The reason politicians on both sides of the political aisle push biofuels from corn is because they are pandering to voters in Iowa. A favorite political joke in recent elections is that if Wisconsin held the first primary, we would have major initiatives to make fuel from cheese.

vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world's growing population

The growing population only increases future demand for fuel, adding to the problem.

... whose jobs are dependant on a federal grant getting renewed.

A recent GAO report said that $106 BILLION was spent by the US government through 2010 on global warming research. If you figure that was through the end of 2010, that was still 4 years ago, so the number is now much larger.

That number absolutely dwarfs even the imagined amount of money that fossil fuel companies have been accused of spending in campaigns against "climate change". I mean it's easily more than 2 orders of magnitude larger.

Even scientists are human, and they are smart enough to know which side of their bread the butter is on.

That's not always correct. Roundup-ready crops sold by Monsanto (for example) are not resistant to pests, they are resistant to herbicides. They let you spray MORE, not less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

No one has genomic techniques to successfully create a protein from whole cloth.

That used to be true, but science marches on...

http://www.princeton.edu/main/...

Basically it is the same as with many other businesses, they will try to leverage their customer relationships to include more areas(so they get more money from the same customer)

Luckily at least currently the competition in the UK market seems to work fairly well so you still have the competition and choice,

There have been some worrying signs of lesser number of providers lately though so the question is how long will the good situation last.

Honestly I can't think of this as being anything but big. Companies live and die by outlook email still (enough of them anyway). So many of those executives don't even need a machine past email really...

On a positive note, the application did install and run correctly, and appeared to offer support for several popular mail servers (Yahoo and Outlook among others, as well as IMAP and Exchange support).

See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... for some perspective...

The iOS Outlook app uses a cloud to download your email (including attachments should you choose to want to see it). This may or may not be what you (or your employer) want. I know I won't be using it.

Mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, etc.

Here someone will say "but that will damage the fragile web of life and kill mother gaia" or some other drivel. The biosphere is quite stable and can survive the loss of all these species without crashing the food web.

Look at a remote tropical island that doesn't have any of these species. They exist. And guess what... they're fine. Will something that eats these things likely have a harder time finding food? Sure. But if the species isn't already on the brink of extinction then it will adapt. If it was already on that brink then chances are it was doomed in any case. Adaptive species don't get into positions like that.

And beyond that, species go extinct all the time. Always have. New species fill their niches or existing species simply expand to fill vacant niches which tends to cause them to splinter and create new species.

Here again, someone will say "but the rate of extinction has increased!" Yes it has. The biggest reason is human transport and trade. You let loose a rat from the mainland onto some little island and it is probably going to go sickhouse on the local species that likely haven't had to work as hard to survive on their little island. And yes, that rat or other relevant more vital species is likely to eradicate or out compete its rivals. Evolution at work.

Beyond that, we are also destroying habitats. And that is sad... We should try to limit that sort of damage when and where possible. However, the mosquito can go fuck itself sideways with a rusty chainsaw. I have literally zero sympathy for that species. And I am quite comfortable geo engineering the world to the extent that nightmare species like that simply don't exist. Mother nature has come up with some very impressive things over the eons. But she has also birthed some monsters. And I am quite comfortable aborting those little experiments.

Here again, someone will say "but humans are the biggest monsters"... then kill yourself. Shut up and kill yourself. I have zero patience for that drivel.

Kill all the mosquitoes.

That's because most physics and chemistry experiments don't breed and multiply.

Neither do infertile mosquitoes; your point?

My point was all about what happens when the mosquitos are not as infertile as planned. Or when another unforeseen event takes place. Obviously, if all the promises by these scientists are true, we have no problem. Unfortunately, promises made through the media (and advertising) are often not as simple as it seems.

They are talking about something that happens literally in their own backyard.

Really, you think there's no products of modern chemistry in your backyard?

If chemical companies are going to dump something into my backyard, I will scream and shout just as loud, if not much louder. The OP said that people only complain about biology, not physics and chemistry. Obviously, once "chemistry" becomes something huge, (e.g. "fracking in your own backyard"), this little claim stops being true. If chemistry comes to your backyard, people WILL complain (and rightly so, even when the experts say that all is well).

