I disagree. Their goal is life extension. They just haven't achieved that goal yet. But they seem to have progressed far enough that they at least offer the possibility of life extension by preserving clients in a state that could potentially allow them to be revived in the distant future. Even if the technology for revival from cryonic suspension hasn't been invented yet, there's no reason why we can't start preserving deceased individuals right now for the day when that technology exists. As long as the company stays in business and their facilities remain operational, there's a chance that those people can still be revived. The same cannot be said about someone who is given a conventional burial or is cremated.

I mean, if a person suddenly dies of a heart-attack but are put into cryonic suspension and revived back to life a century later, then wouldn't their life have been extended? So how is calling themselves a "life extension foundation" dishonest?

Of course, there's no guarantee at this point that they will be able to develop the technology to revive their patients, but I think most of their clients know that. And they at least seem to be making an honest attempt at working towards that goal.

Heh. I'm guessing he's referring to cell membranes. But the issue of preservation injuries does seem to be a major hurdle. I wonder how far these cryonic suspension companies have advanced in regards to the development of cryoprotectants (e.g. combating their toxicity) and avoiding ischemic injury.

There are frogs that can survive being frozen for several months during winter. So perhaps one day the dream of cryonic suspension can be achieved by humans as well (probably through a combination of genetic enhancement and medical technology). Right now that seems to be the only way we could ever colonize other solar systems aside from the use of generation ships.

Personally, I would rather my mind (personality & memory engrams) be uploaded into a supercomputer to live on in a digital world populated by the minds of other similarly deceased individuals.

A lot of science articles do seem to make that mistake, but this isn't one of them. As has been brought up many times before, correlation doesn't necessarily suggest causation, but strong correlation does often suggest an interaction between two variables. It's through analyzing such correlations that researchers can determine what the exact interaction is. And in this case, they have a logical explanation for the correlation, which happens to be related to evolutionary psychology. This explanation also takes into account what we already know about testosterone's effect on aggression. And from TFA, it seems that the same correlation has also been found in similar studies on other competitive activities, all of which point to the changes in testosterone level being dependent on the subject's familiarity with their opponent. So unless you're suggesting that a.) there's a 3rd independent factor causing these correlations; b.) this is all an incredible series of coincidences; or c.) the players' testosterone level caused their opponents to be friends/strangers; then what TFA proposes seems to be the most plausible explanation.

If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, acts like a duck...

So please stop mindlessly regurgitating these Slashdot platitudes.

It's not the rate of energy release that is an issue, but rather energy density. There's also no reason why a high density (or high capacity) battery would be any less safe than low density batteries. I mean, most people are perfectly comfortable driving around in their cars, which has far more energy stored in its fuel tank than any fully-charged laptop battery—not to mention being far more volatile as well.

Put it another way: would you be worried walking around with a piece of charcoal in your pocket? The energy density of a li-ion battery is 540 kilojoules per kilogram. The energy density of coal is 24 megajoules per kilogram. Oh, and a kilogram of fat? that's 37.7 megajoules. So batteries have quite a ways to go.

There's no reason why we can't come up with high energy density batteries that are safe, stable, and release their energy in a controlled manner. Perhaps it can't be done with li-ion technology, but I'm sure it can be done. We just need some new breakthroughs in battery technology. But these types of revolutionary technological changes can only be effected by new knowledge gained through basic research. Unfortunately, most government funding seems to go into applied research these days.

Lastly, if you're still worried about carrying "too much energy" around in your pocket in the form of an electricity, just remember that E=mc^2. So a single gram of material of any form carries 89.87 terajoules of energy. So even an uncharged 1 ounce cellphone battery possesses 2.5 petajoules of energy, or about the same amount of energy as 41 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.

I thought the main purpose of a museum was to share/promote/purvey culture and art. Why would they be opposed to others enjoying a piece of culture/art they feel worthy of archiving? That's like if you sold a copy of a book to a library and then told them, "btw, I'm also giving a thousand copies away"—why should they even care? It's not like they're a book publisher. Do museums purchase works of art just to place licensing restrictions on them? That seems more like the mentality of a film studio.

