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Comment What's so great? (Score 5, Interesting) 118

I don't understand how this is relevant to slashdot. What is so technically challenging about a fake SIM card? I am from India, and we see fake IDs here on a regular basis.

These people are terrorrists - if they can procure an AK-47, why should anything prevent them from procuring an illegal ID and illegal SIM card.

Maybe India can make tougher laws, but that would only hamper those who need to to obtain a SIM card for legal purposes - more paperwork. I doubt that terrorists would be bothered by paperwork.

I can understand Times of India (or any other Indian newspaper) publishing this article, but why Slashdot? If we're going to blindly publish articles from TOI, why not publish this one?

Math

Florence Nightingale, Statistical Graphics Pioneer 204

Science News has a fascinating look at an under-appreciated corner of the career of Florence Nightingale — as an innovator in the use of statistical graphics to argue for social change. Nightingale returned from the Crimean War a heroine in the eyes of the British citizenry, for the soldiers' lives she had saved. But she came to appreciate that the way to save far more lives was to reform attitudes in the military about sanitation. Under the tutelage of William Farr, who had just invented the field of medical statistics, she compiled overwhelming evidence (in the form of an 830-page report) of the need for change. "As impressive as her statistics were, Nightingale worried that Queen Victoria's eyes would glaze over as she scanned the tables. So Nightingale devised clever ways of presenting the information in charts. Statistics had been presented using graphics only a few times previously, and perhaps never to persuade people of the need for social change."
Censorship

Submission + - Muslims Attempt to Censor Wikipedia

Nom du Keyboard writes: As reported on Fox News and The New York Times, some Muslims are attempting to censor Wikipedia because of images of Muhammad contained in the article about him. So does one religion get to tell the rest of the world how they must behave because they'll be offended otherwise, or does the Internet represent all views, even when that view may be offensive to some particular minority?
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - MOS 6505 inventor Chuck Peddle at VCF this weekend

An anonymous reader writes: This is the coolest thing I've heard in a long time. Chuck Peddle, who led development of the MOS Technology 6502 chip, will give a lecture (via videoconference) at the Vintage Computer Festival in New Jersey this weekend. Chuck and his team used the 6502 in their KIM-1 computer and then in the Commodore Pet. Of course, it was also the heart of Apple's early computers. Chuck will be joined (in person at the VCF) by other early C= engineers Bil Herd, Bob Russell, and Dave Haynie. The VCF's web site is vintage.org. It's only an hour from NYC and Philly.

Feed Robot Scans Ancient Manuscript in 3-D (wired.com)

A hand-picked team of classics scholars and technologists creates a high-resolution, 3-D digital image of the Venetus A, a 10th-century manuscript that is the oldest existing complete copy of Homer's Iliad.


Feed The Loneliest Black Holes In The Universe (sciencedaily.com)

Actively growing supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies are common even in cosmic voids, the most rarefied and empty regions of the universe. In a study of more than 1,000 void galaxies, using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II), astronomers from Drexel and Widener Universities announced that the growth of these monster black holes -- with masses millions to hundreds of millions times that of our sun -- are found where galaxies are sparse and interact very little with each other. The researchers also found that the accretion of matter onto these void black holes is slower than in denser galactic environments.
Education

Submission + - Beer Bubbles and Mathematics

An anonymous reader writes: Ever look into a glass a beer and wonder if it held the secret to some profound question? Mathematicians have unraveled a mystery involving those beautiful bubbles that float in the amber nectar which may help metallurgist. Check out: http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/science/s tories/2007/05/29/sci_beerfoam.ART_ART_05-29-07_B5 _F76R11Q.html
Privacy

MySpace Age Verification - for Parents 391

unlametheweak writes "North Carolina is thinking of the children by passing a law requiring parents to verify they are parents before letting their children onto social networking sites. Notwithstanding the whole concept of an Internet ID for people in general; children are now being tracked by cellular phones with GPS, spied upon with Parent Controls (MS Vista has built-in parental spyware), and also strategically placed Nanny Cams, keyboard loggers, etc. 'Few of the proposals we've seen so far seem like good ways to [protect children], but North Carolina's approach at least has the virtue of novelty--unlike most video game legislation, which relies on similar rhetoric but has been almost universally struck down by the courts, sometimes at great cost to the states.' Is the zoo-like Minority Report world in which children are growing up in today doing more harm than good? How will this affect a 14 year old, much less a 17 year old "child"?"
Security

Submission + - The first war in cyberspace.

An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times has an interesting article on the digital war on Estonia following the removal of a Russian war memorial. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/technology/29est onia.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Russia is blamed for launching the war and there are even tracks to Putin.

Interesting description of the attacks and countermeasures that the Estonians took which appear to have been fairly sophisticated. Now that Russia is back in the war business, I think we can expect to see more of this... welcome to the future.

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