Mandrake - Slashdot User

Comment The trouble with opting out (Score 1) 481

by Mandrake on Thursday April 23, 2009 @07:30PM (#27695969) Attached to: Opting Out Increases Spam?

As someone who works at a company that sends a lot of email, we naturally have ways to opt out and to remove yourselves from our mailing lists. There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between removing yourself from the list or unselecting preferences than doing the CAN-SPAM opt out.

IF YOU CAN AVOID IT - JUST UNSUBSCRIBE YOURSELF.

When you do the can-spam opt-out-never-mail-me-again, we're required to keep it on file. We're also required to send this list of email addresses to every agency that markets for us saying they're not allowed to contact you on our behalf.

Now, I want you to read that last paragraph again. They're not allowed to contact you on our behalf, but they can (and almost always will) send other mails to those accounts. This means, through no fault of their own, the place you're opting out from has just given your valid email address to a bunch of other marketing firms.

Now, we have agreements in place with all these other firms that market with us, yadda yadda, and we seed them with dummy addresses so we know who has used our list of opt-outs to spam folks - but the reality is that the damage once it is done is done. and once that list goes out once it goes out 1000 times.

So, do yourself a favor, filter your mail, don't use the don't contact me again ever opt-outs, but unsubscribe if you want. It really sucks, but the law actually makes it easier to spam you rather than harder.

NASA Names Space Station Treadmill After Colbert 383

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @08:58AM from the running-man dept.

willith writes "The SF Chronicle reports on the results of the International Space Station Node 3 naming contest (which we previously discussed). Comedian and fake-pundit Stephen Colbert conducted a bombastic write-in campaign and repeatedly urged his show's fan base (the 'Colbert Nation') to stuff the ballot box with his name, which resulted in 'Colbert' coming in first in the write-in contest with almost a quarter-million votes. Although the Node 3 component will not be named 'Colbert' — NASA has instead chosen to call it 'Tranquility' — one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. The formal announcement was made on the air yesterday at 22:30 EDT on the Colbert Report by astronaut Sunita Williams."

Are Human Beings Organisms Or Living Ecosystems? 397

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @08:14AM from the little-of-column-a,-little-of-column-b dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Every human body harbors about 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering human cells 10 to one. There's been a growing consensus among scientists that bacteria are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. 'Human beings are not really individuals; they're communities of organisms,' says microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai. 'This could be the basis of a whole new way of looking at disease.' Recently, for example, evidence has surfaced that obesity may well include a microbial component. Jeffrey Gordon's lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published findings that lean and obese twins — whether identical or fraternal — harbor strikingly different bacterial communities that are not just helping to process food directly; they actually influence whether that energy is ultimately stored as fat in the body. Last year, the National Institutes of Health launched the Human Microbiome Project to characterize the role of microbes in the human body, a formal recognition of bacteria's far-reaching influence, including their contributions to human health and certain illnesses. William Karasov, a physiologist and ecologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes that the consequences of this new approach will be profound. 'We've all been trained to think of ourselves as human,' says Karasov, adding that bacteria have usually been considered only as the source of infections, or as something benign living in the body. Now, Karasov says, it appears 'we are so interconnected with our microbes that anything studied before could have a microbial component that we hadn't thought about.'"

Slashdot Mentioned In Virginia Terrorism Report 779

Posted by kdawson on Friday April 10, 2009 @09:19AM from the true-americans dept.

megamerican alerted us to a leaked document (PDF) from a Virginia Fusion Center titled "2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment." The document is marked as "Law Enforcement Sensitive," not to be shown to public. Citizens for Legitimate Government has a write-up. Slashdot gets a mention on page 45 — not as a terrorist organization itself, but as one of the places that members of Anonymous may hang out: "A 'loose coalition of Internet denizens,' Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. ... Anonymous is of interest not only because of the sentiments expressed by affiliates and their potential for physical protest, but because they have innovated the use of e-protests and mobilization. Given the lack of a unifying creed, this movement has the potential to inspire lone wolf behavior in the cyber realms." According to the report, cell phones and digital music players have been used to transfer plans related to criminal activity, and therefore presumably could be grounds for suspicion. Podcasting is also suspicious.

id Releases Open Source Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone 232

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @05:58PM from the ach-mein-leben dept.

An anonymous reader writes "id Software has released a port of the classic Wolfenstein FPS to the iPhone. Some of the coding was done by John Carmack himself, who also used original code combined with new code from Wolf3D Redux. The original code was open sourced years ago, and enthusiasts have been updating it, which made the port considerably easier for id. It's available in the iTunes App Store, but the source is available for free at id's website." Carmack also posted a detailed writeup about the decision to bring Wolf3D to the iPhone, including design notes and a few snippets of code. At the end, he says, "I'm going back to Rage for a while, but I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone." Kotaku got a chance to try the game at GDC: "It's not just a good reproduction of the original, it seems better."

