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From: Sony Media
To: $CONSUMER

Re: Unlawful copying of content

Dear $CONSUMER:

It has come to our attention that you are in violation of our copyrights, by making unauthorized copies of our BluRay content using a device known as a Hippocampus. We are bringing suit against you for US$10,000,000.

And now you know why researchers are trying to create an artificial one....

Well that's disconcerting. Here's a related article. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14310?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news5_head_dn14310
An article about a rave where somehow the lasers were turned on/reflected at the crowd, partially blinding a few people.
There are probably dozens of people that want revenge on someone else in some way, now for only $200.00 they can permanently blind whoever they want!
I for one am now paranoid about wearing my shades in public.
Shades will protect people's eyes, right? Some people need eyesight to earn a living!

People, particularly on this forum, put Christians down as ignorant.

Lets see if I can help correct that.

You are ignorant. The majority of Christians however, do accept evolution.

And just in case you were unaware of the fact that the majority of Christians accept evolution you can take a look at this article and the image in it. The United States is almost completely Christian and is evenly split on accepting evolution. Then you merely note the fact that other overwhelmingly Christian countries accept evolution by large margins. Even if try you stack the figures as far as possible by assuming every non-Christian in each country accepts evolution in order to maximize the percentage of Christians rejecting evolution, it still works out impossible for there to be less than 50% of Christians on the evolution side.

Turkey is the only developed nation that has a lower acceptance of evolution than the US.

-

... don't have any bright laws about regulating for this, and it's already too late.
The US allowed the oil sector to write its exploration and drilling laws.
The US knew its protection systems where not great but still handed out more rushed waivers.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18881-oil-industry-failed-to-heed-blowout-warnings.html
Next Fox 'tea party' public chat with your Dem or GOP legislator, remind them of the oil cash they accepted, their drill baby drill enthusiasm (read it back to them) and their lax law making.
Post to youtube with tags and keep on asking.

We see the Universe the way it is, because if it was different, we wouldn't be here to see it.

On the contrary, we would be perfectly suited to survive in any universe that spawned us.

A few years ago, it was reported that without a moon life on earth would be impossible.

Now we are told any little difference in Jupiter's orbit would also render life impossible.

There seems to be a great tendency to suggest we live in a giant "Just So" story and could not exist in any other scenario, while at the same time we are finding life in the most inhospitable places imaginable.

"WE" might be a different "WE" if we evolved in slightly altered environments but never the less the belief that conditions must be just like earth for something nearly human in capabilities, chemistry, and societal structure is pretty close to the geocentric view of the universe so handily debunked by Copernicus.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18889-jupiter-loses-a-stripe.html

anon post to not kharma ho

Thanks for those pics. They make it more clear than the /. links since you can see the Red Spot in both.

It doesn't really look like the belt went anywhere. It just looks like it got a lot lighter. But there is still a distinct band there.

I guess that isn't as thrilling as saying that a belt is gone" though.

The largest black hole discovered to date (AFAIK) is 18 times larger than the one in TFA.
Source.

There. Fixed that for ya.

Any Karma appreciated.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18889-jupiter-loses-a-stripe.html

anon post to not kharma ho

Can anyone seriously say that evolution is as proven as Newton's Laws of Motion on the scale of billiard table?

Evolution is a quazi-random process, so it can't be proven like LoM. But seriously:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

And that's only in 20 years. Now multiply 20 years by 190,000,000 for how long life has been around on our planet. Add in constantly changing fitness conditions, vast amounts of energy input (solar), temperature gradients up the wazoo, and some of the most reactive molecules in the universe (O2, liquid H2O) being present in MASSIVE quantities (well, O2 later on) all at a temperature that makes such molecules possible (i.e. not 2000C), and you get life/evolution.

How could you NOT get life/evolution in those set of circumstances?

If you can test it, it's not true evolution! If you see it, it wasn't evolution, because evolution cannot happen rapidly enough for people to even record!

This fine fellow and his E. Coli would like to disagree with you:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

"A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events."

Just in case you've been subscribed to this particular myth, volcanoes do not emit more carbon dioxide than humans.

