Re: Skateboard requires 2 hands to operate

"I will never own a phone which requires 2 hands to operate."

No problem. There is lots of choice. Personally, I love my 5,5" Galaxy Note 2. I *can* handle the phone: I still have 2 hands and my eyes get some comfort with the big screen too...

"If you dont like TouchWiz, then just install Nova. Problem solved."

Could not agree more. Way better UI than TouchWiz, but you still can use all Sammy's additional goodies.

Re: our data

Ah, so that must be that $7 million Google had to cough up in the US ?

Re: pointless stupidity

"No, it's very easy to grasp. However he fact that the atmosphere is saturated with water vapour, but not with CO2 seeems very hard for some people to grasp."

Given its nonlinear behaviour as greenhouse gas, puffing more CO2 into the atmosphere won't do much anymore. We'll suffocate of its abundance before dying of heat IMHO...

"And the fact that there is NO TREND in solar flux changes is hard for some people to grasp."

There's more to solar flux than an IR component. Other EM radiation types as well as particle outputs can all attribute to our climate in different ways. It's not the solar flux itself, but primarily its composition (as well as other cosmic radiation).

Concerning the CO2 greenhouse issue, there are multiple reasons to have great suspicions towards it. But most other (80%) climate changing factors have not nearly been researched as good as the (modeled...) 20% CO2 factor. It's just not a clear cut issue. Dwelling on CO2 is easy to sell to the public, but we may miss other more important factors while riding the CO2 bandwagon all the time. Funding should be spread more to give all possible attributing factors a good chance to be researched. That's my 2 cents at least.

Re: pointless stupidity

> "Because it's contradicted by actual evidence. Eg:"

A model does not equal "actual evidence"... At all..

> ""We find that water vapor is the dominant substance — responsible for

> about 50% of the absorption, with clouds responsible for about 25% —

> and CO2 responsible for 20% of the effect. The remainder is made up

> with the other minor greenhouse gases, ozone and methane for

> instance, and a small amount from particles in the air (dust and other

> "aerosols")."

>

> http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/

>

> 20% isn't "tiny, tiny"

Okay, a well written article and fine piece of scientific research. But you only pick an issue that helps your view and discard everything else it seems.

1) Modeling finds a 20% attribution of CO2, so would it not be well worth to look into the other 80% ?

2) Modeling finds that the CO2 attribution behaves non linear: "the impact of removing the CO2 is approximately seven times as large as doubling it" or as gary27 stated: "greenhouse effect of co2 now mostly done - think saturation law of diminishing returns";

3) Every model makes assumptions of values of other variables. In this case, the model greatly simplifies the earth and weather. It can therefore by no means be seen as being "actual evidence". It is, at most, a very good piece of work to understand what the effects of CO2 could have been, given a certain basic environment. It helps getting an understanding of the issues at hand, no more.

4) The article describes a negative net greenhouse effect of clouds, which of course creates a negative feedback to heating. Cloud cover also increases as more cosmic radiation falls upon earth, so which percentage of our current heating can be attributed to less cosmic radiation than usual ?

I mean, it's not so simple. Any model can find suspects for both cooling and heating. The real world is way more complex than that. I think CO2 is much overhyped. Farting animals and vulcanism ? Good suspects too. But we really don't want to get rid of our cows and pigs or welcome big vulcanic eruptions. We *can* get a grip on CO2, so come on, create world peace and join together to fight it.

Re: pointless stupidity

gary27, you made my day.

No one ever seems to point out the differences of IR absorption between all gases/vapours that enrich our atmosphere. The tiny, tiny greenhouse effect of CO2 in relation to others, (most of all plain water vapour being very, very abundant) seems to difficult to grasp...

Even small amounts of radiation differences we receive of our Sun have vastly greater effects.

It's not easy to jump of a popular bandwagon it seems. CO2 it is. It *must* be. Yeah... :(

"I now run my own mail server, since about a year, that has not let me down yet."

... it will though, at some time ...

I run my own mailserver now for 17 years and hardware failures will always get to you. Just make sure you have a good fallback server.

