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Enlightenment

Submission + - Two young atheists visit the Creation Museum[PICS]

Submitted by christinabelle
christinabelle writes: Save yourself (and your money) by browsing through these images rather than attending the museum, located near Cincinnati. With the exception of a few videos, the museum's exhibits are documented in their entirety. The homemade t-shirts are worth a look alone. Look no further, here are your Answers in Genesis...
Television

Submission + - great blogger at M2TV makes Comcast cower (multichannel.com)

Submitted by
bill jackson
bill jackson writes: ""Comcast: the Fleecing of a Subscriber"..... This blogger, Mary McNamara, has really caught them this time! She's a regular reporter for Multichannel News (which is pretty much the bible of the cable industry) — and she spanks Comcast on her blog. She says she's "fed-up" with their "bait-and-switch and shakedown tactics."...and she gets very very specific about the Comcast consumer rip-off games. http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330/post/4 0010804.html?"
Movies

Submission + - Michael Moore's new "Sicko" leaked on BitT (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by
Jared
Jared writes: "Michael Moore went so far as to stash a copy of his new documentary "Sicko," a scathing indictment of the US healthcare system, in Canada over fears the Feds would seize it since a portion of it was filmed in Cuba despite the current US embargo against it. Buyt, it won't matter after all since a copy of it has been leaked on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8846/Michael+Moore's+ new+documentary+%22Sicko%22+leaked+on+BitTorrent"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Getting into American Election Business!

Submitted by myspace-cn
myspace-cn writes: The 800 pound gorilla of software development has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes(PDF WARNING) to New York State Election Law drafted by Microsoft attorneys that has been circulating among the Legislature. These changes would gut the source code escrow and review provisions provided current LAW!! There's more information on Bo Lipari's web blog and on Bradblog.com Ain't it time to get rid of these machines?!
Editorial

Submission + - Closed captioning in web video

Submitted by
mforbes
mforbes writes: "I, like many geeks, enjoy watching TV, movies, and streamed video. However, I suffer from a problem known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), which essentially means that I often have difficulties separating the sounds of human voices from various background noises.

When watching TV and when watching movies at home, this isn't a problem, as I can simply turn on the closed captioning. I never watch any television programs without CCTV, actually, and find radio to be an annoyance for the same reason.

Given this, and that CAPD only effects two to three percent of the population (see the preceding link), how much effort would it take the major purveyors of internet video (the broadcasting majors, etc) to include an option for CCTV? I ask this not as a technical expert, although I doubt the bandwidth required would be more than 1% of that required for the video already being presented, but as someone who simply cannot understand much of the dialogue due to this handicap.

As a social libertarian, I would never ask that there be government regulation of such an enterprise; I ask only that the major studios be aware of the difficulties that those of us with auditory disorders face. If it's rough for me, how much more difficult can it be for someone who can't hear at all?

To answer the obvious question, "Why did you post this to Your Rights Online?"
The only response I have is through the American with Disability Act. I acknowledge that this is a law, not a constitutional principle, and that it doesn't matter at all in countries other than the US. Nevertheless, as an American citizen who is subject to the ADA, I find that this is the relevant forum for such discussion."
Biotech

Submission + - MIT Chemists Create Fluorescent Bomb Sensor

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: An MIT graduate student and her adviser have designed a simple test for RDX, the principal ingredient of C-4 explosives. When dissolved in the common solvent acetonitrile and blasted with ultraviolet radiation, the chemical will give off a blue glow if the high explosive is present. In the early 1980s, Army scientists studied how anaerobic bacteria from sewage can destroy RDX. Wired reports that the old Army study was an inspiration for this new sensor. The bacteria in that study used NADH, a coenzyme that is found everywhere in nature, to break down the explosives. The chemical sensor is a VERY distant relative of NADH that reacts with RDX and becomes highly fluorescent. A cool picture of vials filled with the glowing blue liquid appears in the MIT Technology Review.
Businesses

Submission + - Business Week shows offshoring bad for the economy (businessweek.com)

Submitted by
Obasan
Obasan writes: "A 'gaping flaw' in the way economic numbers are computed may be the cause of a disconnect between GDP growth claims and actual growth, especially in terms of real wages, a phenomenon many of us are at least anecdotally familiar with. Business week calls this gap "phantom-GDP", gains in reported GDP that cannot be correlated with domestic production."
Businesses

Submission + - Business Intelligence: Giving meaning to the numbe (anabheri.com)

Submitted by
Rohith Anabheri
Rohith Anabheri writes: "Is your organization holding a large amount of data?, Is your huge amount of the data generated going unnoticed?, And you do not know how to convert it to a business value? Then read along, The last ten years the approach to business management has deeply changed, and Knowledge discovery has come a long way and is inevitable in this era of data explosion where data is generated every where be banking, telecom, or could be the enormous amount of the data that has been created over the internet over the web in text or the multimedia format.

DW is not enough to this end since its technology is neither suitable for the grain nor for the freshness of the collected information, that should quickly flow throughout the different levels of the company.

Today, companies and managers are beginning to ask IT vendors for new tools capable of handling the changed business scenario. Business have become inclined more to metrics-driven management.
Thanks to technology, with ever growing need to support high performance analytics and to address this void. here comes Business Intelligence (BI), the process of turning data into information and then into knowledge. This helps organization to quantify the enterprise strategy and targets, in order to decentralize decision making.

