Slashdot Mirror

So, 76 bytes of identifying info is encoded into EVERY frame via some form of watermarking? Mpeg-7 is supposedly an XML / ID3 type of specification, but if the identifier can survive a digital to analogue conversion, it has to be a fairly strong form of stenography, maybe with some type of Hamming code for good measure. The MPAA lawyers might like this, but I'm not sure film directors would be thrilled with the idea of having new artifacts deliberately added to their movies after post production.

Much more informative article here.

but it's predicted to hit land in the next 3 days as winds turn unfavorable.

There have been daily predictions of imminent landfall since the leak started. Here is one from back in April. Pardon me if projections 3 days out are taken with some degree of skepticism.

And talking about "evidence of damage" as if present damage is all that matters and the future need not be considered is retarded.

My point is that there have been predictions of immediate massive catastrophe for two weeks now. Hasn't happened. In the mean time the slick has actually started DECREASING in size due to various remediation actions.

Do you understand that the gulf coast is an important breeding area for the pelican?

Important for Brown Pelicans living in that area. The world-wide population of the Brown Pelican is around 650,000 and it is distributed throughout coastal areas of both North and South America. It is not endangered or at risk as a species by this oil spill. The article you linked is very much missing a lot of information. In fact this bird disappeared completely from Louisiana once before and came back.

The fact that it's globs and not a continuous stream, and that despite 2,000 barrels a day being leaked there are not oil slicks visible by satellite, puts the lie to the idea that the natural seepage and this disaster are in any way comparable.

Here is a study of a natural seep in California that totally refutes your statement.

http://www.physorg.com/news161440137.html

Don't tell the people actually doing it. They don't know that the author of this piece says it won't work. So they keep making it work. We don't want to upset them. Ssssh.
Speech recognition and translation is becoming a highly effective and proficient tool for the US military. You see it fit's in your iPod... and ... well translates. info here Kinda puts the knosh on this article. Speech recognition as a part of translation is a new application of the tech that is growing by leaps and bounds. 10 years ago we had to do text to text translation, now it's speech to voice. Then you have companies like Voxify,TuVox and others replacing routine call center calls with realistic voice recognition. Far from being a dead animal. It has moved from the realm of fantasy to the realm of direct application.

As far as I can tell, it's an experiment to test the propulsion system with no other purpose. Here's a slightly better article about it.

Then what a waste. Seriously.

One thing I admire about NASA is its ability to pull in secondary and tertiary missions. If you're just going to send it flying, at least put on a simple camera and send it somewhere useful. Fly by the outer planets, or visit the asteroid belt, or try for a comet or KBO. Surely there's at least one object in the solar system within range for simple observations.

Anyone know where it's going? "Deep space" isn't much of an answer, as it includes everywhere that isn't Earth. Does it have a destination besides "away"? The article does not say...

As far as I can tell, it's an experiment to test the propulsion system with no other purpose. Here's a slightly better article about it.

Instead of trying to control individual ACs like this, they should be giving out massive credits to those who go to the expense of installing solar. Even where it won't pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time, installing solar panels will make a difference (probably not so much so in places like Seattle). I would imagine that if you could get 10% of the homes in the nation (even if you were just to do that in So Cal and Arizona and other perpetually sunny places) the relief on the grid would be enormous. With advances in solar cells, combining solar and hydrogen fuel storage/use, and other alternative energy technologies (wind, for example) there should be no problem in providing enough power.

The real problem is that the grid is ancient (relatively) and uses old, broken tech. Unfortunately the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" doesn't apply when you are pushing outdated technology way past its limits.

http://www.physorg.com/news190482866.html

not to say birds are thriving, but they arent extinct in the exclusion zone (and keep in mind pripyat is very close to the reactor)

Not only are they not extinct in the zone, they are relatively thriving. Enough that there's a bunch of studies on them, at least.

I didn't find the study I was looking for, but I did find this one mentioned.
Brightly colored birds most affected by Chernobyl radiation

The study I remember reading was a simpler radiation level and nesting success. Basically, on average birds nesting in the sarcophagus had almost the same success rate as birds not, despite there being double the birth defect rate. Remember, many of these species normally lay 4-6 eggs to get ONE adult bird at the end - the chicks pushing each other out of the nest when they're growing.

