Firstly, I'm going to assume that you have no control over the initial condition of those voting machines, and whether or not those machines generate a paper trail. Of course one would hope that the machines are checked by an independant authority, and that they generate a verifiable paper trail. This is more about protecting the machines while under your watch.
If someone is determined to hack a voting machine, there will be little you can do to stop it. The key is being able to detect that some change was made. I doubt you'd have the kind of access or knowledge to detect software changes, but since nearly all voting machine hacks require access to the hardware you will be able to do something. Use tamper evident tape to seal the case, cover keyholes and block any open ports. The important part to this is to have multiple witnesses around when you apply the tape, and when you verify the tape is still there at the end of the day. Get them to sign an affadavit if you can. If a machine (or machines) have been tampered with under your watch, then you can alert the appropriate authorities.
SYN Flooding is one of the oldest DOS attacks around. The attack must have been truely massive to bring down the server... or the admins didn't have the protection in place for such an old style DOS attack.
Either way, if they can track the attack back to MediaDefender, then they have pretty good evidence to sue them, or at least get the FBI involved.
I think MediaDefender need to be taught a valuable lesson: just because other people break the law, doesn't mean you have the right to break the law in your crusade against them.
SuperNAP
The security seems tight, but the author makes allusions to it being just for show. Why would an as yet unheard of company with such sensitive (and one can assume lucrative) government contracts suddenly make itself public? Maybe the government contracts aren't so sensitive or lucrative, and maybe the company isn't so successful financially? Got to put on a good show for potential investors.;)
Under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 paragraph 3(c) he can defend his action, by saying it was reasonable. There is evidence to back him up: in a 1984 ruling, a UK High court JUDGE called Scientology a "cult" that was "corrupt, sinister and dangerous". Then in May 6th 1991 Time Magazine called Scientology the "Cult of Greed and Power". It is not like he is the first person to call Scientology a cult.
The prosecution could go further to the UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However it can easily be argued having a sign that uses the word cult to describe Scientology is simply criticism, which is specifically protected under the Section 26J of the act.
I think the prosecution is going have a hard time bringing this to court.
They want to Youtube to censor the terrorist organisations showing attacks on US soldiers, but at the same time they're happy to keep footage of US soldiers killing insurgents and civilians (not to mention gun camera footage and smart bomb cameras). A little bit hypocritical, isn't it?
While it isn't ok, it doesn't mean much now since this was made a Federal case, and the FBI have been doing their own investigation. One interesting fact to note is that Ashley Grills, the employee of Lori Drew who was fingered by Drew as the one responsible for creating Josh Evans and sending most of the messages, is now turning evidence against her former boss. The prosecuting attorney didn't interview Grills.
Currently Lori Drew can't be charged with anything else than for breaching MySpace's terms of use. Yes, this will set a dangerous precident for the use of Terms of Use clickthroughs (although this isn't the same as an EULA, as a service is actually being offered). TOS agreements haven't been tested like this before, but that doesn't mean that breaching them in order to get access to a system isn't a crime.
This then comes down to intent. Did Lori Drew intend to commit a crime or other harm by violating the TOS? Lori Drew 'allegedly' created Josh Evans and sought out Megan Meier after Drew's daughter and Megan Meier had had a fight. How could this not be intended to cause emotional harm?
If this is proven in a Federal Court, then it is immediate ammunition for the Meier family to begin a Wrongful Death lawsuit against Lori Drew and her co-conspirators.
Last year Air New Zealand, Boeing and a company called Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation announced they were going to do the exact same thing: fly commercial jet aircraft with fuel derived from algae.
Since then Virgin Airlines have flown aircraft with biofuels too, although theirs use biofuel derived from coconuts (not a viable source). Since then Air New Zealand are testing the biofuels, although currently limited to only one out of four engines. Noone has jet aircraft running only on biofuel, and that is a long way off.
