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Coca-Cola still uses coca leaf extract in flavoring its soft drink. A subsidiary legally imports coca leaves, processes them to remove the cocaine, and then extracts the desired flavoring so that it can be added to Coca-Cola.

Actually that "CancerX" drug all the newspapers were talking about appears to be DMAT, which you can buy here. I mean the the guy doesn't seem to have published anything about CancerX besides on his webpage. He filed a patent in 2009 which is about using DMAT or TBB to inhibit the enzyme Casein Kinase 2 (CK2), and had a PhD student do her dissertation work on the same thing which was completed in 2008. Since DMAT was actually first synthesized in 2004 for the very purpose of inhibiting CK2 to decrease cell proliferation, and there have been numerous papers on using DMAT for this purpose (you can see these by searching for DMAT CK2 in pubmed or google) I find it hard to believe that this was a serendipitous discovery. If you do the pubmed/google search and look for the institutes where the DMAT studies have been done you'll notice they are pretty much all based in Europe. So it seems to me that these other groups failed to patent the use of this drug for whatever reason and this guy is taking advantage of that while making up a new name along with some story about accidentally discovering its anti-proliferative properties as a self-marketing ploy. Possibly to encourage funding or somehow support his patent rights.

That said he is a biochemist working on anti-coagulants and DMAT is basically a nucleotide analogue (nucleotides are involved in blood clotting) so its possible he synthesized/designed the drug himself at some point for that purpose. I don't really know anything for sure except that calling it CancerX is shady, and talking to the newspapers before publishing is shady.

There is one other way. It's called parallax barriers. No glasses required, but eye-tracking and accompanying image updates are necessary. See the Varrier implementation for details.

(In theory, you could build one yourself.)

Thanks for that comment. It inspired me to post a snippet of a similar conversation I had months ago, with your links and some others added:

Is it right, however, to lump together those who are skeptical of evolution with those who are skeptical of AGW, particularly CO2-driven AGW ?

Creationists confuse religious faith with falsifiable science. Among the general public, climate-change contrarians (and your average Greenpeace/PETA loony) confuse political affiliation with falsifiable science. In both cases, scientists are much less likely to agree with either claim, and that likelihood decreases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field. That's probably why both groups tend to accuse the scientific community of conspiracy and/or widespread incompetence.

At my blog, the following statement is both legible and has popup titles describing why that link was chosen. Here it is without the links first: "And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational levels."

And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational lev els.

What a moron, siding with 97% of active, publishing climate scientists.

Again, true. However, when it comes to AGW and the scenarios being reported - and acted upon by politicians.

Acted upon by politicians? That's almost a Contradiction in terminis! :)

the ONLY data behind those scenarios is the output from models

Yes, that's why there are thousands of pages in IPCC reports..

Wrong. You're either ignorant or lying deliberately. Why?

You know we can start insulting and name calling here, but that won't do any good in any way.

From my point of view I could use the exact same sentence back at you.

As for my "reality has turned out worse than predicted" comment, just look at all the IPCC reports. Every time they release a new report, roughly their worst cases turned out to be the best case in the next report.

You're assuming we know of all the inputs and outputs to Earth, which we don't.

Like I said before, science is always a best guess.

If you want a 100% accuracy you'll have to wait until it's too late to do anything, does that sound rational to you?

Your position is however the same as the one behind AGW - "something happened and we don't know the cause - it must be due to us!" which is, of course, laughable.

No, my position is: when you look at the correlation between CO2 and temperature, which records, theories and models suggest to be tied together, and then look at the -huge- increase of CO2 released since the industrial revolution, then you should be worried.

If climatology wasn't so extremely infected by a "holier than thou" attitude

Pot.. kettle?

and if some of its proponents stepped down from their ivory towers

I'm sure a lot of people who didn't believe in it before believe it now. What's your point?

[with regards to the debate about climate change being "over"]

Well I think this is mainly because we seem to have a short time frame to take any meaningful action. People get emotional when they think time is running out and people aren't listening or simply don't want to listen.

It's gotten to the point where talking about climate change is almost a religious discussion.

I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. - Phil Jones, CRU

Most seem to disagree with him: http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

I swear, I'll never understand your obsession with Gore. It's the views of ~97% of climate scientists that we care about. Gore's opinions have no more bearing on the science than Christopher Monckton's or Michael Crichton's do.