Other studies show that migrant birds have more troubles, like the brightly colored ones. Big eggs are also a problem. Still, we're looking at nests in the worst of the contaminated areas.

Deer and such that live further away do fine. Not that I'd recommend humans necessarily live that close, despite me not holding to the linear harm theory(the idea that if Radiation in amount X casues Y cancers, that X/2 will cause Y/2 cancers - I'm more like X/2 is more likely to cause Y/4 cancers).

Skin is an organ and can be grown or transplanted on a suitable substrate. Already in the works.. So I am guessing that it is just a hop skip and jump to a real cyborg. It would probably be cheaper too and self repairing.
Cherry 2010 and if it follows Moore's law they will be posting on slashdot by Cherry 2020.
I would guess that this would be a life extension method at its completion, which allows space for the brain and spinal cord along with an interface. I think that is another of those uncanny valleys.
Though it does seem more like a science fiction movie such as reanimator.

And money. Clearly, our whole society would benefit much more (and create much less pollution) by switching over completely to electric. If the government spent even a fraction of the money they spent on the TWO useless oil wars we have going on in the middle east on nano-capacitors or eliminating costly and vile corporate patents on battery technology, we would have better more reliable cars (electric cars have many, MANY less moving parts), that would be cheaper to operate, own, and be faster and quieter.

Here are some promising links that lead me to believe our government is completely corrupt, incompetent, and wholly a subsidiary of various oil corporations:

http://www.physorg.com/news188637189.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180713660.html
http://www.physorg.com/news186850199.html

Even covering part of existing roofs, driveways, roads, or other surfaces with solar panels would ensure our energy freedom in the long run. Not doing this is just plain stupid.

And money. Clearly, our whole society would benefit much more (and create much less pollution) by switching over completely to electric. If the government spent even a fraction of the money they spent on the TWO useless oil wars we have going on in the middle east on nano-capacitors or eliminating costly and vile corporate patents on battery technology, we would have better more reliable cars (electric cars have many, MANY less moving parts), that would be cheaper to operate, own, and be faster and quieter.

Here are some promising links that lead me to believe our government is completely corrupt, incompetent, and wholly a subsidiary of various oil corporations:

http://www.physorg.com/news188637189.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180713660.html
http://www.physorg.com/news186850199.html

Even covering part of existing roofs, driveways, roads, or other surfaces with solar panels would ensure our energy freedom in the long run. Not doing this is just plain stupid.

And money. Clearly, our whole society would benefit much more (and create much less pollution) by switching over completely to electric. If the government spent even a fraction of the money they spent on the TWO useless oil wars we have going on in the middle east on nano-capacitors or eliminating costly and vile corporate patents on battery technology, we would have better more reliable cars (electric cars have many, MANY less moving parts), that would be cheaper to operate, own, and be faster and quieter.

Here are some promising links that lead me to believe our government is completely corrupt, incompetent, and wholly a subsidiary of various oil corporations:

http://www.physorg.com/news188637189.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180713660.html
http://www.physorg.com/news186850199.html

Even covering part of existing roofs, driveways, roads, or other surfaces with solar panels would ensure our energy freedom in the long run. Not doing this is just plain stupid.

And money. Clearly, our whole society would benefit much more (and create much less pollution) by switching over completely to electric. If the government spent even a fraction of the money they spent on the TWO useless oil wars we have going on in the middle east on nano-capacitors or eliminating costly and vile corporate patents on battery technology, we would have better more reliable cars (electric cars have many, MANY less moving parts), that would be cheaper to operate, own, and be faster and quieter.

Here are some promising links that lead me to believe our government is completely corrupt, incompetent, and wholly a subsidiary of various oil corporations:

http://www.physorg.com/news188637189.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html
http://www.physorg.com/news180713660.html
http://www.physorg.com/news186850199.html

Even covering part of existing roofs, driveways, roads, or other surfaces with solar panels would ensure our energy freedom in the long run. Not doing this is just plain stupid.