They are right to do a risk assessment.

And there have been risk assessments done, by regulators, taking into account the scientific data. Risk assessments are not something for Joe Bloe and his GED who reads NaturalNews and thinks that "GMO mosquitoes" means that they're going to bite his children and spread a zombie plague.

You seem to claim that people should just trust experts. I claim that experts should attempt to inform the public better, thereby earning their trust...

Changing the balance in an ecosystem can have huge consequences.

Contrary to popular belief, changing the bottom of a food chain rarely has major consequences; it's the changing of the top of a food chain that tends to have the biggest consequences. The higher up the food chain you go, not only do you have more of a profound impact on the landscape (look at how radically, say, deer overpopulation transforms a whole ecosystem), but also the more species tend to be generalists rather than specialists. Generalists means the ability to switch more readily between food sources, meaning changes further down have little impact on them. But if you eliminate a top predator from an area, the consequences further down can be profound.

So, rabbits that got released in Australia are the top predator? The Pampas grass in California is the top predator? I can make a long list of invasive species that are not the top predator and still influenced their ecosystem a lot. Grass, as far as I know, is pretty much the bottom of the food chain.

anti-GMOers' grasp on reality is approximately equal to Scientologists.

The difference is that at a certain level of their 'church' hierarchy, the Scientologists know exactly what is going on - and who they're taking from.

If you perturb them, it just re-stabilizes at a new equilibrium point.

Right. But that may takes hundreds of thousands or millions of years and a mass extinction. That new equilibrium point may not be something we want, and it may be completely devoid of humans. A desert is in equilibrium. So is Antarctica. So yes, the environment and the Earth will trudge along and find a stable point, but that doesn't give us free reign to introduce invasive species.

Then nothing is different.

Female mosquitoes aren't going to breed more because of this. Part of what makes mosquitoes so unpleasant is that their breeding mechanism is awkward and requires, for example, blood - our blood - to work. Finding a partner to breed with is the last of their worries.

As a result, what this boils down to is:

Status quo: virtually all females will breed with a regular mosquito, lifestyle unchanged.

Changed to: sizable numbers of females will breed with a GMO mosquito instead of a regular mosquito.

If plan works, enough females will go with the GMO, and breed shorter lifespan mosquitoes of their own, resulting in a (probably temporary, alas) reduction in the mosquito population. If the plan fails, either because the altered genes fail to do their job, or because females avoid the GMO mosquitoes somehow, NOTHING IS DIFFERENT.

What's the issue here? What can actually go wrong that's worse than the status quo? What scenario are you seeing that could happen as a result of this particular project? It's not like this is something out of a Michael Crichton novel. "We think we can reduce the mosquito population by releasing this RADIOACTIVE MOSQUITOS into the population! Their UNTESTED RANDOM GENETIC DIFFERENCES will render the entire population dead within the week! Also let's breed the mosquitos with FROGS just beforehand! Nothing could possibly go wrong!"

We know the generic differences. We know what we're releasing are otherwise regular mosquitos. This is not that terrible novel.

As someone who has good medical reasons to fear mosquito bites more than most, I sincerely hope this works. And I applaud them for trying.

Why are the headlines so big? Why is there 3 inches of blank space between paragraphs?

Catering to our demographic.?.?

If corporate America can offshore the production of its goods to China, displacing US workers, but continuing to keep prices high, then I see this as a fair and just response to that. Cut out the middlemen, it is good for the US consumer, and that's all that matters, right? Just like global trade.

It's the same gang fuck attitude we saw in the 80' with the atari 2600. Junk carts, moving mfg to asia, fire everyone .This time, it's not a bunch of shit for brains designers / coders and polyester suit wearing sales droids, it's the chinese elite with unlimited capital and a unbridled desire to be a +one percent.
We are truly fucked. Get ready for food riots.

Yet, you need to learn the story of Alibaba and the 40 thieves.

Alibaba was a woodcutter and not a thief.

Before you get too high and mighty, you might want to remember that Ali Baba stole from those 40 thieves which is what eventually got his brother killed (because of his own greed) and almost got Ali Baba killed as well. So the OP calling Ali Baba a thief is 100% accurate.