Actually, the story that came to my mind was more along the lines of this one.

Given the choice of paying $400 for a Wii plus the Wii Fit game, or paying $18k for a medical grade device that does pretty much exactly the same job, I'd think the government would prefer the former.

Indeed, and there's actual research supporting usage of the Wii Balance board for physiotherapy. Research was conducted by the University of Melbourne, which the Australian doctor probably read about and decided to recommend to his patient.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527435.300-wii-board-helps-physios-strike-a-balance-after-strokes.html?full=true&print=true

it has been interesting to watch the spin doctors morph AGW into what I think is a more likely and accurate way to put it - "climate change". Something Earth has experienced for its entire existence.

"Global warming" is an accurate term - it was meant to refer to the global mean temperature increasing. The problem was that many non-scientists don't understand how mean values are calculated, and hence didn't understand that the mean could increase even though some regions might cool. The myth that Any Cooling Disproves Global Warming became widespread, and so scientists began to talk about "climate change" instead.

• Penn State
• the British Parliamentary inquiry
• the Oxford panel
• Nature.com

Apparently you missed it

Anyone that's done a little research knows the scientists there really did some questionable stuff. They would also know that they've (CRU/IPCC) been taken to task by others in the scientific community for doing so.

There was a small amount of criticism from the scientific community regarding small details, but the consensus was that the leaked emails did reveal a conspiracy, and did not alter any of the science. See: Nature, Scientific American New Scientist, the Royal Society.

How do you explain the Early Medieval Warm Period, then?

Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

how do you explain the Little Ice Age?

Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

Do you think people were putting enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere then to cause it?

Do you think that for AGW to be the cause of the increase in global temperature over the last century, it must also be the cause of every temperature variation ever?

How do you explain the Early Medieval Warm Period, then?

Climate myths: It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

how do you explain the Little Ice Age?

Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

Do you think people were putting enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere then to cause it?

Do you think that for AGW to be the cause of the increase in global temperature over the last century, it must also be the cause of every temperature variation ever?

err, that was 10 years ago, the 20th century, did you miss the millennium. But if you want futuristic money, read last weeks new scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627562.700-schrodingers-cash-minting-quantum-money.html?page=1

There is life out there.

Remember that the most distant object we can see (GRB 090423) is 13.1 *billion* years old. So 13.1 billion years of stuff has happened before we even noticed it existed, and it'll be another 13.1 billion years before we know if that event spawned anything resembling life by today's date.

I have no doubt that there is life in space. We will just never, ever know of it until those who would find it relevant are long dead.

They have decided to not appeal to fringe geeks and nerds but to instead appeal to the affluent mass market in order to meet their moral responsibility. That moral mass market would prefer if "porn" was not readily available on their consumer electronic devices.

I hate to hit you with this, but the overwhelming majority of the population, both male and female, consume porn to one degree or another, and it is the "moral" minority who consume it more voraciously than normal, healthy people who don't hold fucked up bronze age beliefs that sex is bad. (Amusingly, online porn purchases slightly decrease on Sundays.) The market Apple is appealing to isn't moral, it's just hypocritical, not unlike the stridently anti-gay politicians who frequently turn out to be gay themselves.

The majority may claim to be above porn, but this is the same majority who also claim to be above masturbation, contrary to every reputable study ever conducted, which finds that non-masturbators are a tiny minority, especially among men.

_YOU_ may not like that but Apple's shareholders, to whom Apple answers, likes it quite a bit.

Sounds like you like it. I rather expect that most of Apple's shareholders will like anything that increases their profits. If that happens to be Steve Jobs' messiah complex, so be it. If, on the other hand, they thought there was a good way to monetize the iPhone's use to tap into the multi-billion-dollar porn market without hurting existing iPhone sales, then it would be Apple's moral responsibility -- your words, not mine -- to devote considerable resources to making sure that fisting videos were available with the tap of a finger, now wouldn't it?

But that's how morality goes, isn't it? Any time you hear someone talking loudly about it, you can bet you're dealing with a hypocrite.