Imagine having hundreds of hubble-class telescopes actively scanning for mining targets worth $20,000B ea. requiring little to no propellant to harvest. Gravitational corridors exist that travel through the solar system that require minimal fuel. Materials science is close to being able to construct suitable solar sails capable of freely traveling the solar system. We're not quite where we need to be for moving to space, but it's a helluva lot closer than most people think.

http://www.physorg.com/news3985.html Even the beams being put into bridges are concrete because they are stronger and lighter than metal.

Correction: Even the beams being put into bridges are bendable concrete because they are stronger and lighter than metal.

More on that Bendable concrete: "Essentially, the fibers create many microcracks with a very specific width, rather than a few very large cracks (as in conventional concrete.) This allows ECC to deform without catastrophic failure" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendable_concrete

But before Bendable concrete this is how things were done: There are 3 kinds of forces, Tension, Compression, and Torsion (twisting motion).

Concrete is not "stronger" than steel, it is simply better in compression than steel (it can support more weight). If concrete is in tension beyond the limit, it will break (suddenly and without warning). Concrete is reinforced with steel because the steel complements it. Steel shows signs of fatigue before it breaks when over its limit. Also with changing temperatures, both steel and concrete expand and contract at similar ratios.

http://www.physorg.com/news3985.html
Even the beams being put into bridges are concrete because they are stronger and lighter than metal.

Nope. People have natural and very different sleep rhythms. There really are "night owls" and "morning larks". http://www.physorg.com/news164989094.html

If I take a vacation and totally unplug from the rest of the world, my natural sleep schedule has me going to sleep around 5 or 6 am and waking up around noon or 1pm. I feel more refreshed from that schedule, even though I might be getting less hours of sleep than if I went to bed in the evening and awoke in the morning.

Report explains declining school performance in Sweden Let me summarize the article for you. Sweden's standard of education (still very high, much higher than the US) has been in decline. The reasons are as follows. 1) Schools only to a limited degree compensate for socioeconomic differences. (as you have stated) 2)The most important resource factor is teacher competence. 3)The level of segregation in the school system has increased. Widespread housing segregation and the right to choose which school to attend have resulted in more homogenous student bodies, which affects learning negatively (All the poor kids in one school, and all the rich kids in another is bad for everyone). 4) Less direction on learning outcomes and methods has led to less teacher-led instruction and this negatively affects children's performance. I don't know how you improve on these things (apart from point 2 and 4), but it seems to me that this is a great list to work from.

Oops. Misformatted the link for "and".

There has been some nice work recently on what is available for uranium: http://www.physorg.com/news177839133.html Looks pretty scant. Unconventional gas has boosted estimated reserves here and in Europe quite a lot. Here is a description for the US. http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/unconvent_ng_resource.asp

There is probably less than 70 years of uranium available at the present rate of use. Increasing use would cut the time to the point where a plant built today would run out of fuel before it gets a chance to develop leaks. http://www.physorg.com/news177839133.html

I can see cell phones with the computing power of todays desktops in the next 5-10 years WITHOUT this.

Sure, assuming we get a revolution in power storage/generation/transmission of a suitable size.

One of the problems with making smaller silicon transistors is the leakage currents start to creep back up higher. This means more power consumption for the same speed. That's in addition to the normal increase in power consumption that goes along with faster clock rates. This type of transistor would sidestep this issue, as well as avoid the limitations of photolithography.

Not really - you're telling the Y2K story here. In reality, nobody has cared much about instructions per second (i.e. "Moore's Law") for the last decade or so - the driver of modern technology has been instructions per second PER WATT.

As others have noted - the P3-500 type box that was the prevalent computing equipment of the year 2000 can be reasonably approximated by a modern smartphone. Without "nanowires" and similar stuff that is good for a neat press-release every couple years (like, uh, this one from 2005: http://www.physorg.com/news4889.html). Materials technology hasn't stood still, layouts are getting smarter, architectures that re-use electrons for more than one task, smarter branch-predictions and, in the end, better integration of component building blocks

Wow, +5 Pedantic.

Reinventing the wheel implies that they set out to find a measure of importance. So they would have had to decide to make a search engine, have it produce relative results, decide that relative importance is the key, and then go searching for ways to find relative importance. There's a major gap there, a leap in thinking that simply wasn't present at the time. How important a page is indicates what order it should be in results. That makes sense, but it wasn't obvious at the time. Previous results were based on things like the number of times the page mentions your word, or what order the pages were added. People tried to figure out: what is that quality which makes a page more relevant than others? And they failed.

