This ungrammatical ghost (either "win shakes" or "wins shake" would have been correct) was a clear duplicate of another story, so I knew it was doomed when I saw it.

Tea Party Win Shake Up Net Neutrality
Date: 11/04/2010
Original link: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/11/04/1544211
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the tea-shake dept.

GovTechGuy found a story discussing the Republican and Tea Party congressional wins and what that means for Net Neutrality. Apparently most of the dems who signed the net neutrality pledge last week are now looking for work.

My guess is that this Monday-morning submission turned out to be a duplicate of something that came in over the weekend. But I haven't had a chance to check.

BSA Inflate Their Piracy Losses
Date: 09/20/2010
Original link: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/09/20/1525220
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the thats-just-marketing dept.

superapecommando noted that Glyn Moody reckons
"The IDC numbers turn out to be reasonable enough, the conclusions drawn from them are not. Reducing software piracy will not magically conjure up those hundreds of billions of dollars of economic growth that the BSA invokes, or create huge numbers of new jobs: it will simply move the money around â" in fact, it will send more of it outside local economies to the US, and reduce the local employment. And it certainly won't do anything to ameliorate the quotidian problems of poorly-written software..."

Pamela Geller is despicable.
  I mean really despicable. If this country is or was ever great, than 9/11 should be no more than a triviality compared to its greatness. Compared to what this country represents, the fact that 19 lunatics with boxcutters flew planes into some buildings and killed 3000 people should be nothing but a blip on our history.

Instead, we've got people like Geller trying to make it the American Reichstag. I've never been more ashamed of other Americans than I am of Geller and Gingrich and Reid and anybody who's tried to turn the building of a community center into something ugly. Even if the people behind this community center were everything they're being accused of, it still does not excuse the kind of behavior I've seen these past few weeks.

I've never felt so disgusted with other Americans. I wish I could pass myself off as Canadian, honest to god. I wish I could get a goddamn visa to live in Finland or Belgium or evem goddamned Serbia. Anything but a country where people like Geller and Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved get treated like patriots for (and despite!) denigrating such basic, founding principles as freedom of religion and property rights. They say things like "oh, it's not about freedom of religion and property rights, it's about good taste". Good taste! Now the standard for freedom of speech is supposed to be good taste. And they say "oh, the muslim group must compromise". If they "must" then it's not a goddamn compromise. I don't care if you hate the idea of a community center with a mosque built near ground zero or near your house. If you go on television and try to compare it to Nazis putting signs up at Auschwitz, that makes you the scum of the Earth. You share a hell with the religious fundamentalists that perpetrated the crime in the first place.

So ten years after the fact, this bunch is going to turn into a bunch of drama queens over 9/11, turn the site of the Twin Towers into hallowed ground (or, as Ben Quale says, "hollowed ground"). Is the USA such a flimsy society? Are Americans such weak sisters that they're going to turn a tragedy into a pyre on which to burn each other (yes, the people who want to build the community center are Americans. Yes, there are bombs being thrown at mosques throughout the US in the last few days. Yes, there are "Americans" burning korans in Wal-Mart parking lots. Fucking mutts). I'm so tired of you, America. Never missing a chance to tell the world how great you are, how superior, how above the behavior of "terrorists" but the veneer of your Christian "reformation" turns out to be pretty goddamned thin, after all.

Things like this make me wish there actually was an afterlife where people were judged for their behavior on Earth. I'm willing to do the time for my crimes, as long as I can do it with the knowledge that people who've tried to spread this kind of ugliness were going to do the time for theirs. I'm so tired of you, America.

Rewriting history textbooks isn't nearly enough for the Religious Right. It appears that the "conservative alternative to Wikipedia, "Conservapedia" has some serious issues with Einstein, too.

The first note in the references section of the Conservapedia entry on "Counter-examples to Relativity" will be of special interest to any physicists out there.

I guess that Colbert's throwaway joke about "reality having a liberal bias" was truer than he knew.

I was expecting this one to resurface -- it disappeared right about the time Slashdot posted a big political story -- but it hasn't come back yet. I'm guessing it's a dupe of a story over the weekend, but I haven't had time to go searching.

Your Rights Online: UK Government Refuses To Ditch IE6
Date: 08/02/2010
Orig link: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/02/169202
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the good-plan-guys dept.

