Feed Oops! Yahoo Japan erases 4.5 million e-mails (com.com)
Blog: Yahoo Japan accidentally erased nearly 4.5 million e-mails after the system incorrectly labeled them as spam messages, according...
Feed Galaxy's 'wunderkind' stars may actually be old pro's (pheedo.com)
The 'baby' stars that appear to have been born impossibly close to the Milky Way's black hole could instead be ancient interlopers with a youthful glow
Feed US senate to consider two stem cell bills (pheedo.com)
One is nearly identical to a bill the president vetoed in 2006 that would have encouraged federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research; the other is a compromise measure
Submission + - Why you can hear everything in an amphitheater
Lucas123 writes: "A story on ScienceDailyexplains that you can hear a pin drop from the back seat of a Greek amphitheater not because of the slope or shape of the theater but because of the seats themselves."
Feed Plastic With Changeable Conductivity Developed By Chemical Engineer (sciencedaily.com)
A chemical engineer has modified a plastic so its ability to carry an electrical current can be altered during manufacturing to meet the needs of future electronic devices.
Feed Lyme Disease Vaccine Proteins Patented (sciencedaily.com)
Scientists have received a US Patent for developing chimeric, or "combination," proteins that may advance the development of vaccines and diagnostic tests for Lyme disease.
Submission + - The U.S Resources Wars
visionary07 writes: "Future American governments will have to place a greater emphasise on its Oil, gas and even fresh water supplies than previous administrations. Now I no America has always looked after its interests above everything else, but the coming years will see military conflict around the globe fighting over precious resources.
The U.S will have no option but to use its military might either as a veiled threat or in direct action to secure its supplies.
The problem with taking this action for the U.S will be the lack of finance to fund a large conflict. As we are seeing in Iraq the cost of 2 years occupation fighting a guerrilla war is mind bogging $200 billion for the first year alone."
Submission + - How to convince the boss to use open source?
PHPNerd writes: My boss is a very smart man who has been in the computing industry (mainly the software side of it) for the last twenty years. Now he's the IT Director at the company I work for where I'm a software developer (about 500 employees total). I see the value of open source, and so does my boss who frequently tests out the latest and greatest that the community has to offer. However, here at this company, we're rather entrenched into Microsoft and other companies where the users feel "safe" and "secure" using it because it's the familiar thing to them. He told me that he cannot justify moving to Open Office, Linux, and other open source movements. Effectively, it appears as though his hands are tied by the higher-ups. So, I ask the Slashdot community for help: I need a homerun, slam dunk list (to present to the vice presidents) with reasons why moving to open source will not only save money, but help the company to do better business.
Submission + - Two Worm "Families" Make Up Most Botnets
JMoon writes: HNS has an article about the Sdbot and Gaobot families which are responsible for most botnets worldwide. These two families were responsible for 80 percent of detections related to bots during the first quarter of 2007. Other culprits, although on a much lesser scale, included Oscarbot, IRCbot or RXbot.
Submission + - Classic Science Fiction Coming to Life
al_broccoli writes: Scientists at Purdue University are currently in the design stage of a cloaking device that can divert light around an object, thereby making it invisible. It only works with a single wavelength currently, but they are optimistic that it can lead the way to a device that will work for all wavelengths of visible light. Preorders will be available soon at thinkgeek.
Submission + - Best way to image and deploy dual-boot Macintosh?
macpulse writes: What is the best way to image and deploy dual-boot Intel Macintosh desktops in an Educational environment? Our organization is getting ready to purchase dozens of new Intel Macs for each campus and we're not sure how to proceed. With Windows XP and Dell, we've simply used Symantec's Enterprise Ghost to deploy our images. Playing with the test Intel Macs we have, we are unable to get Ghost to work with the Mac. I've also played with Bombich's NetRestore product (which is FOSS!) but without much success. I'm curious how the Slashdot crowd has resolved this issue. Thanks!
Submission + - Taipei - The World's First Major Cyber City
jcdenhartog writes: The following story from Digital Communities: http://www.govtech.net/digitalcommunities/story.ph p?id=101773 contains the remarks of Mayor Ma Ying-jeou at W2i Taipei on the wide use of WiFi and other technologies throughout the city.
Some examples are, offering cell phones to guests of a hotel which provide information services through WiFi, and real-time transfer of information between ambulance paramedics and the hospital.
An impressive accomplishment for a large city, though it does raise questions about Big Brother.
Some examples are, offering cell phones to guests of a hotel which provide information services through WiFi, and real-time transfer of information between ambulance paramedics and the hospital.
An impressive accomplishment for a large city, though it does raise questions about Big Brother.
Revolution, Flashmobs and Brain Implants in 2035 327
siddesu writes "Marxist revolution, WMDs, flashmobs and other sci-fi items are coming soon in a country near you, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. 'Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls. "Flashmobs" — groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces.'"
Submission + - Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 Launched, Benchmarks
MojoKid writes: "Intel officially
launched its next speed bump in their Core 2 Extreme quad-core desktop processor
line-up today. The new
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 has frequency parity with its dual-core counterpart,
the Core 2 Extreme X6800 — sans the "Q". At 2.93GHz this makes the Core 2
Extreme QX6800 Intel's highest clocked quad-core desktop processor to date.
Due to its 2.93GHz clock speed, the new QX6800 is as fast as the Core 2 X6800
while running single-threaded applications, as with most game engines and office
productivity tools. While
running multi-threaded applications that can fully utilize the additional
processing resources afforded by the quad-core design of the QX6800 however, the
new
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 clearly puts up significantly better performance
numbers than any other desktop PC processor currently available."
Submission + - Hacker's Case May Add to Students' Privacy Rights
An anonymous reader writes: Article in Inside Higher Ed says the legal loss of a hacker in federal appeals court may result in students at public universities having MORE privacy rights. The hacker lost, but federal appeals court also said he had (generally) a right to privacy on computer in his dorm room:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/09/heck enkamp
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/09/hec