Business Intelligence solutions are based on advanced data analysis. The process all together constitutes extracting of the high-level knowledge from low level data in the larger databases context. Improved Extract, transform, load (ETL) and even recently Enterprise Application Integration tools have increased the speed of collecting the data. OLAP reporting technologies have allowed faster generation of new reports which analyze the data

Business intelligence applications and technologies can help companies analyze the changing trends in market share, changes in customer behavior and spending patterns, customers' preferences, company capabilities and market conditions. BI allows one to interpret raw data with Comprehensive set of data pre-processing tools, learning algorithms and evaluation methods , to come up with insightful reports and to use the information to propose actions. These rules are an absolute must for root-cause analysis and operational BI. With BI becoming more and more process-oriented this can be used to help analysts and managers determine which adjustments are most likely to affect trends.

Knowledge is typically obtained about customer needs, customer decision making processes, the competition, conditions in the industry, and general economic, technological, and cultural trends. Thus In the competitive customer-service sector, companies need to have accurate, up-to-date information on customer preferences, so that the company can quickly adapt to their changing demands. Business intelligence applications and technologies can enable organizations to make more informed business decisions, and they may give a company a competitive advantage thus helping business a great deal in achieving the business goals and creating a business value from their business investment."
Spam

Submission + - Pump and dump spam coming to VOIP?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This morning I received a phone spam for a penny stock. It was similar to the robotic political campaign calls that plagued during the last election (I was receiving over 10 a day in the weeks leading up to the election). The call had all the tact of a late night infomercial, proclaiming... "STOP! Do you trade in stocks? Then you need to BUY XXXX (I won't do them the justice of perpetrating their pump and dump). Thats XXXX! This stock is set to run! Get in now before the news breaks sending XXXX into the stratosphere" You get the point.

I'm on the do not call list and use a "zapper" so my normal telemarketer frequency, aside from political and charity calls is very low. I did just register a new domain name and didn't configure my private registration for a couple of days... so I imagine my number could have been scraped from WHOIS.

So I put it out to other Slashdotters... have you experienced this? Do we have to look forward to a new level of spam harassment utilizing the latest and greatest in low cost automated phone banks? Has the cost of VOIP brought the cost of spamming down so low as to be profitable for the pump and dump scam artist?
Windows

Submission + - online windows desktop (hindu.com)

Submitted by Shyamaraj
Shyamaraj writes: Bangalore: The Web is where it is all happening — or so we are told by Internet pundits. The applications that we use on our desktop or laptop personal computers will eventually all migrate to the Web, they say. Indeed, players such as Google already offer their users the ability to create and save documents and presentations entirely through a browser. But it's still something happening piece-meal and in driblets. Now, a Delhi-based start-up, fuelled by the creative efforts of a dozen young Indian programmers, has boldly gone where no major player has gone before — and has just announced the "world's first Windows-based online desktop." It's called Nivio and helps one to create a full-fledged, but entirely virtual, desktop of one's own — on the Web.
Communications

Submission + - Why people write online documen (onlamp.com)

Submitted by mbadolato
mbadolato writes: The O'Reilly Network published a survey asking why people contribute to online forums, wikis, and other technical documentation. With over 350 responses, the results and analysis are published here

The article summarizes some of the debates concerning online gifting, presents the results of the survey, and attempts to analyze the meaning of the results.
Democrats

Submission + - Obama rips Clinton on outsourcing (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by
slashdotlurker
slashdotlurker writes: "Senator Obama's supposed to be secret scoop on Senator Clinton and Bill Clinton's secret dealings with Indian interests was released to the media by the Clinton campaign and has made for some embarrassing reading given Senator Obama's previous commitment to indulge in a different kind of politics. The Obama campaign has tried to mollify the Indian-American community, but the impact of the episode is likely to be minimal given the low level of support he enjoys among Indian-Americans.

However, the scoop does raise some questions about Senator Clinton's record and the issue of outsourcing. This will probably need to be addressed and not just brushed aside."
Businesses

Submission + - Comcast Blocking FedoraProject.org

Submitted by Kainaw
Kainaw writes: For well over a week, I have not been able to access FedoraProject.org from home (where I use Comcast high-speed Internet). I can access it from work easily. I thought it was a blip for a few days, but then started asking around. Nobody here can access FedoraProject.org through Comcast. I've called and emailed them in the morning and evening for the last three days and I haven't received any worthwhile response. They just tell me to unplug my modem and plug it back in. So, now I'm thinking about the current push by companies like Comcast to charge for preferred Internet service. Is this the first step — blocking Linux sites to push out those "free software" freaks who demand an equal Internet for all?
Google

Submission + - Is Google's Power a Myth?

Submitted by Henry V .009
Henry V .009 writes: The Times Online reports that Google's power is 'less than thought.' Google boosts of taking on Microsoft with its free web applications and comes second to none in customer loyalty. But is its vaunted online advertising presence a myth? According to the article, doubts are beginning to take hold as eBay begins its Google boycott: "Before I pulled the data, I was expecting a bigger drop given the drastic removal of sponsored listing ads by eBay," [Bill Tancer] said. He added that that the impact of eBay's advertising withdrawal was reduced by the fact that 25 per cent of users visiting the internet auctioneer from Google do so after searching for eBay, rather than by clicking on one of the "sponsored links" that appear next to other search results.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Mock Oil Conference Talk Suggests Corpses-to-fuel (commondreams.org)

Submitted by
tom_guyette
tom_guyette writes: "From the article: Imposters posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives delivered an outrageous keynote speech to 300 oilmen at GO-EXPO, Canada's largest oil conference, held at Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta, today. ... In the actual speech, the 'NPC rep' announced that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies ... are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could 'keep fuel flowing' by transforming the billions of people who die into oil."

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