PHPECTS - sorry, that should be "aspects" - of spelling on the internet are growing weirder. Readers recently explained the numerous web appearances of the non-word at the start of this paragraph by speculating that website managers carelessly run a "find-and-replace word" macro to expunge all references to the Microsoft web-page-generating language ASP, and replace it with the independently-produced language PHP (27 February). ...

These search-and-destroy word-replacing missions - which we shall call netplications - are not limited to the acronyms favoured by IT geeks. Some years ago, following the takeover of the Midlands Examining Group (MEG) by the Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations board (OCR), physics students were suddenly required to learn all about "ocrawatts" and "ocrabytes" (14 January 2006). We haven't yet come across any netplications using real words. Perhaps our mind is now too discomanised to think of any to try.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627542.800-stewing-magazine-wrappers-in-gravy.html

Classified or not, I would imagine this is something that the US Government took rather meticulous records of

Why would they? Once it's in the ground, it's no longer their problem, right? Keep in mind that there's vast piles of nasty stuff left over from the Second World War and the Cold War that is poorly documented at best. A lot of this stuff wasn't documented because otherwise it became the problem of the people who were dumping it. Odds are very good that some army officer was told to get rid of the stuff so he did. If he had documented what he did, then that would involve bureaucrats and higher ups in his decision. He might still be trying to bury the stuff today.

I've been mistaken as to physicists role in this but I've found an article dealing with this split votes problem (Arrow's impossibility theorem). It shows that range voting was given as a remedy for exactly this problem.

We've found aliens, and they've got a warpdrive: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18775-mysterious-radio-waves-emitted-from-nearby-galaxy.html. Ok, most likely this is a previously unknown radio source that only looks like it is moving faster than the speed of light due to the angle of approach, but it is still fun to think about.

Yes.

Most pulsars are around 3000 light-years away. Since the speed of light changes over time those pulsars emitted light when it was traveling at a different speed than it is today. So the timing between the pulses will drift.

(At times like this, Slashdot needs a +1 Crackpot moderation.)

There are other articles with more coverage -- Live Science, BMC Biology (PDF of 20-page article with pictures available), New Scientist, Nature, and others. The provisional PDF available at BMC Biology is the full article as it was accepted, and details the experimental procedure that confirmed that these were completely anaerobic organisms.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4343-fish-farting-may-not-just-be-hot-air.html

this link perhaps explains the cod's behavior: herring use sound (farting) to "talk" to each other (coordinate schooling after dark). so that would perhaps explain the attraction to the sonar. i don't know how related cod are to herring, but even if not related, there is perhaps convergent evolution going on here (schooling fish in the north atlantic coordinating with sound)

apparently some fish literally talk out of their asses

they talk out of their asses. literally

here is a .wav of a herring fart talking, and a story about it:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4343-fish-farting-may-not-just-be-hot-air.html

Would you have a cite for that? I'd just like to check it out, not doubting you, just didn't know about that. I know the government takes patents all the time for "national security"**, or keeps them hidden under gag orders if developed "in house", stuff like that (refs: http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/181.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725075.800-patents-gagged-in-the-name-of-national-security.html etc, google has a lot of hits on that) so I wasn't aware that IP seizure for crimes was illegal.

**some decent conspiracy theory out there about stuff like applecart upsetting energy related patents, etc, as well. That's how I first learned about "secret" seized patents. Ha! Stuff stacked up in that big warehouse at the end of the Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie

The original "New Scientist" article can be found here:

  http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18731-simon-singh-the-libel-fight-goes-on.html

There is a petition you can sign, anyone, from any country, here (also linked to in the article):

  http://libelreform.org/sign

Do we know what's past the edge of the universe? I guess I'm asking if C is constant outside of space as well as inside, or if C could be exceeded relative to what is outside of space.

Or is that a stupid question?

There appears to be stuff past the edge of the universe:

• http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14098-hints-of-structure-beyond-the-visible-universe.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14814-galaxy-flow-hints-at-huge-masses-over-cosmic-horizon.html

It is barely possible that the fundamental constants vary over a scale larger than the visible universe, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Do we know what's past the edge of the universe? I guess I'm asking if C is constant outside of space as well as inside, or if C could be exceeded relative to what is outside of space.