Re: Ads

- besides, the Nokia turn-by-turn navigation is unbelievably chatty and less intelligent towards the driver than Googles. I used both upto very recently and as a reasonable driver, the Nokia directions are just a pain in the *ss compared to Googles turn-by-turn solution. Google just takes the user seriously. Nokia not so much.

Re: Very strange stuff

"So is it possible that it's producing energy through very low-level fusion only happening deep in the core?"

Not necessary. It's even bigger than Jupiter and both Jupiter and Saturn produce more heat than they receive. The steady compression of all that mass + slow natural radioactive decay produce more than enough heat to reach a few hundred degrees.

Re: @Dana D

@AC 15:00

U need to *RTFP*: "have had" != "runs round with" ...

Re: Linus, Jobs, Ballmer

Hmm, if he'd arrive at the party in all his resurrected Shinyness, wouldn't it be a Dead Man's Party (tm) by definition ?

Re: This is new...

@Sean Timarco Baggaley "On styluses"

If you have a spare moment, I'd suggest to try a Samsung Galaxy Note II somewhere and put it through some handwriting recognition moves. I have a crappy handwriting at best and the Note II gets it still...

It's rather amazing to see how far this technique has come given that there are a lot less devices with styluses these days.

Re: I don't understand why ...

@shade82000: "But, if you want an ipad get an ipad. If you dont care about the ipad get an Android. Why buy somethinig that looks like an ipad?"

LOL, for *this* price, I'd buy it just to f***off my Apple loving colleagues.. :)

Having a couple of good laughs for a few tenners is like going to the theater: only afterwards you have a nice toy leftover to play with too...

Re: Dark Matter ..

@HFG

And TY for this one too :)

Re: Dark Matter ..

@HolyFreakinGhost

TYVM for the food for thought.

I only just recently started taking more interest in the DM/DE physics and don't know all these facts yet, so your story helps. An amateur with a keen mind, no more. It needs a bit of time to sink all in though.. :) I am thinking about an astronomy study after my retirement: a.t.m., I'm just an IT guy and need another 15 years or so before I really get the time to do that.

Re: Dark Matter ..

@HolyFreakinGhost "The point of dark matter is that is *does* clump."

I'm not mathematically involved, but I beg to differ... :) If it really did clump, it would concentrate right in the core of stars, galaxy's etc. or in itself for that matter. It does not. It just floats in the vicinity of great lumps of matter (halo's of galaxies/clusters), "trying to get away" but grabbed by gravity. Gravity seems to win upto a point where the repulsion gets the upper hand, so it ends up in an awkward equilibrium.

This is for me the only way I can explain it for myself as far as I understand it, but, IANAM(athgeek)...

Re: Dark Matter ..

"Why doesn't dark matter clump ?"

Dark matter has a sort of repulsive trade, at least towards regular matter, but it seems to dark matter itself too.

It doesn't clump: it wants to distribute itself as evenly as possible in the available space and would have done so if it wasn't affected by gravity.

A sort of an energy field for which we have no means of detection rather that the gravity with which it interacts.

Very strange stuff indeed...

Re: That would be £40 rather than £50 cheaper, and the magic word is

@Steve Todd: "Software. There still isn't much that has been tablet optimised for the Nexus."

Huh ? Really ? Are you sure we're living on the same planet ?

About not selling to non-whities..

"That's a wee bit harsh!"

Euh, no, just a teeeny weeeny little bit.... :) Just google for it.

Re: From Steve in heaven:

"Sent from my iPhone 7 of cloud 9, fully assimilated. Resistance is futile."

There, fixed it for ya... :)

Re: analysts BS

Pre-ordered 2 Samsung Galaxy Note 2's just yesterday :) . Let's see how that goes...

Re: Their is?

You need to be an AC today if you're willing to happily announce that you're an iAddict...

Re: Grand Challenge

Not only that, but the rover:

- has limited energy to use per day

- has limited cpu power to steer itself safely around hazards

- crew needs to get accustomed with driving, so it won't go at top speed for sure

- may find science underway that may arouse the scientists

- etc.

It's the first ride and there's no way to help the machine out of its pickles: it will take a lot longer than just a few hours to drive to Glenelg for sure...