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Earth

Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World 359

Posted by samzenpus from the ant-lords-demand-more-sugar dept.
Deag writes "A mega colony of one family of ants has spread all over the world. Previous mega colonies in California, Europe and Japan have been shown to be in fact one global colony. Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony. But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends."
Government

Rhode Island Affiliates Banned From Amazon.com Sales 532

Posted by timothy from the oh-just-wait-for-the-feds-to-tax-it-instead dept.
Rand Huck writes "Amazon.com has now added Rhode Island to its blacklist of affiliates in response to its proposed budget changes to enforce a tax on Internet sales, which includes commissions on their affiliate program by content providers based in Rhode Island. The first state to be blacklisted was North Carolina, for the same reason. If you go to a Rhode Island-based or North Carolina-based website that advertises Amazon.com goods as an affiliate, that website will no longer have the goods available because otherwise Amazon.com would be forced to pay sales tax to the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations or the State of North Carolina. The state's rationale is, if someone clicks to buy a good from Amazon.com via a site based in Rhode Island, it's equivalent to buying a good from a brick and mortar chain store located in Rhode Island."
NASA

NASA Requests Help With Von Braun's Notes 148

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-actually-it-is-rocket-science dept.
DynaSoar writes "NASA is soliciting ideas from the public on how best to catalog and digitize the collected notes of Wernher von Braun. 'We're looking for creative ways to get it out to the public,' said project manager Jason Crusan. 'We don't always do the best with putting out large sets of data like this.' The PDF notes are those of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the first director of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and are typed with copious handwritten notes in the margin. According to the official request for information, NASA needs ideas on what format to use (PDF), how to index the notes, and how to create a useful database. The unique nature and historical value of the data, literally discovered in boxes six months ago, is what motivated NASA to ask the public for ideas."
Privacy

Montana City Requires Workers' Internet Accounts 836

Posted by timothy from the are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been dept.
justinlindh writes "Bozeman, Montana is now requiring all applicants for city jobs to furnish Internet account information for 'background checking.' A portion of the application reads, "Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.' The article goes on to mention, 'There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.'"
Google

Submission + - Google Earth Blurs Poland's Death Camps 1

Submitted by Greg
Greg writes: Exploring Poland on Google Maps shows an interesting pattern. Many areas in Poland have hi-res satellite images however when you get close to a death camp like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibór and others you for some reason see only low-res imagery, which will not let you see any details of the death camps. In some cases you can clearly see the difference in the image resolution as you get close to the camps.
Books

Submission + - The Internet Archive Demands Same Rights as Google (fictioncircus.com)

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's "Authors Guild" settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: "The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books." Who deserves the rights to out-of-print literature more? Google or Kahle's internet library?"
Programming

How Do I Get Open Source Programs Written For Me? 285

Posted by kdawson
An anonymous reader writes "I am a biomedical researcher interested in having general-purpose, scientific programs developed and released as open source. Interface design and reusability of the code are of primary importance to me. For my purpose, Cocoa applications relying on Core Data seem to be the best way to get the job done quickly. While I have some programming experience, I have few connections to the industrial world. So my question to Slashdot readers is: how do I find someone (individual or business) to write high-quality programs? Are there reputable contractors experienced in Cocoa? What sort of rates should I expect, to use as a starting point in negotiations? Would a requirement that programs are released as open source make it more or less difficult to find someone to do the job?"

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