FOIA Request For Pending Copyright Treaty Denied 364

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 13, 2009 @01:18PM from the let-the-sunshine-in dept.

Penguinisto writes "According to CNET, Knowledge Ecology International's FOIA request for information about ACTA was denied. ACTA is the pending copyright treaty believed to have been authored by lobbyists for the content cartels. Even stranger, the denial cited 'national security reasons (PDF). While it is not unusual for the White House of any administration to block FOIA requests for national security reasons, one would think that a treaty affecting civil interests alone wouldn't qualify for such secrecy. Not exactly sure what involvement the former RIAA mouthpiece Donald Verelli (a recent Obama pick for the DOJ) may have in this." KEI is not alone; the European Parliament wants to see the ACTA documents too.

Higgs Territory Continues To Shrink 118

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 13, 2009 @12:02PM from the hoggamus-higgamus dept.

PhysicsDavid writes "Announced this morning by Fermilab, the possible territory for the Higgs boson has shrunk even further. Combined results from the CDF and DZero experiments at the Tevatron have ruled out the existence of the Higgs with a mass between 160 and 170 GeV/c^2 with 95% confidence. At 90% confidence the Higgs is ruled out between about 157 and 185 GeV/c^2. Here is Fermilab's press release. If the Higgs is to be found at the lighter end of the currently allowed range of 114 GeV/c^2 to 185 GeV/c^2, its detection will be harder than at the heavier end due to the kinds of signals that the Large Hadron Collider and the Tevatron will see. Some physicists think that a lighter Higgs will be easier to spot at the Tevatron as the background processes which obscure the faint signal are not as prevalent in those experiments."

How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds? 426

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 13, 2009 @11:56AM from the permission-to-sudo-sir dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Cyber Warfare is a hot topic these days. A major reorganization may be looming, but a critical component is a culture where technologists can thrive. Two recent articles address this subject. Lieutenant Colonel Greg Conti and Colonel Buck Surdu recently published an article in the latest DoD IA Newsletter stating that 'The Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain cyberwarfare components, but these organizations exist as ill-fitting appendages (PDF, pg. 14) that attempt to operate in inhospitable cultures where technical expertise is not recognized, cultivated, or completely understood.' In his TaoSecurity Blog Richard Bejtlich added 'When I left the Air Force in early 2001, I was the 31st of the last 32 eligible company grade officers in the Air Force Information Warfare Center to separate from the Air Force rather than take a new nontechnical assignment.' So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?"

Norfolk Town's Schools First To Be Heated By Burning Cattle 83

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @05:56PM from the burn-it-up dept.

A "trailblazing" Norfolk town has begun heating many of its buildings - including the schools - by burning oil made from melted-down cow and pig carcasses. The strategy is described as "equal or lower in carbon footprint than natural gas." Should schools have to offer vegetarian heating?

Vandals Strike Traffic Signs Again 3

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 05, 2009 @03:01PM from the rabid-pitbull-with-AIDS-next-exit dept.

Vandals in three US states have altered the text on electronic road signs, posting notices of "Nazi zombies" and "raptors ahead" instead of legitimate messages detailing traffic problems. The latest prank took place Tuesday in Collinsville, Illinois, and warned "DAILY LANE CLOSURES DUE TO ZOMBIES". Past faux warnings from around the country this week include: "NAZI ZOMBIES! RUN!!!", "RAPTORS AHEAD.", and "ZOMBIES IN AREA! RUN." As you can imagine authorities don't think hacking traffic signs is funny and warn that doing so is against the law punishable by removal of your delicious brain.

Artist Wants to Replace Lost Eyeball With Webcam 156

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 17, 2008 @03:33PM from the all-the-better-to-film-you-with dept.

A one-eyed San Francisco artist, Tanya Vlach, wants to replace her missing eye with a Web cam. There has even been talk of her shooting a reality TV show using the video eye. "There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I'm sort of a sci-fi geek, with the advancement of technology, I thought, 'Why not?'" said Vlach. I'm a bit perplexed that the obvious things you'd want in a cyborg eye: range finder, infrared/lowlight vision, and a hypno-ray are not discussed in the article.

Submission + - LOTR Actor Slays Amazon 1-Click Patent

Submitted by

theodp

on Tuesday October 16, 2007 @05:56AM

theodp writes: "A reexam initiated by Lord of the Rings motion capture performer Peter Calveley's do-it-yourself legal effort has prompted the USPTO to reject 21 of the 26 Amazon 1-Click Patent claims. A USPTO Examiner found a 1995 Newsweek article on Digicash submitted by Calveley sufficient to quash a number of the claims, while many others were rejected in light of an e-shopping patent flagged by Calveley. Interestingly, additional claims were rejected by the Examiner in light of a TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable 1-Click prior art (for not being specific to the Web) in a contest run by the Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (Amazon last year testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent). Unfortunately, the action is non-final, so Amazon's high-priced law firm will get another chance to crush Calveley's PayPal-financed effort."

Slashdot Top Deals