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Comment Forbid Google, Apple to entcrypt (Score 1) 575

by Tanuki64 (#48041053) Attached to: Obama Administration Argues For Backdoors In Personal Electronics

I could not care less. If I had something I really need encrypted, I would not rely on what those companies try to sell me. I might be paranoid, but I have some trust issues with huge American companies. Wonder why. I would rather do my own encryption. Now some insightful persons might say, that doing ones own encryption is almost a guarantee to get cracked. I agree. I am a software developer, but I would never try to invent my own encryption algorithm. This would be madness. But I'd try to chain several existing ones. Encrypt with several different programs. Hopefully at least one has no backdoor and/or implementation faults and cannot be cracked. I might not be able to create my own secure encryption algorithm, but a nice wrapper program to make the chaining convenient and easy to use should not be a problem.

Submission + - Fukushima radiation still poisoning insects (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Eating food contaminated with radioactive particles may be more perilous than thought—at least for insects. Butterfly larvae fed even slightly tainted leaves collected near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station were more likely to suffer physical abnormalities and low survival rates than those fed uncontaminated foliage, a new study finds. The research suggests that the environment in the Fukushima region, particularly in areas off-limits to humans because of safety concerns, will remain dangerous for wildlife for some time.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Have you experienced Fear Driven Development (FDD) ? (hanselman.com) 1

Submitted by nerdyalien
nerdyalien writes: Few years back, I worked for a large-scale news-media related web development project in a South-East Asian country. Despite formally adopting Agile/Scrum as the SDLC, development was driven based on fear imposed by managers, and architects who were proficient in ADD — A**hole Driven Development. Project ran 4x over its initial estimation, and not to forget those horrendous 18 hours/day, 6 days/week shifts with pizza dinners. For better or worse, I was asked to leave half way thru the project due to a row with the manager; which followed with poor performance reviews and delayed promotion. Are FDD and ADD here to stay ?

Submission + - Schizophrenia Is Not a Single Disease (wustl.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New research from Washington University has found that the condition known as schizophrenia is not just a single disease, but instead a collection of eight different disorders. For years, researchers struggled to understand the genetic basis of schizophrenia, but this new method was able to isolate and separate all of the different conditions, each with its own symptoms, which are classified the same way (abstract, full text). "In some patients with hallucinations or delusions, for example, the researchers matched distinct genetic features to patients’ symptoms, demonstrating that specific genetic variations interacted to create a 95 percent certainty of schizophrenia. In another group, they found that disorganized speech and behavior were specifically associated with a set of DNA variations that carried a 100 percent risk of schizophrenia." According to one of the study's authors, "By identifying groups of genetic variations and matching them to symptoms in individual patients, it soon may be possible to target treatments to specific pathways that cause problems."

Submission + - Getting around the UN's ban on blinding laser weapons (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Despite the UN’s 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, the world is moving closer to laser weapons in both military and law enforcement situations that can cause temporary and even permanent blindness. Military-funded research in this area continues to be conducted by the Optical Radiation Bioeffects and Safety program, and already "dazzlers" have been in use in Afghanistan. Domestic versions of these weapons are intended for use by law enforcement agencies and in theory cause motion-sickness type illness but not blindness. 'But something bright enough to dazzle at 300 meters can cause permanent eye damage at 50 meters, and these devices can be set to deliver a narrow (and more intense) beam. To get around the ban against blinding weapons, systems like the GLIS run off of a low-power source.' Great info.

Submission + - Cheetah robot can run and jump, untethered, across grass Read more at http://sci (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Speed and agility are hallmarks of the cheetah: The big predator is the fastest land animal on Earth. Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they’ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah — a sleek, four-legged assemblage of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart. The key to the bounding algorithm is in programming each of the robot’s legs to exert a certain amount of force in the split second during which it hits the ground. So far they've gotten the beast up to a steady 10 mph, with leaps thrown in, and think the current model can be coaxed to 30 mph.

Comment Re:Atheism offers no values - you have to add them (Score 1) 937

by Tanuki64 (#47899489) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

Atheism offers no values - you have to add them

Means I as atheist are much better than a theist. Theists would murder, steal, betray without limit if they were not afraid to be punished after death by big daddy. I as atheist am not hindered by such fear, and despite that I don't do such things. Looks like I have my a moral compass on my own.

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