Link Collection

An international team of researchers have proposed a way to slow global warming that would help people living in poor countries right now instead of taking decades to show any impact...and might actually be able to work in practice. The proposal addresses global warming without requiring a reduction in fossil fuel usage. By 2050, the amount of global warming would be reduced by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about 1/3 of the warming projected if nothing is done), much better than the normal proposals that focus on carbon dioxide emissions. The reductions in low-level ozone and black carbon would yield immediate health benefits--700,000 to 4.7 million premature deaths would be avoided because of the cleaner air, and crop yields would enable farmers to produce at least 30 million more metric tons of food each year. This also avoids the political issue of global warming--dealing with dirty snow, poor crops and diseased lungs would seem to be less controversial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/countering-climate-change-without-waiting-for-a-payoff.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all


An increasing number of Eastern states have turned to gambling as a way to attract tourists and get more tax dollars. Recently New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania have opened up and/or started huge expansions of casino locations--construction projects like the $4 bil one in New York create a lot of jobs now and in the future and lead to huge tax revenue boosts:
http://news.yahoo.com/casino-plans-sprout-us-states-seek-revenue-171416316.html


Column about the Internet blackout tomorrow, where Reddit, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, Mozilla, Tucows, and dozens of other websites will be offline to protest the 2 proposed copyright laws: SOPA and PIPA. SOPA and PIPA are attempts to combat Internet piracy that occurs outside the US, where US laws do not apply, by making those sites invisible to US citizens by forcing ISPs and other service providers to wipe the names of infringing sites from DNS records (basically making the domain names go away). Unfortunately, the way that SOPA and PIPA are being implemented has a number of flaws that will create a number of problems...they are still making changes to the laws (including reducing some DNS blocking) and my guess is that there will be a series of tweaks before long:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/internet-blackout-has-been-brought-you-the-us-congress-184227


Passengers flying from Miami to London on British Airways were terrified when an announcement said that the plane was going to crash and make an emergency water landing!  The passengers were upset that they were afraid that they were about to die and it took 30 seconds for a flight attendant to apologize for the intercom for playing the crash landing message in error:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087427/BA-flight-crew-mistakenly-play-recorded-crash-message-flight-London.html


Report that RIM is actively meeting with almost every company that might be interested in either a part of all of RIM, in addition to being in talks to license its software to other vendors. The report states that RIM is trying really hard to get Samsung to buy them, where Samsung may benefit by integrating BlackBerry Messenger and several enterprise features into its Android devices:
http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/17/research-in-motion-pushing-for-sale-to-samsung/


Samsung was asked about the report and said that they are not interested in buying RIM. RIM's stock went up 8.04% today after the report about RIM trying to sell the company to Samsung, but dropped about 5% in after-hours trading after Samsung denied any interest in RIM:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/17/us-rim-idUSTRE80G1Q520120117