BBC nor any of the governments involved saw fit to provide the victims with any kind of reimbursement at all).

There is a huge gulf between media reports of life in Iran and the reality. I was there for two weeks this month and wrote a short blog post on the internet censorship. http://kanahakkliha.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/iran-in-2012.html

The reality is the censorship is considered to be a complete joke - freegate or tor just goes right through it. The government is just wasting their time. Facebook, youtube and twitter are all "blocked" but everyone uses them. It only gets annoying when you're accessing wifi from a mobile device and don't have a VPN already set up.

There's a site called blockediniran.com which is pretty accurate - http://www.blockediniran.com/?siteurl=google.com it shows that google.com is not blocked yet (but, for example, it can't understand that m.smh.com.au is a website). However, when I was there, every other country variant of google was blocked - google.com.au, google.co.uk, google.co.nz etc, and blockediniran confirms those.

Patent lawsuits aren't new - but they're also more plentiful than they've ever been in history, and new ones are being issued at a likewise record-breaking rate. The system can tolerate a certain number of patents - especially if its given time to thoroughly examine them and weed out all of the bad ones. But there comes a tipping point where the number of patents starts choking out the life out of the enterprise. When you've got, say, a hundred patents relating to your specific field of endeavour, going through them is a pain, but doable. When you've got ten thousand, it's not practical.

Geekoid, from the way you argue I'm going to guess you're a circumcision fetishist.
http://www.circleaks.org/

No major health organisation (not even in Israel) recommends infant circumcision and the AAP has been criticised around the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/28/circumcision-the-cruellest-cut?newsfeed=true
http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm
http://chhrp.org/index.php/news/childrens-health-human-rights-partnership-condemns-new-aap-policy-statement/

In the past the AAP has been deeply influenced by circumcision fetishists such as Edgar Schoen. He was chairman of the American Academy of Paediatrics task force on circumcision that published a report in 1989 recommending infant circumcision. He was not involved in 1999 when the policy position was reversed. It would appear the fetishists are back in though.

Most people don't even know what circumcision is so, what is circumcision?
http://www.noharmm.org/separated.htm

Lets have a look at some critical analysis of the African RCT's.
http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV-SA.html
http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22320006
http://www.circinfo.org/africa.html

I suggest everyone pay close attention to the bit in the first page about men who were lost from study and bear in mind that their HIV status is unknown. If the RCT's have any value at all we would see benefits in the real world. Just looking at developed Western nations, Europe has the lowest rate of MGM while the USA has the highest. The USA also has the highest rate of HIV infection.
http://joseph4gi.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/where-circumcision-doesnt-prevent-hiv.html

Where is the benefit in the real world?

The reality is that the RCT's were not about combating HIV in Africa or anywhere, it is all about creating bogus 'scientific' evidence to bolster the practice of infant circumcision in the USA. Doctors can make a tidy extra income from it:
http://www.circumstitions.com/$$$.html

cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies purchase amputated foreskins and use then in the production of various products:
http://www.foreskin.org/f4sale.htm

You claim it's a lie that babies die from it:
http://www.circumstitions.com/death.html

Now let's look at a timeline of the miraculous claims that have been made for circumcision since the puritans introduced it to America to prevent masturbation.
https://sites.google.com/site/completebaby/medicalization

If circumcision is so beneficial, why has it been necessary to make so many false claims about it? The current claims of HIV protection are just a rehash of the claims in 1855 and 1949 that it protects against Syphilis.

You also arrogantly claim there are no complications in later life. I am middle aged, I was mutilated as a baby and I now find that I have so little sensitivity that I can't maintain an erection during intercourse. Most of the time I can't even feel if I am inside a woman. It has nothing to do with health or lifestyle factors. I swim long distance ocean races a

You shouldn't do a PhD just because you think it'll get you a better job, because it probably won't. Do it because you love the subject, and because you want to challenge yourself. Some time ago I wrote a blog post that sums up my feelings on doing a PhD, that you might find useful.

I feel like a police negotiator desperately trying to talk a man out of shooting his foot off.

Repeat after me Microsoft: The desktop market is not the smartphone market, and any attempt to ram it down reluctant consumers throats will turn it destroy what is still your biggest cash cow. http://waysofteaandfailure.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-many-problems-of-windows-8.html

It's almost certain lifespans will be reduced significantly, though we won't necessarily be told how many and by how much.

