The lower atmospheric pressure in Denver means that the air holds less water vapor at the same temperature. The water vapor in the atmosphere condenses on the snowflakes as they fall. If the temperature is relatively close to melting point, the condensation on the snow flakes will not freeze completely and result in a "wet" snow. Since there is more water vapor in the Illinois air versus the Denver air at a given temperature, the effect is more pronounced in Illinois.
Databases are indeed copyrightable, but the U.S. requires an element of creativity to do so as decided in the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc.
From the parent's link:
According to the Supreme Court, a compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship," citing the definition of a compilation in 17 U.S.C. 101.
This holding overruled numerous lower courts that adopted a "sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection" test of copyrightability. Under this test, if a compilation was created as a result of a great deal of effort (such as the collection of thousands of names and addresses), copyright protection would extend to the compilation regardless of the creativity or originality in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the facts.
The Supreme Court expressly stated that this "sweat of the brow" analysis was faulty, and that copyright extended only to the original selection, coordination, and arranging of data, and not to any unprotected facts contained within the compilation.
I think you misunderstood what the parent was trying to say. The poster is suggesting we replicate one of nature's lesser carbon sequestration methods, which is the burying of plant and animal matter that will eventually be transformed into oil. The parent is suggesting that as soon as a tree matures and slows down its growth, we remove it, bury it, and replace it with a young tree that will pull carbon out of the atmosphere faster.
1) You are correct that such a method is a timber farm and that a normal ecosystem will not exist. But since the goal of the forest is not to provide usable tree products, the need for pesticides in not present. If a disease runs through and wipes out a large number of the trees, we simply bury those trees earlier than we wanted and start growing new ones.
2) If you think that managed forests in developed countries are still often clear-cut, you know very little about the timber industry as they have been selectively cutting trees since the eighties.
3) This plan would not put a pressure on landfills because it would require a specialized location anyway. To get around the methane problem, this area would have to be far deeper than an above ground landfill. In fact, it may be easier to turn the trees into woodchips and fill up abandoned mines with them. Or perhaps produce a wood-pulp slurry and inject it back into former oil-fields.
If the solution to autonomous driving is to modify every road with extra features to help vehicles navigate themselves, that was accomplished long ago with far simpler methods than those in the article.
Even the accomplishment of using magnets is not that impressive, it is basic engineering and control systems. The focus of actual autonomous vehicle research is to allow navigation without the cost of upgrading every road across the country.
Light bulbs are the single biggest user of energy in most western households.
I'm sorry, but that simply isn't true. A quick search will produce hundreds of results like this that show that lighting usually lags behind space heating, refrigeration, and water heating. Photons (even with incandescents) are cheap compared to BTUs.
What worries me is that every time you hear about a new "think-of-the-children" law, the language (at least in the media) always says "sex offender". Not child sex offender, not violent sex offender, just "sex offender".
Would someone explain to me why a married couple having sex in a public place should be banned from living close to a school? Someone tell me why a person who repeatedly walks home drunk from a bar and stops to urinate in an alley shouldn't be allowed on MySpace. Why does the drunken frat kid who streaked across campus a few times deserve to be labeled a threat to society?
There is a huge an ever-growing number of "offenses" that gets someone put on sex "offender" lists. The fact that they often get lumped together is pure bullshit.
Regarding the reefs, they will merely move to another region further away from the equator. And if for some reason they can't adapt, some other organism will take their place.
Change happens. It only people's resistance to change and their affection for the status quo that makes it 'bad'.
2. We believed the global warming nutcases, so we invested a lot in cutting down our pollution, switched away from fossil fuels to more expensive options, and generally feel good about ourselves because we are helping the earth. On the way, we managed to drive up the cost of everything we do and as such China is now the world's only superpower, and everything is made in Africa. Poverty abounds in Europe and America, but don't worry: We're all armed to the teeth so we can set everyone back to the stone age and attempt to start over.