The key was settling on Importance, or we could call it Charisma. When you mention the name "Brad", do more people think of the guy you work with first or Brad Pitt? Brad Pitt is more relevant (technically relevant to more people), but why? More people know of him, and more people speak of him. More importantly, more important people speak of him.

Scientific papers have been measured for their influence factor this way (but that might be a false correlation: http://www.physorg.com/news165950992.html "... papers published early in a field receive citations essentially regardless of content because they are the only game in town.") If they had looked to science to see what makes something influential, they would have seen the same concept. But they didn't know they needed to find "influential", just "relevant".

The breakthrough Google made was deciding on a quality which made things more relevant, which is roughly equivalent to notoriety. Not just the number of references to a page, but the weight of those references in relation to who references them. That's where link farming sprouted, and they had to figure a way to cancel that effect out.

How many people know this page, as opposed to that page? And then they had to figure a way to find the pages, process the data, calculate notoriety, and serve it up quickly, and create a revenue stream from all of that. It's not about whether you're going to arrive more quickly by re-inventing the wheel. Often times you can, especially if it's in a language where you don't know all of the built-in functions. You can write a linked list with sorting faster than searching for how the language implements it under certain circumstances.

It's about whether you will arrive better, at a better solution in other words. The point was to look elsewhere for implementation, but the part you missed was you have to have inspiration to know where to look.

Google wanted to get something to lots of people. They might have had stuff in baskets. They could re-invent the wheel to make the baskets easier to transport, or they could build up a farm, attracting farm hands and their families and gradually build up a town, making the people come to Google instead. Once you know you need a transportation solution, it's easier to copy an existing idea. It just so happens that once you decide the solution to your problem is relative importance, there's a description of how to do it in a book from the 1940's.

Why do I have to click through two blogs with fluff to reach the original article on PhysOrg? - http://www.physorg.com/news184585514.html

I saw this news item as well, albeit at PhysOrg, which has linked a few interesting related articles. From the comments, it struck me that a concern is indeed the possibility that stray particles from applying this stuff might get into your lungs or on your eyes, causing all sorts of problems since it apparently binds well to organic substances. Also, one wonders what happens if the coating is degraded on food-handling surfaces. Do fragmented microparticles rip up your insides after being carried into your body within contaminated food?

Even with these concerns, of course, I'd love to test this stuff on various less risky surfaces, such as bathroom tiles and shop tools, with appropriate respiratory and eye protection. Being able to use it on a kitchen countertop would just be a welcome bonus if it turns out to be safe for that use after all. (As an aside, I think that use wouldn't breed resistant bacteria since it simply discourages any bacteria at all from growing on the protected surfaces).

What would a brown dwarf do if it passed close by to earth... since they are hard to detect I can assume we wouldn't see it coming. Would it possible be able to cause the earth to spew out a moon? http://www.physorg.com/news183884450.html?xid=rss-fullcontent

Using a phrase like "our standard of living" covers up the fact that some people get the benefits of automation, but others pay the costs (directly or indirectly). Marshall Brain wrote about that here:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

On labor saving:
"The Original Affluent Society"
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied. The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo."

With robotics on the way, what are people going to do when there are no jobs in construction?
"USC's 'print-a-house' construction technology"
http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html
"Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the "Contour Crafting" automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours."

Or no jobs in burger flipping even running the machines?
"Robot Chef"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSKMGurrPI

Or even, next-to-no jobs in medicine? Or software? Or music? Because even if human do those things, automation lets less people do so much more?
"Robot doctor gets thumbs-up from patients"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4946229/

It's a big like something in Isaac Asimov's story "The Last Question", when it was asked, if you are in a rainstorm, and you take shelter under a tree, what are you going to do when the tree gets wet through and starts dripping on you? Do you say, I'll go under another tree? When robots can automate much of construction, are we going to get jobs again in agriculture or miming or driving trucks or delivering packages?
"[p2p-research] 60 jobs that will rock the future... (not)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html
"[p2p-research] Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

The US is in the midst of vast and increasing unemployment. Many jobs probably are not coming back. Most services are frivolous and related to guarding or make-work.
http://www

An astonishing fraction of research "results" from China are just plain made up. No wonder they're so prolific! I don't doubt that they will eventually make significant scientific contributions as a nation -- they're 20% of the world's population, after all -- but they're going to have to clean up their act before the global scientific community starts to take them seriously.