When asked why these results haven't been widely reported, Calidcott noted that Japanese officials are not sharing ultrasound results with foremost experts of thyroid nodules in children and accused the media of "practicing psychic numbing," saying that she doesn't understand why media outlets are choosing to ignore the nuclear fallout.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-children-have-abnormal-thyroid-growths-2012-7
 

When the above four studies are tallied in one table, it becomes obvious that the result of the thyroid examinations of children in the “Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey” is astonishing. This is because one-third of the children had developed “ cysts.” A “cyst” is a fluid-filled sac. Cysts don’t mean there is an immediate chance of developing thyroid cancer. However, it is apparent that something extraordinary is happening inside the thyroid gland, such as inflammation or changes in cellular properties.

Summarizing the thyroid ultrasound examination results from Japan and overseas, prevalence of “cysts” detected in children around the age of 10 is approximately 0.5-1.0%.

The fact that 35% of Fukushima children (average age around 10) have thyroid cysts strongly suggests that these children’s thyroid glands are negatively affected by undesirable environmental factors.

http://enenews.com/head-of-internal-medicine-at-japan-hospital-astonished-by-fukushima-thyroid-exams-immediate-evacuation-is-imperative-a-violation-of-human-rights-for-those-exposed-to-radiation

In June [2012], 56 percent of Japanese fish catches tested by the Japanese government were contaminated with cesium-137 and -134. (Both are human-made radioactive isotopes—produced through nuclear fission—of the element cesium.)

And 9.3 percent of the catches exceeded Japan’s official ceiling for cesium, which is 100 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg). (A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to one nuclear disintegration per second.)

The numbers show that far from dissipating with time, as government officials and scientists in Canada and elsewhere claimed they would, levels of radiation from Fukushima have stayed stubbornly high in fish. In June 2012, the average contaminated fish catch had 65 becquerels of cesium per kilo. That’s much higher than the average of five Bq/kg found in the days after the accident back in March 2011, before cesium from Fukushima had spread widely through the region’s food chain.

In some species, radiation levels are actually higher this year than last.

http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/are-fish-pacific-ocean-and-japanese-coastal-and-inland-waters-safe-eat-16-months-after-fuk

Sevendsen et al, from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of South Carolina, demonstrated in 2010 that children who had been living in areas heavily contaminated with radioactive cesium have decreased pulmonary function.

http://fukushimavoice-eng.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/position-statement-what-is-currently.html

Industrial farming has also led to the need for Kevlar Tyres on tractors.

Also Australia.

Original source:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/biking-directions-expands-into-europe.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/SbSV+(Google+LatLong)&utm_content=Google+Reader

There's a reason Android and MacOS do not use X Windows.

Well in the case of Android, Wayland is coming!

This implementation doesn't use share any Xorg legacy but rather cobbles together an implementation based on the graphics APIs exposed by the Android SDK.

An eventual goal might be to replace the display technology - Google proprietary (aosp) SurfaceFlinger with a Wayland compositor. Thus with, say, CM13 your tablet would be able to run Android apps seamlessly alongside KDE Plasma apps. On the desktop, Android apps would thus interact with Unity on Ubuntu Wistful Wombat. ;-)

Well I know this won't be popular, but you shouldn't build a "business" out of a charity. You should, however, run your charity like a business to make sure it is efficient. If you make your charity a true business then it is no longer a charity...it's a business. I'm thinking not-for-profit or non-profit here, but I am not intelligent enough to understand the nuances.

Well, I agree most with your last sentence. 8^)

I've worked for and with NGOs and non-profits large and small, from UN agencies to universities to the independent think tank where I am now. Let me assure you that the death-knell of any non-profit is to have it taken over by someone who claims it needs to run more like a business.

Profit-making and non-profit organisations are very different in their nature and -more importantly- their culture. They each have a million ways to fail, but here's the key: Non-profit organisations can and must measure success by something other than financial returns. This impacts every single aspect of its work. It sometimes means that you can (and should) spend more time on seemingly pointless details getting things just right. It sometimes means that you work on things that you know have a high chance of failure, but you take them on precisely because no profit-making outfit can't afford the risk.

