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The Internet

Internet's First Registered Domain Name Sold 137

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-a-growth-industry dept.
MojoKid writes "Believe it or not, it wasn't internet.com or dot.com that was acquired when the Internet was young. Instead, it was the somewhat off-the-wall name of symbolics.com. The Symbolics company was the first to use an internet domain name to guide Internet viewers to its line of Lisp machines, which were single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. XF.com Investments, which is a Missouri-based Internet investments firm, has managed to secure the domain name from its original owner for an undisclosed sum and XF's CEO was quick to proclaim his excitement over the acquisition. It's hard to say why this domain name was the first registered back on March 15, 1985, but for obvious reasons it holds a special place in history. There has been one original owner for nearly 25 years. Over that time, we've seen the Internet grow to the tune of 180,000,000+ registered domains, and thousands more are being added each and every day."
Earth

Laughing Gas Is Major Threat To Ozone Layer 306

Posted by timothy from the damn-you-street-racers-damn-you dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that according to new research, nitrous oxide, the colorless, sweet-smelling gas with a long history as a medical and dental anesthetic is the next big threat to Earth's protective ozone layer. Its role in destroying ozone has long been recognized, as well as its role as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas but the new study puts nitrous oxide's ability to deplete ozone into numbers comparable to those used for other ozone-depleting gases covered by the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The researchers note that the health of the ozone layer has been improving since the adoption of the protocol and that nitrous oxide looms large today as an artificial destroyer of the ozone layer, in part because the emissions of other harmful chemicals have been so sharply reduced." (Continues.)
It's funny. Laugh.

Pigeon Protocol Finds a Practical Purpose 113

Posted by timothy from the fly-away-little-one dept.
Selanit writes "Since David Waitzman wrote his tongue-in-cheek Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, there have been occasional attempts to actually transmit information via pigeon. One group back in 2001 successfully sent a PING command. But now there's a practical use for pigeon-based communications: photographers working for the white-water rafting company Rocky Mountain Adventures send memory sticks full of digital photos via homing pigeon so the photos will be ready when the rafters finish up. The company has details on how the pigeons are trained and equipped. It may not be a full implementation of the Pigeon Protocol, but it works in narrow canyons far off the beaten path — and just as David Waitzman presciently predicted, they occasionally suffer packet loss due to hawks and ospreys."
Censorship

Swedish Regulators Ban Word "Bank" In Domain Names For Non-Banks 175

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the nanny-state-to-the-rescue dept.
It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word "bank" in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.
Medicine

Drug Vending Machines 97

Posted by samzenpus from the correct-change-only dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you guessed San Bernardino County prisons as the ideal place to put drug vending machines, come claim your prize. From the article, 'Corrections departments are responsible for so many burdensome tasks that many of their everyday functions, like administering prescription drugs to inmates, are afterthoughts for the public. However, dispensing medication was so laborious and wasteful for the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff-Coroner Department that officials sought a way to streamline the process. The end product was essentially a vending machine that links to correctional facility databases and dispenses prescription medications.'"
Science

How To Prove Someone Is Female? 1091

Posted by kdawson from the who-can-replace-a-man dept.
krou writes "Caster Semenya won the 800m at the World Athletics Championship in blistering style, leaving her competitors in the dust, but she has been thrown into the midst of a scandal amidst claims that she's not really a woman. According to the many press reports, she's believed to shave, is flat chested, has a very masculine physique, previously preferred playing physical games with boys, and shunned traditional female activities and clothing. Questions about her gender have dogged her entire career. Previously, acceptance that she is a women relied on simple inspection of female genitals. But now the IAAF claim that they want to conduct further tests to see if 'she may have a rare medical condition that gives her an unfair advantage.' An IAAF spokesmen noted that 'The [testing] process was started after Semenya made her startling breakthroughs — a 25-second improvement at 1500m and eight seconds at 800m, just some weeks ago.' I'm curious what the Slashdot community thinks: what can be considered proof of someone being male or female? Is it simply a case of having the right genitals, or are there other criteria that should be used? Is the IAAF right in claiming that someone should be prevented from competing because they have a rare medical or genetic advantage?"