I just entered Bing and the daily picture today is this.

According to Firefox the file size is 81.98 KB (83950 bytes). Which would take a whole 15 seconds to download on a 56k modem. Using the average 5.1 mbps connection speed in the US it would take far less than 1 second. Does the image really make it that much slower?

Sweet! Now let's see combine this with past work with nanowires and make the world's first Living TV! Plasma tv that uses your own plasma? I'm game.

Unless Apple is planning some truly revolutionary new input (in terms of computers) on this device, I don't see how it will be able to tell us anything about alien life/air/soil samples. We've seen other tricorder-like devices before; hell we've even discussed them on slashdot before. And this Apple tablet is a long ways from that.

Basically yes, it starts oxidizing right away and releases energy in the process. Burning aluminum is just really fast oxidation.

You're right that combustion is just an oxidation reaction, you're totally wrong that all aluminum is burning. The outside layer that's exposed to air oxidizes immediately. That layer of aluminum oxide then protects all the lower layers from oxidation. That's why aluminum is generally considered rust-proof, that's why all the things around you that are made of aluminum aren't collapsing, and it's why when you want your aluminum to oxidize, like these guys, you have to make a special alloy to ensure that it happens.

And then there's plastics, and plenty of other stable chemicals who have energy stored inside them.

No, the vast majority of electricity use ends up as waste heat pretty quickly, electronics, lighting,motors, heating (obviously), cooling etc.

Yes like I said most is lost as waste heat. However you said it's all lost, and that's simply not true unless you're talking time scales beyond the lifetime of our planet. And in some cases, like aluminum production, most is lost as heat, but a quite significant 36% is actually going into the aluminum.

"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon? Decent people... shouldn't think too much about that." - Prokhor Zakharov, For I Have Tasted The Fruit

Link is http://www.physorg.com/news11980.html; I was wrong though, it was the song of the humpback whale that they analyzed. From the article:

"Despite the 'human-like' use of hierarchical syntax to communicate, Suzuki and his colleagues found that whale songs convey less than one bit of information per second. By comparison, humans speaking English generate 10 bits of information for each word spoken."

They used an information-theoretic approach, since the songs can't yet be decoded with any certainty. Given that we can speak several words a second, our rate of communication would seem to be much higher.

Hard science papers dropped to 1/10th? Nonsense.

The number of papers published increased significantly during the Bush administration. What has dropped is the percentage of papers published in the US versus the rest of the world. That trend started back in the eighties as countries like China, India, and the former Soviet Union published more, not that the US published less.

...What I want from you is a list of those distinct groups....
How about dogs vs cats, elephants vs giraffes, Falcons vs crocodiles and on and on and on? You can make your own list. None of these creatures are able to breed together.

(... from the article you referenced...)
[...It frequently includes the following conditions: rapid and permanent burial/entombment; protecting the specimen from environmental or biological disturbance; oxygen deprivation - limiting the extent of decay and also biological activity/scavenging;....]

Isn't that what I said, a rapid, not ages long process is involved? Nothing at all is said in the article how the decay process is prevented. Burying something in mud and water does not kill microbes. Neither does high-pressure. There are microbes living at the bottom of the oceans. The fact is that we find not only vertebrates fossilized, but millions of snails and worms and other such softbodied lifeforms. You just cannot get around it, but you have to sterilize the dead body very quickly and then bury it in a sterile environment.

(....There is no evidence that a single big flood ever happened....)
The existence of fossils, millions of them, all over the earth, even in polar regions is evidence for a universal water catastrophe. The biblical account tells us that the fountains of the deep broke open. The interior of the Earth is hot and thus superheated water gushed forth, killing and sterilizing masses of land and sea creatures in seconds.