Or is that a stupid question?

There appears to be stuff past the edge of the universe:

• http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14098-hints-of-structure-beyond-the-visible-universe.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14814-galaxy-flow-hints-at-huge-masses-over-cosmic-horizon.html

It is barely possible that the fundamental constants vary over a scale larger than the visible universe, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Do we know what's past the edge of the universe? I guess I'm asking if C is constant outside of space as well as inside, or if C could be exceeded relative to what is outside of space.

Or is that a stupid question?

There appears to be stuff past the edge of the universe:

• http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14098-hints-of-structure-beyond-the-visible-universe.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14814-galaxy-flow-hints-at-huge-masses-over-cosmic-horizon.html

It is barely possible that the fundamental constants vary over a scale larger than the visible universe, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I understand the mechanism - it's very straightforward. This is the quote: "It incorporates within its tiny frame a polymer sheet that is folded for launch to be unfurled once in space."

My bad for taking the article at face value. I think the New Scientist article is better: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18705-nanosatellite-sets-sail-to-tackle-space-junk.html It even tell you how big the sail is...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6935-syphilis-cycles-not-driven-by-risky-sex.html

The /. eds could make this article 10x more relevant to most people by titling it 'Man wins million dollar mental masturbation prize' or by explaining the practical applications of this discovery. Instead the summary is a list of techno jargon that'd put Star Trek to shame with no mention of the $$ prize nor details of the winner. Who is this guy? Why did someone give him so much money for solving for x? Can I too win cash money for balls? If not, can I out source next year's winner to india and take a cut of the prize?

Anyway, this article's a lot better:http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/11/grigori-perelman-the-genius-in-hiding.php

This system was designed to address exactly the problem you mention with picking out things in low contrast, funnily enough.

In case your memory doesn't go that far back, Parent is spot on about 5-year-olds dreaming up patentable things. I'm of course talking about the patent for "method of swinging on a swing".

For those interested, the full version of this article originally comes from the New Scientist, just before Christmas. The NYTimes version is shortened and split onto two pages.
Just sayin'

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427391.600-alices-adventures-in-algebra-wonderland-solved.html?full=true

But the funny thing is that it would be technically possible to land a winged aircraft on Mars.

I seem to recall reading something interesting about that several years ago - it claimed that a Martian aircraft would have to look pretty interesting - due to the lower density of the atmosphere and the lower speed of sound, a prop-driven fixed-wing or helicopter would have to break the sound barrier with the tip of its blades, which is a little impractical.

P.S. Found the article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17022932.700-flight-of-the-martian-bee.html

Here's why botnets and, more generally, spam continue to survive - people buy the products advertised!:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527491.500-spamdemic-tracking-the-plague-of-junk-mail.html

(From the text in the graphic) An analysis of just 1.5% of one botnet ("Storm") for one month in 2008 showed:

35 million spams sent
8.2 million passed filtering software
10,500 clicked on the link in the email
28 people actually bought the product

Although this represents only a 0.000008% conversion rate when scaled up it shows that "Storm" generated $3.5 million in sales in 2008.

Well know liar? He's a professor at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Queensland. And if you had watched more than 30 seconds of the first part of his lecture, and also the rest of the parts, you would see that the temperatures and warming rates of our time are statistically insignificant. In fact from the look of things, we are heading into another mini ice age.

Again, you failed to address the fact that he has a history of lies, and merely parroted the same old right-wing anti-science lies. We are not heading into a mini ice age.

There has been no statistical warming for the past decade.

What do you base that claim on?

Why do you think those emails caused such a stink?

Because of creationist-like quote-mining and misrepresentation of the contents.

They admitted it themselves.

They did no such thing.

Even climategate's Phil Jones conceded in a recent interview with the BBC that there had been no statistical warming recently which belies their own models.

Oh dear. You are quoting the misinformation from the Daily Fail, aren't you? You are evidently extremely ignorant of even basic science. The "statistical significance" comment takes more than half a brain to understand, and you evidently don't have that. Educate yourself instead of showing off your amazing ignorance and dishonesty.

