It looks like the Citroen Revolte got more publicity on the streets of Paris than at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. In this video the Revolte takes a tour in Paris to the delight of curious onlookers. Apart from the cameraman moving someone out of the way at one point, passersby were able to get up close and have a good look at the car. I’d be happy to see these kinds of initiatives more often – Ferrari on the streets of Milan, anyone…?
Source | Autosblog.fr
Hubble has snapped a spectacular view of M 66, the largest “player” of the Leo Triplet, and a galaxy with an unusual anatomy: it displays asymmetric spiral arms and an apparently displaced core. The peculiar anatomy is most likely caused by the gravitational pull of the other two members of the trio.
The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is the member of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66 group. Messier 66 wins in size over its fellow triplets — it is about 100 000 light-years across.
Be sure to hit the link up there for an absolutely humongous version of the image. Here’s some additional background.
The Huffington Post (Aladdin Elaasar)
I suppose it depends on how you define “pharaoh” but whichever way you cut it Taharqa doesn’t seem to come out as the last of the pharaohs!
Will Smith is a natural for the role of Taharqa the Nubian king. Little has been explored about Africa’s Nubia and its kings who played a role thousands of years ago in ruling Egypt. They’re almost forgotten now, especially after Nasser’s government in Egypt relocated them from their villages after building the Aswan Dam. Their unique language and culture is feared to be extinct.Will Smith’s upcoming movie sheds light on that long forgotten history. Usually Hollywood tackles other pages of Egyptian history already known to people, such as The Ten Commandments, and Cleopatra by Liz Taylor. Cleopatra, the Greek queen, was reduced by Hollywood to a mere vixen who seduced Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.
Hollywood movies sometimes present untrue fictitious characters of archetypal villains with sinister heavy accents drabbed in ancient Egyptian costumes. The Last Pharaoh is an exception. Will Smith deserves a great deal of credit for tackling that long forgotten history.
Anyone involved in the online video industry has to be chilled to the bone by the recent court ruling invalidating much of the FCC’s authority over broadband service providers.
The court essentially told the FCC that it couldn’t force Comcast to pass all bits equally through its cable modems, in essence allowing the ISP to once again shape packets and slow certain types of traffic with impunity. This is bad news for lots of different businesses on the web, but it’s most chilling to companies like YouTube, Metacafe, Netflix and mine, Revision3, which serve up independent video.
Why? Because Comcast could potentially slow down the delivery of our streaming video. Why would it do that? To protect its multichannel cable-TV oligopoly, and its owned and operated cable networks — including The Golf Channel, Style and G4 –- from web-based competition.
Comcast, along with Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, Charter and other conglomerates have a lot at stake here. New multichannel services from Move Networks, Sezmi and others promise to use the broadband network to replace traditional cable services. Anecdotal evidence shows that many have already ditched cable for a combination of Netflix streaming, Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes and Internet originals, via devices from Roku, Boxee, Syabas and the new crop of web-connected TVs and Blu-ray players.
Streaming video is not like a simple file transfer, because all the bits have to arrive in order, and on time, in order to ensure a clean and rebuffer-free viewing experience. ISP routers already analyze every packet for source, destination and routing path, and it’s relatively easy to slow down, or shape, packets based on type or source. And if you can’t get a good streaming video signal because your ISP has slowed those services to a crawl, you’ll be forced right back to traditional multichannel video services for your television.
So the courts have handed cable TV operators, along with Verizon and AT&T, a huge tool to keep their customers from fleeing to Internet alternatives. As you would expect, though, Comcast and others are claiming that they “remain committed to the FCC’s existing open Internet principles.” They’re also asking the government to let them self-regulate.
But they can’t be trusted. Comcast lied about its packet-shaping in the past, and I don’t expect it to suddenly change its stripes now. Luckily the FCC isn’t standing still, but is considering a number of different alternatives to ensuring net neutrality, including getting Congress to expand its authority over broadband.
I think the best alternative, however, would be to reclassify ISPs to a Title II common carrier service from a Title I. This would put broadband into the same category as POTS and other telecommunications services. Self-regulation would be bad, and I’m leery about leaving the decision up to Congress in light of how long they can take to make a decision.
Free and clear access is important for consumers, for competition and for creativity. Because without it, we’ll be stuck in a “57 channels and nothing on” world, dictated and enforced by the cable monsters.
