Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Coulson held in perjury inquiry (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
HarryatRock
HarryatRock writes: "BBC reporting arrest of Prime Minister David Cameron's former director of communications Andy Coulson.
A police spokeswoman said: "Officers from Strathclyde Police's Operation Rubicon team detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning under section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act 1995 on suspicion of committing perjury before the High Court in Glasgow.""

Comment Abraham Darby (Score 1) 542

by HarryatRock (#40063063) Attached to: Of currently dead inventors, my favorite is ...

Abraham Darby for starting the industrial revolution.
From Wikipedia
In 1709, at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, England, Abraham Darby began to fuel a blast furnace with coke instead of charcoal.
His new process made lots of cheap good quality cast iron, used for pots and pans, fire grates, and bridges! This lead to massive expansion of transport (lots of heavy iron to move), and could be said to have started "consumerism", with barges moving vast quantities of iron goods along the canals.
Politics

Submission + - Chile Threatens To Drop Out Of TPP Negotiations Due To Ridiculous US Demands Abo (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "You may remember that some officials in Chile recently began wondering what benefit they would get from agreeing to be a part of TPP. It seems that view is going even further. There was just another negotiating round and it appears (as we've expected, but don't know for sure because the US negotiators, led by Ron Kirk refuse to be even remotely transparent) that the US's strong position on IP is scaring off Chile. A high level government official is now saying that the country is considering pulling out of the TPP negotiations unless the US "significantly moderates its intellectual property demands." The article suggests that Chile is willing to move forward with much of the rest of the agreement, but the ridiculous USTR position on IP is giving it reason to be concerned."
Facebook

Submission + - Winklevoss Twins Launch Zurker - The Social Network Owned By You (zurker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Winklevoss twins have launched a new social networking site to rival Facebook, except this site comes with a twist in that everyone that signs up to the new site during its beta test gets shares in the company. This "owned by you" approach is a novel way to combat security concerns surrounding sites like facebook and google but do you think Zurker will even see the light of day in terms of every day use? Will this go the same way as Google+ or will some people get rich in the process?
Science

Submission + - Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic

Submitted by DaneM
DaneM writes: Recently, a group of student researchers from Yale University brought home a previously-undiscovered fungus that has a voracious appetite for polyurethane. For those not aware, polyurethane comprises many garden hoses, truck seats, shoes, and other durable plastic items--and will be around for your great-grandchildren to watch decompose if you throw it in the dump today. Depending on further study, this new organism may prove to be a solution to a significant part of our slow-decomposing waste problem.
Politics

Submission + - Climate Change: Conservative politics still have no clue (smh.com.au)

Submitted by hairyfish
hairyfish writes: In Australia, acting NSW Premier, Andrew Stoner, has dismissed extreme weather predictions for the state of NSW by the federal government's Climate Commission as ''alarmist''.
"We have heard of all our dams drying up in the past. We've heard predictions of the central coast and other coastal parts of the state going under water, the polar ice caps melting. I'm sorry, none of this has happened. As time goes on I think these people's credibility will be found wanting.''
The Military

UK In Danger From Electromagnetic Bomb, Says Defense Secretary 268

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the dastardly-soviets dept.
judgecorp writes "Britain must build defenses against an EMP bomb, the UK Secretary of Defense Phillip Hammond told a conference today. Electromagnetic Pulse devices mimic the result of a solar flare or a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, creating a storm of electromagnetic radiation, which can break mobile networks and satellite systems. Any preparation for solar storms must also consider the possibility of deliberate electromagnetic events, warns Hammond."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Launched, Tested (hothardware.com) 3

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "AMD lifted the veil on their new Trinity A-Series mobile processor architecture today. Trinity has been reported as offering much-needed CPU performance enhancements in IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) but also more of AMD's strength in gaming and multimedia horsepower, with an enhanced second generation integrated Radeon HD graphics engine. AMD's A10-4600M quad-core chip is comprised of 1.3B transistors with a CPU base core clock of 2.3GHz and Turbo Core speeds of up to 3.2GHz. The on-board Radeon HD 7660G graphics core is comprised of 384 Radeon Stream Processor cores clocked at 497MHz base and 686Mhz Turbo. In the benchmarks, AMD's new Trinity A10 chip outpaces Intel's Ivy Bridge for gamingbut can't hold a candle to it for standard compute workloads or video transcoding."
Piracy

Finland: Open WiFi Access Point Owner Not Liable For Infringement 156

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the pirating-play-goers dept.
New submitter mjrauhal writes "In Finland, the operator of an open WiFi access point was found not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said access point. The operation of such access points would have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district court ruling."
Microsoft

Submission + - Forbes Names Microsoft's Steve Ballmer names worst CEO

Submitted by _0x783czar
_0x783czar writes: Microsoft haters gleefully have latched on to the latest scoop that a Forbes columnist has named Steve Ballmer the worst CEO. It seems that the article has leveled some strong accusations of irresponsible and ineffective business practices; claiming that Microsoft has not progressed over the last 12 years of Ballmer's leadership.

http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/14/microsoft-steve-ballmer-worst-ceo/

(full disclosure: I'm not a Microsoft fan myself and tend to agree with this piece.)
Science

Submission + - Warmest 12-month Period Recorded in US (wunderground.com) 6

Submitted by seanzig
seanzig writes: Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground provides a good overview of the State of the Climate Report from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). May 2011 through Apr. 2012 broke the previous record (Nov. 1999 — Oct. 2000). A number of other interesting records (e.g., warmest March on record) and stats emerged. It just presents the data and does not surmise anything about the causes or what should be done about it.
Science

Mini Mammoth Once Roamed Crete 50

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-get-small dept.
ananyo writes "Scientists can now add a 'dwarf mammoth' to the list of biological oxymorons that includes the jumbo shrimp and pygmy whale. Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed — which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant (abstract). The species is the most extreme example of insular dwarfism yet found in mammoths."
Medicine

Submission + - Humans have been performing skull surgery for 10,000 years (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: We oh-so-resourceful humans have been performing brain surgery — successfully, mind you — for up to 10,000 years. In fact, the act of cutting open the skull is likely the oldest surgical procedure humans have ever performed.

A paper by Dr. Giorgio Sperati in Italian medical journal ACTA Otorhinolaryngologica Italica which tracks craniotomies throughout history. According to Sperati, evidence suggests that craniotomies — surgeries involving removing a section of the skull in order to access the brain — were first being performed in the Neolithic Age, which lasted from 8000-5000 BC. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that anthropologists M. Prunières and Paul Broca suggested that the marks were the result of surgery, although they originally argued that such surgery was inspired by mystic, rather than medical, causes.

Sperati notes that nearly half of patients survived craniotomies — and with evidence of regrown bone around the incisions on some skulls, some of those patients must have lived for years. That’s a stunning fact considering neolithic surgeons didn’t have operating rooms, antibiotics, anything resembling sterile conditions — or even metal tools.

Slashdot Top Deals

PURGE COMPLETE.

Close