It is hard to say that his views do not have bearing when he won the Nobel prize for that sham of a movie he made.

I swear, I'll never understand your obsession with Gore. It's the views of ~97% of climate scientists that we care about. Gore's opinions have no more bearing on the science than Christopher Monckton's or Michael Crichton's do.

I take it that you're dropping the ridiculous notion that a couple errors in a 3,000 page document written by hundreds of people somehow means that the whole thing is invalid?

preaching something that doesn't exist and then claiming that science supports what you preach is "climate evangelism".

Yeah. I mean, only ~97% of the world's publishing climate scientists believe in it. Who cares about those who actually do the research and keep up on all of the (very extensive) literature? It's all a socialist conspiracy anyway.

In case anyone's curious how different mountain glaciers are changing, here's a nice graph.

we've been fighting the little blue bastards since 1983.

Check out what this guy has to say. He talks about the science and politics surrounding climate change.

For a summary, there's a huge disjoint in what scientists are actually saying, and what is being presented to the public. When scientists talk, they talk about maybe a degree increase in global mean temperatures within a century, which frankly is within natural variation within a day in any given place. What is being presented to the public is drought, hurricanes, dying polar bears, rising ocean levels, and other catastrophes. Now, not so many scientists are willing to put their reputation on the line to say any of this is going to happen. Even the IPCC is not willing to go that far.

In 2007 people freaked out because ant-arctic ice was retreating a little farther than normal. Now it is growing back. Once again, the change was extremely small compared to the natural variation in ice coverage every year (as you can see in this graph).

Another important point he makes, is that statistically 2009 the earth had the same mean temperature as 20 years ago.

Sometimes people bring up the point that there will be an inflection point, that somehow we will hit a point where suddenly the feedback systems kick in and the temperature starts rising drastically. However, there is no evidence for this, and in fact the evidence points the opposite direction: that the more CO2 we get, the less cumulative greenhouse heating we see.

Another thing he talks about is that it's a good idea to measure the actual greenhouse effect, that is the amount of energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. We can measure this with satellites that measure radiation coming off the earth.

There is a lot of bad science going on, and if you look around, you should be able to see some for yourself. Watch that movie, and look especially for disjoints in what scientists are actually saying and what is getting presented in publications like New Scientist, or that you hear politicians saying. Obviously you are not going to get good information from Fox News, either.

Watch that movie, it's a good starting point for figuring out where to make your own analysis. The concepts behind global warming really are simple, and anyone should be able to understand them even if they can't go out and make CO2 measurements for themselves.

Dear AC,

As far as I know, since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists changed their mind, there have been no scientific organizations of any importance who reject human influence on climate change.

In a recent study Doran & Zimerman concluded that there really isn't even any debate about the authenticity of global warming among those who understand long term climate processes... Practically everyone agrees that it happens. Take a look: http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

So... exactly what the are these people missing that only you are seeing?

Okay, I'll check that out. Until recently though, they required the use of the Odyssey client and the UIC LUG instructions looked like this:

http://lug.cs.uic.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=wifi_linux

and

http://lug.cs.uic.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=wifi

The new Ubuntu 8.10 look pretty straightforward, so I'll give them a try.

Okay, I'll check that out. Until recently though, they required the use of the Odyssey client and the UIC LUG instructions looked like this:

http://lug.cs.uic.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=wifi_linux

and

http://lug.cs.uic.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=wifi

The new Ubuntu 8.10 look pretty straightforward, so I'll give them a try.

The UIC's LUG has had a tutorial on how to connect to the UIC wireless network for some time, there's no "bypassing" anything, you just need a wireless client that supports IEEE8021x authentication, e.g. wpa_supplicant. I think only reason why the accc tells you need Secure W2, is becuase I don't think Windows XP supports 8021x natively. Note that OS X > 10.3 can connect natively, and the accc even links to the LUG instructions: this link seems a bit screwed up, try reading the table of contents, at the top of the page though. At least a few of the dept.'s at UIC run linux servers, I know the MSCS and CS dept.s do. The old tigger and icarus servers run a very old version of solaris. And there used to be some old G3 macs in the library running Debian, but I think these were phased out and replace w/ newer machines running Vista and OS X. I think the CS dept. has a bunch of labs full of red hat machines. Also, if you're on the campus network you can download a site-licensed copy of Red Hat. So, there's actually a bunch of stuff on campus running Linux and while the accc doesn't support crap here, there's very little you can't do on the campus network if you run linux vs. Windows/OS X. Also, this is pretty much as good as it get's anywhere; I don't even know of any residential ISP's in Chicago that "officially" support linux. AT&T supposedly supports "unix", but if you ask them for help with linux on the phone they pretty much hang up on you.

