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Businesses

Submission + - Mislabelling Organic Foods

Submitted by BayaWeaver
BayaWeaver writes: These days I try wherever possible to eat organic foods: bread, olive oil, tofu, veges but then there's this article in the LA Times USDA may relax standards for organic foods.
This looks like an attempt to water down the meaning of organic. Here's a quote from the article: "This proposal is blatant catering to powerful industry players who want the benefits of labeling their products 'USDA organic' without doing the work to source organic materials"
So I may not be free of pesticides and preservatives after all. If we can't trust the USDA to enforce accurate labelling of foods, who else can we turn to? Are there independent organizations that can be trusted?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Hillary says save Scott's hut (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "The World Monuments Fund has recently identified 100 monuments that are endangered by, among other things, global warming. One of them, the base hut of Robert Falcon Scott in the Antarctic is beginging to rot because it is no longer permanently frozen. Sir Edmund Hillary strongly supports efforts to preserve the hut which could cost $6.7 million."
Biotech

Submission + - Watching Drug Resistance Develop in Vivo

Submitted by nursegirl
nursegirl writes: As the spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria like MRSA and the new XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant tuberculosis) becomes a growing concern throughout the world, a team of scientists has been able to learn how bacteria evolves in vivo as a response to vancomycin and other antibiotics.

The team isolated S. aureus bacteria intermittently through a patient's antibiotic therapy and sequenced the genome of the bacterium multiple times. The results demonstrated 35 mutations in 31 locations as the bacteria evolved from vancomycin-susceptible to vancomycin-resistant.
Patents

Submission + - US patents Yoga

Submitted by
SmellTheCoffee
SmellTheCoffee writes: "Members of Parliament (MPs) in India on Tuesday slammed the US patenting authority for granting yoga-related copyrights to American companies, saying yoga is a part of Indian heritage. Terming the whole exercise as preposterous, the MPs said yoga had originated in India. Till date, the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. TOI is reporting on this."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Evolutionist manufactures Creationist hit piece

Submitted by
starrsoft
starrsoft writes: "A Ph.D. macroevolution student from the University of Bristol wrote an interesting post (featured on Digg) highlighting some outlandish claims made by the new Creation Museum, specifically that the T. Rex ate coconuts. There is only one problem: the museum is not open yet, her facts don't line up with reality, and it appears likely she invented the entire tale."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - US wants everyone else to destroy the climate too

Submitted by minuszero
minuszero writes: BBC news Is reporting on some of the changes the US wants to put in the new G8 climate texts.

Such changes include:
Striking out "climate change is speeding up and will seriously damage our common natural environment and severely weaken (the) global economy... resolute action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions".
and "we are deeply concerned about the latest findings confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)".

Yet, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality claims "The US continues to lead the global effort on climate change."

Question is, did she mean stopping climate change, or encouraging it?
Power

Submission + - YouTube Username Dispute

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hi there, I am user NativeInstruments in the YouTube community. I have received a request from the head of public relations of Native Instruments gmbh to handover the account because they would like to open their own channel. I asked what I could expect for my trouble. He has offered me $500 and threatened legal action if I do not respond by this sunday because they want to open the channel ASAP. So my questions to the slashdot community are mostly; is this what YouTube and communities are about? Are there any potential legal actions that can be taken against me? Are there examples of YouTube or Google accomodating corporate interest over individuals? Should I just give them the account? Any advice is appreciated since I value slashdot contributors' insight highly. Thank you!

Commodore Returns with New Gaming PCs 281

Posted by Hemos from the everything-old-is-new-again dept.
JamesO writes "Commodore is a name which will bring memories flooding back to many a gamer and it's been announced that the legendary brand is to return with a new range of high specification gaming PCs. The new Commodore PCs optimized for gaming will be launched at the CeBIT show in Germany on March 15 and attendees will be offered the chance to play the latest PC games using the purpose-built PCs."
Privacy

Submission + - Beware how much your WiFi is sharing about you!

Submitted by
QuantumCrypto
QuantumCrypto writes: "Errata has developed a new network sniffer that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SNMP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more. "You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you," said Robert Graham, Errata's chief executive. The tool will soon be released publicly on the Black Hat Web site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said. Errata also plans to release the source code on its Web site."

P2P - From Internet Scourge to Savior 131

Posted by Zonk from the bringing-the-goblin-out-of-the-closet dept.
microbrewer writes "The MIT Technology Review has up a feature discussing the future of p2p networks. Specifically, they look at their role in content distribution, in the age of ubiquitous video services. Soon, the article asserts, the very same p2p-style networks that 'threatened' legitimate business may be the basis for most video-on-demand services." From the article: "So how could additional P2P traffic actually be a good thing for the Internet? Carnegie Mellon's Zhang points out that because peer-to-peer networks exploit both the downlink and uplink capacities of users' Internet connections, they distribute content more efficiently than centralized 'unicast' technologies. Zhang also says it should be possible to label P2P traffic so that service providers can track it and decide how much of it to allow through their networks. He and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley have founded a startup, Rinera, to develop software that will give service providers such control."

How Bezos Messed With Texas 87

Posted by Zonk from the have-to-stay-up-there-once-he-launches dept.
theodp writes "The WSJ has the behind-the-spaceport story on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Texas land grab for his Blue Origin space tourism venture. Bezos deputized an attorney (who once handled Amazon SEC filings) to make ranchers offers they couldn't refuse (and can't talk about), acquiring property through corporate entities with monikers including 'James Cook L.P.,' 'Jolliet Holdings,' 'Coronado Ventures,' and 'Cabot Enterprises' — all named for famous explorers and all using the same address, c/o [Star Trek-monikered] Zefram LLC. BTW, FAA temporary flight restrictions are in effect for Blue Origin until Monday ('DUE TO ROCKET LAUNCH ACTIVITY'). Let's hope it's more successful than Blue Origin's maiden flight."

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