OSF Dataloss seems to be counting the number of data breaches (i.e. database of customer info being leaked, millions of credit card numbers being stolen, etc.), whereas this article refers to security breaches in general, not just those that affect personal privacy. Also, the article seems to be based on Canadian statistics, as well as going by the cost of damages rather than the number of breaches that occurred.

I mean, if in 2008, there were 703 breaches, each only making off with a $10~20k of data on average, whereas the 331 breaches this year average $100k in data, then that's still a huge increase the severity of the security breaches.

Simply counting the number of breaches on record just doesn't paint the full picture.

You only need to watch about the first 15 minutes to get a good understanding of what it is and why it's innovative. I'd skip the boring hyped up intro though—not that it doesn't deserve some of that hype, just that it's not very informative. Personally, I think it's a really cool app. This is the first time I've heard about it, but I'm already eagerly awaiting its public beta.

It probably won't be as revolutionary or game changing as e-mail, instant messaging/text messaging, or wikis. But it seems like it will at least have as much of an impact on the online community as other innovative, well-designed applications like Google Search, Gmail, Firefox, etc., each of which used preexisting ideas to re-imagine a common everyday tool/application. Though none of these applications contain any groundbreaking ideas of their own, they nonetheless deliver a novel user-experience by the seamless integration of preexisting ideas in a new and refreshing way—or sometimes just by their flawless execution of existing ideas.

Really? How does a private company like Gillette have access to draft registration info, though? I don't even remember ever registering for selective service. I guess I must have done that when I was applying for student loans.

I wonder when we'll see Marlboro mailing out packs of smokes on each male's 18th birthday, or Budweiser their "first" beer on their 21st birthday.

What exactly does being Turing complete have to do with it? If a scripting language weren't turing complete, but had direct read/write access to your file system, would it be any safer than JS?

The problem with Reddit isn't JavaScript but rather their markdown implementation. And the security threat here isn't to the user whose system is running the JS, but instead to the Reddit site. If you're using an up-to-date & secure browser, there's typically minimal risk to enabling JavaScript. That JavaScript can sometimes be used to do mischievous things is a reason why site owners should not recklessly allow JavaScript to be posted by untrusted users—just as you wouldn't want to allow unfiltered HTML code to be posted by untrusted users.

If someone posts a link on a Slashdot, and that link eventually gets Slashdotted, then does that mean hyperlinks are inherently unsafe and need to be disabled, or just that some common sense precautions need to be taken when using them?

Clearly you're not very familiar with "enterprice" software. Magento, which is a solid open source e-commerce solution but nothing more, costs $8900+ a year ($11,125 for the average deployment) just to license—no hosting. That's the whole idea of free market capitalism. What something is worth doesn't necessarily correlate to how much effort was put into creating it, its material/resource costs, its usefulness, or any other inherent value it has; instead, it is simply how much you can get others to pay you for it.

The cost of natural diamonds versus synthetic diamonds, for example, has nothing to do with any intrinsic value, nor can it be justified by its artificial scarcity (as used diamonds sell for far under market prices, but are purchased back from consumers by diamond distributors like De Beers, who turn around and repackage/resell it at market prices once again).

I mean, isn't the objective of every good businessman to buy for as low as possible and sell for as high as possible?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but nearly every mainstream (especially pop, country, hip-hop/r&b, etc.) album that includes vocal parts in it these days has been "enhanced" through the use of auto-tune. Heck, auto-tune is even used in live concerts nowadays. Don't confuse the general usage of auto-tune, which is merely a tool for pitch correction, with the specific practice of feeding extreme parameters into auto-tune software to produce synthetic- or electronic-sounding vocal effects (some like to call this "auto-tune abuse"), as was initially popularized by Cher in the track "Believe."

