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Comment Summary wrong: porn, not Stasi (Score 1) 569

by Badge 17 (#25773015) Attached to: Politician Forces German Wikipedia Off the Net

It's well-known that he worked for the Stasi, it seems, but he didn't like the claims that he didn't finish his university degree, or that he worked for a porn-related business (I don't know if either of these is true). The reason he's dealing with the forwarding is that wikipedia.de is under German jurisdiction, but de.wikipedia.org is not.

The lesson here is: totalitarian repression is A-OK, but porn is over the line.

German article here:

Comment Re:Nothing new under the sun... (Score 2, Insightful) 193

by Badge 17 (#25749911) Attached to: Review: <em>Gears of War 2</em>

Aside from the cover-fire system, this game is nothing new.

I don't understand comments like this, really. When was the last time you saw *one* really new thing in a major game? Portal? Bioshock is System Shock - awesome, but not new. Considering the popularity of three versions of Halo, with zero new things, just smoothing out old problems with the console FPS, I'd say console shooters will take creativity where they get it.

Comment Re:Very exciting, but... (Score 1) 281

by Badge 17 (#25629851) Attached to: New Type of Particle May Have Been Found

It's not just the mass - it's the other parameters involved. I'm not a particle physicist, but I hang out with them - the results are so freaky that of all the crazy DM papers, only *one* predicted them. That's kind of surprising in its own right.

So it's actually a bigger deal than you think - if the results are right. The theory in question (by Neal Weiner and Nima Arkani-Hamed) was created to explain a *different* experiment - a dark matter observatory, PAMELA (http://arxivblog.com/?p=599).

The "new physics" suggested from a different experiment may also show up in these results - and as far as anyone knows, it's the only theory that does predict deviations like this.

Math

Distributed.net Finds Optimal 25-Mark Golomb Ruler 265

Posted by timothy from the unique-and-in-duplicate dept.
kpearson writes "Distributed.net's 8-year-old OGR-25 distributed computing project has just proven conclusively that the predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal. 'The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29 39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396 431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays them: 12-17-10-33-19-...).' 124,387 people participated in the project and two people found the shortest ruler, one on October 10, 2007 and the other on March 24, 2008."
Biotech

Couch Potato Gene Identified In Fruit Flies 105

Posted by timothy from the or-extract-it-straight-from-me dept.
Pickens writes "University of Pennsylvania biologists have discovered a mutation in fruit flies aptly named the 'couch potato' gene that allows them to simply chill out — entering a mild state of quasi-hibernation known as diapause, when winter arrives. 'It's not like they're bears sleeping in a cave,' says Paul Schmidt. 'They just look like they're a little bit more sluggish.' The couch potato gene, first discovered in the early 1990s, got its nickname because flies with mutations in the gene became really sluggish and behaved abnormally. Little is known about the underlying evolutionary genetic architecture, but in diapause, the slacking off is far less severe. The flies' bodily functions slow down, and they are better able to tolerate stress. The fruit fly gene may have implications for human health, as it can help biologists study the function of the nervous system and diseases such as epilepsy, refuting a recent statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has 'little or nothing to do with the public good.'"
Music

Record Label Infringes Own Copyright, Site Pulled 282

Posted by kdawson from the wonder-who-filed-the-complaint dept.
AnonCow sends in a peculiar story from TorrentFreak, which describes the plight of a free-download music site that has been summarily evicted from the Internet for violating its own copyright. The problem seems to revolve around the host's insistence that proof of copyright be snail-mailed to them. Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license that cannot be verified unless its site is up. "The website of an Internet-based record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself 'The First Ever Donation Based Record Label,' but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug."
Medicine

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False 259

Posted by kdawson from the peers-can-be-wrong-too dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers have found that the winner's curse may apply to the publication of scientific papers and that incorrect findings are more likely to end up in print than correct findings. Dr John Ioannidis bases his argument about incorrect research partly on a study of 49 papers on the effectiveness of medical interventions published in leading journals that had been cited by more than 1,000 other scientists, and his finding that, within only a few years, almost a third of the papers had been refuted by other studies. Ioannidis argues that scientific research is so difficult — the sample sizes must be big and the analysis rigorous — that most research may end up being wrong, and the 'hotter' the field, the greater the competition is, and the more likely that published research in top journals could be wrong. Another study earlier this year found that among the studies submitted to the FDA about the effectiveness of antidepressants, almost all of those with positive results were published, whereas very few of those with negative results saw print, although negative results are potentially just as informative as positive (if less exciting)."

Slashdot Design Changes for Wider Appeal 854

Posted by CmdrTaco from the omg-i-heart-ponies-lol dept.
Our marketing department has done extensive research over the last 3 quarters and discovered that our audience is strangely disproportionately skewed towards males. Like, 98.3% males to be precise. To correct this oversight, we have decided to subtly tweak Slashdot's design and content to widen our appeal to these less active demographics. Don't worry! We'll still continue to serve our core audience, but we hope you'll work with us as we try to find a balance that will work for all.

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