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes
"The UK government has said it will not upgrade its departments computers from Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 because it would not be 'cost-effective'. A recent online petition posted to Number10.gov.uk received 6,223 signatures that called for the 'Prime Minister to encourage government departments to upgrade away from Internet Explorer 6' due to its alleged vulnerability to attack, and because it requires web developers to specially craft sites to support the browser. This raises the question, what is the cost of an upgrade compared to a massive security breach?"

This one was funny -- it was in red on the front page at the same time as the article that eventually posted for real, Talk On Chinese Cyber Army Pulled From Black Hat. Oops!

Black Hat Talk On China Cyber Army Pulled
Date: 07/15/2010
Orig link: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/07/15/1529241
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the nobody-ever-talks-about-the-purple-hats dept.

itwbennett writes
"A talk that would have given conference attendees a unique profile of China's secretive government-sponsored hacking efforts has been pulled from the Black Hat schedule. Wayne Huang, one of the presenters of the talk and CTO with Taiwanese security vendor Armorize, said that he decided to pull the talk after vetting it with several organizations that had contributed intelligence and getting pressure from several places, both in Taiwan and in China. Huang wouldn't say who complained or why, but he said that by pulling the talk Armorize will be able to maintain its good relations with the Asian security community. 'We ran the materials by some key people and they were not happy with it,' he said."

The first Ghost Article in many, many months shows some strange behind-the-scenes SlashCode action. When I reload the original page URL, I get the generic "Nothing to see here, move along". But when I click on the "title" link, the one in the header before the comments section, the page that results has the full article title. It's not just echoing the text in the URL, either... otherwise it would say "Man HIV Free" instead of "Man HIV-Free". That implies that the ghost is still in the database... somewhere.

Man HIV-Free 2 Years After Stem Cell Treatment
Date: 26 Feb 2010
Orig link: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/26/1637249
Title link: http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/26/1637249/Man-HIV-Free-2-Years-After-Stem-Cell-Treatment
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the good-genes dept.

kkleiner writes

"According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, a stem cell transplant performed in Germany has unexpectedly removed all signs of HIV from a 42-year-old American patient. The unnamed white male was treated two years ago for leukemia with a dose of donor stem cells, and his HIV RNA count has dropped to zero and remained there since. While the treatment was for leukemia, Dr. Gero Hutter and colleagues at the Charite Universitatsmedizen in Berlin had selected the stem cell donor for his HIV-resistant genes. While there are still many questions unanswered, this is the first such case of stem cells treating HIV that has been reported in a publication of the caliber of the NEJM."

According to a research article published in the current International Journal of Biological Sciences, genetically modified corn from Monsanto increases the levels of liver and kidney failure in rats, as well as other harmful effects to the "heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system.

Apparently, Monsanto has wasted no time claiming the study was based on "faulty data" saying that it's own 90-day study didn't show similar problems. Of course, that ignores the fact that the organ failure only starts to show up after "5-14 weeks" according to the abstract.

Sorry, no time for fancy formatting. Here's the article... I don't keep up with the topic, so I don't know why it got yanked. Here's the link, in case it comes back: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/16/1945246 Enjoy!

The Long Term Impact of Jacobsen v. Katzer
Posted by timothy in The Mysterious Future!
from the stabs-in-the-dark dept.

snydeq (http://www.infoworld.com/) writes
"Lawyer Jonathan Moskin has called into question the long-term impact (http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/does-court-ruling-raise-risks-open-source-687) last year's Java Model Railroad Interface court ruling will have on open source adoption among corporate entities. For many, the case in question, Jacobsen v. Katzer (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/index.shtml), has represented a boon for open source, laying down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/03/1447248&tid=185). But as Moskin sees it, the ruling 'enables a set of potentially onerous monetary remedies for failures to comply with even modest license terms, and it subjects a potentially larger community of intellectual property users to liability (http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202429618746).' In other words, in Moskin's eyes, Jacobsen v. Katzer could make firms wary of using open source software because they fear that someone in the food chain has violated a copyright, thus exposing them to lawsuit. It should be noted that Moskin's firm has represented Microsoft in anti-trust litigation before the European Union."

Ghosts of Slashdot: 11/13/2008
[This looked like an awesome story, and it's a new discovery, so I wondered why it got yanked. Turned out there was an even more awesome version in the pipeline, that referenced not one but two extraterrestrial systems being imaged, and threw in a jab at the Hubble to boot. Plus, this story linked to a page on the KeckObservatory.org site that doesn't have any actual content (perhaps it was about to get Slashdotted and they blanked it to avoid meltdown?).]

