Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
United States

Science Debate 2008 322

Posted by kdawson from the good-luck-with-that dept.
bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting about Science Debate 2008, an attempt to put the scientific issues front and center in the US Presidential race. After 12,000 scientists signed on in support of the idea of a debate focused on science, no campaign has replied to an invitation to such a debate. The article notes that only one candidate has said much about science issues in the campaign, and that some who are running are sufficiently anti-science as to deny evolution. There is a link to a comparison of the candidates' positions on issues informed by science. (Yes, Ron Paul is included.)"
Privacy

The Doctor Will See Your Credit Score Now 464

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what's-up-doc dept.
mytrip writes to mention that the same people who invented credit scores are working to create a similar system for hospitals and other health care providers. "The project, dubbed "MedFICO" in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient's ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive."
Social Networks

Parents To Block Kids From Joining MySpace 337

Posted by kdawson from the how-hard-is-a-new-gmail-address dept.
Reservoir Hill writes "A New York Times blog notes that attorneys general of 49 states are announcing a partnership with MySpace to fight sexual predators on social networks by letting parents submit the e-mail addresses of their children, so the company can prevent anyone from using that address to set up a profile. MySpace will also set up a 'closed' section for users under age 18 so only their established online friends can visit their pages. MySpace also promises to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site. 'This set of principles is a landmark and milestone because it involves an acknowledgment of the importance of age and identity authentication,' said Connecticut attorney General Richard Blumenthal." Blumenthal also actually said "If we can put a man on the moon..."
The Internet

NSI Registers Every Domain Checked 668

Posted by kdawson from the that's-why-they-are-the-front-runner dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a developing story, registrar Network Solutions has been caught front-running domain names. Any domain names searched via NSI's whois are being immediately purchased by the registrar, thereby preventing a registrant from purchasing the domain at any other registrar. There are multiple reports of this practice over at DomainState.com." Update: 01/09 01:58 GMT by KD : shashib writes to let us know that NSI has issued a response to the accusations of front running.
Government

UK Moves to Outlaw 'Hacker Tools' 308

Posted by Zonk from the getting-to-be-popular-over-there dept.
twitter writes "New guidance rules for the UK's controversial Computer Misuse Act do not allay fears of impracticality, or of the banning of legitimate IT software: 'The government has come through with guidelines that address some, but not all, of these concerns about dual-use tools. The guidelines establish that to successfully prosecute the author of a tool it needs to be shown that they intended it to be used to commit computer crime. But the Home Office, despite lobbying, refused to withdraw the distribution offense. This leaves the door open to prosecute people who distribute a tool, such as nmap, that's subsequently abused by hackers.'" Somewhat similar legislation recently became law in Germany.
Programming

Rails Bigwig Rails on Rails Community 616

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the less-than-elegant-exit-strategies dept.
Zed Shaw, creator of the popular Mongrel HTTP daemon / library, has decided it was high time to tear into the Ruby/Rails community for many different complaints that he has been collecting over the last few years. "Rails is a Ghetto" is Shaw's self-proclaimed exit strategy from the Rails community. "This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a 'Ruby guy' anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned. This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well."
The Internet

People Were More Likely To Google Themselves This Year 160

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-up-with-the-joneses dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "More than twice as many Americans googled themselves in 2006 than five years previous — and many are googling their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released ecently by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey shows that the percentage of US adult Internet users who have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine has more than doubled in the past five years (pdf) from 22 percent in August, 2001 to 47 percent in December, 2006. Only 3 percent of internet self-googlers say they Google themselves regularly, 22 percent say 'every once in a while,' and three-quarters say they have googled themselves once or twice. The original report, 'Digital Footprints,' contains many more interesting observations (pdf)."
Software

Alpine 1.00 Brings Pine Back 204

Posted by Soulskill from the old-friend-new-face dept.
TreeDork alerts us that Alpine 1.00 has now been released by the University of Washington. The full source and documentation are available."On the surface, Alpine will appear strikingly similar to the Pine Message System, and it is upwards-compatible for existing Pine users. Alpine is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0. The source code has been reorganized from the ground up to separate the user interface code from the underlying email engine itself. All of the source needed to build Unix, Windows, and Web-based mail user agents is included.
Biotech

Swedish Athletes Back GPS Implants to Combat Drug Use 299

Posted by samzenpus from the i-can't-be-trusted-with-my-freedoms-please-take-them dept.
paulraps writes "Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm have proposed a radical technological measure to stop top level competitors from taking performance-enhancing drugs. Klüft and Holm, reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events, argue that competitors at the highest level should either have computer chips implanted into their skin or GPS transmitters attached to their training bags so that the authorities can keep tabs on them at all times."
The Internet

YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation 816

Posted by kdawson from the playing-to-the-emotions dept.
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."
Linux Business

Submission + - Is trixbox Pro bad for the community? (trixbox.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Recently a company called Fonality bought the trademark rights to trixbox, which used to be called Asterisk@Home. Now they've released a product they call "trixbox Pro" which, unlike other Free and Open Source vendors who also have a commercial offering, is a completely different, closed source codebase that is based on their PBXtra product, and not based on what up until now has just been known simply as "trixbox."

This doesn't sit well with me for a variety of reasons, but I'd like to get the opinions of Slashdot community members on this. They appear to be operating within the letter of the GPL, but not the spirit. Are they going to plow the profits made on trixbox Pro back into trixbox Pro and ignore the community that uses and supports what they're now calling trixbox CE? Obviously there's no way to predict that, but we can certainly make an attempt. Have other vendors gone down this path and still made good on their community responsibilities? Any spectacular failed attempts?
Science

Scientists Create Sheep That Are 15 Percent Human 475

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the dollie-partof dept.
anthemaniac writes "Professor Esmail Zanjani and colleagues at the University of Nevada-Reno have created sheep that are 15 percent human at the cellular level. Half the organs in the sheep are human. The idea, of course, is to harvest those organs to transplant into human patients. From the article: 'He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.' One scientists worries, however, that the work could lead to new viruses that cross from animals to humans."
Games

Submission + - Commodore's new gaming PC - specs revealed

Submitted by
steven williamson
steven williamson writes: "Following on from the press release earlier today announcing new details for Commodore's range of gaming PCs, the spec for have been revealed before CeBIT 2007 in Hanover launches tomorrow. HEXUS.gaming have gatecrashed the show early and have a full list of what we can expect.

So we all got excited over the news that Commodore are entering the gaming PC market, but what we've all been gagging to know is what the spec of these new PCs will be...
Check out the full list : here"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Video On Demand - and DRM

Submitted by Harry Palm
Harry Palm writes: So — what would it be like to work in the on-line Video Delivery business? Check out this job description from DICE.COM The position is in the City of Brotherly Love.... :-) And check out the their rack (server rack that is) http://www.nationala-1.com. If you dig around a little bit.. you find out that they also run a company known as: VODCONCEPTS.com. Read a little about their DRM Hosting service ... they claim over 40,000 titles as of March 2006. Would this get you out of the basement?

Slashdot Top Deals

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

Close