Image courtesy of Flickr user rstrawser
Jim Louderback is CEO of Revision3. He was previously vice president of Ziff Davis Media and Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and PCMag.com.
by Umbra Fisk
Dearest
readers,
Thank you
all so much for joining me this week as we got down and dirty with our first
book club selection, Possum
Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money,
hitting all the hot buttons like leaving
the rat race, eating
meat, and bucking
the education system.
We’re in
the homestretch—let’s make Dolly Freed proud with our last day of discussion.
So do you think there’s something to this whole possum living thing? And if the
lifestyle is as simple as Freed says it is, why aren’t more people doing it? Is
it simply that we’re so culturally programmed about what’s accepted?
Has the
book inspired you to make any changes in your own life? Even if you aren’t
going to live a possum lifestyle, do you think there’s value in it?
Also, what was
your take on the 30-years-older Freed in the afterword? Were you surprised to
learn about her father’s alcoholism? Did it color your view of her story at all?
Looking
forward to hearing your final thoughts.
Finally,
Umbra
P.S. It’s
time to announce next month’s book club pick. (Drum roll, please.) Next up, we’ll
be pouring over Anna Lappé‘s Diet for a Hot Planet. We’ll
kick off discussion on May 11, so get reading!
Here’s a synopsis of the book from the Small Planet Institute:
In 1971, Frances Moore Lappé‘s Diet for a Small Planet sparked a revolution in how we think about hunger, alerting millions to the hidden environmental and social impacts of our food choices. Now, nearly four decades later, her daughter, Anna Lappé, picks up the conversation. In her new book, the younger Lappé exposes another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis.
While you may not think “global warming” when you sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food—from Pop-Tarts packaged in Tennessee and eaten in Texas to pork chops raised in Poland, with feed from Brazil, then shipped to South Korea—is connected to as much as one third of total greenhouse-gas emissions. Livestock alone is associated with more emissions than all of the world’s transportation combined. Move over, Hummer. Say hello to the hamburger.
If we’re serious about the climate crisis, says Lappé, we have to talk about food.
In this groundbreaking book, Lappé exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin tactics companies are employing to deflect the heat. With seven principles for a climate-friendly diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, she offers a vision of a food system that can be part of healing the planet. An engaging call to action, Diet for a Hot Planet delivers a hopeful message during troubling times.
Related Links:
Ask Umbra’s Book Club: The three L’s—laziness, learning, and lawlessness
Americans eat more processed food than, well, anyone
Farm saved by community featured on CNN
Saw this on Gizmodo the other day, and I had to share it with you guys. Mainly because I am not a big Apple fan. I am not saying that Apple doesn’t make great products. They do. I just don’t like how friggin’ proprietary they are. For instance, we tried setting up a new Wireless N network at my company using WPA2. Everything worked fine except Mac’s which only support WPA2 if you are also using an Apple access point. Lame sauce!
That being said though, If someone were to give me an iPad for a review or whatever, I don’t think I can bring myself to decline it. A colleague of mine went out last Saturday and bought one at the local Best Buy. In fact, here is a picture of Bauer-Power on it:
Enough about all that though, and back to why you are here…. Watching the senseless destruction of an iPad! Here you go!
Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.
During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow.
Was this credible? Would we have done it? Who knows? No one’s ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that – a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice.
Our policies did. The result was called deterrence. For half a century, it held. The Soviets never invaded. That’s why nuclear doctrine is important.
The Obama administration has just issued a new one that “includes significant changes to the U.S. nuclear posture,” said Defense Secretary Bob Gates. First among these involves the U.S. response to being attacked with biological or chemical weapons.
Under the old doctrine, supported by every president for decades, any aggressor ran the risk of a cataclysmic U.S. nuclear response that would leave the attacking nation a cinder and a memory.
Again: Credible? Doable? No one knows. But the threat was very effective.
Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.”
Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)
However, if the lawyers say the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.
This is quite insane. It’s like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.
Apart from being morally bizarre, the Obama policy is strategically loopy. Does anyone believe that North Korea or Iran will be more persuaded to abjure nuclear weapons because they could then carry out a biological or chemical attack on the U.S. without fear of nuclear retaliation?
The naiveté is stunning. Similarly the Obama pledge to forswear development of any new nuclear warheads, indeed, to permit no replacement of aging nuclear components without the authorization of the president himself. This under the theory that our moral example will move other countries to eschew nukes.
On the contrary. The last quarter-century – the time of greatest superpower nuclear arms reduction – is precisely when Iran and North Korea went hellbent into the development of nuclear weapons.
It gets worse. The administration’s nuclear posture review declares U.S. determination to “continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks.” The ultimate aim is to get to a blanket doctrine of no first use.