(....volcanic eruptions and all that other sudden stuff to give you the fossils...)
By seismic studies of the Eurasian landmass (Russia mostly) evidence has come forth that the mantle of the Earth contains several times as much water as the oceans. Look at a cross-section diagram of the Earth sometime to note how thick the mantle is compared to the thickness of the crust of our planet. If you are interested in learning more about this, you can start here:
http://www.physorg.com/news90171847.html
Scientists do not know what forced all or a significant portion of this superheated water to the surface, but there is enough water down there to cover the surface of the earth including all continents several times over. However next time, God promises to cleanse the earth by fire, not water.

(....It is a theory, not absolute truth,...)
But of course the theory of evolution is absolute truth.

(...That doesn't change the fact that science has build up a pretty damn good and detailed explanation...)

Observed experimental facts is what science is all about, not necessarily the explanation of them. All explanations have gone through the worldview filter of whoever is making the explanation.

(...Do you have an alternative theory that works on clock changing....)

Not one that I have come up with, but others have. There is evidence from the quantized red shift and the speed of light measurements, that the clocks based on the electrical force, basically the atom, has changed dramatically since time began, in relation to the clocks based on gravity. The Earth's rotation around the sun is governed by gravity. One such rotation is defined as a year. Radioactivity and other atomic phenomena is the clock that the billions and billions of years of atomic time are measured by. In the beginning, atomic time and gravity time, or as it is sometimes called, dynamical time, were vastly different. Now they are the same, and because they are, the assumption is made that this was always so.

Red shift data from the most distant, and therefore most ancient objects give evidence that certain "constants", such as for example the speed of light and its inverse, Planck's constant h which governs atomic processes, was as much as 100 million times bigger than it is today. Scientists have slowed the speed of light to a crawl in the laboratory. Lenses work by the fact that the speed of light through them slows down. Basically, what it amounts to is that the speed

As of now the solar cells are producing energy with 14.9 percent efficiency, which is pretty great compared to off-the-shelf commercial modules which range from 13 to 20 percent.

I guess that must be good for the size, but Boeing announced 41.6 percent efficient cells this year and I wonder how the ex NASA employee & inventor of the super soaker is getting on with his work he claims could hit up to 60%

A related breakthrough

FTFA

"By implanting an electrode into the brain of a person with locked-in syndrome, scientists have demonstrated how to wirelessly transmit neural signals to a speech synthesizer. The "thought-to-speech" process takes about 50 milliseconds - the same amount of time for a non-paralyzed, neurologically intact person to speak their thoughts. The study marks the first successful demonstration of a permanently installed, wireless implant for real-time control of an external device."

It's just a few vowels at the moment, but still...

Try “all” teenage boys and “most” teenage girls.

For instance (PDF),

A total of 429 students aged 13 and 14 from 17 urban and rural schools across Alberta, Canada, were surveyed anonymously about if, how and how often they accessed sexually explicit media content on digital or satellite television, video and DVD and the Internet. Ninety per cent of males and 70 per cent of females reported accessing sexually explicit media content at least once. More than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos “too many times to count”, compared to eight per cent of the girls surveyed.

That’s just junior highers... and the ones who would admit to it, even in an anonymous survey.

Anyone else get a slightly uneasy feeling at the idea of crop-dusting entire areas of land with living bacteria that glow?

Not when a child's life can be saved. As for living bacteria in dirt, a teaspoon of dirt contains an estimated 10,000 species of bacteria. And there are organisms that naturally glow.

What assurances do we have that the bacteria won't mutate, self-replicate, or turn against its master in the form of some horrendous new super-bug that makes the 20,000 land-mine casualties a year seem like a drop in a bucket?

Aren't we already doing that with GE crops? Grocery stores are stocked with corn, soya bean products, and tomatoes that were genetically engineered. Try to find out which ones come from GE crops though, good luck. Monsanto and other businesses fight all attempts to label food containing GMOs. Monsanto even fought to prevent farmers from labeling their food GMO free.

Falcon

Anyone else get a slightly uneasy feeling at the idea of crop-dusting entire areas of land with living bacteria that glow?

Not when a child's life can be saved. As for living bacteria in dirt, a teaspoon of dirt contains an estimated 10,000 species of bacteria. And there are organisms that naturally glow.

What assurances do we have that the bacteria won't mutate, self-replicate, or turn against its master in the form of some horrendous new super-bug that makes the 20,000 land-mine casualties a year seem like a drop in a bucket?