Commonly the N2O cylinder itself contains a 50/50 mixture

Item Name: NITROUS OXIDE,USP
Company's Name: LIQUID AIR CORP CALIFORNIA PLZ
Company's Street: 2121 N CALIFORNIA BLVD
Company's P. O. Box:
Company's City: WALNUT CREEK
Company's State: CA
Company's Country: US
Company's Zip Code: 94598
Company's Emerg Ph #: 415-977-6500
Company's Info Ph #: 415-977-6500
Proprietary: NO
Ingredient: NITROUS OXIDE *
Ingredient Sequence Number: 01
Percent: >98
Ingredient Action Code:
Ingredient Focal Point: D
NIOSH (RTECS) Number: QX1350000
CAS Number: 10024-97-2
OSHA PEL: NOT ESTABLISHED *
ACGIH TLV: 50 PPM; 9192 *
Other Recommended Limit: NONE SPECIFIED NITROUS OXIDE,USP

Entonox is 50:50, but Nitrous Oxide USP is 98% or greater, typically Reagent or Industrial grades are purer than USP grade so Reagent/Industrial grades are also labeled USP, but not vica versa, it is normally cheaper to stock one item for both than to maintain two inventories. Welding Oxygen is also purer than Oxygen USP so the same applies.
If I go to the dentist and he starts cracking N2O cartridges into balloons, I'm leaving!

How about one of these?

And you must have rocks in your head if you think that NewsBusters is a credible source. For christ's sake, their slogan is "Exposing Liberal Media Bias".

NewsBusters (a fox news favourite) is owned by Media Research Centre, a far-right group whose president Brent Bozell who, among other things, in 2004 accused John Kerry of lying in his testimony to the US Senate foreign relations committee in 1971 because he had depicted US soldiers in a bad light.

Media Research Centre has several far-right financial supporters, among them:
The Scaife Foundations - Director Richard Mellon Scaife whose fortune was built on the family's ownership of Gulf Oil Corp., Alcoa and Alcan.
John M. Olin Foundation - also funds Brookings, Project for the New American Century etc.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation - another far right group which gives away about $30 million a year to neocon organisations.

PS. And there is a consensus. Here's yet another survey. Is 96.2% of climate science specialists good enough for you?

The sort of idiot who knows that the "extensive study" you talk of is, to put it mildly, immature

And you know that from reading a whopping zero papers on the subject. Come back when you know what you're talking about.

Your view, that we know all we need to know already to make 50 year predictions, is idiotic.

That's just the tiniest fraction of the data used. Of course, no surprise that you'd make that argument, since you've read a whopping zero papers on the subject. Come back when you know what you're talking about.

Would you have the same confidence in an economic model as you have in these climate models?

Yes, if it had as much study and peer review behind it.

Oh yes it is, you're making the assumption that peer review is some guarantee of correctness.

I'm making the assumption that it's infinitely better than a slashdotter whose read no papers on the subject talking out their arse.

If you've read the Wegman report, you'll know what I'm talking about.

You mean a non-peer-reviewed report? Cute. Keep avoiding peer review. It shows what you think of science.

And, FYI, I have read it. And, FYI, fixing of the errors reported by the Wegman report doesn't change the shape of the reconstruction. And, FYI, that's about one single paper out of many thousands. Including many more on the exact same topic using different methodologies that reach the exact same conclusion (the most recent, for example, is "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia"):

Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.

But no surprise you'd conflate a single, now obsolete paper to somehow be the keystone of all of climate science. On, and one more FYI: if you read the original paper, it's actually all about the uncertainty levels at different points in time.

While we are often told about the "2,500 scientists" who contributed to the latest IPCC report, the vast majority of these contributors had no influence on the conclusions expressed by the IPCC and were not asked if they endorsed those conclusions

Would you like polls, then? How's this? According to polls, more climate scientists think the IPCC was too lax with their conclusions than too harsh, 97% of climate scientists say that temperatures have risen, and 97% think humans are responsible.