Cyanogen mod don't have access to the source code for all of the drivers required to run the hardware. So they have to copy the binaries from the manufacturer.

If the manufacturer doesn't support new versions of android, with newer linux kernels, there's not much they can do.

Yes, it seems like most phones are abandoned by cyanogenmod at about the same time the manufacturer does.

The sticking point is drivers. Most SoCs are abandoned at about the same time and virtually none of the drivers are Open, let alone Free. If some influential manufacturer keeps using a particular SoC past the usual sunset, then odds are good that they will release a newer version of Android, and then the drivers can be taken from their image and used to roll a newer version of CM for other devices based on the same SoC.

AFAIK the only GPU with credible OSS drivers is still Mali 400, which is an antique by modern standards. Still works, though. It works well enough to play Q3, IIRC. Most of the rest of the hardware is less well supported than that...

I think the idea is that Google, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have all made themselves into a sort of cartel that don't allow the "open source project" to actually be a source of freedom for consumers. Cyanogen is "rogue" because it bucks that system and restores freedom to the project.

Not really. That may be the perception, but it's not true. Google is quite happy to see CM and similar third party ROMs flourish; this is part of why all Nexus devices are unlockable.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Google engineer, and I work on Android, but I'm not a Google spokesperson and this is my opinion, not an official statement.)

CM devs are consumers first. What this means is that they do not divide up devices among other developers, or assign devices like one would at a job. Developers work in their spare time without monetary compensation. Because of this, the developers are free to work on any device they choose to purchase.

Now, what does this mean to you? First off, requesting anywhere in the CM forum, the CM Blog, or the Facebook/Google+/Twitter accounts for device XX to be supported is probably a waste of your time and anybody who reads said request. CyanogenMod does not work on device requests as there is no guaranteeing that a current CM maintainer is even interested in the device. Additionally, its not as simple as 'porting' code, the device trees must be coded from scratch and made to work with the AOSP sourced code and CM enhancements. This takes a large amount of time and effort, especially when the device's OEM fails to release the latest version of Android for it. Second, in hoping a worthy developer sees the post and decides to take up the project... well, that is probably just wishful thinking. Many developers do not like interacting with end users (too much finger pointing between both devs and users or anger directed at the devs for something working other than how the user expects - it happens far too often); because of that, many developers don't frequent the forum (or if they do, they only view the forums for the devices they maintain). The best way to get a device official support is not requesting it from the CM team, but learning how to do it yourself or encouraging a maintainer of an unofficial build to submit their code for review.

So, Cyanogenmod devs will support what strikes their fancy. And if they are no longer interested in a device, it won't be supported any longer. Now if they get financing, maybe this will change as most consumers want some stability and continued support. It is one of the things that could differentiate itself from the phone makers... if they care to. If not, in this regard they won't be any different. And it would be a shame since it is nice to get rid of bloatware.

The vast majority of people will not port their own devices. They either don't have the time or the technical know-how or nether. I will use the stock OS if it isn't available as a stable CM. In fact I do with my P600 Samsung Note. But even if they did, after reading that sticky from the forum, I am less willing to adopt CM and choose to just root the device instead.

For those that want to look at the pretty pictures:

https://wiki.documentfoundatio...

I think the ability to theme with firefox color themes is intrigueing.

Having used both, I think LibreOffice Calc sucks compared to Excel. Every time I use it, I come across at least one limitation it has, that Excel does not. Sometimes it's usability-related, but frequently it's just because it doesn't implement a particular feature. It's a death by a thousand paper cuts. I don't think anybody who works on the project realises quite how bad it is, otherwise they would surely have rewritten the whole thing by now, rather than persevering with what's clearly a dead-end codebase.

I used to use Excel very heavily for work. Not only is Excel (2007 or later) easier and quicker to use (and not just because of the ribbons), but there are also things in Excel that are either a pain or simply impossible to achieve in a sensible way in Calc. Using Calc is like if I was used to using Photoshop and then somebody came along and gave me Paint.NET and said it could do everything Photoshop does. It might technically be feasible to achieve all the same outcomes, but it sure as hell isn't going to be as easy, and you're going to be fighting against the software and doing things extra manually half the time. (Not that I have anything against Paint.NET; it's a great bit of software if you're not trying to do everything that Photoshop does. Maybe this was a bad metaphor.)