Aren't we already doing that with GE crops? Grocery stores are stocked with corn, soya bean products, and tomatoes that were genetically engineered. Try to find out which ones come from GE crops though, good luck. Monsanto and other businesses fight all attempts to label food containing GMOs. Monsanto even fought to prevent farmers from labeling their food GMO free.

Falcon

before we scrap software patents, we need to provide developers with an alternative.

There are alternatives such as trade secrets and first mover advantage. Actually by scrapping patents you may encourage innovation, if a business wants to it's market share then it will innovate. As it is patents may discourage innovation. Tell me, why should I spend millions of dollars to invent something if I can be slapped with a lawsuit claiming infringement? Because patents are issued companies have to horde them just to use for self protection. With a thousand patents if another business comes along and threatens a patent infringement lawsuit then one of those patents may save the business because of mutually assured destruction. This forces businesses to spend more on defense than on innovation.

Falcon

Frankly, I prefer living in an industrialized country

So do I, I especially wouldn't want to spend thousands never mind millions of dollars to research something only to be slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit.

Every industrialized nation in the world has implemented a public-disclosure-in-exchange for-a-time-limited-monopoly system to specifically encourage innovation which trade secrets otherwise stifle.

Which copyrights do, no need for patents. As it is now a number of economic studies have concluded patents may stifle innovation. Study finds patent systems may discourage innovation. Patent systems may discourage innovation. Patents Don't Promote Innovation: Study.

Falcon

"Solar isn't going to help much, even if we paved all of Arizona, Nevada and Southeast California with silicon."

Not true.

Fact check: A 100x100 mile area in the southwest could supply all current electricity needs in the USA. Actually, a plot of that total size in arizona with mainstream 12% efficiency panels, would supply twice the kilowatt-hours per day than the current daily demand.

But of course, most large-scale solar will probably be solar thermal, not photovoltaic, because for that some very efficient storage techniques are being developed to match plant output with demand fluctuations (and to fill the 'night gap')...

References:

http://www.environmentflorida.org/newsroom/energy/energy-program-news/large-scale-solar-power-plants-could-power-nation-combat-global-warming-and-create-thousands-of-jobs

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x203056

http://www.physorg.com/news176632405.html

This is another one of those annoying blog posts where some uninformed non-scientist copy-pastes an article from a reputable scientific reporting organisation. At least in this case he linked to the original: http://www.physorg.com/news176483573.html which appears to be a duplicate of an even older article: http://www.physorg.com/news170927623.html

The main advantage appears to be not that people don't have to peel the sticker off before eating their apples but rather that the label cannot be tampered with. (Or at least, not easily.)

This is another one of those annoying blog posts where some uninformed non-scientist copy-pastes an article from a reputable scientific reporting organisation. At least in this case he linked to the original: http://www.physorg.com/news176483573.html which appears to be a duplicate of an even older article: http://www.physorg.com/news170927623.html

The main advantage appears to be not that people don't have to peel the sticker off before eating their apples but rather that the label cannot be tampered with. (Or at least, not easily.)

arielCo writes "Those helpful-yet-annoying little stickers on fruits that tell the cashier the variety and brand may be replaced with a CO2 laser etching. Quoth the PhysOrg article: "the laser cauterizes the peel, much like when a laser is used on human skin. The cauterized area is impenetrable to pathogens and decay organisms and resists water loss". Demonstrated on a grapefruit, it is due for testing on "tomatoes, avocado and other citrus fruits". The original paper (abstract) requires a paid subscription."

In regards to screen size, research is already being done to move user interaction away from screens in general. Think projection, direct retinal display, etc.

No, the article is stating that the theories in question predicted much larger effects.

The data that they got fell outside of the bounds that validate the theory so the theory is considered invalid.

Then what about this? http://www.physorg.com/news110480559.html

There are several aspects to be considered, of course.

Go RTFA again and stop spouting your highschool physics awesomeness and let the real scientists get to work.

Well, too bad I have a bachelor's degree and actually have studied relativity and QM. Also, you're the anonymous coward here.

Compare this simple robot to the high-tech Japanese one covered by Slashdot earlier. Makes one realize the difference in research money available to the Slovenians versus to the Japanese.