Its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) are produced by a small group of scientists and are revised and agreed to, line-by-line, by representatives of member governments before they are made public (McKitrick 2007).

You know, you could at least not

There is lots of research linking cost of cigarettes to reduction of smoking. Since you're too lazy to look it up (you could try Google) or allergic to facts, here are some references: (sorry about the sloppy formatting but I'm too lazy to format for trolls.)

1 Philip Morris document, "General Comments on Smoking and Health," Appendix I in The Perspective of PM International on Smoking and Health Initiatives, March 29, 1985, Bates No. 2023268329-8348. 2 Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris, 1994 draft speech to the Philip Morris USA Trade Council, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oyf35e00. 3 R.J. Reynolds Executive D. S. Burrows, âoeEstimated Change In Industry Trend Following Federal Excise Tax Increase,â RJR Document No. 501988846 -8849, September 20, 1982. 4 Philip Morris Research Executive Myron Johnston, âoeTeenage Smoking and the Federal Excise Tax on Cigarettes,â PM Document No. 2001255224, September 17, 1981. 5 Philip Morris Executive Jon Zoler, âoeHandling An Excise Tax Increase,â PM Document No. 2022216179, September 3, 1987. 6 Philip Morris Executive Claude Schwab, âoeCigarette Attributes and Quitting,â PM Doc. 2045447810, March 4, 1993. 7 Chaloupka, F, et al., âoeTax, Price and Cigarette Smoking: Evidence from the Tobacco Documents and implications for tobacco company marketing strategies,â Tobacco Control 11: 62-72, March 2002. 8 See, e.g., Chaloupka, F, âoeMacro-Social Influences: The Effects of Prices and Tobacco Control Policies on the Demand for Tobacco Products,â Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 1999; other studies at http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc/; Tauras, J, âoePublic Policy and Smoking Cessation Among Young adults in the United States,â Health Policy 6*:321-32, 2004; Tauras, J, et al., âoeEffects of Price and Access Laws on Teenage Smoking Initiation: A National Longitudinal Analysis,â Bridging the Gap Research, ImpacTeen, April 24, 2001, and others at http://www.impacteen.org/researchproducts.htm. Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998, http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc; Emery, S, et al., âoeDoes Cigarette Price Influence Adolescent Experimentation?,â Journal of Health Economics 20:261-270, 2001; Evans, W & Huang, L, Cigarette Taxes and Teen Smoking: New Evidence from Panels of Repeated Cross-Sections, working paper, April 15, 1998, www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wrkpap.htm; Harris, J & Chan, S, âoeThe Continuum-of-Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in Relation to Price Among Americans Aged 15-29,â Health Economics Letters 2(2):3-12, February 1998, www.mit.edu/people/jeffrey. 9 See, e.g., U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), âoeResponses to Cigarette Prices By Race/Ethnicity, Income, and Age Groups â" United States 1976-1993,â Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47(29):605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm; Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998. 10 Ringel, J & Evans, W, âoeCigarette Taxes and Smoking During Pregnancy,â American Journal of Public Health, 2001 See also, TFK Factsheet, Harm Caused by Pregnant Women Smoking or Being Exposed to Secondhand Smoke, http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0007.

There is lots of research linking cost of cigarettes to reduction of smoking. Since you're too lazy to look it up (you could try Google) or allergic to facts, here are some references: (sorry about the sloppy formatting but I'm too lazy to format for trolls.)

