John Murdoch - Slashdot User

Submission + - Net neutrality in Canada now in serious risk.

Submitted by

Oshawapilot

on Monday February 12, 2007 @09:23PM

Oshawapilot writes: "A editorial piece in todays Toronto Star newspaper points towards some disturbing movements on the Net Neutrality front in Canada.

With a Minister Of Industry making such troubling statements as "[Maxime] Bernier believes that consumers are best served by giving the dominant telecom companies maximum regulatory freedom" along with several questionable decisions on the Internet front, one must wonder if this government minister either fails to grasp what he is dealing with, or is in the pockets of big-telecom in Canada.

With 84% of the internet connections in Canada being controlled by only a few companies, this should concern Canadians, and be a wakeup call to all those who concern themselves with Net Neutrality.

With some ISP's in Canada already subjecting their customers to content or application discrimination, is a full blown attack on Net Neutrality that far away on this side of the border?

Does the government care? Or even understand?"

Submission + - Short proof of the four color theorem?

Submitted by easyEmu on Monday February 12, 2007 @09:11PM

easyEmu writes: Today a mathematics paper http://arxiv.org/math.GM/0702261 claiming to be a short theoretic proof of the four color theorem appeared on the arxiv. Such papers appear on the arxiv about once every three months by non-mathematicians who are quacks. According to other papers under this latest author's name, Yanyou Qiao has collaborated with other mathematicians, one of whom I know is very respected in his field of research. Could this be the long awaited arrival of a simple proof, in this case eight pages, of the famous four color theorem, or simply another attempt with a fatal flaw?

Submission + - Demo of Commercially-Available Quantum Computer

Submitted by zero_offset on Monday February 12, 2007 @09:09PM

zero_offset writes: Over the past few days many sources (for example, InformationWeek) have been reporting that a Canadian company named D-Wave Systems announced that tomorrow, February 13th, they'll demonstrate a commercially-available 16-qubit quantum computer. The founder and CTO states, "It doesn't do any kind of communications or cryptographic applications, but instead solves multivariable, combinatorial problems on our own supercooled quantum computer." Other sources are reporting that companies such as IBM are skeptical. Based on a 2005 article in Technology Review which stated they were looking at a 3-year timeline, it would appear they're ahead of schedule.

Submission + - Yahoo! India steals content from blogs

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo! India, an Indian subsidiary of Yahoo! Corporation launched a new Malayalam (Indian Language) Portal recently. While browsing through the contents, couple of Malayalam bloggers were shocked to find their published content (blogs that were registered under Creative Common Licensing rights) were smoothly lifted and placed on Yahoo! India's portal. Obviously, the bloggers were never contacted before this violation. A Malayalam recipe blog by blogger 'Surgayathri' had to suffer the major violation even though her blog is registered under Creative Common License. Read more here: http://copyrightviolations.blogspot.com/

Submission + - Getting in to a Top Tier College

Submitted by on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:36PM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm currently a senior at a top rated public school and I look forward to majoring in electrical engineering. I've already been accepted into Carnegie Mellon University, so I don't need to worry about any "safety" schools. However, I still have my sights set on getting into a school such as MIT or Caltech. My grades are high (95.6 on a 100 scale) and I have several leadership positions in clubs. But I'm pretty sure that's not enough. So I ask Slashdot: What else can I do to improve my chances of being accepted there? I've already been deferred from early action at both institutions and I'm afraid it's too late to do much at this point. However, I'm sure there are other Slashdot users wondering just what it takes to go in a top college today.

California Balks At Internet Sales Tax 268

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 12, 2007 @08:06PM from the what's-$2B-among-friends dept.

bob_calder writes "California has walked away from $2 billion a year in revenue by declining to get on board with a group working to standardize tax rates so a national tax on Internet sales could eventually be implemented by Congress. Supporters of the tax think they still have a chance in New York, Texas, and Florida. At the moment the largest states pursuing the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative are New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. California didn't want to give up its autonomy in setting taxes to a coalition of smaller states."

Near-Complete Cure For Diabetes In Two Years? 271

Posted by kdawson on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:21PM from the medical-miracle dept.

resistant writes "Researchers at a Toronto hospital have stumbled upon a dramatic treatment for mouse diabetes, with large implications for the treatment of diabetes in humans. From the article: 'The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection... They also discovered that their treatments curbed the insulin resistance that is the hallmark of Type 2 diabetes, and that insulin resistance is a major factor in Type 1 diabetes, suggesting the two illnesses are quite similar.'"
Update: 12/17 03:46 GMT by KD : resistant adds that the Cell Journal article is posted as a PDF as well as in plain text.

Submission + - Why cell phone outage reports are secret

Submitted by

thenendo

on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:07PM

thenendo writes: "An MSNBC article reports on the recent rejection of FOIA requests for government-collected cell phone outage statistics. It would seem that the FCC is using the threat of terrorism as a thinly veiled excuse to protect Telecoms from fair market competition for reliability. From the article:
"A federal Freedom of Information Act request for the data, filed in August by MSNBC.com, has been rejected by the agency [the FCC]. The stated reasons: Release of the information could help terrorists plan attacks against the United States, and it would harm the companies involved.
...
"'There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,' said Cressey, now a partner in Good Harbor Consulting. 'The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying "the government says we're more reliable."'
...
"Al Tompkins, a Freedom of Information Act expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think-tank, said release of the cell phone outage reports would be 'a tremendous consumer tool,' and compared them to the Federal Aviation Administration's publication of airline on-time records.""

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