Comment Re:Strongly typed language? (Score 1) 299

by Ann Coulter (#29113597) Attached to: Scala, a Statically Typed, Functional, O-O Language

What would be the result of 354+true? What is the result of true+true? What is the result of false-true? What is the result of true^3? What is the squareroot of true? Does it make any sense? Is it well defined?

In C, any non-zero int value is synonymous with true and the int value 0 is synonymous with false. So, 354+true is something besides 354; true+true is the sum of two non-zero int values; false-true is simply the arithmetic negation of some non-zero int value; true^3 is some non-zero int value multiplied by itself twice; sqrt(true) is some non-zero int value cast into a double and given to sqrt. It does not have to make sense because these operations are well-defined.
Earth

Fatal Explosion At Russian Hydroelectric Dam 336

Posted by kdawson from the price-of-green dept.
stadium writes "An oil-filled transformer exploded at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant in Siberia, destroying three turbines and bringing down the ceiling of the turbine hall, which then violently flooded. The dam itself did not sustain any damage. It is unclear how many people were killed, but with 12 confirmed deaths and as many as 64 still missing (all presumed dead), this is a serious incident. The huge transformer had enough oil in it to produce a three-mile-long oil spill slowly moving downriver. BBC News reports with three separate videos. The dam produces a quarter of the total energy of RusHydro (whose stock thus took a steep dive at London Stock Exchange) and also feeds the world's largest aluminum smelter. The damages will take years to repair."

Comment Re:Strongly typed language? (Score 4, Informative) 299

by Ann Coulter (#29109209) Attached to: Scala, a Statically Typed, Functional, O-O Language

Strongly typed languages usually make type conversions explicit and enforce type restrictions; whereas weakly typed languages usually allow implicit type conversions and relax type restrictions.

Explicit type conversions disallow a value of type T to be treated as a value of type S without invoking a function that takes a value of type T and returns a corresponding value of type S. For example, a conversion from an integer type to a floating point type requires the invocation of a function that performs the conversion. Contrast this with implicit type conversions where a value can be treated as almost any type depending on how it is to be used.

Type restrictions only allow certain operations to be done to certain types. For example, numerical addition mïay only be performed on numerical types. A lack of type restrictions allow for numerical addition to apply for, say, booleans, for example.
Image

Verizon Sued After Tech Punches Customer In Face 493

Posted by samzenpus from the can-you-hit-me-now dept.
suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"
Image

School Uniform To Block Cell Phone Emissions 153

Posted by samzenpus from the luddite-high dept.
Foehg writes "ForeignPolicy.com reports, 'A Belarusian textile company has developed a special school uniform that protects kids from electromagnetic radiation emanating from their cellphones. The uniform features a dedicated pocket that can store the phone and make it safe for those who wear it.'" Now someone has to create an oven mitt that can protect you from the harmful radiation given off by your microwave oven.

Comment Re:Learn as hobby, not at school (Score 1) 141

by Ann Coulter (#29076703) Attached to: 14-Year-Old Wins International Programming Contest

A web developer or a functional programmer wouldn't stand a chance here as normal programming only in rare cases involves advanced algoritms like maximum bipartite matchings, maximul flow or other graph related algorithms.

Functional programmers will stand a better chance in these competitions. It is arguably easier to implement graph algorithms in functional programming languages than in imperative programming languages. There are proportionally more functional programmers who have a firm grasp of algorithm design and implementation than programmers who have not used functional programming languages.

Comment Re:Why should PUBLIC records be behind a paywall? (Score 1) 145

by Ann Coulter (#29071089) Attached to: Firefox Plugin Liberates Paywalled Court Records
Forbidding competition among providers of services is bad everywhere. User fees for road tolls and taxes as well as public schools are bad if private entities are not allowed to respectively provide access to their own privately owned roads and private schools. Moreover, these court records can be distributed by private individuals without incurring any additional costs to the federal government.

Comment Re:You need trust (Score 4, Interesting) 207

by Ann Coulter (#29023825) Attached to: Schneier On Self-Enforcing Protocols
Self-enforcing protocol participants do not require the level of trust that are required of impartial middle-men. One way of looking at self-enforcing protocols is to think of the protocol itself as serving the role of a middle-man. The protocol can be scrutinized more thoroughly than any self-serving middle-man and a higher level of trust can be placed on the protocol.

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