Algae derived biofuels are definately the future, and not just for making jet fuel. The US department of Energy estimated that if 1/7th of the fields devoted to corn production were converted, the entire petroleum fuel consumption of the US could be replaced by algae biofuels. Algae derived biofuels have up to 20 times the yeild (gallons per acre) than any land based crop, and these yeilds will only improve as the technology is researched.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
Honeywell is fairly new to the biofuel scene, although I'm sure they have no problems aquiring smaller and more established companies, and throwing money at them.
Unfortunately you won't be finding killer games on Linux anytime soon, but there are multiple issues stopping it.
Windows is the dominant desktop OS in the world today. It is a sad fact, but true. It costs a lot of money for studios to support multiple OSes. It simply isn't worth it for them to code games for the small market share of Linux. It is hard to get good games on Macs too, for much the same reason.
Graphics card drivers on Linux are not good. Typically drivers for graphics cards lag behind the drivers for the same cards under Windows. This is improving slowly, but until Nvidia and ATI release source code that won't change in a hurry. Even then, most recent games use DirectX over OpenGL, so until Linux can start magically supporting DirectX (9 or 10) don't expect to see the Crysis on Linux. In saying that, Wine has made some inroads in running DirectX.
It is not like the only thing holding the Linux gaming market back are the people porting projects like Blender to Windows.
MS want to help Blender run better on Windows, but only Windows. This isn't anything new: it is just a new generation of their 'embrace, extend (and extinguish)' mantra. They want to get open source projects running better on Windows than Linux, and I can just imagine their revival of the 'Get the Facts' website if they do. But It isn't going to happen.
What I see is that this is going to cause a backlash *against* Blender development for Windows. For those people that do use Blender on Windows, I hope that this doesn't happen. Don't punish the users for MS's interference.
If MS wants to help open source projects, than that is a good thing, but only as long as that support is open (ie. if they share their jewels, they share them with the world, not hidden behind NDAs), and that the projects get to choose how that support is used.
Oh dear. I was thinking this was something really cool like a peice of hardware or software that remapped the image for projectong onto a curved surface. Nothing of the sort: it is just a dome screen. All he does is run Crysis with a custom field of view. There is no perspective correction, which mean that straight objects like trees and cranes are bowed on the screen. On top of that, his idea increases the viewable area, but not the pixel count. Indeed the pixel count would be less, unless you could afford a projector with the same resoultion as a decent LCD monitor.
You either need a fisheye lens to snap on to the projector, or some kind of computational remapping. One of the only games I know of that remap the image in this way is Fisheye Quake (http://strlen.com/gfxengine/fisheyequake/index.html), and it is much more computationally intensive than regular Quake. I'd imagine Fisheye Crysis would be a nightmare to get running at a decent framerate.
This product is limited to games only, and games that allow you to modify the fov at that (changing the fov doesn't make the image fisheyed). I'd quite happily pay for something similar that I could use every day for CAD/CAM work. I think if he could find/make a fisheye lens that snaps onto the front of a projector, and market it for a bit more, he'd be onto a winner.
Fisheye lenses are very expensive, so the only cheap solution would be projection off a hemispherical mirror (http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/projection/meshmapper/), but I can see a way of doing that by rear projection.
Anyway, I would be wary of buying something that the manufacturer admits is "simple wire-frame and scotch-taped numerus badly cut letter-sized papers". I can't really see how this has been patented, as there is plenty of prior art for rear projected domes out there.
People can already do this, and for far less than $10,000. Many people already make homebrew alcohol (although the legality depends on where you live). A home brewing kit, a still and the activated charcoal filter only costs a couple of hundred dollars. The only difference is that they are intended to make alcohol for drinking. It isn't hard to distill a higher concentration of alcohol. The only difference to this device is that it seems to have some method of reverse osmosis to increase energy efficiency of the distillation process. You still have to feed it water, sugar, yeast and electricity. I'm not going to pay $10,000 for that.
