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Censorship

Submission + - Is Facebook censoring political groups?

Dynamus writes: I just found out that the biggest Facebook group against the creation of a nationwide cellphone registry in Mexico has been disappeared. So far, Facebook has not given any reason. This could easily be interpreted as censorship, but I want to ask your opinion. The subject of the national cellphone registry (RENAUT) has been the source of a lot of debate in Mexico. Many people think that giving that much information to the government (allowing them to link you directly with your cellphone number) is a lot of risk. Scandals have already happened when it has been proved that Mexico's government sells or simply missuses huge databases of confidential information regarding its citizens
Biotech

Submission + - Detection of Parkinson's by Voice Analysis 1

lee1 writes: "The early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease can slow down or even stop
its progression, but established methods, such as brain
imaging, are expensive, and inappropriate for screening large
populations. Prof. Shimon Sapir at the University of Haifa has developed a new technique
for early diagnosis that is reliable, non-invasive, simple, and inexpensive.
The technique merely requires the patient to read a few simple
sentences, which are acoustically analyzed by a computer program.
The analysis detects subtle abnormalities in speech that are present
in the early stages of the disease but are not perceptible to listeners.
This appears to be an application of the author’s technique for
extracting vowel sounds from short phrases and analysing them to detect nervous system disorders."

Comment Re:So, what now? (Score 1) 658

Government spends because you demand the services they provide. If you are unhappy with those services please list those services that you personally will be happy to do without. And while you are contemplating which government agencies you can live without please consider the downside to life without said agency. For example, no FDA and drug companies can do whatever they want with the drugs your aging parents take. Consider the company behind the Extenze ads. Now think of them as the industry model.

Because I demand it. Wow. Do you think in the absence of an FDA that people would start taking drugs that would kill them. (I don't know Jebediah, mah' ma keeled near completely over when she downed that bottle of AZT the chiropracter prescribed for her corns.). or that there wouldn't be private agencies that would step up and do drug analysis, and since they had an economic incentive to maximize the cost/benefit of drugs, that this would not be done better, and in a much more cost effective way.

Let's do a little mind experiment. Perhaps we can have a government agency that approves code -- after all, bad code can endanger lives, and almost any line of code anywhere can be a source of danger -- and we can all submit our code to the government before it is production ready.

Do you think such a system would improve the quality of code?

Comment Are we really worth saving? (Score 1) 865

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful." -- Well if we aren't clever enough to handle it, we will perish. So what. Another extinct life form. Since Lovelock will be dead in 10 years or so, he has nothing to fear.

Comment Re:Unions (Score 2, Informative) 377

And you forgot how racist the Unions were. That the AFL was only integrated in 1935, by federal decree -- as a sop by Roosevelt, to help win over the previously Republican Blacks (remember Lincoln was a Republican and the south was staunchly Democrat). and all the "official" Railroad unions were closed to blacks -- except the porter's union which was all black. And no, I don't remember how badly most workers were treated by their employers, since my grandfather was kept out of the Shoemaker's union, and had to start his own shoemaking business. Perhaps you can enlighten me with some concrete story of employer evil.

Comment Re:Go go Nanny State... (Score 1) 794

Yeah. Private industry would be happy to poison us. That way we would all be dead and they would have no more customers!. Since most computer programmers refer to our "customers" as users, does that make us equivalent to drug dealers. Your error is assuming that when the government legislation equals protection, as opposed to harm. If you regulate what goes into foods, and force restaurants to work within dietary regulations, then you actual produce more McDonald's, who are able to work within a regulatory environment. All you have accomplished is to highen the cost of opening a hamburger joint, to compete with McDonald's. Regulation serves as a barrier to entry for worthwhile competitors, and the process whereby regulators create regulations that serve vested interests, is called Regulatory Capture. Yeah, they have terms for it, it is a quite widely understood process. As for you. Idiot would do or Government Worker. Sorry, I am repeating myself here.

Submission + - Murdoch says Amazon e-book prices kill paper books (wired.com)

hrimhari writes: The settlement between Amazon and Macmillian got the attention of a known dinossaur. Consistent to his views, Mr. Murdoch wants to defend his book editors by killing the cheaper solution.

"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99," Murdoch said. "They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge," he said. "But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books."


Submission + - Russia Says Apophis will Certainly Hit The Earth (usatoday.com) 3

rubycodez writes: USA Today reports that Russia wishes to start a new space project to deflect the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which instead of missing the earth as NASA claims, will certainly hit it by Russian calculations. They aren't going to let Bruce Willis blow it the hell up with nu-cu-lar weapons, instead planning on using "basic physics" to alter its trajectory.

Comment And its not just North America (Score 1) 207

Now if we can just see Europe and the Middle East Before civilization crept in. Or perhaps India, and China. Probably a lot of trees there thousands of years ago. Maybe we should just depopulate Europe. Make into into a great big foresty theme park. Or better yet, lets just depopulate the world and then we can all enjoy beautiful trees. You go first. I will make sure that everyone else drinks their kool-aid. I promise, I will drink mine too.
Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
Image

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."

Submission + - EFF wants to know are the Feds cyberstalking? (arstechnica.com)

rossendryv writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation and UC Berkeley's Samuelson Center filed suit in California's Northern District, asking the court to force a number of government agencies to hand over any documents they have concerning the use of social networking sites as part of investigative procedures.
Image

New Food-Growth Product a Bit Hairy 243

MeatBag PussRocket writes "An article from Marketplace.org reports, 'A Florida company has developed an all-natural product that it says could revolutionize how food is grown in the US. It's called Smart Grow, but it might be a tough sell. It's inexpensive. It eliminates the need for pesticides, so it's environmentally friendly, but it's human hair. Plant pathologists at the University of Florida have found the mats eliminate weeds better than leading herbicides and can also make plants grow up to 30 percent larger.'"
Unix

(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks? 2362

So the other day I messaged another admin from the console using the regular old 'write' command (as I've been doing for over 10 years). To my surprise he didn't know how to respond back to me (he had to call me on the phone) and had never even known you could do that. That got me thinking that there's probably lots of things like that, and likely things I've never heard of. What sorts of things do you take for granted as a natural part of Unix that other people are surprised at?

Security

Submission + - Another Way The LHC Could Destroy The Planet (arxivblog.com) 7

KentuckyFC writes: "Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the LHC, another nightmare scenario has emerged that some critics believe could cause the particle accelerator to explode. The culprit this time is not an Earth-swallowing black hole but a "Bose supernova" in the accelerator's superfluid helium bath. Physicists have been playing with Bose Einstein Condensate or BECs for almost 20 years now. But in 2001, one group discovered that placing them in a powerful magnetic field could cause the attractive forces between atoms to become repulsive. That caused their BEC to explode in a Bose supernova, which was little more than a novelty when it was no more than a microscopic blob of cold matter. But superfluid liquid helium is also BEC. And physicists have suddenly remembered that the LHC is swimming in 700,000 litres of the stuff while zapping it by some of the most powerful magnetic fields on the planet. So is the LHC a Bose supernova waiting to go off? Not according to the CERN theory division which has published its calculations that show the LHC is safe (abstract). It also points out that no other superfluid helium handling facility has mysteriously blown itself to pieces."

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