This is deeply worrying to small nations who for half a century relied on the extended U.S. nuclear umbrella to keep them from being attacked or overrun by far more powerful neighbors. When smaller allies see the United States determined to move inexorably away from that posture – and for them it’s not posture, but existential protection – what are they to think?
Fend for yourself. Get your own WMDs. Go nuclear if you have to. Do you imagine they are not thinking that in the Persian Gulf?
This administration seems to believe that by restricting retaliatory threats and by downplaying our reliance on nuclear weapons, it is discouraging proliferation.
But the opposite is true. Since World War II, smaller countries have agreed to forgo the acquisition of deterrent forces – nuclear, biological and chemical – precisely because they placed their trust in the firmness, power and reliability of the American deterrent.
Seeing America retreat, they will rethink. And some will arm. There is no greater spur to hyper-proliferation than the furling of the American nuclear umbrella.
Will no one utter a word in defense of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele? With attacks pouring in from both the left and the right, won’t someone at least pretend to take his side? Sigh. Must I do everything around here?
All right, I’ll give it a shot. Looking past the fact that I disagree with Chairman Mike on just about everything, and the fact that he has brought most of his trouble on himself, and the fact that letting party funds be spent at a bondage-themed Hollywood lounge was definitely not a smooth move for the titular head of the “family values” party, let me try to make the argument that he’s getting a bad rap. Kind of.
Chairman Mike committed his latest sin Monday, when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him whether “as an African American, you have a slimmer margin for error than another chairman would.”
“The honest answer is yes,” Steele said. “It just is. Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. We all – a lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play, and that’s just the reality of it.”
Well, it’s obvious that race is not the reason why Steele is in such trouble with the pooh-bahs of his party. They’re angry at him for being such an indefatigable self-promoter, for seeming to care more about his own career as an author, lecturer and television talking head than about the party’s fortunes, for spending the party’s money lavishly at a time when many Americans are suffering economic hardship, and for handling the party’s money so carelessly that $1,946.25 was spent at Voyeur West Hollywood, a topless club with a sadomasochistic theme.
That’s more than enough to get any party chairman in trouble, regardless of race or creed. But if you look narrowly at what he said, he’s surely right.
We’ve come a long way in this country, but it’s still true that the first woman or Latino or African American to hold any high-profile job inevitably comes under extra scrutiny. Does that enhanced scrutiny translate into a “slimmer margin for error,” as Stephanopoulos volunteered? Often it does.
Now, it’s also true that they don’t make margins wide enough to contain Chairman Mike’s transgressions. But consider the context. He is the first black leader of a party that has no African American members of Congress and that many black Americans, rightly or wrongly, see as indifferent or hostile to their interests. Steele has to deal with Republican officials who make boneheaded moves that perpetuate the party’s estrangement from African Americans, such as Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation that celebrated “Confederate History Month” without mentioning the tiny little detail known as slavery. Say what you want about Chairman Mike, he doesn’t have an easy job.
Republican grandees such as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former party chairman, huffed and puffed at Steele’s sociological observation as if they wouldn’t dream of even noticing he’s black. Conservative commentators and irate party activists called for him to resign. But meanwhile, the RNC was reporting that it had raised an impressive $11.4 million last month. Steele has indeed been a big spender, but he has proved to be a tireless and talented fundraiser as well.
Some high-powered Republican operatives are trying an end run around Steele’s RNC by forming a separate group, American Crossroads, to raise $52 million for GOP candidates nationwide. Among those involved are former party Chairmen Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie, and Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s political czar.
It’s not really possible to marginalize the party’s basic machinery, however, and unless his critics somehow get him to resign, Steele will be around at least through the year. So far, state party officials have been happy with all the attention that Steele has paid to them and nonchalant about the scandals that have the inside-the-Beltway crowd so exercised. Nobody’s going to be able ignore the chairman, if only because the people who book guests for television talk shows have his number on speed dial. He’s the perfect guest: You never know what he’s going to say.
OK, I realize that wasn’t a very effective defense. Sorry, Chairman Mike, I did the best I could. Give me a little more to work with next time.
Ralph C. Carmona
I was deeply moved by the movie “Stand and Deliver”, the 1988 motion picture starring actor Edward James Olmos, about the recently deceased Jaime Escalante. The public school teacher and Latino immigrant found fame at my alma mater, Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, by bringing national attention to racial discrimination involving Latino students.