Now if they made a device I can dump my lawn clippings into, that made ethanol, I would be the first in the queue.;)
It seems everyone is confused. This isn't about IP addresses. The IP addresses themselves are not the irrefutable proof, but the timestamp on those IP addresses is. The reports, which supposedly have already been submitted as evidence to the courts, have all been made after January 2nd, when the cease and desist order was made.
If the RIAA have submitted these as evidence, then MediaSentry would have signed an affadavit that they are true and corrrect. This means that they have already admitted to the courts that they are operating after January 2nd.
If they try to refute that, at the very least they could be charged with fraud and/or perjury, not to mention the charges of operating without a permit.
This then throws MediaSentry on very shaky legal ground, and therefore all the evidence they have presented to date.
The Firewire port in the picture is the old 6 pin Firewire 400 port (IEEE1394a). While it is still used, the standard has been surpassed 9 pin Firewire 800 port (IEEE1394b). In saying that, the new standard is still backwards compatible with Firewire 400, although an adapter cable is needed. Furthermore, the same 9 pin connector is to be used for the planned S3200 Firewire standard (3,200Mb/s, with the possibility to expand to 6,400Mb/s in beta-mode only).
In saying that, the Firewire standards have allowed for other connectors. The S800T (IEEE1394c) standard allowed for 800Mb/s Firewire over Cat5e cable with RJ45 connectors, and the chipset was suposed to be able to switch between Firewire and Ethernet. I think that would have been really useful, but I can see how there would have been confusion. To date noone has picked up on that standard. Then there also support for Firewire over optical fibre, but again noone (except maybe the military) uses it.
Firewire (while not as widely used as USB) isn't disappearing anytime soon. For example, the data bus in the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning is Firewire 800 (IEEE1394b). Firewire 400 can still be found, but on things like portable HDDs Firewire 800 is taking over from the older Firewire 400 standard.
I'm not going to compare Firewire to USB since each standard has their strengths and weaknesses. Since each is suited to different tasks, and therefore different markets, it is a bit like comparing apples to oranges.
Firewire 400 may be dead/dying, but Firewire as a standard is still strong.
I know that they have released a statement saying that the scholarship will be open https://endsoftpatents.org/bias-in-academic-papers, but I truely hope that they keep that part of the judging open to public scrutiny, even if the best paper comes out in support of software patents. Don't get me wrong, I hate software patents. However, if they don't keep the judging open to scrutiny for bias, the winning paper will be about as useful as a study into the total cost of ownership of linux vs windows from a Microsoft funded think tank.
Biodiesel from algae is not new, and algae doesn't use up land resources like converting farmland for ethanol production does. In fact growing algae utilizes waste water streams from sewage plants, making the water cleaner in the process. On top of that, the yield of oil from algae (and hence biodiesel yields) can be up to 200 times more per acre than the best performing vegetable oil crops. Biodiesel from algae isn't without it's faults: it is expensive to set up the infrastructure to produce it (although that is a one time cost), and extracting the oil can be difficult. However new technology in systems using supercritical fluid extraction (using a superfluid CO2 of all things) has been nearly 100% efficient. There are companies already doing this:
http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/technology.html
The problem is that people are still focussed on ethanol as the solution, being a quick and easy replacement for gasoline. Ethanol production from crops is nowhere near as efficient as producing biodiesel from crops, and ethanol production is expensive from both an economic and energy point of view. Many of the crops used to make ethanol only grow well in specific climates, meaning farmers outside those climate ranges who convert to ethanol crops can expect very low yields per acre. An eventual solution would be to move to diesel/biodiesel engines over gasoline/ethanol engines, and use ethanol is only an intermediate step to cover that conversion. Jets already make use of biodiesel blends with jetfuel, and progress is being made to jets using biodiesel only fuels.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4218411a10.html
The problem I have with these studies is that they treat ethanol as the only biofuel available. There are other biofuels, from straight vegetable oil to biodiesel. They claim that it is more destructive than commonly made out, yet the do not mention it is nowhere near as destructive to the environment as fossil fuels (and related fuel processing). Once the infrastructure is in place, it is far better for the environment. The studies also make out that biofuel production has resulted in massive deforestation, yet massive deforestation has been happening for decades before biofuels became mainstream. The real culprits are primarily demand for wood, farmland (and not just biofuel crops) and resource mismanagement on an extreme level. While the studies have raise some important issues that must be considered, I can't help but feeling that somewhere along the funding chain for these studies is an oil company. On top of that oil companies' PR agents are having a field day, making sure these studies get published everywhere.