Not some random female, but a greenpeace activist was who he was talking to.

Again, this is completely irrelevant. What some random activist things is not even remotely relevant to what the actual scientists are saying.

In it, he queries her motives and how she investigated the science. And we learn that she never actually did, but instead took unquestionably the propaganda pumped out by greenpeace as truth. This is the problem with most of the alarmists; it's no longer a scientific debate, but a matter of faith as is the case in religion. An utterly abhorrent stance in my opinion, and not one that should be taken when making decisions that could bankrupt our country.

The hypocrisy here is quite amazing. Monckton is a dishonest and disgusting liar who himself will only parrot right-wing lies. He hasn't a scientific bone in his body. Never mind the fact that the video is completely irrelevant to the scientific facts. It's just more hand-waving to get people to ignore the science.

It's patently obvious you have made up your mind regardless of the actual science, as demonstrated by repeated links to pro-AGW sites. If you have any real unmarred data sets (not hockey stick graphs constructed with manipulated data sets) which prove your position, then I would be more than happy to evaluate them.

You wouldn't know unmarred data if it punched you in the face. The way you are linking to videos of the retarded moron Monckton process that you are nothing but a denialist.

Please point out any half-truths I may have used. Is it a half truth that in the historical temperature record, CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around? That's a fact. Another fact; The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been ten times what it is today, yet all life did not cease to exist. Quite the opposite in fact, life thrived.

Indeed. The Gish Gallop. Typical brainwashed denialist drone. Here are the actual facts that refute your dishonest talking points:

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to glob

Is that why it has been observed that children living under power lines had a 70% increased risk of leukemia?? Is that why DDT has been sprayed directly onto people as a standard anti-mosquito practice?. Is that why asbestos has been used extensively as an insulator and structural material? Is that why lead paint has been the standard paint for home renovation and art? Is that why gasoline is carcinogenic? Is that why wet Portland cement causes serious health problems which include severe burns that damage nerves?

Just because something is banal, widely used and is seen as an accepted practice it doesn't mean that it is perfectly safe and free from any nasty side effects. History has a pretty long damning list of cases where the dangers are only known after the stuff that causes them is widely deployed.

Architects, sociologists, city planners.. indeed all of us could learn something about the kind of innovation that goes on in slums as the result of necessity. Our cushy world is based so much around luxury, not necessity, that it's nearly impossible to strip away what we really need. Some MIT students studied the carbon footprint of homeless and found that een the homeless of the U.S. have nearly twice the carbon footprint of the global mean. If people with homes in ROW can get by, even be relatively happy with half the carbon footprint of our homeless, maybe they know something we should learn.

Whether we reach peak-oil, peek debt, peak atmospheric carbon or our population reaches a point where food and water becomes too scarce, eventually most of us will have to learn to live with what we need rather than what we want. We won't learn that if we (Like Beijing), take working old neighborhoods, Hutongs and silk market and replace them with hi rises and supermalls. We wont learn it if we do like the U.S. and declare such neighborhoods "Blighted" and seize them by eminent domain and hand them over to private developers who understand greed more than they understand the architecture and sociology of necessity.

Phil Jones has admitted that there has been no global warming since 1995.

No, he didn't. What he said was that the data since 1995, taken over only that period, showed no warming at some given significance level. The "no warming since 1995" meme is the same as the already discredited global warming stopped in 1998 meme.

The CRU was massaging the data to show warming that wasn't there. NASA was cherry picking data from urban heat islands to show warming that wasn't there.

Yes, yes, It's all a conspiracy.

Phil Jones has admitted that there has been no global warming since 1995.

No, he didn't. What he said was that the data since 1995, taken over only that period, showed no warming at some given significance level. The "no warming since 1995" meme is the same as the already discredited global warming stopped in 1998 meme.

The CRU was massaging the data to show warming that wasn't there. NASA was cherry picking data from urban heat islands to show warming that wasn't there.

Yes, yes, It's all a conspiracy.