Through sheer personality and drive, Escalante not only taught Garfield’s Mexican American students calculus but prepared them to pass college entrance exams – only to be wrongfully accused of cheating. It was classic racial profiling: Poor and segregated Mexican kids were not supposed to pass such tests.
His tireless effort rose above lowered student expectations integral to racial segregation. Escalante’s bilingual endeavor to push ganas, or desire, onto Garfield students turned conventional wisdom on its head. He was a life-changer for those aimless Latinos confined by the benign neglect of his colleagues and the structure of public schooling.
Then came the corporate and political influence, seeking to benefit from a teacher’s incredible classroom accomplishment. Escalante played along, failing to adequately apply his momentous fame to enhance public teaching. He became a motivational speaker and a “go-to Latino” for Republicans supporting voter-passed anti-Latino state measures during the 1990s to end emergency services for undocumented immigrants, affirmative action and bilingual education. He dismissed Latino critics, claiming that he “put East Los Angeles on the map” and squandered his goodwill with hostility toward other teachers. This blinded Escalante from seeing that his ganas or desire-driven charisma in a segregated Garfield environment was not automatically transferable to non-Latino classrooms in Sacramento.
I was one of those who experienced Garfield’s segregated Latino world. Like many of Escalante’s students, I intuitively avoided pondering and felt conflicted over my self-worth. The school’s internecine variations were there; be it immigrant status, gradations of color, linguistic or generation differences. A small percent of us were non-Latinos of different color or religion.
At our first-year orientation, the vice principal wished us well in our effort to avoid an expected 60 percent dropout rate. Like many, I was a non-college student destined for dead-end work, Vietnam or community college. The prevailing sentiment was that lingering sense of what Betty Friedan, in her classic “Feminine Mystique,” defines as a problem with no name.
The 1960s fundamentally changed that. My Escalante ganas came when some students became “Chicanos” and dared to see life as more than a “Mexican problem.” University of Southern California Chicano student protests gave me an affirmative action ticket to the campus; an admission based less on college exams or grades than my potential desire to learn and perform. My opportunity was not because of any single person, but a civil rights movement that opened doors for the poor and people of color on life’s margins. It reflected President Lyndon Johnson’s policies that created a political climate of outreach, integration and opportunity.
Before his portrayal of Escalante in “Stand and Deliver,” Olmos was among those who helped me in my life journey. I organized from scratch a 1982 Latino scholarship event in Pasadena. Following months of effort, I successfully recruited the actor, fresh from his starring role in “Zoot Suit,” to be my master of ceremonies. Over breakfast, Olmos shared the years of effort it took for him to find success. Impressed with my words of community engagement, he stopped me cold when I talked of a doctoral degree that I probably “will never finish.”
I will always remember his affirming response: “You will finish that degree, you understand? You will finish it.“
Those words changed my life. Like Escalante with his Garfield students, Olmos emboldened me to complete my doctorate.
In 1997, I opposed an English-only initiative and sought out Escalante at Sacramento’s Hiram Johnson High School. I wanted to know why he publicly supported a state ballot proposition that would undermine his bilingual approach to Latino students. Taking time to observe him in a Sacramento classroom, it became obvious that his teaching did not live up to the “Stand and Deliver” expectations. His Bolivian accent and bilingual assertions of ganas did not readily connect with a mostly non-Latino poor student class.
Over lunch, I quickly realized that he was clueless about the initiative he endorsed. Acknowledging this, Escalante left open a reconsideration of his position if I brought in Olmos and the late Sacramento Mayor Joe Serna to meet with him. However, he soon decided against any future meeting, leaving further discussion about his position with those pushing the initiative.
It was all about partisan politics – not teaching. Among the initiative’s supporters was Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who earlier considered appointing Escalante to fill an elected state superintendent of public instruction vacancy. Fortunately, he concluded that Escalante’s world was that of a classroom – not California public policy.
Students like those in Escalante’s Garfield class now permeate many of California’s public schools. We need more bilingual teachers like Escalante and public policies that positively affect student performance. A decade of failure to do either has contributed to the Golden State’s growing public school multiracial segregation, achievement gaps and dropouts.
To understand that is to know that Escalante stood and delivered for a classroom of Latino students at Garfield High School – not the broader world of public education.
Don Mette, the recently retired Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District chief collects $20,083 a month in retirement, $240,999 a year. Mette just made the infamous top 10 list of public employee pensioners in California. Compiled by the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, pension reform activists, Mette is No. 8 on the list.