First Picture of an Alien Solar System
Posted by ScuttleMonkey in The Mysterious Future!
from the say-cheese dept.

dtolman writes

"Astronomers at the Keck Observatory have announced that they have taken the first image of an alien solar system. 'The new solar system orbits the dusty young star named HR8799, which is 140 light years away and about 1.5 times the size of our sun. Three planets, roughly 10, 9 and 6 times the mass of Jupiter, orbit the star. The sizes of the planets decrease with distance from the parent star, much like the giant planets do in our system.'"

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 10/24/2008
[Finally, I think this one will *stay* dead! No idea what it's all about, or why it didn't stay on the front page. Probably a dupe, but it's far enough outside my sphere of knowledge that I wouldn't know exactly what to search on. And, I have to admit, I'm not interested enough to find out...]

Antitrust Working For Samba and FSFE
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the in-an-ideal-world dept.

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes

"It's now just over a year since Microsoft lost their final court case in the EU regarding breaches of antitrust regulation. Samba developer Andrew Bartlet writes in his blog that the documentation and help MS was forced to deliver is proving truly useful: '[T]he bottleneck is our own pace of implementation and comprehension, not missing documentation or the difficult task of network analysis so often required in the past.' FSFE blogger Ciaran O'Riordan also explains the motivations for those years of work. Hint: it wasn't about fines."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 10/08/2008
[They're rarer, but sometimes the ghosts still make it to red-link front page status before they're hosed away. Not sure why this one got doused, but I suspect it's a dupe.]

Recovering Blurred Text Using Photoshop
Posted by Timothy in The Mysterious Future!
from the careful-how-you-hide-stuff dept.

An anonymous reader writes

"There's been a lot of talk about recovering blurred or pixelated text, but here's an actual implementation using nothing but Photoshop and a little JavaScript. Includes a Hollywood-esque video showing the uncovered letters slowly appearing."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 08/20/2008
[Wow, it's been forever! But I finally caught one. I was going to send a note to the DaddyPants address warning them that this was a dupe, but I couldn't find the article it was a duplicate *of*. Someone did, though. Oh, and it's "Caucasus", not "Caucuses". It's Georgia, not Iowa.]

ISS Threatened by War in The Caucuses
Journal written by Presto Vivace (882157) and posted by samzenpus in The Mysterious Future!
from the no-space-for-you dept.

According to this report in the Washington Post, the ISS program could become a casualty of the war in the Caucuses. Our current space shuttle craft will be retired in 2010, with no replacements until 2015. In the meantime, in order for NASA to contract with Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, Congress would have to pass a waiver to a 2000 law forbidding government contracts with nations that help Iran and North Korea with their nuclear programs, as Russia has done. Even before the war in the Caucuses this was controversial, now the ISS mission is at great risk. It would be a shame if the ISS mission were jeopardized over this, a real shame.

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! These stories were accepted, posted for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

By the way, any Subscriber can join the Ghost Hunt, but so far only morcheeba has shown the requisite sensitivity to ectoplasmic vibrations.

Not that it's an earth-shattering development -- I'm not creating miniature black holes or anything, but I did re-up my Slashdot subscription.

The first potential ghost article: Engineers Make Good Terrorists?. I don't think that one will get canned! Though it sure seems like a leftover April Fool's gag. Sadly, it's not... the source article is dated 4/3, not 4/1. Of course, the past seven-and-a-half years have been an extended April Fool's Day... but on the bright side, there are only 9 months 19 days 17 hours 3 minutes before the foolishness finally ends.

Apparently, the webmasters at the Right-Wing website Redstate.org are blaming the fact that Scoop is made by members of the vast Left-wing conspiracy as the reason they're having web problems and can't seem to RTFM.

If we'd been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren't really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

C'mon, there must be a few coders out there who haven't been co-opted by the George Soros/islamoliberalcommienazi Illuminati and could help these poor boys. But it must be a little bit embarrassing for these strong self-reliant free-market conservatives to have to ask for a handout:

But we're convinced that America can afford even less to have us operating at anything less than our absolute peak potential during the coming presidential election season.

So we've decided to move ahead with our upgrades without delay, and despite not having the cash on hand - hoping and praying that RedState.com readers like you will help us make up the shortfall with a generous donation.