So, for all Excel's flaws, if I was using spreadsheets for anything remotely serious on anything like a regular basis, I would buy a copy of Excel. But not the 2013 version; what the hell were they thinking with that UI?

we had a hooker and blow party at my store.

No idea what you're talking about. LibreOffice, OpenOffice, and StarOffice before it are all written in C++. Java is used as a glue between certain components, such as database part. It's also used in some import filters. But it's certainly not required for LO or OO, and hasn't been a requirement ever as far as I know. Guess you haven't ever used LO or OOo.

I'm a lump of dirt with no nervous system, you insensitive clod!

I'm betting that NetBSD will still run on you.

The hardware isnt all that bad most of the time, it's the shitty horrible firmwares they run.

Frequently, it's an old, horribly butchered hackjob of openwrt under there these days. Something unholy running a 2.6 era kernel, and with drivers with more hacked patches attached than a 4th century beggar's clothes.

Getting that old filth flushed out and replaced with something properly maintained is a GOOD thing. The router (hw wise) itself usually isnt all that bad.

Netgear tends to be a bit better, but overpriced. Belkin can go die in a fire though.

The last I looked, the state of remote-sensing algorithms for limb profiling (i.e., looking through the layer of the Earth's atmosphere over the limb of the planet from your orbital position) is something between bad and "are you kidding?".

I wonder what kind of secret sauce these Young Turks have that NASA and NOAA doesn't?

The last I looked, the state of remote-sensing algorithms for limb profiling is something between bad and "are you kidding?".

But they are not doing much "remote sensing". All they are doing is recording when a GPS signal is received. That's it. That shouldn't be too hard. The delay between when the GPS should have been received, and was actually received, will tell them the index of refraction of the atmospheric cord it passed through, and from that, a ground computer can calculate the humidity, temperature, and pressure.

OMG! Quick somebody tell these people that the experts here at /. have decided that they are making a big mistake. I'm sure they will be grateful for all of the expert opinions of our hive mind since it will save them from making a BIG MISTAKE.
(OTOH, you could RTFA.)

Let's not forget back in the day when Linux and the GPL was "communist".

Oh, I can see it now. Some Linux enthusiast (wait, no, a GNU/Linux enthusiast; run-of-the-mill Linux enthusiasts are too corrupted by pragmatism) poring over hundreds of giant sheets of chip diagrams, nodding sagely at incomprehensible engineering spaghetti he doesn't even understand. "Hmmm... yes... this all seems to be in order..."

At some point, you have to start trusting people/organizations/companies.

What you're really saying is, "You don't have a choice, so just suck it up, princess. Privacy is so 20th century."

No, you don't have to trust people/organizations/companies who have not earned your trust. You are the one paying. Use the power you have as a consumer. Weaponize your purchasing power.

And always, always reserve the right to just say "Nope, I don't need it, I don't want it, and I'll find another way."

If I understand it correctly, I would be able to power on, fix or reimage my home desktops/laptops while at work or away on a trip. Or fix my moms crashed computer from half way around the globe. And, since all communication is authenticated with a TLS certificate, there is little danger of other taking over my hardware.

I understand people's right to be paranoid or want 100% open systems, and hope that appropriate choices remain available. But even for most Linux kernel developers a failsafe way to repair an unbootable system from remote is a good thing.

...using a fingerprint database to show that cash isn't anonymous.

The article says it can identify someone in as few as 3 transactions.
But they aren't really identifying them, they are just showing that no other person hit the same exact set of shops.
Well, they also mention that they get a datestamp with the transaction so assuming that datestamp has minutes
or seconds then it should only take 1 transaction or 2 at the most. That being said, you really haven't identified
this person as you don't know who they are in the real world just that they have a unique shopping pattern as
everyone does.

I always thought it was anonymized through aggregation.

Aggregation is not very useful. Much more useful is being able to look for relationships between purchases by the same user. Years ago department stores would have an "accessories" section. Then Wal-Mart crunched their data, and figured out that people don't shop for accessories randomly. They buy a belt when they are buying pants. They buy a necktie when they are buying shirts. So today, the belts are placed by the pants, and the neckties are placed by the shirts. This seems kind of obvious in hindsight, but it took data analysis to make it happen.