But who is the enemy? My vote is for Mossad. While I don't put much faith in the US intelligence agencies, they wouldn't be so stupid as to keep going when it has been made so public, especially with the US as the obvious perpetrator. Israel on the other hand have done many covert military operations, and blatantly carried on even when they were made not-so-secret. I'd bet Israel are finding themselves mysteriously unaffected by these cable outages, while their neighbors are being destabilized.
This really reminds me of an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex where Batou (a cyborg) talks about how, as prosthetics advanced beyond human capabilities, the Paralympics became a showcase for prosthetic and cybernetic manufacturers. As a result, the Paralympics became more mainstream and the Olympics, where they insisted on remaining unaltered, became a decorative event that merely served tradition.
There are 6 main disability categories to the Paralympics: Amputees, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disabilities, Visually Impaired, Wheelchair users, and Les Autres (any other disabilities).
Within those categories are various classes that athletes are put into based on assessments of their disability (and this assessment is ongoing throughout their career). The classes are different for each sport, although some sports don't include all disability categories (like Boccia and Wheelchair Rugby).
>The one catch with the paralympics is that because there are so many classifications disabilities
>they have to rotate through which type gets to compete each year.
All the classes get to compete in their respective events at the Paralympics, so I don't know what is being referred to in the post. However there are some events that aren't open to all classes (mostly for obvious reasons: eg. high level quadriplegics don't compete on the wheelchair track events). Sometimes multiple classes compete in the same actual race, but they are each assessed according to their class, so it is possible to lose the race, but win the class.
All of these keyboards date from the late 70s/early 80s era, when ergonomics wasn't really that well known or implemented. It is not surprising that the designs are horrible. However, the author examines the keyboards from the perspective of modern keyboard usage. Of course that is going to make them seem far worse than they really were.
One example is the Timex Sincliar 1000, it wasn't much of a machine and intended for Basic programming (not to mention Basic commands were the basis for its CLI), yet the author seems to think that optimizing the keyboard for those Basic commands is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. For a machine that was the cheapest home computer (and I don't believe that claim to fame has been taken away since), it was pretty good.
While many of those machines would have had simple word processing applications available, most of these machines were not intended for word processing. For the many people that used these machines, a very small number would have actually used them for word processing, and definitely not the levels of typing/word processing that we see today.
I don't disagree that some of these keyboards are awful, but the author definitely makes them seem a lot worse by comparing them to today's keyboards and keyboard usage.
There are quite a few modern keyboards that should be up there, and should have more reason to be there, especially with modern knowledge of ergonomics and RSI/OOS. There are a few people that point to Apple's new chiclet keyboard, but I'd also like to add the cramped and tiny sub-notebook (eg Eee PC) keyboards to that list too.
There was a student, and he was using Firefox, and he did get a detention.
However, the student wasn't supposed to be using IE, he was supposed to be using Word. He should have been working on a resume (his assignment) instead of browsing the web, but that was not what he got detention for.
He got detention for mouthing off at the teacher.
The student photoshopped the detention letter to remove the real reason, and posted it on the web (I assume he knew it would get a reaction).
The student is probably in a lot more trouble now than if he just shut up and took the detention. Even if the letter was genuine, it just showed that he was being insubordinate by repeatedly refusing to do what the teacher asked. Not the best 'hoax'.