The killer on both sides of the equation, though, is complacency and power. Allow either to become too apparent and the same sociopathic personalities begin to appear at the head of the organisation. And though they die in different ways, their death is a painful spectacle. Non-profits, especially those with guaranteed budgets, get over-run by careerist know-nothings who spend more time agonising over their per diems and life-saving meetings than actually thinking about what they're supposed to be achieving.

In profit-making ventures, the organisations get overrun by strategic thinking business-school types who spend more time plotting strategy and market position than actually running the fricking company.

Non-profits die like old oak trees: They rot from the inside; they remain standing for far longer than they should, providing shade for a few but hosting an increasing army of parasites.

Profit-making companies die by fire. They remain standing until the first lightning strike, then collapse in flames, sometimes taking half the countryside with them.

Android needs to support standard X applications so the whole code base such as LibreOffice works on Android, allowing it to function effectively as a laptop replacement

It looks like they're heading down a different path and trying to get the app stack running on Android. Buying QuickOffice suggests they won't be pushing too hard to get Libre on there. http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/google-quickoffice-get-more-done.html.

There's already third party X11 servers, so they may appear on the open source versions of Android soon, if there's enough demand.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theqvd.android.x&hl=en

http://my20percent.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/android-x-server/

You completely fail to understand what these boxes do.

"Two months ago, Skype replaces user-hosted P2P supernodes with Linux grsec boxes hosted by Microsoft, but for what?

I found some brilliant and valuable comment about this:

I think wiretapping is one of the big reasons for the rearchitecture. Skype officially claimed they could not comply with wiretapping requests because of the P2P network as late as 2008 (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9963028-38.html), and Microsoft was already working on wiretapping VoIP in 2009 (http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/microsoft-patents-voip-and-skype-wiretapping.asp)."

http://skype-open-source.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/microsoft-wiretapping-on-skype-now.html

We wanted our VOIP services to be free of CALEA backdoors

Make sure you don't use Skype.

Microsoft has replaced user-hosted P2P supernodes with Linux grsec boxes hosted by Microsoft. There's been a lot of speculation about reasons. This looks plausible.

I think wiretapping is one of the big reasons for the rearchitecture. Skype officially claimed they could not comply with wiretapping requests because of the P2P network as late as 2008 (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9963028-38.html), and Microsoft was already working on wiretapping VoIP in 2009 (http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/microsoft-patents-voip-and-skype-wiretapping.asp).

http://skype-open-source.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/microsoft-wiretapping-on-skype-now.html

'Models are useful even when their results are not entirely correct because they facilitate communication' World Bank HEF Techniccal Report 1, June 2010

because as you can see, the model is generating discussion. If the model is wrong, it is still the first step towards making a better model.

GoodonyaMate! and I mean that with sincerity, otherwise I would have said "GoodonYa....Mate!". :)

However the old fart cynic in me says: Good luck competing with "A current affair" and "Today tonight" who have both been shilling these kind of "pocket money" schemes for at least a decade. Then there's "Australia's most read columnist", Andrew Bolt, a shill for God in an Akubra ....errr... I mean the minning industry. And who can forget "Australia's most popular talk show host" Alan Jones,[NSFW]*, a convicted shill with a small army of devoted thugs...errr...I mean dedicated listeners.

In a land where the people are famous for their bullshit detectors such shills should stick out like the proverbial "dog's balls", yet statistics strongly suggest we can't get enough of it.

* - The photo is real but cropped, I remeber it from the 80's when he stood for election under the count-ry party banner, we have some brilliant, yet under-appreciated political photo-journalists in this country.

People don't do advanced degrees like a PhD for the money (which isn't that great) or the recognition (which is hard to come by) but because they love the work.

Basically, if you love doing it, do it. If you hang in there, things will probably work out. If not, find something else to do with your life. A while ago I summed up in a blog post my thoughts on doing a PhD: http://computational-intelligence.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/hang-in-there.html

Just my $0.02.

...one might wonder why Google has to push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing.

Could it be because they tried working on open protocols for sharing and it didn't work? Hate to reign in the $MEGACORP bashing here, but Google really HAVE tried in this area - G+ looks like a last-ditch attempt to gain some traction amongst the big players in "social".

This article from 2005 on a different ZnO-Zn process may be of interest:

Zinc: Miracle Metal?

The SolZinc process described there uses carbon in the ZnO reduction, and works at 1200C, compare with 1650C = 4000F for the prototype in this post.

