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Medicine

Scientists Recover Black Death RNA From Exhumed Victims 105

Richard.Tao writes "Scientists have recovered the RNA of the virus that caused the plague by digging through an English mass grave, and compiling [from several partial examples] the genetics of the virus. Though the plague still persists, scientists have believe the ancient strain was different due to a different onset of symptoms."
Security

Security Researcher Threatened With Vulnerability Repair Bill 231

mask.of.sanity writes "A security consultant who quietly tipped off an Australian superannuation fund about a web vulnerability that potentially put millions of customers at risk has been slapped with a legal threat demanding he allow the company access to his computer, and warned he may be forced to pay the cost of fixing the flaw. A legal document (PDF) sent from the company demanded that the researcher provide its technical staff with access to his computer. The company acknowledged the researcher's work was altruistic and thanked him for his efforts, but warned that the disclosure, which was not previously made public, may have breached Australian law. The researcher had run a batch file to access about 500 accounts, which was then handed to the company to demonstrate the direct object reference vulnerability."
Apple

Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac? 692

hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"
Space

Astronauts As Alien Life Hunters? 172

astroengine writes "Ever since the last NASA space shuttle mission touched down in Florida on July 21, there has been a spirited debate in articles and blogs across the Internet over the future of humans in space. Everyone seems to be asking: What's the point of spending shedloads of cash getting mankind into space when robots can do it at a fraction of the cost? Well, pending any great (and unexpected) advance in robotics, our adaptability in space may be our biggest asset. Ultimately, the hunt for extraterrestrial life may need an astronaut to physically push deeper into space." Also, who wants to let the robots have all the fun?
The Almighty Buck

Ask Slashdot: How Do You View the Wall Street Protests? 1799

__roo writes "The New York Times reports that the Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired hundreds of Facebook pages, Twitter posts, and Meetup events, and that 'blog posts and photographs from all over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but also economic injustice.' What do Slashdotters think? Do you relate to the 99% stories? Do they make you angry — either at the system, or at the protesters? If it's at the protesters, is it rational or a just-world effect?"

Comment Same as iPhone games (Score 1) 342

The iPhone game market caused the same race-to-the-bottom that appears to have happened for eBooks. Game developers make an median of $3000 per iPhone game, clearly not enough to sustain anyone but development teams who live in Tadjikistan. Oversupply made iPhone games a bloodbath, and it looks like it's the same for eBooks (but, I assume, far worse because it's easier to write a median quality book than a median quality iPhone game).

Comment My Kinect video experience (Score 1) 81

I watch Netflix and Hulu + using my Xbox+Kinect with a DSL link, which saves a lot of money compared to Comcast, the cable TV monopoly in my area, which I used to use until six months ago or so. My observations:

1. The Kinect is a detriment to my TV watching experience, not a benefit. About once every 2 or 3 nights, the Xbox will start fast-forwarding or fast-rewinding for no apparent reason. The Kinect software did it, either because my wife or I said something it interpreted as a command, or because the actors on the TV commanded the Kinect to do it. I'm told the Kinect software attempts to subtract the Xbox's audio output from the room's environmental sound, in order to prevent the latter; but in my personal experience it seems to happen sometimes anyway. I know it's the Kinect because my wireless controller turns itself off after a few minutes, and it's always off when this event occurs. By the way, the event does suck; it's not minor. It takes about a minute to fumble with the controller to turn it on and rewind to where we were. We don't use voice command for this because my wife and I are usually shouting or throwing things at each other, and voice command isn't amenable to panic situations.

2. I love this setup for the ability to watch our favorite series one-after-another without waiting a week for each new show. However, now that NFL football season has started, I miss football. A lot. The PS3 we also have next to the TV has a new NFL Ticket option, I'm told, but it's over $300 for the year, which I can't afford.

3. More minor point: About once per week, the Xbox used to display an unwanted Kinect UI at the bottom of the screen in response to me stretching my arms out, shifting my position, or otherwise moving a little whilst sitting on the couch. This problem was unintentionally fixed by my wife when she actually rotated the Kinect to point away from us, and to point right at the wall, because she is sure there is some network hack available that will let strangers use the Kinect camera to spy on us as we sit in our living room. (Yes, the kids rotate the Kinect camera back to face them when they play Kinect games.)

Although point #2 is the most pedestrian comment above, it's the most important one. Content is the killer app. Not voice command while watching TV. As msobkow posted above, I, too, have always heard complaints about being able to access content, and I have never heard anyone complain about not being able to use gestures and voice to control their television.
Earth

Interviews: Ask Technologist Kevin Kelly About Everything 135

Kevin Kelly has for decades been involved in some of the most interesting projects I know about, and in his roles as founding editor (and now editor at large) of Wired Magazine and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog has helped spread the word about many others. Kelly is probably as close to a Rennaisance man as it's possible to be in the 21st century, having more-than-passing interest and knowledge in a range of topics from genetic sequencing and other ways that we can use measurement in pursuit of improved health to how technology is used and reused in real life. Among other projects, he's also the founder of CoolTools, which I consider to be (unsurprisingly) the closest current equivalent to the old Whole Earth Catalogs. (Disclaimer: I've had a few reviews published there, too.) (He's also one of the founders of The WELL, now part of Salon.) Kelly is also Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Long Now Foundation, the group which for years has been designing a clock to ring on 10,000 years in the future. Below, ask questions of Kelly, bearing in mind please the Slashdot interview guidelines: ask as many questions as you want, but please keep them to one per comment. He'll get back soon with his answers.
Image

Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas Screenshot-sm 283

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. 'When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,' said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski. 'Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.' The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E."
Facebook

Poole To Zuckerberg: You’re Doing It Wrong 371

An anonymous reader writes "At South by Southwest Interactive 2011 in Austin, Texas this week, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (also known as 'moot') took the stage to talk about various online issues. One of these was how important anonymity is on the Internet and how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get it."
Facebook

Facebook May Bust Up the SMS Profit Cartel 262

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes "Fortune had an interesting article recently about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans. 'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.' A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company a Thursday. The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps. The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

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