Great, so we have scramjets capable of Mach 15+ speeds. But scramjets alone do not make an aircraft. We would need an airframe capable of handling the immense stresses and heating involved with flight of that speed.
The only aircraft I know of that would be close to this capability is the space shuttle. It is doing about 17,500mph (approx Mach 25) when it slams into the atmosphere, and it needs ceramic tiles and thermal matting to stop it from being incinerated. Sure the speed is much higher, but at around 400,000 feet, the air is far thinner. Attempting Mach 15 at a much lower altitude (say 100,000 feet) would cause heating and stresses potentially greater than that of the shuttle on re-entry.
Just like the space shuttle, at those speeds, the air around the airframe would become superheated and ionized, causing a radio blackout. That is not something you want on a passenger aircraft.
If there were airliners travelling at those speeds, and something went wrong, there would be zero chance of survival. The airframe would be ripped apart, and it would just become a fireball spread over a huge area, just like the Challenger crash.
How exactly is this different to what the US does to foreign visitors?
When the US started to fingerprint foreign travellers, a whole bunch of countries threatened to do that to visting US citizens. It is nice to see Japan follow through with their threat, albeit a few years later (although they are not just focussing on US citizens). I can see a bunch of Americans getting really upset about this and declaring they'll never travel to Japan, but what the Japanese Government are doing is really no different than what the US Government is doing to everyone else.
Personally I don't like being treated as a criminal. However, as much as I could complain about it, it won't be stopping me from travelling.
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, I'm going to assume that you have no control over the initial condition of those voting machines, and whether or not those machines generate a paper trail. Of course one would hope that the machines are checked by an independant authority, and that they generate a verifiable paper trail. This is more about protecting the machines while under your watch.
If someone is determined to hack a voting machine, there will be little you can do to stop it. The key is being able to detect that some change was made. I doubt you'd have the kind of access or knowledge to detect software changes, but since nearly all voting machine hacks require access to the hardware you will be able to do something. Use tamper evident tape to seal the case, cover keyholes and block any open ports. The important part to this is to have multiple witnesses around when you apply the tape, and when you verify the tape is still there at the end of the day. Get them to sign an affadavit if you can. If a machine (or machines) have been tampered with under your watch, then you can alert the appropriate authorities.
SYN Flooding is one of the oldest DOS attacks around. The attack must have been truely massive to bring down the server... or the admins didn't have the protection in place for such an old style DOS attack.
Either way, if they can track the attack back to MediaDefender, then they have pretty good evidence to sue them, or at least get the FBI involved.
I think MediaDefender need to be taught a valuable lesson: just because other people break the law, doesn't mean you have the right to break the law in your crusade against them.
SuperNAP ;)
The security seems tight, but the author makes allusions to it being just for show. Why would an as yet unheard of company with such sensitive (and one can assume lucrative) government contracts suddenly make itself public? Maybe the government contracts aren't so sensitive or lucrative, and maybe the company isn't so successful financially? Got to put on a good show for potential investors.
The prosecution could go further to the UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However it can easily be argued having a sign that uses the word cult to describe Scientology is simply criticism, which is specifically protected under the Section 26J of the act. I think the prosecution is going have a hard time bringing this to court.
They want to Youtube to censor the terrorist organisations showing attacks on US soldiers, but at the same time they're happy to keep footage of US soldiers killing insurgents and civilians (not to mention gun camera footage and smart bomb cameras). A little bit hypocritical, isn't it?
While it isn't ok, it doesn't mean much now since this was made a Federal case, and the FBI have been doing their own investigation. One interesting fact to note is that Ashley Grills, the employee of Lori Drew who was fingered by Drew as the one responsible for creating Josh Evans and sending most of the messages, is now turning evidence against her former boss. The prosecuting attorney didn't interview Grills.