2. We failed to believe the global warming scientists, so we continued using fossil fuels, continued releasing greenhouse gases, watched the glaciers melt, and opened up northern passages over Canada and Russia resulting in huge new trade possibilities. We gained access to massive quantities of resources in Siberia while watching wildlife flourish in this newly habitable region. The Midwest has switched away from corn/soybeans/wheat to crops that like a little more heat. The same corn/soybeans/wheat now is grown through the northern US, whose soils have improved dramatically with the longer growing season and more varied wildlife. On the other side of the globe, Russia is now Asia's largest provider of food. The rise in sea levels forces people to rebuild further from the ocean resulting in a major boom for economies around the world. The higher humidity results in additional rain in some places, including places which didn't see much before. Untold numbers of new industries sprout up to take advantage of new possibilities.
Every bad aspect of global warming has a corresponding good one. Change always results in both.
No one is an "european citizen". There is no such thing as Europe-the-nation.
A little history: Those "Fucking Americans" are citizens of the United States, meaning a collection of independant smaller states working together for the common defense. Except that over the years, those states stood as they watched the federal government power grab and now those states are insignificant compared to the whole.
Fast forward a few years: The European Union is formed, a collection of independant states working together for the common good. Do you honestly think the growth of the EU's authority is going to stop? You're on the exact same path we were dude.
I agree that this is a simple case of greedy lawyers.
It's one thing when a company releases a product that plain doesn't work as advertised or routinely breaks beyond usibility after a short time. It is another issue entirely when the only problem is cosmetic or just low quality. The Nano performs its functions as advertised and the scratches do nothing to harm that.
If you are upset about the low quality of the finish on the Nano, don't buy Apple products next time. Go buy from Creative or another manufacturer. Thats how the market works. Suing a company simply beacuse you are disappointed in your purchase is not the answer and should not stand up in court.
If that were the case, then as a few other posters have said: Microsoft owes us some money...
The summary is somewhat confusing, but the modified mosquitos are already sterile before the sorting process. They just want to seperate out the females and kill them so they dont contribute to spreading malaria during their lifetime.
As far as the second concern, sterile insects still mate, its just that nothing happens in the end. The eggs are laid believed to be fertilized when in fact they aren't.
Gravity has little to do with how thick an atmosphere is. Look at Venus: gravity is at 98% of Earths yet has an atmosphere 90 times denser. All this at an even closer distance to the sun where the solar wind is magnitudes stronger. Magnetic fields, seismic activity, and the presence of water have far more influence than just the strength of gravity.
Actually, this recent attack on video games is quite interesting as far as who is behind it. The GOP is the party that has been hijacked by a bunch of neo-conservative religious zealots, but it is the Democrats that are leading this war on "immorality" and seeking censorship. (The governor of Illinois is currently a Democrat for those who don't live here.) Are video games really that awful to the democrats, or is this just their way of trying to convey their take on "moral issues"?
Did I not see my beloved TI-89? That extremely versatile tool has never failed me through years of science and engineering courses and is still the calulator of choice for high school and college students alike. Really any member of the TI-8* family is/was a marvel in itself.
Russia can't handle the ISS. The shuttle is the only vehicle that can handle lifting the larger parts of the station. Russia can only resupply and and lift small items for the ISS. Until the shuttles get back into it, ISS constuction is on hold.
The sooner we can finish off our commitment to the ISS, the sooner we can focus on the next generation of transports. Ones that are cheaper to operate and can take advantage of all the stuff we've developed in the last 10 years instead of having the astronauts take laptops with them because its cheaper than removing the outdated computers currently in the shuttle.
Mars' gravity is perfectly capable of holding a thick atmoshpere. If you look at Venus, who's gravity is something like 98% of Earth's, it has an atmosphere 100 times thicker than ours. The thickness is determined by a lot of factors, but gravity is a relitivaly small one.
The magnetic field argument is a strong one. Its the only thing that protects the atmosphere from being blown away. However, another theory on why Mars lost its atmosphere is the following:
As rain falls through the atmosphere, CO2 dissolves in it. When this rain water hits the ground, the CO2 reacts with Calcium and others to form limestone. On earth, this limestone is eventually recycled through our tectonic processes and released in volcanos/other release points (this being part of the global warming argument that something like 70% of earths CO2 is released by volcanos and is outside our control).
However, on Mars, any tectonic activity has stopped, and as such, this limestone never gets put back into the atmosphere. It's ironic that the water itself eliminated the gas it needed to exist.
One could say its a little of both. When tectonic processes stopped, CO2 stopped being recycled leading to a slightly thinner and much colder atmosphere, at the same time that the magnetic field dissappeared and the remainder of the atmospere was blown away.