Even artists in genres you don't typically associate with electronic vocal effects, like rock, metal, punk, jazz, etc. use auto-tune to some degree these days. It's just part of the recording process now, and it's something you'd expect as "part of the package" when you hire a professional sound engineer to mix/master an album.

Not every musician out there uses it (and some musicians have even taken a stand against it), but it's a fact of life that the majority of albums you see on retail store shelves have been pitch-corrected to some degree.

I'm guessing he meant "and [one] I [think] will backfire badly."

Or at least I hope that's what he meant. I mean, I know what happens when a car backfires (i.e. an explosion takes place in the exhaust system). I don't even wanna imagine what happens if a person backfires...

That comes as quite a surprise to me. With WAP and mobile internet access having been available (and heavily marketed) on even the cheapest of phones since 2000, I would have thought that e-mail would be one of the first standard features to implement—it's certainly easier than trying to render a webpage on a tiny 2~3" screen. I'm pretty sure my Motorola RAZR had a built-in email client. I would think that most Sidekicks & Sidekick-type phone would also support email as well. Even my cheapo Samsung T629 can send/receive email—though it's not completely straightforward. First off, when you go to the tools menu, there's a mailbox with an @-sign on its side, and some envelops going in and out of it. Well, that's really just the SMS/MMS message tool. You can't really receive email from it, but you can send emails from it by filling out the email field in the recipient form rather than the phone number box. To check your email, you have to go to T-zone. There are supposedly a lot of 3rd party apps that also let you send/receive emails (using POP3 or IMAP) on many popular phones, but that's really beyond what can be expected of the average user.

I believe the "stupid nature reference" is just to state where they got their inspiration from, and it also serves as a non-technical analogy that laymen can understand. It's a pretty standard practice that you'll find in many CS textbooks. Also, you're making a lot of assumptions and outright illogical statements.

1. You clearly aren't very knowledgeable about network/system security. Sure, you can have complete security if you leave your computer off or don't connect it to an external network, but that's not always practical. A computer sitting disassembled inside of a 20-ton safe isn't very useful. Software is written by human-beings, and the more robust the software is, the more likely it is to have bugs. If a bug can be exploited, then you have a security problem on your hands. You may know everything there is to know about security (at the moment), but there's no telling what new exploits will be found in the future, and what new viruses will be written to use them. And, usually, it's only after a virus has infected lots of machines that security researchers pick up on it and and learn how to detect/remove/prevent it.

2. How do you know that the servers sitting between you and your e-mail server/online banking server/ecommerce site server are secure? Just as malware writers use encryption to communicate securely with their botnets, so can security researchers communicate with their "ants." And the idea is to run the application on your entire network so that the network uses its collective computing power to detect signs of a potential new infection. This is only meant to be used on large networks and is more concerned with preventing an infection from spreading through the entire network rather than protecting a single PC.

3. That reads a lot like, "[If] you want X, you should do Y. However, Y usually doesn't work." If monitoring network activity doesn't work on the dangerous malware, then wouldn't it be a good idea to try another method? What exactly is your point? That computer security is futile? This has nothing to do with the idea being proposed, which is merely a way of applying distributed computing to the deployment of network security. The article only mentions that the ants will look for evidence of a security threat, not what type of evidence it is looking for.

There is no perfect solution to computer security, which is why it's an area of continuous research. Of course malware writers will try to hide, disguise, or otherwise improve their worms and viruses. Likewise, security researchers will continue to improve their detection/prevention techniques. It's an ongoing arms race. That doesn't mean nothing can be done to improve the state of computer security.

I guess they should have phrased the ad better:
"If you want unlimited legally purcha...—er, licensed DRM-protected music, unlimited legally licensed DRM-protected games and unlimited legally licensed DRM-protected movies -- get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT. Do not under any circumstances use your AAPT broadband to illegally commandeer seafaring vessels. Also, do not use AnyDVD to bypass UOP restrictions. Be sure to always read the FBI Warning, copyright notices, and watch anti-piracy ads and future releases that are displayed before every movie (and take meticulous notes on what films you would like to purchase a limited viewing license for in the future)."