gnownaym - Slashdot User

Conference Board Admits Plagiarism, Pulls Copyright Report 60

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 28, 2009 @02:07PM from the look-forward-eagerly-to-future-reports dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Conference Board of Canada has withdrawn all three reports on intellectual property after allegations this week by Michael Geist of plagiarism. The organization now admits that its report on copyright was plagiarized from US copyright lobby groups."

Intel's Nehalem EX To Gain Error Correction 80

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @02:28PM from the no-it-won't-yes-it-will dept.

angry tapir writes "Intel's eight-core Nehalem EX server processor will include a technology derived from its high-end Itanium chips that helps to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable server performance. The processor will include an error correction feature called MCA Recovery, which will detect and fix errors that could otherwise cause systems to crash — it will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and work with the operating system to correct them." Update: 05/27 19:11 GMT by T : Dave Altavilla suggests also Hot Hardware's coverage of the new chip, which includes quite a bit more information.

Creating a New Yorker Cover On the iPhone 226

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @03:00PM from the eye-of-the-beholder dept.

Jaime Leifer writes "The cover of the June 1, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, entitled 'Finger Painting,' was drawn by Jorge Colombo entirely on his iPhone — a first for the magazine. Colombo, a New York-based artist and illustrator, uses the iPhone's Brushes application to vibrantly depict New York street scenes." There's a video recapitulating the creation of the piece, omitting all of the undos.

Virus Tamed To Attack Cancer, Cancer Drugs To Treat Alcoholism 128

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 25, 2009 @02:04PM from the and-alcohol-to-treat-the-common-cold dept.

ScienceDaily is reporting that scientists at Oxford University seem to have adapted a virus so that it attacks cancer cells but does not hurt healthy cells. "Adenovirus is a DNA virus widely used in cancer therapy but which causes hepatic disease in mice. Professor Len Seymour and colleagues found that introducing sites into the virus genome that are recognized by microRNA 122 leads to hepatic degradation of important viral mRNA, thereby diminishing the virus' ability to adversely affect the liver, while maintaining its ability to replicate in and kill tumor cells." Relatedly, cancer drugs already approved for use may be cross-functional as a treatment for alcohol addiction. "Now, the researchers show that flies and mice treated with erlotinib also grow more sensitive to alcohol. What's more, rats given the cancer-fighting drug spontaneously consumed less alcohol when it was freely available to them. Their taste for another rewarding beverage -- sugar water -- was unaffected."

Sophos Releases Klingon Language Version 94

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 18, 2009 @04:55PM from the a-for-effort dept.

Bantu1 writes to mention an attention grab by anti-virus company Sophos, which is now offering a Klingon language version of their popular anti-virus software. Now Qo'nos too can be completely safe from the storm. If only we could see a Sophos logo in the next Paramount endeavor, the cycle would be complete.

ASCAP Starts To Act Like the RIAA 272

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 15, 2009 @11:41AM from the rebrand-as-ashattery dept.

Scott Lockwood writes "Below Average Dave, a Dr. Demento style parody artist, has been shut down by the ASCAP. This collective, acting as badly as the RIAA, is now attempting to ignore the 2 Live Crew Supreme Court decision that parodies are new derivative works. Just like the RIAA, ASCAP seems intent on misrepresents the law. If you know anyone who can help BA Dave in his plight, please contact him." This artist doesn't have the resources to fight the ASCAP, even though the law is pretty clearly on his side. Anyone at the EFF or the ACLU interested?

Breast Cancer Gene Lawsuit Argues Patents Invalid 294

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday May 13, 2009 @09:33AM from the time-to-reconsider-my-patent-on-feet dept.

bkuhn writes "The ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation have filed a lawsuit charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer are unconstitutional and invalid. The lawsuit (PDF) was filed on behalf of four scientific organizations representing more than 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals, as well as individual researchers, breast cancer and women's health groups, and individual women. Individuals with certain mutations along these two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are at a significantly higher risk for developing hereditary breast and ovarian cancers."

Windows 7 RCs Shut Down To Force Updates 414

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 11, 2009 @11:38AM from the please-resume-download dept.

nk497 writes "The release candidate for Microsoft Windows 7 will expire June 2010, and the software giant will let users know they need to pay to upgrade by shutting down the system every two hours for three months. According to Microsoft: "The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You'll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.""

Repairman Steals Hard Drive And Charges To Reinstall It 181

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 07, 2009 @02:39PM from the new-geek-squad-terms-of-service dept.

Phase 1: Break into a realty office, and steal a computer hard drive.

Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.

Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!

New Study Finds Flu Virus "Paralyzes" Immune System 84

Posted by timothy on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @11:37AM from the now-that's-just-stunning dept.

mmmscience writes with this excerpt from Examiner.com: "A study coming out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found that the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system, allowing other infections to thrive in the body. This discovery, coming at an opportune time as the world battles the new H1N1 flu outbreak, may be the first step in understanding why the flu can cause such high mortality rates in normally healthy individuals."

Comment #colbertflu (Score 1) 607

by gnownaym on Friday May 01, 2009 @11:47AM (#27787907) Attached to: Let's Rename Swine Flu As "Colbert Flu"

Use the masses to do your bidding! Start tagging things on twitter as both #colbertflu and #swineflu (with requests to retweet, of course). It won't take long before someone thinks it's amusing enough to copy. It's better than all of the "@noonecaresaboutme OMG, I'm soooo going to miss bacon!!! #swineflu" tweets that are clogging my series of tubes...

Parrots Can Dance 104

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 01, 2009 @11:46AM from the elephants-too dept.

juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"

Let's Rename Swine Flu As "Colbert Flu" 607

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 01, 2009 @11:24AM from the or-maybe-a-treadmill-on-the-virus-surface dept.

Bruce Perens writes "The World Health Organization will no longer refer to Virus A(H1N1) as 'Swine Flu,' citing ethnic reactions to 'swine,' for example among middle-eastern cultures who feel that swine are unclean. Or, is it because meat packers are concerned that people might stop eating pork in fear of the virus? WHO suggests that the public select a new name for the virus. I suggest that we all start calling it The Colbert Flu, after the comedian and fake pundit who asked his audience to stuff a NASA poll so that a Space Station module would be named after him. What can we do to make the name stick?"

Tokyo Scientists Create Mobile Slime 111

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @04:42PM from the godzilla's-newest-foe dept.

Sockatume writes "Shingo Maeda and colleagues at Waseda University have created a polymer gel that walks under its own chemical power. The team exploited the oscillating Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction to create periodic changes in the size of the polymer, and built a tensed structure that would amplify those small movements into a horrifically potent gait. The current version only walks across a notched surface, but the team are working on a terrible new form that will cross smooth surfaces like a snail. The team say they intend to apply it in the self-assembly of small structures. Suddenly, I can't stop screaming."

Senate Bill Calls For Open Source Electronic Health Records 170

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday April 24, 2009 @03:41PM from the wider-adoption-can-only-help dept.

An anonymous reader optimistically writes that new legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would call for a nationwide adoption of electronic health records built on open source. The bill does not seek to supplant proprietary alternatives, but instead to either augment or offer a cost effective alternative. "'We need advancements in health information technology across the board to improve the quality of care Americans receive,' said Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. 'To make this happen, we need universal access to affordable and interoperable health information technology — from small, rural health clinics to large, urban hospitals.'"

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