1 Philip Morris document, "General Comments on Smoking and Health," Appendix I in The Perspective of PM International on Smoking and Health Initiatives, March 29, 1985, Bates No. 2023268329-8348. 2 Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris, 1994 draft speech to the Philip Morris USA Trade Council, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oyf35e00. 3 R.J. Reynolds Executive D. S. Burrows, âoeEstimated Change In Industry Trend Following Federal Excise Tax Increase,â RJR Document No. 501988846 -8849, September 20, 1982. 4 Philip Morris Research Executive Myron Johnston, âoeTeenage Smoking and the Federal Excise Tax on Cigarettes,â PM Document No. 2001255224, September 17, 1981. 5 Philip Morris Executive Jon Zoler, âoeHandling An Excise Tax Increase,â PM Document No. 2022216179, September 3, 1987. 6 Philip Morris Executive Claude Schwab, âoeCigarette Attributes and Quitting,â PM Doc. 2045447810, March 4, 1993. 7 Chaloupka, F, et al., âoeTax, Price and Cigarette Smoking: Evidence from the Tobacco Documents and implications for tobacco company marketing strategies,â Tobacco Control 11: 62-72, March 2002. 8 See, e.g., Chaloupka, F, âoeMacro-Social Influences: The Effects of Prices and Tobacco Control Policies on the Demand for Tobacco Products,â Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 1999; other studies at http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc/; Tauras, J, âoePublic Policy and Smoking Cessation Among Young adults in the United States,â Health Policy 6*:321-32, 2004; Tauras, J, et al., âoeEffects of Price and Access Laws on Teenage Smoking Initiation: A National Longitudinal Analysis,â Bridging the Gap Research, ImpacTeen, April 24, 2001, and others at http://www.impacteen.org/researchproducts.htm. Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998, http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc; Emery, S, et al., âoeDoes Cigarette Price Influence Adolescent Experimentation?,â Journal of Health Economics 20:261-270, 2001; Evans, W & Huang, L, Cigarette Taxes and Teen Smoking: New Evidence from Panels of Repeated Cross-Sections, working paper, April 15, 1998, www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wrkpap.htm; Harris, J & Chan, S, âoeThe Continuum-of-Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in Relation to Price Among Americans Aged 15-29,â Health Economics Letters 2(2):3-12, February 1998, www.mit.edu/people/jeffrey. 9 See, e.g., U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), âoeResponses to Cigarette Prices By Race/Ethnicity, Income, and Age Groups â" United States 1976-1993,â Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47(29):605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm; Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998. 10 Ringel, J & Evans, W, âoeCigarette Taxes and Smoking During Pregnancy,â American Journal of Public Health, 2001 See also, TFK Factsheet, Harm Caused by Pregnant Women Smoking or Being Exposed to Secondhand Smoke, http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0007.

..a majority of the scientists...

Of course, once upon a time the majority of scientists thought the earth was at the center of the universe.

No they didn't. The majority of people thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Of course this was before the discipline known as "science", the scientific method and all that comes with that. Most people used religion to explain the unknown and religion decreed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

The majority of doctors and medical scientists believed that disease was caused by bad air and fought early pioneers and advocates of rigorous cleanliness in hospitals tooth and nail. The majority of cosmologists today believes that electricity plays no role whatsoever in the large-scale operation of the universe. Some of them will desperately oppose anyone who even breathes the word "electric" or "plasma" in connection with cosmology or astrophysics.

Since when has the majority had a corner on truth? Has it ever been? No? Well maybe the majority is wrong here also. When it comes to science, the stupidest thing I know of toward the validity of any scientific statement or argument is to invoke the majority.

The mistake you make here is to mistake the majority of evidence with the majority of people . In the examples you cite, scientific methods had not been devised, and so it is valid to claim them as examples of historical ignorance. In the case of global warming however, there is an enormous majority of evidence in favour of global warming, which is what climate scientists base their opinions on.

In the case of global warming, the majority is clearly wrong, once again, as usual. The Earth has cycled between warmer and cooler for ages. Where, for example, did all that carbon comes from that is stored in the fossil fuel we burn today and have yet to burn? How does the carbon, along with hydrogen become hydrocarbons? Why do we call it fossil fuel? Is that not all solar energy stored as chemical energy? What mechanisms converted and stored this chemical energy, if not photosynthesis? Today, plants get the carbon they need to grow from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Where did the plants of long-ago which we now burn in our gas tanks and power plants get their carbon dioxide they needed for the process of photosynthesis?

If we burned every possible gram a fossil fuel, would that not return Earth's conditions to what they were before the fossil fuels were formed in the first place?

Yes it might. Prior to the evolution of photosynthesis, approximately 3.4 billion years ago, the sun was up to 1/3 dimmer than it is now, however due to the effects of greenhouse gases (much higher than at any other time in earth's history), temperatures were comparable to today. Interestingly, carbonate rocks from this period are rare, as the oceans were far more acidic than they are now. So if we were to revert to this, say goodbye to pretty much the entire oceanic food chain, and possibly your ability to breathe.

