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Submission + - The Forensic Dentist Who's Reviving Mexico's Unidentified Corpses (NSFW) (vice.com)

Daniel_Stuckey writes: CIUDAD JUAREZ — The man cuts a striking profile. He’s been dead for two years—a nameless hit-and-run victim, I’m told, left to bleed out on the side of some dusty road in this Mexico-US border town of 1.5 million people. The accident punched a hole in his forehead. From where I’m standing, hunched over an autopsy stretcher on which his body is strewn akimbo, I can see through to his pickled brain. If I didn’t know any better, there's still life in this man. It’s been 120 hours since Dr. Alejandro Hernández Cárdenas got to work. That’s when Hernández Cárdenas, an unassuming local dentist who splits his time practicing, teaching graduate forensic odontology courses at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, and identifying the unidentified at the Juarez Forensic Science Lab, submerged this man’s gnarled, sun-scorched body into what Hernández Cárdenas affectionately calls the “Jacuzzi.”

Submission + - Should ISPs Quarantine Infected Computers? (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: Notifying Internet users of malware infections, especially when their computers become part of known botnets, has become a relatively common practice for some ISPs in recent years. But some security researchers think ISPs should actively quarantine infected computers identified on their networks. '[Infected] systems should be moved to quarantine, the account owners should be contacted and directed to resources which will enable them to clean up and rectify the situation. Until such time as the infection is remediated the computer should be able to access only limited Internet resources' said Trend Micro's Rik Ferguson in a blog post. 'Don't care will be made to care.'

Submission + - Game of Thrones: The dragons and nuclear weapons nexus (thebulletin.org)

Lasrick writes: Yes, Game of Thrones has deep meanings with a surprising number of lessons about peace and security for real life, and Timothy Westmyer of the Rising Powers Initiative explores the dragon metaphor here: 'One parallel, however, has escaped analysis: dragons as living, fire-breathing metaphors for nuclear weapons. Despite the fantasy setting, the story teaches a great deal about the inherent dangers that come with managing these game-changing agents, their propensity for accidents, the relative benefits they grant their masters, and the strain these weapons impose upon those wielding them.' As Thrones creator George R.R. Martin has said: 'Dragons are the nuclear deterrent...but is that sufficient?'

Comment Re:I believe it because.. (Score 2) 291

Screaming children? That's a parent fail....

Kinda depends on whether we're talking like 5 years old or 5 months, doesn't it?

If a kid isn't even old enough to attempt to verbalize "ears hurt", they sure aren't ready to comprehend and deal with being in pain from air pressure changes.

Or if something is causing them stomach or intestinal pain, if they're young enough they know no other way to deal with it but scream.

Comment Re:More Cold War Waste (Score 1) 174

And now I'm going to disagree with your characterization of this story as "...one of an ongoing number of agenda driven submissions...".

It's just a story about "who knew they used kitty litter when storing nuclear waste, much less that it has to be a specific type of kitty litter?".

Unless you're convinced that any time someone says "nuclear waste" without saying "nuclear waste, but the Cold War weapons kind, not the cute, cuddly, super-friendly power plant kind" that it's some kind of conspiracy rather than use of a generic term.

Comment Re:IT upgrade for a machine that predates IT (Score 1) 190

Apparently the large cargo Antanov has control systems made up of racks of gear with valves. A retired electrical transmission engineer I know (who did plenty of design work with valves in his career) was shown around inside one, and he suspected it was to deal with an EMP pulse. There's probably American stuff that is EMP hardened as well but there are solid state ways of doing it that were used by NASA before they sent the first probe near Jupiter.

When you say valves, do you mean what in the US are referred to as vacuum tubes, or are you referring to a mechanical device such as might be used in pneumatic or hydraulic control systems?

Comment Re:Control Groups (Score 1) 250

There's a reason we don't trust journalists to get science stories right. They allow hedlines which ignore issues like control groups.

Generally they have no control over headlines other than getting angry and resigning.

Editors write headlines.

They also determine how much of what the journalist wrote actually winds up getting printed under that headline, and perhaps even in which order.

Submission + - Customers, support thy selves...

An anonymous reader writes: Has anyone else noticed the trend towards "community forums" where customers are basically being recruited to solve the issues of other customers while the companies selling the products causing the issues sit back and take a passive role in the process? Granted, sometimes the companies' employees play an active part in the forums and provide some value-add by contributing crucial, and often undocumented, knowledge that solves the problem in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case and this leaves customers with no visibility into whether or not their problems are being addressed, and, if they are, when they might expect to receive assistance. This is bad enough when dealing with consumer electronics that cost up to a couple of hundred of dollars, but it's completely unacceptable when dealing with proprietary design tool vendors that are charging several thousand dollars for software licenses for tools that are the only option if a customer doesn't want to drop an order of magnitude more money to go with 3rd party tools (e.g., Synopsys).

This leads me to the following questions for all of you Slashdotters: who do you think are the worst offenders of this downloading of support onto the backs of the customers themselves, and what can be done to let them know that this new reality is ridiculous?

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