This then comes down to intent. Did Lori Drew intend to commit a crime or other harm by violating the TOS? Lori Drew 'allegedly' created Josh Evans and sought out Megan Meier after Drew's daughter and Megan Meier had had a fight. How could this not be intended to cause emotional harm?
If this is proven in a Federal Court, then it is immediate ammunition for the Meier family to begin a Wrongful Death lawsuit against Lori Drew and her co-conspirators.
http://stuff.co.nz/4218411a10.html
Since then Virgin Airlines have flown aircraft with biofuels too, although theirs use biofuel derived from coconuts (not a viable source). Since then Air New Zealand are testing the biofuels, although currently limited to only one out of four engines. Noone has jet aircraft running only on biofuel, and that is a long way off.
Algae derived biofuels are definately the future, and not just for making jet fuel. The US department of Energy estimated that if 1/7th of the fields devoted to corn production were converted, the entire petroleum fuel consumption of the US could be replaced by algae biofuels. Algae derived biofuels have up to 20 times the yeild (gallons per acre) than any land based crop, and these yeilds will only improve as the technology is researched. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
Honeywell is fairly new to the biofuel scene, although I'm sure they have no problems aquiring smaller and more established companies, and throwing money at them.
Windows is the dominant desktop OS in the world today. It is a sad fact, but true. It costs a lot of money for studios to support multiple OSes. It simply isn't worth it for them to code games for the small market share of Linux. It is hard to get good games on Macs too, for much the same reason.
Graphics card drivers on Linux are not good. Typically drivers for graphics cards lag behind the drivers for the same cards under Windows. This is improving slowly, but until Nvidia and ATI release source code that won't change in a hurry. Even then, most recent games use DirectX over OpenGL, so until Linux can start magically supporting DirectX (9 or 10) don't expect to see the Crysis on Linux. In saying that, Wine has made some inroads in running DirectX.
It is not like the only thing holding the Linux gaming market back are the people porting projects like Blender to Windows.
Does anyone know of a replacement UI project for Blender? Something like Gimpshop is for Gimp? A Blended Maya perhaps? ;)
What I see is that this is going to cause a backlash *against* Blender development for Windows. For those people that do use Blender on Windows, I hope that this doesn't happen. Don't punish the users for MS's interference.
If MS wants to help open source projects, than that is a good thing, but only as long as that support is open (ie. if they share their jewels, they share them with the world, not hidden behind NDAs), and that the projects get to choose how that support is used.
Oh dear. I was thinking this was something really cool like a peice of hardware or software that remapped the image for projectong onto a curved surface. Nothing of the sort: it is just a dome screen. All he does is run Crysis with a custom field of view. There is no perspective correction, which mean that straight objects like trees and cranes are bowed on the screen. On top of that, his idea increases the viewable area, but not the pixel count. Indeed the pixel count would be less, unless you could afford a projector with the same resoultion as a decent LCD monitor.
You either need a fisheye lens to snap on to the projector, or some kind of computational remapping. One of the only games I know of that remap the image in this way is Fisheye Quake (http://strlen.com/gfxengine/fisheyequake/index.html), and it is much more computationally intensive than regular Quake. I'd imagine Fisheye Crysis would be a nightmare to get running at a decent framerate.
This product is limited to games only, and games that allow you to modify the fov at that (changing the fov doesn't make the image fisheyed). I'd quite happily pay for something similar that I could use every day for CAD/CAM work. I think if he could find/make a fisheye lens that snaps onto the front of a projector, and market it for a bit more, he'd be onto a winner.
Fisheye lenses are very expensive, so the only cheap solution would be projection off a hemispherical mirror (http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/projection/meshmapper/), but I can see a way of doing that by rear projection.
Anyway, I would be wary of buying something that the manufacturer admits is "simple wire-frame and scotch-taped numerus badly cut letter-sized papers". I can't really see how this has been patented, as there is plenty of prior art for rear projected domes out there.