If a woman stops buying condoms and starts buying vitamin supplements, that means you should showing her popup ads for maternity clothes. Nine months later, you can show her a different brand of condom, with ads than emphasize reliability.

I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty fair to say that a record without any information directly identifying the subject is "anonymous".

The ability to complete an analysis of multiple records and data sources thereby reasonable guess (90% accuracy) of who the subject might be is insufficient to remove the title of anonymous.

Not sure what you're talking about. My credit card has no fees

It has no fees you know about... And banks want to keep it that way. When you pay for something by credit card, the merchant pays 3% or more for accepting the card. This means they have to pass the cost onto you in the form of higher prices.

You didn't think the bank gave you free money did you?

Its Machiavellian in its brilliance, you're robbing yourself of 3% in order to give yourself 1% and you're so enamoured with it, you're trying to do this as much as possible.

and what MakerBot is doing to try to salvage its open-source cred

Yeah. Good luck with that salvage job.

makerbot is more than dead to me, if I ever hear anyone considering buying a 3d printer that's the only advice i give them is "No matter what you do, do not buy a makerbot"

I hope everyone else here is doing the same they should not be allowed a second chance or any form of forgiveness

Embedded fucking videos??? With autoplay??? FUCK YOU Slashdot! My how far you have fallen. News for nerds my ass.

the Bentley Jubilee 2002 was built and furnished entirely in England. The engine is a Rolls Royce TT 6.75l V8 purpose-built in Derby. Coachwork and chassis assembled by hand in Crewe, and the furniture by Hield in West Yorkshire. It might be *owned* by Volkswagen but the manufacturing is entirely still British labour.

A four engine plane will land on no engines.

If the two-engine planes are such a risk, how the hell have they got air safety certificates?

Because the certification for twin-engine planes only looks at engine reliability and environmental factors like rain and hail. It doesn't consider being shot at with missiles and small arms fire, which is a required safety criteria for Air Force One.

Why not convert a C17 - its more manoueverable, and can use smaller airfields

The Soviet Union adopted with the AK-74 in 1974

He was speaking about AK-74M, which was adopted in early 1990s.

But anyway, even if you look at AK-74, it was already in many ways outdated back when it was introduced. Only two locking lugs, and not in a barrel extension, craptastic safety, slow iron sights, a large open gap in the receiver when bolt is closed permitting dust and dirt in, very inconvenient optics quick mount on the side rail (on AK-74M with its folding stock, if you use the rail, you can't fold the stock - WTF?) etc. Also pretty heavy in its basic configuration, and even heavier with optics because of that aforementioned side rail necessitating heavy mounts.

A good example of a modern AK-derived design is SIG SG 550. Same basic action, but it uses modern layout, modern ergonomics, and is much more accurate and flexible while being every bit as reliable.

and most Eastern European and former Soviet Republics use it today.

Most Soviet republics - true, but which of them are "allies"?

Most Eastern European states - not really true anymore, and wasn't really true even when USSR was still there. The only two I can think of that still use AK chambered in 5.45 round are Bulgaria and Romania (and for Romania it's not AK-74, but their own independently developed variant), and both are looking at options to migrate to, generally in 5.56 for NATO conformance. Poland uses the 5.56 Beryl, also not derived from AK-74, and significantly improved compared to the latter. All ex-Yugoslavian states either still use the original AK chambered in 7.62, or else have migrated to something in 5.56 (e.g. FN F2000 for Slovenia or VHS in Croatia). Czechs and Slovaks have both used their indigenous Vz.58 until recently, and are now switching to CZ-805. Hungarians use their own FEG AK variant, also in 7.62. Albanians use the original AKM. Did I forget anyone?

The only nation states I know of that still use the old AK-47 are in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia (including, I think, India). The big advantage of the AK-47 is that it is cheap enough to hand out like candy to guerrilla fighters, and it's reliable enough to still work after years of little to no maintenance (though it's effectiveness drops quite a lot when doing so).