The public knows the size of Mette’s pension because Sac Metro Fire contracts with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. To its credit, CalPERS voluntarily discloses such information.
By troubling contrast, Sacramento County Employees’ Retirement System refuses to disclose the names of its retirees and their pension earnings. Unlike CalPERS, the county retirement system is governed by the 1937 Retirement Act. County officials claim state law bars them from disclosing confidential information. But other 37 Act counties – including Fresno, Contra Costa and Stanislaus – have released it. Sacramento should too.
It’s not idle curiosity that motivates newspapers to seek such information. Soaring pension costs have put additional pressure on Sacramento County’s dangerously depleted finances. High pension obligations are part of the reason the county has been forced to reduce services and lay off hundreds of its employees.
After prodding by The Bee, SCERS released some information but not the most important – the identity of the biggest pensioners and the size of their pensions.
Still, as The Bee’s Robert Lewis reported in Public Eye on Thursday, what has been released is troubling enough: 245 former Sac County employees collect more than $100,000 in pensions. Some 125 of those $100,000-plus pensioners worked for the Sheriff’s Department, and 80 percent retired after 2003, when county supervisors substantially boosted retirement benefits.
In a visit to The Bee last year, CalPERS’ Rob Feckner surprised us by saying the $100,000 club “is something that needs to be looked at.” He’s right. State and local governments must reduce pension benefits for new hires to a reasonable level.
Overshadowed by the presidential signing of the historic health reform bill was a restructuring of the federal student loan program, signed last Tuesday.
While some private lenders understandably are squawking – the bill would end $8 billion a year in lucrative subsidies for them – much of the backlash is misplaced.
The latest legislation resolves what has been a running battle in the last half-century over which type of student loan program the federal government should offer.
Since the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government has offered two types: “direct student loans” (where the government makes loans directly to students) and “guaranteed student loans” (where the government pays fees to private lenders who make risk-free loans to students).
The legislation signed by President Barack Obama resolves the issue in favor of direct loans, signed originally by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958. It would eliminate the more recent guaranteed loans, added in 1965.
This is not a new “government takeover” of student loans, which have been a government-subsidized program from the beginning.
The reality is that the direct loan program costs taxpayers a lot less than the guaranteed loan program. A 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office study found that the federal government’s cost in the guaranteed loan program is $9.20 per $100 in loans, compared with $1.70 per $100 in the direct loan program. That’s a huge difference: five times more per loan in the guaranteed program – and it goes to lenders, not students.
The guaranteed loan program also has been plagued by scandal – state and federal investigations in 2007 that found that lenders were providing special favors, perks and kickbacks to get colleges to steer students to the guaranteed loan program.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, cutting out the middleman in favor of the direct loan approach is expected to save the U.S. government $61 billion over 10 years. That savings will be used to expand student financial aid (including the Pell Grant program).
Though private lenders fought the change, they will continue to benefit: They can compete to win lucrative contracts to service direct student loans.
For students, the direct loan program is easier: The college determines eligibility, sends out paperwork for signature and it’s done. Interest rates for the 2009-2010 school year are 5.6 percent for financially needy students and 6.8 percent for non-needy students – and this will be reduced in coming years.
There are also cost advantages for middle-class parents. The Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (for costs not covered by grants and student loans) has better interest rates in the direct loan program: 7.9 percent, vs. 8.5 percent for PLUS loans provided by private lenders.
Both the direct and guaranteed student loan programs are government programs. Neither is market-based. The issue is who should benefit from the government subsidies – students and taxpayers, broadly, or private lenders?
Despite some misguided backlash, the president and Congress made the right choice in favor of the direct student loan program.
Extracts icons or icon arrays from files (EXE, DLL, OCX, etc.) with ability to scan folders to search for EXE, DLL, OCX files, which contain icons. You can save extracted icons to file(s) – all from selected file, all from selected folder or selected icon only.
Supported formats to export icons are: ICO, BMP, JPEG, EMF, HTML. You can print extracted icons (all or selected only). Most of the operations can be performed through the command line.
What’s New in version 4.01:
Homepage: http://www.vlsoftware.net/
Download: exico.zip
File Size: 573KB
Standard Christmas Icons represent everything that is typically associated with
This specially designed set of holiday icons has everything you
Changing
Copyright © 2008
Best Freeware Blog | Buy Laptop | Business Software Reviews | astaga.com lifestyle on the net
Article Tags: Headline Story, Richard Lindzen
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, Is climate change real?
To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.
Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.
For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.
