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Earth

New Batfish Species Found Under Gulf Oil Spill 226

eDarwin writes "Researchers have discovered two previously unknown species of bottom-dwelling fish in the Gulf of Mexico, living right in the area affected by the BP oil spill. Researchers identified new species of pancake batfishes, a flat fish rarely seen because of the dark depths they favor. They are named for the clumsy way they 'walk' along the sea bottom, like a bat crawling."
Australia

AU R18+ Rating Plans Put On Hold Due To "Interest Groups" 139

Dexter Herbivore writes "Australian gamers are yet again left disappointed by their government's response to a lack of an R18+ rating for games. Gamespot reports that Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has blamed 'interest groups' for swamping the public consultation with pro-R18+ submissions. From the article: 'A strong response from gamer groups in the Australian Federal Government's R18+ public consultation has led Censorship Ministers to claim that more views from the community are needed before a decision into the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games can be reached.'" Reader UgLyPuNk adds that support for the new rating is coming from unexpected places.

Comment Re:The dog ate it? (Score 1) 882

Yes, it is - this was data from the 1980s, that had been stored on tape at best or not even archived in many cases, since no one at the time thought that it would be worth the money and effort required to archive it effectively. Understandable, really, given that everyone /aside/ from the wingnut deniers are pretty much happy with the processed data that /was/ archived.

himi

Comment Re:des (Score 1) 1100

I did a quick search of google groups for the term 'climate change' from around 1990-91, and found masses of hits - it was obviously a common term even back then, even being used in government reports of the time. The only reason climate change has become more visible (and suffered bullshit attacks like yours) is because the whole issue has become much more visible.

Your ignorance is not a good basis for this kind of attack.

himi

Comment Re:Poor choice for screensaver? (Score 2, Insightful) 907

Yeah, and despite that Linux has an ACPI implementation provided by Intel, and (as far as I know) fully compliant with the spec. The problem Linux has is that most OEM implementations /aren't/ compliant - they're implemented to run with Windows, and debugged with Windows, which means that any time Windows allows them to get away with a shortcut they'll take it, and when it bites Linux's ACPI implementation in the arse they can feel safe in the knowledge that users will blame the problems on Linux.

We've been dealing with this kind of crap through Linux's whole history - traditional BIOSes are notoriously buggy, APM implementations were buggy and had lots of OEM specific crap, and now ACPI implementations are just as bad. The only way that this will change is if Windows stops being the standard against which everything else is measured.

himi

Comment Re:100% worthless (Score 1) 489

. . . okay, so you were deliberately putting up a strawman argument in response to a perfectly reasonable post - that just confirms you being a moron.

As to context, I've read most of your posts on this thread, and most of the responses, and somehow or other they haven't improved my opinion of your intellect or intellectual honesty. I stand by my original post: you're not worth arguing with.

himi

Comment Re:100% worthless (Score 1) 489

So what you saying is that any scientist can make a claim, refuse to give the supporting data and it is up to other scientist to prove or disprove his claim without any insight to the data or methodology. This doesn't sound like the science they taught me in school, I will write them a not as soon as I remember how to write in cursive and tell them they need to change the text books to this new science.

Moron. The 'insight' into the data and the methodology is provided in the paper - the peer reviewed paper published in a journal. The fact that you don't know this simple, basic fact indicates that you're too ignorant to argue with.

himi

Comment Re:In fact you should scrutinize it yourself (Score 2, Informative) 489

So Gore is putting his money where his mouth is - what's wrong with that? Is T. Boone Pickens a hypocrite because he's promoting natural gas as an alternative to oil, and he's invested billions in natural gas?

Gore believes this is a major issue, and he's not just talking about it, he's investing in ways that match his talk. That's what people /should/ do, and using it as an argument against his beliefs is just plain stupid.

himi

Comment Re:This sort of thing would make anyone suspicious (Score 1) 489

That period in time (usually 196x to 199x/2000) is the "stable weather-utopia" referenced to as 1988 in my post. 1988 being the year James Hansen invented the global warming scare as a career move.

My /god/ you're an idiot. Global warming has been theorised about for a hundred years or more, and there have been papers written for government consumption dating back to the /fifties/ warning that if we continued to burn fossil fuels the way we had been we'd be creating warming conditions. Hansen didn't get into climatological research until the consensus in the field was that warming was going to happen - Hansen's famous contribution was to demonstrate that it was happening /then/, rather than in the future.

This one comment of yours marks you as a denier, not a skeptic. It's also, as I said, outstanding evidence that you're an idiot, a moron, and and imbecile.

himi

Comment Re:Brainless research (Score 1) 266

Considered all of that, how the fuck does that help to know that watching TV is correlated to asthma?

Maybe, if you'd thought to read a little further, you'd have noticed that the research uses TV viewing as a /proxy/ for sedentary behaviour? And also, if you'd read a little further, you'd have noticed that the research proposed a number of mechanisms to explain why sedentary behaviour might result in increased risk of asthma?

Maybe, just maybe, you might want to /learn something/ before you start spouting bullshit.

himi

Comment Re:Correlation vs. Causation (Score 1) 266

I strongly recommend that you look just a /tiny/ little bit deeper than the summary of the article. This was /not/ a study about asthma - this was a single result from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (google it), which is a large scale, long term study of children, their parents, and their environments (~14,000 kids, studied since pregnancy in 1991/1992, and still ongoing).

This kind of study /can't/ realistically make recommendations, unless the correlations they see are so strong that they can be confident of the causation without further study. What this (and other studies like it) are about is finding correlations that then drive further research - the further research is where recommendations come from.

Oh, and the notion that a study with only 3000 data points can't reliably tell us anything about the general population is pure ignorance on your part. Go look up a little bit about statistics before you spout any more crap like that.

himi

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