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Education

Submission + - Kansas abandons "intelligent design" in s

Submitted by joe90
joe90 writes: Kansas has repealed public school science guidelines questioning the theory of evolution that brought the state international ridicule, but educators aren't sure how long it will be before the decision is overturned. The State Board of Education approved new, evolution-friendly science standards with a 6-4 vote Tuesday, replacing ones that questioned the theory and had the support of "intelligent design" advocates.
Movies

Submission + - Mexico = #1 in movie piracy, not China or Russia

Submitted by
soulxtc
soulxtc writes: "In a new report just released by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPI), the estimated trade losses due to piracy reveal some interesting results that seem to be startlingly absent from all the current discussions about the levels piracy and copyright infringement in the world. China and Russia are the two countries that are frequently cited as the world's "piracy powerhouse" over the rampant pirating of movies and music that occur in their countries, with Hollywood recently even going so far as to place Canada at number 3 on its "Most Wanted List" with its alleged camcording "leniency." But, is this really the case? The report finds that Mexico is responsible for almost TWICE the amount of lost revenue from movie piracy that China is ($484 million USD versus $244 million USD), and yet barely a word of this is mentioned in the media or even uttered from the lips of the WTO or any of the intellectual property enforcement organizations."
The Internet

US Group Wants Canada Blacklisted Over Piracy 585

Posted by samzenpus from the are-you-on-the-list dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on an earlier story, the IIAA wants to add Canada to a blacklist of the worst intellectual property offenders. A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize. 'Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections', the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government."
Databases

Submission + - Master Boot Record Guided Tour

Submitted by IdaAshley
IdaAshley writes: This article explores the Linux boot process from the initial bootstrap to the start of the first user-space application. Along the way, learn about other boot-related topics such as the boot loaders, kernel decompression, and the initial RAM disk. Also take a look at a scheduled chat about the Linux desktop and how it is evolving, including improvements in application interoperability, and desktop graphics.
The Internet

Submission + - Citizendium failing to gain traction?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Despite the two recent Slashdot articles about Larry Sanger's Citizendium, it appears that the site is having difficulty converting good publicity into new content. Although the project saw impressive spikes in the number of new user registrations on both occasions, neither of them resulted in a general increase in the number of edits made to the site; even the number of article edits for the last 24 hours are lower than pre-Slashdot levels. What does this mean for the budding Wikipedia competitor?
User Journal

Journal Journal: 'Gateway' gene discovered for brain cancer

Journal by stemceller
Researchers have discovered that the same genetic regulator that triggers growth of stem cells during brain development also plays a central role in the development of the lethal brain cancer malignant glioma. In experiments on mice with such gliomas, they showed that knocking out the function of a particular regulatory protein, Olig2, almost completely eliminated tumor formation.
Quickies

Submission + - MS warns users not to trust its software -- DST

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "Yahoo! News reports that Microsoft is warning users not to trust its calendar and appointment software. For three weeks this March and April, Microsoft warns that users of its calendar programs "should view any appointments ... as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees." It's a potential problem in any software that was programmed before a 2005 law decreed that daylight-saving time (DST) would start three weeks earlier and end one week later, beginning this year. Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings. Software created earlier is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not the second Sunday in March (that's March 11 this year [2007]). The result is a glitch reminiscent of the Y2K bug, when cataclysmic crashes were feared if computers interpreted the year 2000 as 1900 and couldn't reconcile time appearing to move backward. This bug is much less threatening, but it could cause head-scratching episodes when some computers are an hour off. The problem won't show up only in computers, of course. It will affect plenty of non-networked devices that store the time and automatically adjust for daylight saving, like some digital watches and clocks. But in those instances the result will be a nuisance (adjust the time manually or wait three weeks) rather than something that might throw a wrench in the works. Digg."
Spam

Submission + - Email that's Spam Harvester-Proof... Seriously

Submitted by
Slimtreeshadow
Slimtreeshadow writes: "Here's a method to publish emails embedded in links. The system opens a web page w/ the encoded URL and then sends a mailto to your client of choice. Has anyone seen something like this? He claims the system is totally harvester proof. Quote:

While in the hospital a short time ago (urgent abdominal surgery), I had a lot of time to meditate and imagine without the pressures of day-to-day business intruding. And I figured out how to do it. The system is harvester-proof. No doubt. The email address can not even be harvested by manually clicking on the link. The system never discloses the real destination email address to any party, robot or human...