Well, you kinda lump them together - it's not like there are a few nations in Middle East or Africa, and a great many of them use AK. But, as noted, in Europe, you're looking at least at Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and Hungary. And if you look at who else uses AK-derived guns chambered in 7.62x39, you'll have to also add Czech Republic and Slovakia (tho not for long) and Finland.

FWIW, I don't see the point of differentiation. AK-74 is only marginally different from AKM in matters other than caliber (and muzzle brake, but that can be easily retrofitted). All ergos are the same, reliability is the same, and all deficiencies are also the same.

In any case, I don't see why anyone in a sane mind would adopt AK-74M as a new service rifle in 2015. There are far better options available for anyone not sorely short on cash and not running a guerrilla army.

I mean, sure, you could take AK-74 and modernize it - make the receiver cover non-detachable so that a rail can be put on top, replace handguards with rails or something else allowing different mounts, replace leaf sight with a peep, replace the safety with a switch that can be manipulated by a thumb, replace the stock with folding and length-adjustable one that also has a cheek riser for better weld.

Russians did just that in their own modernization program, and the result is now known as AK-12 and is undergoing trials. Though it has a bunch of other changes (like lightened bolt) that are suspect wrt reliability, especially given the results of the trials so far.

But then again, unless you're short on cash, you could just get SG 551, which was designed with all those things in mind from ground up.

it's not government mandated, it's a *natural* monopoly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

things like fire, police, healthcare, powerplants: there is no market for such things. for a number of reasons. with broadband it's because of high barrier to entry: no one has the billions to gamble on entering the market with uncertain payout

oh google does. so go ahead and wait 40 years until they get to your city

but if you make believe (like the usa does) that things like broadband and healthcare are free markets, you just wind up with grossly expensive, inefficient jokes

what we need is universal healthcare, and government owned fiber

i hear it already: "oh you evil socialist statist..." *drool, snort*

i don't like the government. but unlike some people, i recognize that on the topic of *natural* monopolies, government control is the least horrible situation, and certainly better than the usa's joke of healthcare system or approach to broadband

capitalism is a wonderful tool. i love capitalism

for example: governments should own all fiber, and then lease it to private companies to deliver services. any private company can lease to provide any service. that's wonderful capitalism, embraced in a manner of fair competition. without the bullshit notion they own the fiber too, and there's "competition". no there isn't. and there never will be. and no government policy is to blame. it's the simple nature of the sector fo the economy: too high of a cost to enter. no one else can afford to roll out the fiber

capitalism is not a fucking religion, and it has its limits

natural monopolies represent those limits

if you don't understand what a natural monopoly is, stop talking about economics, you don't understand the topic

government is not your enemy, rent seeking parasites CORRUPTING your government are. you want to remove the corruption and have your government work for you. not weaken and remove government, thereby allowing the monopolists to rape you even more

there's just a certain kind of person in the world that think government is the problem no matter what. and on topics where the real problem is something else: natural monopolies, they simply enable the monopolists by misdirecting their anger at the wrong target (government). propaganda funded by the plutocrats are happy to feed this error, because indeed, with a weakened government, they get to rape you even more without even the pesky need to buy off congresscritters and pass warped regulations at all

The 2007 action put some limits on local (but not state) franchising practices. It did NOT eliminate them. In fact, most of the US population still lives in areas with restricted franchises. The FCC said that local franchising authorities could not be "unreasonable" in their demands. More info:

https://www.wilmerhale.com/pag...

Sweden is about the same size as California, but has only 10 million people vs. 40 million in California.

So how come broadband access is better and cheaper in both the cities and rural areas in Sweden compared to California?

I have 75/75 for $60 in metro LA. I don't find that unreasonable.

I have 76/20 truly unlimited for $34 a month in my small 11,000 popultation town in rural East Yorkshire, England. I find that more reasonable.

The threat of competition prevents long term monopolies from persisting.

explain how that works. you've just made a statement of unsupported belief

i've explained to you reality, straightforward: a high cost of entry into the market prevents competition. high cost alone

you have opposed my description of reality. that's fine, you don't have to agrere with me

but you have to be able to explain how or why i am wrong. you have not done that

"go read my religious literature" is not an argument

if you can't make your case in plain language, that says something doesn't it?

an unsupported faith in an unsupported statement is trendy nonsense