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Submission + - link between religion and violence.

Submitted by niloroth on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @05:54PM

niloroth writes: This study finds a link between violence and scripture. "Even among our participants who were not religiously devout, exposure to God-sanctioned violence increased subsequent aggression. That the effect was found in such a sample may attest to the insidious power of exposure to literary scriptural violence." What does this say about fundamentalists of all religions, and for the atheists that responded in the same way? Does this mean that religious scripture should have a 18+ rating? Does this mean that a video game with a religious theme is the most dangerous thing in the world?

Submission + - Five common Ajax design patterns that make sense

Submitted by IndioMan on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @05:22PM

IndioMan writes: Sure, Ajax is the Web 2.0 buzzword that everyone wants associated with their site. But what does it really mean? And how are engineers integrating it into their sites at an architectural level. This article covers the basics of Ajax and shows some Ajax design patterns that have become proven best practice with Web 2.0 development.

Submission + - Splat! Photomicrographs of roadkill bugs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @04:57PM

An anonymous reader writes: As well as some very cool pics showing in stark detail what happens when bug meets windscreen, there's an interesting story here about what you can do with a scanning electron microscope and some ingenuity. Like testing out the optimum speed for bug splatting, and finding an Italian rice paddy where the air was thick with potential victims.

Journal SPAM: Of Experts and Editors 1

Journal by narramissic on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @03:45PM

Recently it has become even more apparent to me that experts and editors play an important role, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Slashdot's own Firehose section. While the democratic method of choosing top stories seems to be largely effective, with the best stuff generally getting the most votes, the crowd often skips over the hidden gem that an editor would find, fact check, polish, and post to the front page. My little Firehose rant aside, this is the sort of thing I've been ponderin

Submission + - The Coevolution of Lice & Their Hosts

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @03:23PM

eldavojohn writes: "It might be an uncomfortable subject but parasites are an interesting subject when it comes to evolution. Ever wonder if pocket gophers have lice? Well, they do. And most interesting of all is the evolution of these lice mirroring the evolution of gophers. To study the genes of lice may shed just as much light on evolutionary trees as studying the genes of the actual host the lice has evolved to. The most unsettling result from these studies is that human head lice and human pubic lice (crabs) vary so greatly that they are in two separate genera. There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas. Scientists came to the conclusion, "which they published today in BMC Biology, is just as striking as their earlier one about head lice. But it is hardly the same. We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas.""

Submission + - Travel Back in Time Not Possible

Submitted by anthemaniac on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:18PM

anthemaniac writes: Time travel has long been one of those "theoretically possible" things that makes Sci-Fi thrive. But while going forward in time is still perhaps possible, going back has been all but ruled out, according to an article (and accompanying videos) at LiveScience. Chiming in are four scientists who think about this a lot: Brian Greene, Charles Liu, Michio Kaku and J. Richard Gott. Liu flatly states: "It is not possible for you and me to travel backward in time."

Submission + - Best Buy Says Dual-Site System 'Human Error'

Submitted by

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @07:58PM

An anonymous reader writes: eWeek is reporting that Best Buy is in a bit of hot water with the Conneticut Attorney General. Evidently, the issue stems from having an intra-store Web site that has different prices than the Web prices, but guarantees customers to be the same. Best Buy has gone on the record as blaming employees. From the story:

"Best Buy officials, while admitting 'human error' among its workers, denies any evil intent and says the false statements apparently made by store employees were a result of confusion and inadequate employee training... The intrastore version is showcased in store kiosks using Internet Explorer and is intended to show customers information about products available in the store, along with their official prices. The problem stems from Best Buy's price-matching policy, which promises to match the price of other retailers, and it explicitly includes BestBuy.com... The problematic scenario happened when customers saw a low Web price and went into a Best Buy physical location to trigger the price match and get that low price. Employees would agree to match the price and would say they are calling up the Web site to verify the claim. Instead of calling up the Web site, though, employees would access the intrastore version of the site, which looked identical (other than its pricing) to the site, and then used that to 'prove' the online pricing didn't exist."

Submission + - Amazon... we have a (password) problem...

Submitted by

poodlehat

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:55PM

poodlehat writes: "I was on Amazon.com earlier today to check on an order I placed. I went to log in, and accidentally appended some extra characters to the end of my password. Me, being a lazy typist, decided to hit enter and re-enter my password on the inevitable login rejection screen. Well, imagine my surprise when the site let me straight into my account! I logged back out and intentionally typed something completely wrong in the password field and got rejected, so it it definitely only checking up to the number of characters in the stored password. This seems totally unacceptable to me — the two "keywords" should have to match exactly, right? Or is this behavior considered acceptable in the security world? I tried to find a technical contact at Amazon.com, the customer service page just doesn't feel like it would cut it on this one... anyone have a contact?"

Submission + - Pioneer in Global Warming Reasearch Now Skeptical

Submitted by The Underwriter on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:27PM

The Underwriter writes: Article from Canada's National Post, March 2, 2007

"Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity' (Wikipedia), a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's 'potential risks are very great' and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off 'spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.'"

In light of the volumes of research conducted since then, Dr. Allegre recently renounced his previous views. He now believes global warming is "over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank."

" 'The cause of this climate change is unknown,' he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the 'science is settled.' "

Part 13 of the National Post's "Deniers" series, about scientists who contradict the majority opinion on climate science.

Submission + - What does it take to survive the Slashdot effect?

Submitted by

Dave

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:26PM

Dave writes: "How much hardware, bandwidth, etc. does it take for a server to survive the Slashdot effect? Is the Fark or Digg effect worse than Slashdot? Is there a guaranteed way to avoid these effects?"

Feed Navy Researches Vomit Beam (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @06:12PM

Set phasers to "puke"? The military works on a weapon that makes people so dizzy they fall over and throw up. It can supposedly shoot through walls, too. In Danger Room.

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