The only difference I see is they added a "My Speakeasy" menu after "Help". Inside are some resources for their customers and a bunch of bookmarks to various sites.
Interestingly enough, some of the sites that made the cut are OSTG, DistroWatch, ThinkGeek, and Newegg. Kinda odd for a plugin they're targeting at average users...
Others include Wikipedia, Babelfish, an entire section of gameing sites, and some shopping sites.
Slashdot Mirror
The lower atmospheric pressure in Denver means that the air holds less water vapor at the same temperature. The water vapor in the atmosphere condenses on the snowflakes as they fall. If the temperature is relatively close to melting point, the condensation on the snow flakes will not freeze completely and result in a "wet" snow. Since there is more water vapor in the Illinois air versus the Denver air at a given temperature, the effect is more pronounced in Illinois.
The higher elevation of Denver results in a drier snow that is less prone to sticking than in Illinois. We get more "slush" than snow...
From the parent's link:
According to the Supreme Court, a compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship," citing the definition of a compilation in 17 U.S.C. 101.
This holding overruled numerous lower courts that adopted a "sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection" test of copyrightability. Under this test, if a compilation was created as a result of a great deal of effort (such as the collection of thousands of names and addresses), copyright protection would extend to the compilation regardless of the creativity or originality in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the facts.
The Supreme Court expressly stated that this "sweat of the brow" analysis was faulty, and that copyright extended only to the original selection, coordination, and arranging of data, and not to any unprotected facts contained within the compilation.
1) You are correct that such a method is a timber farm and that a normal ecosystem will not exist. But since the goal of the forest is not to provide usable tree products, the need for pesticides in not present. If a disease runs through and wipes out a large number of the trees, we simply bury those trees earlier than we wanted and start growing new ones.
2) If you think that managed forests in developed countries are still often clear-cut, you know very little about the timber industry as they have been selectively cutting trees since the eighties.
3) This plan would not put a pressure on landfills because it would require a specialized location anyway. To get around the methane problem, this area would have to be far deeper than an above ground landfill. In fact, it may be easier to turn the trees into woodchips and fill up abandoned mines with them. Or perhaps produce a wood-pulp slurry and inject it back into former oil-fields.
If the solution to autonomous driving is to modify every road with extra features to help vehicles navigate themselves, that was accomplished long ago with far simpler methods than those in the article.
Even the accomplishment of using magnets is not that impressive, it is basic engineering and control systems. The focus of actual autonomous vehicle research is to allow navigation without the cost of upgrading every road across the country.
I'm sorry, but that simply isn't true. A quick search will produce hundreds of results like this that show that lighting usually lags behind space heating, refrigeration, and water heating. Photons (even with incandescents) are cheap compared to BTUs.
Would someone explain to me why a married couple having sex in a public place should be banned from living close to a school? Someone tell me why a person who repeatedly walks home drunk from a bar and stops to urinate in an alley shouldn't be allowed on MySpace. Why does the drunken frat kid who streaked across campus a few times deserve to be labeled a threat to society?
There is a huge an ever-growing number of "offenses" that gets someone put on sex "offender" lists. The fact that they often get lumped together is pure bullshit.
Change happens. It only people's resistance to change and their affection for the status quo that makes it 'bad'.
2. We believed the global warming nutcases, so we invested a lot in cutting down our pollution, switched away from fossil fuels to more expensive options, and generally feel good about ourselves because we are helping the earth. On the way, we managed to drive up the cost of everything we do and as such China is now the world's only superpower, and everything is made in Africa. Poverty abounds in Europe and America, but don't worry: We're all armed to the teeth so we can set everyone back to the stone age and attempt to start over. 2. We failed to believe the global warming scientists, so we continued using fossil fuels, continued releasing greenhouse gases, watched the glaciers melt, and opened up northern passages over Canada and Russia resulting in huge new trade possibilities. We gained access to massive quantities of resources in Siberia while watching wildlife flourish in this newly habitable region. The Midwest has switched away from corn/soybeans/wheat to crops that like a little more heat. The same corn/soybeans/wheat now is grown through the northern US, whose soils have improved dramatically with the longer growing season and more varied wildlife. On the other side of the globe, Russia is now Asia's largest provider of food. The rise in sea levels forces people to rebuild further from the ocean resulting in a major boom for economies around the world. The higher humidity results in additional rain in some places, including places which didn't see much before. Untold numbers of new industries sprout up to take advantage of new possibilities. Every bad aspect of global warming has a corresponding good one. Change always results in both.