Source: gazettextra.com
Daily Random Recipe
INGREDIENTS:
Apologies for the absence of posts this week – I've moved house and my internet connection still hasn't been reconnected, so things will likely remain quiet until early next week…
As anger towards the Digital Economy Bill grows, some are fighting back against the bill in a variety of ways. ISP Talk Talk, who had been vocally against the bill ever since it was first proposed, has apparently now announced that it will not follow the more draconian aspects of the law. In an official blog post by the company, it says that it will fight in court any attempt to force it to do things it feels are unwise, and will continue to fight against the law politically:
After the election we will resume highlighting the substantial dangers inherent in the proposals and that the hoped for benefits in legitimate sales will not materialise as filesharers will simply switch to other undetectable methods to get content for free.In the meantime we stand by our pledges to our customers:
- Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it.
- If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.
Who knows if it will actually help, but it is nice to see an ISP willing to not just give in at this point.
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PhoneScoop has reviewed the HTC HD2 and they concluded:
The T-Mobile HTC HD2 is the best Windows Mobile phone on the market (though the Touch Pro 2 is no slouch if you need a keyboard). Near the end of this year, Microsoft will release the first Windows Phone 7 devices, but I think the HTC HD2 will hold its own against the newcomers, and I wouldn’t advise buyers to hold out if they find the HD2 appealing. It’s the most polished Windows Phone HTC has produced, with so many details accounted for and surprise features thrown in that they were almost too numerous to count. From the detailed calling screens that show you contact info, messages and Facebook updates for your caller, to the accelerometer gestures to silence the phone or activate the speakerphone, the HTC HD2 represents some of the most innovative thinking of one of the best smartphone makers around. I can’t imagine a first generation phone on Microsoft’s new mobile OS will have the same level of polish and completeness.
It isn’t all great news. The touchscreen doesn’t work as well as I’d like, especially in apps that should take the spotlight on such a large screen, like the Web browser and the GPS maps. There are some cool movie options from BlockBuster, but these are nearly ruined by the horrible, ancient Windows Media Player. The HTC HD2 may be one of the best smartphones for calling, messaging and business tasks, but it still concedes to Apple’s iPhone what the iPhone has always done best, which is entertainment. The HD2 is not a great pick for music, movies or games, and that’s a disappointment considering lush, expansive touchscreen. I’m also disappointed that T-Mobile dropped the Wi-Fi tethering feature I liked so much on the international version of this phone.
So, if you don’t mind putting in a little more effort, in the Web browser interface, the media player, etc, the HTC HD2 is a great phone. It gets so many things right that it’s a joy to use in day to day business. Even in its flaws, it isn’t a bad device, but it could be much better. In the end, the HD2 is an easy phone to recommend for buyers right now, no need to wait for the next big thing . . . and i do mean big.
Read their full review here.
Trader Joe's will offer only sustainable seafood by the end of 2012.
I have to admit the folks at Greenpeace are quite effective, resourceful, and clever. The NGO challenged a popular supermarket chain known for its organic, healthy food offerings. Trader Joe’s has positioned itself as the “neighborhood grocery store” and an eco-friendly company. So why did Greenpeace target this “green” company with one of its campaigns? Greenpeace believed there was something fishy about Trader Joe’s seafood procurement practices. And the environmental activists were right.
With threats of global warming and climate change looming larger than ever before, designers have taken up the task to come up with proposals that won’t need any land to stand. While most architects believe that the only way out of the problem is to build structures that float on open waters, there is no dearth of plans that take cities under the surface of water as well, where they run completely on renewable energy harvested onsite. Here is a list of 10 such superstructures that might define the future of urban architecture:
With Vista Codec Package installed, you won´t need to install any other codec or filter. Many user suggested default settings are implemented. It does not contain a media player. It does not associates filetypes.
With this package installed you will be able to use any media player (limited only by the players capabilities) to play DVD´s, movies and video clips of any format. Streaming video (real and quicktime) is supported in web browsers. Visit the homepage to get a 64bit Addon which enables xvid, divx and DVD playback in Vista´s MediaCenter.
Do you want to watch your favorite video in MediaCenter? These components are tested on Vista Ultimate x64. This release is fully compatible with the 32bit codecs installed by the Vista Codec Package. t is fully uninstallable through the Windows interface. This release will not install on a x86 systems.
Requires x64 Systems.
What’s New in version 2.5.2:
Homepage: http://shark007.net/
Download: x64Components_v252.exe
File Size: 15.63MB
ClassicPro is a plugin for Winamp that enables you to
Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform.
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