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Power

Worldwide Support For Nuclear Power Drops 324

Posted by Soulskill from the neutrons-are-scary dept.
ProbablyJoe writes "A poll for the BBC shows that worldwide support for nuclear power has dropped significantly in the past 6 years. However, while support has dropped in most countries, the UK has defied the trend, where 37% of the public support building new reactors. Unsurprisingly, support in Japan has dropped significantly, with only 6% supporting new reactors. The U.S. remains the country with the highest public opinion of nuclear power, though support has dropped slightly. Much of the decline in approval has been attributed to the events in Fukushima earlier in the year, although a recent Slashdot poll indicated that many readers' opinions had not been affected by the events, and there was an even split between those who found the technology more or less safe since the events. With reports on the long lasting effects in Fukushima still conflicted, is nuclear power still a viable solution to the world's energy problems?"
Cellphones

California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches 462

Posted by Soulskill from the take-that-citizens dept.
kodiaktau writes "In probably the most important decision Gov. Brown of California will make this year, he has vetoed the bill that would require officers to get a search warrant before searching cellular phones of arrested citizens. This further enables the police to carry out warrantless searches of private property extending into contacts, email, photos, banking activity, GPS, and other functions that are controlled by modern phones. 'He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message (PDF), he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not. Instead, he says the state Supreme Court’s decision is good enough, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand last week.'"

Comment Free Vinyl? (Score 1) 108

by fracai (#35841346) Attached to: Today Is Record Store Day 2011

It'd be nice for record stories[sic] to give away tons of 7" vinyl promos.

Yep, there's no better way to attract new customers than by giving away a product that no mainstream customer actually cares about. There's a significant portion that wouldn't even stop by for free CDs.

Comment 30 PPT files, 3 versions, 3 OSs, and an emulator (Score 1) 498

by fracai (#34671838) Attached to: What's the Oldest File You Can Restore?

I recently "recovered" around 30 PowerPoint files that I put together about 17 years ago. None were critically important; just some crude stop motion movies, homework, and other horrible "paintings", but they're a neat part of my childhood.

At they time, I had put them together using PowerPoint 2.0 (maybe 1.0, but I doubt it) and modern versions have long dropped support for those files. As I researched, I found that a straightforward conversion was impossible. There were specific conversion components for some versions (I think there was a v2 plugin for v3) and support for older formats seemed to be quickly dropped. By investigating installed files and old software reviews, I learned that v3 or v4 would do fine with the v2 files that I had and '98 or 2001 would upgrade the converted files to the "modern" binary format, it didn't look like 98 could read v1 or v2 files. Any of the more recent versions could upgrade those to the new XML format.

So I assembled my tools; I actually already had access to archived installation images for 2001, had installed 2008, and amazingly still had floppies for v4 and even found a *nix box with a floppy drive. I've previously played around with SheepShaver, but running the old Microsoft products proved to be difficult. I don't remember the exact issues, but installation or execution failed consistently when trying to run version 2001. A thread on the SheepShaver forums indicated that running under Ubuntu might be successful, but I didn't have any luck. I did find success running SheepShaver under Windows, and of course running 2008 under Mac OS X 10.6 was just fine.

In the end, my conversion chain looked like this:
10.6 > SheepShaver > MacOS 9.0.4 > PowerPoint v4 - v2 files to v4
Windows 7 > SheepShaver > MacOS 9.0.4 > PowerPoint 2001 - v4 files to modern binary data
10.6 > PowerPoint 2008 - binary files to XML

The only degredation I've noticed is that one file seems to either be using a font I don't have or perhaps the spacing or size was lost as the text doesn't quite line up correctly.

I suppose I should also take a pass through my other files and upgrade any Microsoft data to more modern formats, though nothing goes back as far as these did. Or just print them out to PDF. It's not like I need to actually edit any of these.

What strikes me most is how transient version support was even for Microsoft's own formats. I'd think at the least that Microsoft could keep a basic conversion product going for modern OSs and all the old formats. Not that I actually expect this from them.
Image

Australian Women Fight Over "Geekgirl" Trademark 187

Posted by samzenpus from the geekgirls-geekgirls-you're-both-pretty dept.
bennyboy64 writes "Two prominent women in the Australian IT industry are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the trademark 'geekgirl.' A woman attempting to use 'geekgirl' on Twitter told ZDNet that women had been advised by the trademark owner to stop doing so since she owned the trademark for the word. 'She noted her trademark and asked me to stop calling myself a "geekgirl" in general conversation and to cease using the hashtag "#geekgirl" on Twitter,' IT consultant Kate Carruthers said."
Earth

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science 1046

Posted by Soulskill from the but-it's-really-cold-today dept.
blau tips news of an open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, decrying the "recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular." The letter lays out the basics of the scientific method, and explains how certainly highly-regarded theories — such as the big bang, evolution, and Earth's origin — are commonly accepted due to the strength of the evidence supporting them, though "fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." It goes on to "call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them." According to the Guardian, the letter "originated with a number of NAS members who were frustrated at the misinformation being spread by climate deniers and the assaults on scientists by some policy-makers who hope to delay or avoid making policy decisions and are hiding behind the recent controversy around emails and minor errors in the IPCC."
Science

Second Inquiry Exonerates Climatic Research Unit 764

Posted by kdawson from the wash-behind-your-ears dept.
mvdwege writes "After being cleared of charges of misconduct by a parliamentary committee, now the CRU has the results of the inquiry (PDF) by a panel of scientists into their scientific methods. Here is the CRU press release. Criticisms: The statistical methods used, though arriving at correct results, are not optimal, and it is recommended future studies involve professional statisticians if possible; and the CRU scientists are lacking somewhat in organization. A very far cry from the widespread allegations of fraud. It seems 'Climategate' is ending with a whimper."
Earth

Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming 344

Posted by kdawson from the caught-between-asthma-and-the-rising-sea dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists estimate that the US Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant, sulfate aerosols, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems. But NPR reports that this good news may have a surprising downside: cleaner air might actually intensify global warming. One benefit of sulfates is that they've been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. But thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, the planet has felt only a portion of that warming. And unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last in the air for a week at most, so cutting them would probably rapidly accelerate global warming. The author of 'Hack the Planet' says: 'As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.'"

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They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- Carl Sagan

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