Click this link to try it: http://flow-to.com/email/w.u1171228517w.mth

The link can be on web pages, in emails, used in news groups, even published off-line in newspapers or on highway billboards, just like any other URL.

When the link is clicked, two things happen:

(i) your email program opens a new email form or window with the "To" and possibly other fields pre-filled, and

(ii) your browser opens a web page. Depending on your browser, the web page will be blank or it will contain normal web page content.
The full post is here."
Announcements

Submission + - Great Games Contest

Submitted by
James Wiley
James Wiley writes: "THE GREAT GAMES CONTEST

Great Games, Great Community, Great Contest

GarageGames is proud to announce a contest for a brand new site dedicated to bringing developers, gamers, and publishers together with great games: GreatGamesExperiment.com. To create your account and get started head over to www.GreatGamesExperiment.com and use the promo code SlashDotGGE.

GarageGames is going beyond development tools to try to change the industry using the entire community of indie gamers. Great games deserve to be played, regardless of budget or bureaucracy. No one company or part of the community can do it alone. Gamers, developers, and publishers must unite to bring every essential component of the indie game process together.

Contest, Categories, Prizes

Here's a link to the contest categories and prizes, which include an Xbox 360 with XNA Creator's Club Membership, an ATI video card, an iPod shuffle, 2 free passes to the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco, and more great prizes!

If you're reading this the contest has already started, this round ends on February 19th. GGE will be having a new contest every two weeks leading up to a two week contest after its full release to the public on March 5th, so there will be plenty of chances to win increasingly great prizes.

Gamers Wanted

Why are we giving away so much free stuff to a limited group of people? GGE is a community site, and therefore requires active community participation to thrive. We have the content, and now we're looking to get more gamers. Gamers on GGE aren't limited to playing games that have already been posted. If a game can be found, it can be posted — there are few limits to the games that community members can add. Having a large initial user base comprised mostly of developers and gamers will help to ensure that GGE will indeed result in a site that is dedicated to being the catalyst that drives the video game industry into the next generation of gaming.

Promote, Network, Discover, Download, Play

The goal of GGE is to be an all-in-one community for everything a lover of great games could want from a site. Promote your game; network with other developers and gamers; discover new games and old favorites; download free games and demos, or make yours available to others; play games and share your passion with an active community created for that very purpose."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Piracy on the rise? Blame Canada!

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the Globe and Mail by way of Gamespot, an article about the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which is shaming Canada for failing to tighten up its copyright laws. They're demanding the US Government blacklists Canada, claiming it is a mass exporter of bootlegged IP. The IIPA is made up of entertainment industry bodies including Slashdot favourites the MPAA and RIAA. I always knew Canada was to blame for something...
Republicans

Submission + - Truth in Ratings Act reintroduced

Submitted by dropgoal
dropgoal writes: Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas (and GOP presidential candidate) has reintroduced the Truth in Ratings Act. Like the previous version that failed to pass last year, Sen. Brownback's bill would make the FTC responsible for overseeing the video game ratings system and possibly result in a unified ratings system for games, movies, and TV. The ESRB would also have to review all game footage before issuing a rating: 'Currently, the ESRB hands out ratings after viewing a reel with representative content prepared by the developers. Sen. Brownback thinks that's not enough: "Video game reviewers should be required to review the entire content of a game to ensure the accuracy of the rating," he said. "The current video game ratings system is not as accurate as it could be because reviewers do not see the full content of games and do not even play the games they rate."'
Science

New Accelerator Technique Doubles Particle Energy 124

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the double-your-pleasure dept.
ZonkerWilliam writes "Plasma wake particle accelerators are making surprisingly quick advances. It was a just a little while ago we had GeV acceleration in 3cm. Now they are capable of doubling the energy of electrons. 'Imagine a car that accelerates from zero to sixty in 250 feet, and then rockets to 120 miles per hour in just one more inch. That's essentially what a collaboration of accelerator physicists has accomplished, using electrons for their race cars and plasma for the afterburners. Because electrons already travel at near light's speed in an accelerator, the physicists actually doubled the energy of the electrons, not their speed.'"

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