If that happened suddenly, it would be rather catastrophic, but not if it took place over many generations of humans.

Once again, the changes from those conditions to today's took place over 3.4 billion years. We are seeing changes occur due to human activity on timescales which are several orders of magnitude shorter than this.

Please go and educate yourself on these issues - not just for your own sake, but for everyone else's too because your vote is worth the same as mine.

Yes. They. Are.

According to this recent study, 97% of specialists and 82% of scientists in general agree with anthropomorphic climate change.

So, what's your evidence that scientists do not agree? Put up or shut up.

Dude, not to be pedantic about it or anything, but I think you meant anthropogenic climate change.

In answer to the question "do you think human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures?" 75 of 77 climate scientists who are active publishers on climate change said yes.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

To the AC: keep posting, though. As Goebbels said, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.

They are NOT agreed.

Yes. They. Are.

According to this recent study, 97% of specialists and 82% of scientists in general agree with anthropomorphic climate change.

So, what's your evidence that scientists do not agree? Put up or shut up.

Scientists who study climate are in agreement. Some non-experts who study unrelated fields disagree. I'll stand with the people who know what they're talking about, and whose arguments I find sensible. Feel free to review the evidence yourself, and come to your own conclusions.

You moderators are truly pathetic, modding me flamebait for posting a polite reply. By the way, here's a paper which confirms exactly what I said, but I doubt you'll read it since you only care about silencing anyone who disagrees with you.

Anyone remember the 'slow glass' in stories by Robert Shaw.

For anyone who's interested, here's one of them

While you're right that antibiotics shouldn't be used when not necessary, focusing on human use of antibiotics isn't that productive. More than 70% of antibiotics are used in animal feed. Most cows in feedlots are fed massive amounts of antibiotics so that they don't die from being fed food they weren't evolved to digest. A very quick way to massively reduce the amount of needless antibiotics used in the US is to regulate the beef industry.

This is a survery from the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Philosophy was number with math/physics being number 1 for law schools. I suppose my facts were slightly off, but most people I know who major in philosophy are planning on going to law school. Neverthelesss, I have met people like your college roommate, but I feel those people exist in every major.

Fair Use does have limits.

Limitations:

Time:
        up to two years without permission
Portion:
        Motion Media: 10% or three minutes, whichever is less
        Text: 10% or 1000 words, whichever is less (except poems)
        Music: up to 10%, but no more than 30 seconds
        Illustrations and photographs: less than five images per artist
        Data Sets: 2500 fields or cells or 10%, whichever is less
Special cases:
        poems, email, online chats, LISTSERV discussions, Web cameras; see the guidelines for further information
Copies:
        no more than two copies, which may be placed on reserve

source: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/newsletter/adn20/copyright.html

You can find the same information at dozens of websites around the world, though most of the first hits are from universities, because the whole concept of Fair Use was introduced to help universities and provide protection for academic use of copyrighted materials. To save you the trouble:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=fair+use+time+limits&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

No smurfs?

and I mean, really - mods from the early 1990s? That's a decade late ;)

Yes, as long as you don't mind building a rig that takes up more space than an old school front projection TV...

That technique has been around a very long time.

Note the 1994 date...

Admittedly, it IS in Chicago, so I cannot vouch for the humans getting back out again, but if worked as described by the researchers involved, the system is capable of resolving down to individual neural connections.

Heres a couple of others:

Electrochemistry: http://alford.bios.uic.edu/teaching/Nernst.html
Fluid Dynamics: http://mse-092697c.princeton.edu/lecture1001/page3.htm

I'm not qualified to assess the objectivity of his "damage index," but as he points out, a simple re-ordering of the data they actually presented is pretty convincing. You don't need his damage index at all, and his point stands. You can show damage vs. temperature representing both damage and temperature exactly the way the booster rocket team actually presented them at that meeting, and it's still convincing. Out of data from 46 launches, 8 had significant damage. Of those eight, five of them were in the seven coldest launches. None were in the 11 warmest launches. All three of the coldest launches had damage. With no attempt at all to categorize the severity of the damage, the a simple linear curve fit still shows a strong correlation between low temperature and damage.