A little history: Those "Fucking Americans" are citizens of the United States, meaning a collection of independant smaller states working together for the common defense. Except that over the years, those states stood as they watched the federal government power grab and now those states are insignificant compared to the whole.
Fast forward a few years: The European Union is formed, a collection of independant states working together for the common good. Do you honestly think the growth of the EU's authority is going to stop? You're on the exact same path we were dude.
The difference being that the users knowingly installed those applications and assumed the risk that comes with it.
It's one thing when a company releases a product that plain doesn't work as advertised or routinely breaks beyond usibility after a short time. It is another issue entirely when the only problem is cosmetic or just low quality. The Nano performs its functions as advertised and the scratches do nothing to harm that.
If you are upset about the low quality of the finish on the Nano, don't buy Apple products next time. Go buy from Creative or another manufacturer. Thats how the market works. Suing a company simply beacuse you are disappointed in your purchase is not the answer and should not stand up in court.
If that were the case, then as a few other posters have said: Microsoft owes us some money...
As far as the second concern, sterile insects still mate, its just that nothing happens in the end. The eggs are laid believed to be fertilized when in fact they aren't.
when CNET is carrying it hassle free...
Gravity has little to do with how thick an atmosphere is. Look at Venus: gravity is at 98% of Earths yet has an atmosphere 90 times denser. All this at an even closer distance to the sun where the solar wind is magnitudes stronger. Magnetic fields, seismic activity, and the presence of water have far more influence than just the strength of gravity.
Actually, this recent attack on video games is quite interesting as far as who is behind it. The GOP is the party that has been hijacked by a bunch of neo-conservative religious zealots, but it is the Democrats that are leading this war on "immorality" and seeking censorship. (The governor of Illinois is currently a Democrat for those who don't live here.) Are video games really that awful to the democrats, or is this just their way of trying to convey their take on "moral issues"?
How do I know that? I don't. But my statement has just as much fact behind it as your baseless and ill-informed assumption.
The same political and financial influence that gets you 3 years in an American federal prison.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/28/12 23244&tid=155&tid=126&tid=103
There's an oxymoron if I've ever seen one.
Did I not see my beloved TI-89? That extremely versatile tool has never failed me through years of science and engineering courses and is still the calulator of choice for high school and college students alike. Really any member of the TI-8* family is/was a marvel in itself.
Russia can't handle the ISS. The shuttle is the only vehicle that can handle lifting the larger parts of the station. Russia can only resupply and and lift small items for the ISS. Until the shuttles get back into it, ISS constuction is on hold.
The sooner we can finish off our commitment to the ISS, the sooner we can focus on the next generation of transports. Ones that are cheaper to operate and can take advantage of all the stuff we've developed in the last 10 years instead of having the astronauts take laptops with them because its cheaper than removing the outdated computers currently in the shuttle.
The magnetic field argument is a strong one. Its the only thing that protects the atmosphere from being blown away. However, another theory on why Mars lost its atmosphere is the following:
As rain falls through the atmosphere, CO2 dissolves in it. When this rain water hits the ground, the CO2 reacts with Calcium and others to form limestone. On earth, this limestone is eventually recycled through our tectonic processes and released in volcanos/other release points (this being part of the global warming argument that something like 70% of earths CO2 is released by volcanos and is outside our control).
However, on Mars, any tectonic activity has stopped, and as such, this limestone never gets put back into the atmosphere. It's ironic that the water itself eliminated the gas it needed to exist.
One could say its a little of both. When tectonic processes stopped, CO2 stopped being recycled leading to a slightly thinner and much colder atmosphere, at the same time that the magnetic field dissappeared and the remainder of the atmospere was blown away.
Why fix it in a free patch, when they can charge money for a new version that you have a reason to buy?
Interestingly enough, some of the sites that made the cut are OSTG, DistroWatch, ThinkGeek, and Newegg. Kinda odd for a plugin they're targeting at average users...
Others include Wikipedia, Babelfish, an entire section of gameing sites, and some shopping sites.
No Slashdot though...