Key quote:

Mobile fuel cell: There are already projects to run vehicles such as buses on zinc-air fuel cells. If these could be moved down to cars, the results could be quite impressive; a vehicle using 250 Wh/mile would require only 179 grams of zinc (2.74 moles) per mile. Zinc is a reasonably dense metal at 7.14 g/cc; solid zinc would yield about 40 miles to the liter, or upwards of 150 miles per gallon (powdered forms would not be quite so energy-dense). The carbon monoxide would also be surplus in this scenario.

The actual available energy (electricity) from a Zn-air fuel cell is several times as great as what can be obtained from the same chemical input of gasoline to an internal combustion engine. The metallic zinc contains about 90% as much energy as the input carbon, and it can be converted to motion with very high efficiency. It appears likely that a solar-mediated zinc reduction process using coal could power 3.5 times as many vehicle-miles as a conversion of coal to liquid fuel.

Infrastructure is the questionable issue. If we ship zinc metal out as fuel then we have to ship it back for recycling, or get the zinc oxide to another solar plant. (If we ship hydrogen we have to manage the bulk.) But we did it with coal.

http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/superconductors-picture-of-progress.html

For those wondering, the highest critical temperature as of 2012 is 135K. Room temperature is about 300K. So no, unobtanium hasn't been discovered yet.

The problem here, of course, is not so much that the body is beheaded, but that there is a connectivity problem in the autonomous nervous system. It is often unclear what this problem is, exactly, and how it affects perception of the person inside the brain. It is likewise unknown what the chances of recovery are, except that they're statistically relatively small. It is not known how small exactly. We don't really know all that much about the connections between the brain and the autonomous nervous system. The only certainty is that most of it (except the eyes) goes through the brainstem, and most (not all) functions that we consider a human originate in the cortex. So what's really going on in a BHC is a lack of signals traversing the corpus callosum.

So sadly, the worst is true : it varies from :
1) it doesn't affect perception at all ("locked in syndrome"). Usually, but not always, the eyes will still exhibit autonomous functions.
if you are a donor, you best pray to high heavens this doesn't happen to you
2) the person really is dead, and no perception will occur. Sometimes the eyes are nevertheless open and partially functional.

Of course, the real world is even more complex than this, people have been known to recover fully from both cases. Both from locked in syndrome and from braindead state. This is rare, but due to organ donations being commonplace for nearly as long as we actually have figures, it is not actually known how rare.

In both cases, doctor's neither kill the patient directly, nor administer anaesthetics, because both may cause deterioration in the organs to be transplanted. It is thus a very real possibility that there is one case of a patient being cut apart while fully aware on a yearly basis in America.

The real problem with signing a donor card is that it takes away the decision from everyone involved, and delivers it into the hands of people whose only incentive does not have anything to do with your condition. If you sign that thing, doctors have permission (and a strong incentive) to cut you apart the moment you are declared braindead. Given the incentives, it is feared that this even affects the decision to declare a patient braindead. But the worst, imho, is that the choice is taken away from both the person, and from their loved ones, who would normally have to give the go-ahead (presumably after being convinced doctors have done all they can, which would be a safeguard). The problem with this is that it often takes time to contact next of kin, and during that time doctors have to watch perfectly good organs deteriorate and fail.

I would never sign that card, and if it becomes opt-out I'd opt-out immediately. My wife is perfectly aware that I would be willing to donate my organs, and she makes the decision, simply because I trust her with it. If I sign that paper, there's no telling who that decision gets transferred to. If that means my organs die, well too bad. Without consulting me or someone I trust to make that decision on my behalf, nobody has any right whatsoever to my organs.

The sad part is that in order to harvest organs, the hippocratic oath was modified (just as it was modified to remove the restrictions forbidding euthanasia and abortus). It is very sad that we have exactly zero respect for the contract that gave us modern medicine. What people don't realize is what happened with medical knowledge in ancient Greece before the hippocratic oath, and how badly it affected society (someone basically went to the local doctor for a good poison to murder someone else in more than a few stories). But hey we see a quick buck (for doctors) or a quick organ (for patients) and bye-bye oath. I am of the opinion that one day normal people (you, me, the poor in general) will thorougly regret that. (btw yes, second link is morality-preaching obama-bashing nonsense, scroll down to the paper and read it. I have looked for a direct link, not found one)