Also, Tufte had interviewed people from both the management and engineering side who were at that meeting, and read notes and a summary of the meeting, and the analysis of the meeting from the Rogers Commission. The booster rocket engineers never presented their case in speech any more than they did in the graphs. They simply didn't have their information organized, in their graphs, in their talk, or in their heads. Any engineer or scientist should have been able to see that the point they were trying to convey was that launch temperature correlated to o-ring damage, and therefore they should show the correlation between launch temperature and o-ring damage, which they never really attempted to do in any way. Sure, management should have realized how disorganized their presentation was and sent them back to come up with some organized data, but it was the engineers job to present the case that they had a legitimate concern, and they completely failed to do so, despite having in their hands all the evidence they needed.

5%, 25%, 50%? 90%? Are there estimates for the "rate never before seen" that users are having their personal information stolen?

And what personal information is it? To extend the old saying "If it is on the internet, it is public". Well, *all* information you store the computer that you access the internet suffers from this lack of security.

A truly secure user experience would be managing personal data on an unconnected system (or even a private network of systems) and then transferring data from there that needs to make it to the Internet via the Sneakernet. This is how the Department of Defense guarantees the security of Secure Facilities, and it is (unfortunately) the only way to guarantee the security of your own personal information.

But for systems that are on the 'Net, using an OS that doesn't hide/obfuscate fundamental security models is a plus. For example, it is easier for me to shutdown outgoing ports/services on Linux than on Windows.

As far as browser exploits... one can only hope that developers close off the attack vectors faster than they open new ones.

You are quite wrong, treadmills have been used in the past to power all sorts of things. Here is an example:

http://www.uic.edu/aa/college/gallery400/notions/histories.htm

"The hospital of Bicêtre, France boasts a prodigiously deep well underneath, dating from 1735. The horizontal wheel that pumped the water was turned
  initially by twelve horses, then, starting in 1781, by 72 men, taking shifts on a 24 hr day. These workers were eventually replaced by epileptic
  patients and "madmen" in residence at the hospital."

I would also challenge the notion that fluorinated plastics can be produced energy efficiently enough to actually produce an energy surplus by collecting raindrops. I might be wrong
though, but out of laziness I'll leave the proof to somebody else.

In the meantime I wonder if Newspapers as a medium are capable of making the transition to the Internet and incorporating the new freedoms that brings? Slashdot is way ahead it seems in dealing with some of the issues raised by offering discussion forums, as an article being discussed in today's Guardian CIF : The bullies' charter by Linda Grant makes clear.

If anyone's interested, the role of online news papers is being discussed in a couple of recent articles running on First Monday at the moment:
Western European newspapers and their online revenue models: An overview. By Valerie-Anne Bleyen and Leo Van Hove.
Outside influences: Extramedia forces and the newsworthiness conceptions of online newspaper journalists

In the meantime I wonder if Newspapers as a medium are capable of making the transition to the Internet and incorporating the new freedoms that brings? Slashdot is way ahead it seems in dealing with some of the issues raised by offering discussion forums, as an article being discussed in today's Guardian CIF : The bullies' charter by Linda Grant makes clear.

If anyone's interested, the role of online news papers is being discussed in a couple of recent articles running on First Monday at the moment:
Western European newspapers and their online revenue models: An overview. By Valerie-Anne Bleyen and Leo Van Hove.
Outside influences: Extramedia forces and the newsworthiness conceptions of online newspaper journalists

In the meantime I wonder if Newspapers as a medium are capable of making the transition to the Internet and incorporating the new freedoms that brings? Slashdot is way ahead it seems in dealing with some of the issues raised by offering discussion forums, as an article being discussed in today's Guardian CIF : The bullies' charter by Linda Grant makes clear.

If anyone's interested, the role of online news papers is being discussed in a couple of recent articles running on First Monday at the moment:
Western European newspapers and their online revenue models: An overview. By Valerie-Anne Bleyen and Leo Van Hove.
Outside influences: Extramedia forces and the newsworthiness conceptions of online newspaper journalists

Later as a child, I described everything I remembered to our doctor (this was in a small southern city in the late 1960s when there were no fancy big city hospital with teams of specialists, we had one and only one family doctor who took care of all our medical needs, and a very small and modestly equipped small town hospital) and the old doctor was flabberghasted that I recalled the details of what I remembered during my birth, the color of the delivery room, the unusual light fixture on the ceiling, seeing him for the first time, his two nurse assistants and the gowns they were wearing, and my crying uncontrollably until I couldn't catch my breath anymore when the nurse came at me with large scissors to cut the umbilical cord and then I stopped breathing and remember seeing the doctor and his nurses go into a panic just before I blacked out.

