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Biotech

How Norway Fought Staph Infections 595

Posted by timothy from the they-fired-adrian-monk dept.
eldavojohn writes "Studies are showing that Norway's dirtiest hospitals are actually cleaner than most other countries', and the reason for this is that Norwegians stopped taking antibiotics. A number of factors like paid sick leave and now restrictions on advertising for drugs make Norway an anomaly when it comes to diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). A Norwegian doctor explains, 'We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better.' Norway is the most MRSA free country in the world. In a country like Japan, where 17,000 die from MRSA every year, 'doctors overprescribe antibiotics because they are given financial incentives to push drugs on patients.'"
Mars

Submission + - SPAM: NASA, European Space agency want to go to Mars

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s.
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Link to Original Source
Censorship

Submission + - City Councilman Arrested for Anonymous Flier. (dailykos.com)

Submitted by
arbitraryaardvark
arbitraryaardvark writes: "Clarksville West Virgina City Councilman Martin Shaffer was arrested June 2 for suspicion of conspiring to distribute an anonymous newsletter. In "prosecuting anonymous speech, that's what's criminal" Reid Cox, Center for Competitive Politics, explains that the arrest was probably illegal and unconstitutional. What's this got to do with computers, the internet, or slashdot? Anonymous speech by anonymous cowards is one of things that makes slashdot and the internet as we know it possible. More background on the story at some blog."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Ultimate BIOS guide

Submitted by
amcdiarmid
amcdiarmid writes: "I just ran across a very nice guide to BIOS settings. (From Maximum PC of all people!) I read the first several pages, and found a few things I (an old curmudgeny IT type) did not know — and only one thing I think was wrong... (Likely a typo in the "Limit CPUID Max. to 3:" section, I don't think that a Modern OS needs this enabled.)

The thing includes such gems as (paraphrasing) old timers turned stuff off on the motherboards to save memory resources, but since all new motherboards have more than 2MB of memory — it's not necessary unless you need the IRQ's, or want to avoid IRQ conflicts.

At over ten web pages at http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ultimate_bios_guide_every_bios_setting_revealed?page=0%2C1 you might want to just hit the print link: http://www.maximumpc.com/print/6543 If it's still up after a maximum slashdotting (;p)"
Software

Format Standards Committee "Grinds To a Halt" 271

Posted by kdawson from the collateral-damage dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Microsoft's OOXML did not get enough votes to be approved the first time around in ISO/IEC — notwithstanding the fact that many countries joined the Document Format and Languages committee in the months before voting closed, almost all of them voting to approve OOXML. Unfortunately, many of these countries also traded up to 'P' level membership at the last minute to gain more influence. Now the collateral damage is setting in. At least 50% of P members must vote (up, down, or abstain) on every standard at each ballot — and none of the new members are bothering to vote, despite repeated pleas from the committee chair. Not a single ballot has passed since the OOXML vote closed. In the chairman's words, the committee has 'ground to a halt.' Sad to say, there's no end in sight for this (formerly) very busy and influential standards committee."
Programming

Submission + - Wikipeida-Like Wiki for Developers Evolves (devviki.com)

Submitted by
jason1
jason1 writes: "A group of software engineers based out of Silicon Valley North have started up a wiki based tool for developers they are calling devviki. The wiki allows developers to add code samples, tutorials, articles, and news clips to the wiki.

The wiki is based on an open source framework and all content is completely open source with the intent that it's easy to use. To make it easier for developers the site is completely open to the public so developers can post code without signing up. The wiki is to be an open source code repository for developers coming from the sites slogan — "by developers... for developers...!". More information about the project can be found at devviki.com

The project started near the beginning of the month and has shown some growth of interest via page view reports since opening to the public. The creators say that "page views are increasing and new content appearing daily!"."

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"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!" -- Alan Perlis

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