Now if they made a device I can dump my lawn clippings into, that made ethanol, I would be the first in the queue. ;)
If the RIAA have submitted these as evidence, then MediaSentry would have signed an affadavit that they are true and corrrect. This means that they have already admitted to the courts that they are operating after January 2nd.
If they try to refute that, at the very least they could be charged with fraud and/or perjury, not to mention the charges of operating without a permit.
This then throws MediaSentry on very shaky legal ground, and therefore all the evidence they have presented to date.
In saying that, the Firewire standards have allowed for other connectors. The S800T (IEEE1394c) standard allowed for 800Mb/s Firewire over Cat5e cable with RJ45 connectors, and the chipset was suposed to be able to switch between Firewire and Ethernet. I think that would have been really useful, but I can see how there would have been confusion. To date noone has picked up on that standard. Then there also support for Firewire over optical fibre, but again noone (except maybe the military) uses it.
Firewire (while not as widely used as USB) isn't disappearing anytime soon. For example, the data bus in the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning is Firewire 800 (IEEE1394b). Firewire 400 can still be found, but on things like portable HDDs Firewire 800 is taking over from the older Firewire 400 standard.
I'm not going to compare Firewire to USB since each standard has their strengths and weaknesses. Since each is suited to different tasks, and therefore different markets, it is a bit like comparing apples to oranges.
Firewire 400 may be dead/dying, but Firewire as a standard is still strong.
I know that they have released a statement saying that the scholarship will be open https://endsoftpatents.org/bias-in-academic-papers, but I truely hope that they keep that part of the judging open to public scrutiny, even if the best paper comes out in support of software patents. Don't get me wrong, I hate software patents. However, if they don't keep the judging open to scrutiny for bias, the winning paper will be about as useful as a study into the total cost of ownership of linux vs windows from a Microsoft funded think tank.
Biodiesel from algae is not new, and algae doesn't use up land resources like converting farmland for ethanol production does. In fact growing algae utilizes waste water streams from sewage plants, making the water cleaner in the process. On top of that, the yield of oil from algae (and hence biodiesel yields) can be up to 200 times more per acre than the best performing vegetable oil crops. Biodiesel from algae isn't without it's faults: it is expensive to set up the infrastructure to produce it (although that is a one time cost), and extracting the oil can be difficult. However new technology in systems using supercritical fluid extraction (using a superfluid CO2 of all things) has been nearly 100% efficient. There are companies already doing this: http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/technology.html
The problem is that people are still focussed on ethanol as the solution, being a quick and easy replacement for gasoline. Ethanol production from crops is nowhere near as efficient as producing biodiesel from crops, and ethanol production is expensive from both an economic and energy point of view. Many of the crops used to make ethanol only grow well in specific climates, meaning farmers outside those climate ranges who convert to ethanol crops can expect very low yields per acre. An eventual solution would be to move to diesel/biodiesel engines over gasoline/ethanol engines, and use ethanol is only an intermediate step to cover that conversion. Jets already make use of biodiesel blends with jetfuel, and progress is being made to jets using biodiesel only fuels. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4218411a10.html
The problem I have with these studies is that they treat ethanol as the only biofuel available. There are other biofuels, from straight vegetable oil to biodiesel. They claim that it is more destructive than commonly made out, yet the do not mention it is nowhere near as destructive to the environment as fossil fuels (and related fuel processing). Once the infrastructure is in place, it is far better for the environment. The studies also make out that biofuel production has resulted in massive deforestation, yet massive deforestation has been happening for decades before biofuels became mainstream. The real culprits are primarily demand for wood, farmland (and not just biofuel crops) and resource mismanagement on an extreme level. While the studies have raise some important issues that must be considered, I can't help but feeling that somewhere along the funding chain for these studies is an oil company. On top of that oil companies' PR agents are having a field day, making sure these studies get published everywhere.