Spammers pay real money for botnets/phishing websites etc, but their return is higher
than their expenses so they continue to plague us. Our spamfiltering solutions may
diminish their return, but apparently not enough.

One interesting approach (from MIT Spam Conference) was these guys (SPAMALOT), who basically interact with the spammer as much as possible.

http://acm.cs.uic.edu/~lszyba1/

I really think its a good idea. If a spammer is trying to get a credit card, give them 50000 phonies. Imagine what would happen to spammers if everyone responded to all their spam? The only probem I see is it might make it easy for malicious people to DOS real web stores, by sending out spam for those stores.

Any other ideas?

I always though one of these would be nice.

This is a great thread. There are so many 3D alternatives out it will be great to see what this thread comes up with. I am only disappointed this topic didn't get rated as a major story on Slashdot.

Not to downplay the benefits of programming in C++, I think it is better to focus game development using scripting language rather than for C++. When I started writing games on the Apple II+ I wrote everything in 6502 assembly but with lores B&W graphics. Today the successful game developer no longer has that luxury. ;-)

Game development now requires imagination, creativity, artistic talent and often times story telling ability in addition to programming talent. IMHO it is better to balance your time developing all the different parts of a game than to waste cycles on the ins and outs of C++ (or assembly). I believe this is why the LUA (open source) scripting language has seen so much success in the development of video games. Games such as Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island published by Lucasarts and Neverwinter Nights and MDK2 developed by Bioware were written in LUA. More information about LUA can be found here: http://www.lua.org/ and here: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/featu res/lua.

There are no less than five (and probably more) major 3D engines tied to LUA: Ogre3D (using Emma3D http://emma3d.sourceforge.net/, Irrlicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ (using https://sourceforge.net/projects/irrlua/, Apocalyx http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/, Luxina http://www.luxinia.de/, and Electro http://www.evl.uic.edu/rlk/electro/index.html

I am just getting started learning LUA (for a 2D game - another advantage of learning LUA - the ability to grow) so I make no claims to know which 3D engine is the best. There may be other 3D engines integrated to LUA out there and I would love to hear from other people who have experience developing games using LUA and from people developing 3D games using LUA.

It's always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light, reflecting green, when the sun emits the peak energy of the visible spectrum in the green

No, it doesn't!
- Solar irradiance at sealevel
- Absorption-spectrum

Solar irradiance at sealevel 'peaks' at 470nm which is exactly where chlorophyl-B absorption peaks. In fact the 'peaking', when put into context, is somewhat vague, since throughout the whole visible spectrum from 400nm - 700nm you have well over 50% of the real watts that you get at the peak 470nm, so an adaptation to a particular wavelenght within it gives at most only a conservative if not marginal advantage.

I work in the Electronics Visualization Lab at University of Illinois Chicago, and we have a software to deal with tiled displays called SAGE.

http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/index.php

It also works with VLC. Might be worth a look for you.

• 1980's EAMON let you create entirely new text-based adventures.
  
• 1981's Castle Smurfenstein was "Silus S. Smurf"'s modded version of the original Castle Wolfenstein.
  
• 1983's Lode Runner had a built-in level editor.

IIRC, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has a connection to this network. Does anyone from UIC have any information about what's going on with it? I attended classes in the college of Engineering (EECS) from '94 till '98, but I can't recall anyone ever mentioning it.

I would assume labs like the Electronic Visualization Lab would have had a connection to this network, but perhaps only the medical campus is using it?

EVL went into networking because of the limitations of teleimmersion over the standard internet. Now the lab works on allot of high res real time scientific data over multitile visualization clusters. Here is a link to the 100Mpixel display http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=1&indi= 273. I have seen demonstrations with the 2005 hurricane tracking and some microscope data. Along with some apps using what looks like high rez google maps which I was under the impression where to be used in emergency response type of things.

Yep, go to http://www.ncdm.uic.edu/

"Of course wanting to slaughter your enemies because they have been beating the ever living shit out of you for decades now has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all."

Can you back up your emphatic claim with support from an unbiased source?