Boccia is one such sport. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boccia
This really reminds me of an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex where Batou (a cyborg) talks about how, as prosthetics advanced beyond human capabilities, the Paralympics became a showcase for prosthetic and cybernetic manufacturers. As a result, the Paralympics became more mainstream and the Olympics, where they insisted on remaining unaltered, became a decorative event that merely served tradition.
There are 6 main disability categories to the Paralympics: Amputees, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disabilities, Visually Impaired, Wheelchair users, and Les Autres (any other disabilities). Within those categories are various classes that athletes are put into based on assessments of their disability (and this assessment is ongoing throughout their career). The classes are different for each sport, although some sports don't include all disability categories (like Boccia and Wheelchair Rugby).
>The one catch with the paralympics is that because there are so many classifications disabilities
>they have to rotate through which type gets to compete each year.
All the classes get to compete in their respective events at the Paralympics, so I don't know what is being referred to in the post. However there are some events that aren't open to all classes (mostly for obvious reasons: eg. high level quadriplegics don't compete on the wheelchair track events). Sometimes multiple classes compete in the same actual race, but they are each assessed according to their class, so it is possible to lose the race, but win the class.
One example is the Timex Sincliar 1000, it wasn't much of a machine and intended for Basic programming (not to mention Basic commands were the basis for its CLI), yet the author seems to think that optimizing the keyboard for those Basic commands is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. For a machine that was the cheapest home computer (and I don't believe that claim to fame has been taken away since), it was pretty good.
While many of those machines would have had simple word processing applications available, most of these machines were not intended for word processing. For the many people that used these machines, a very small number would have actually used them for word processing, and definitely not the levels of typing/word processing that we see today.
I don't disagree that some of these keyboards are awful, but the author definitely makes them seem a lot worse by comparing them to today's keyboards and keyboard usage.
There are quite a few modern keyboards that should be up there, and should have more reason to be there, especially with modern knowledge of ergonomics and RSI/OOS. There are a few people that point to Apple's new chiclet keyboard, but I'd also like to add the cramped and tiny sub-notebook (eg Eee PC) keyboards to that list too.
There was a student, and he was using Firefox, and he did get a detention.
However, the student wasn't supposed to be using IE, he was supposed to be using Word. He should have been working on a resume (his assignment) instead of browsing the web, but that was not what he got detention for.
He got detention for mouthing off at the teacher.
The student photoshopped the detention letter to remove the real reason, and posted it on the web (I assume he knew it would get a reaction).
The student is probably in a lot more trouble now than if he just shut up and took the detention. Even if the letter was genuine, it just showed that he was being insubordinate by repeatedly refusing to do what the teacher asked. Not the best 'hoax'.
The only aircraft I know of that would be close to this capability is the space shuttle. It is doing about 17,500mph (approx Mach 25) when it slams into the atmosphere, and it needs ceramic tiles and thermal matting to stop it from being incinerated. Sure the speed is much higher, but at around 400,000 feet, the air is far thinner. Attempting Mach 15 at a much lower altitude (say 100,000 feet) would cause heating and stresses potentially greater than that of the shuttle on re-entry.
Just like the space shuttle, at those speeds, the air around the airframe would become superheated and ionized, causing a radio blackout. That is not something you want on a passenger aircraft.
If there were airliners travelling at those speeds, and something went wrong, there would be zero chance of survival. The airframe would be ripped apart, and it would just become a fireball spread over a huge area, just like the Challenger crash.
When the US started to fingerprint foreign travellers, a whole bunch of countries threatened to do that to visting US citizens. It is nice to see Japan follow through with their threat, albeit a few years later (although they are not just focussing on US citizens). I can see a bunch of Americans getting really upset about this and declaring they'll never travel to Japan, but what the Japanese Government are doing is really no different than what the US Government is doing to everyone else.
Personally I don't like being treated as a criminal. However, as much as I could complain about it, it won't be stopping me from travelling.