41259231
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Iconic writer Douglas Coupland reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future.
40448171
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler may have recently witnessed Apple's impertinent fudging of a UK court's ordered confession of misdeeds and taken away an important lesson, because she has demanded that U.S. tobacco companies publish confessional ads beginning with very specific wording indicating that they lied to consumers over the health dangers of tobacco. Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies "deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking." Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that "secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans a year." Perhaps big tobacco will try to fight the order by claiming free speech rights under the First Amendment in line with the Citizens United ruling?
40265221
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Dr. Clive Boddy believes that increasingly fluid corporate career paths have helped psychopaths conceal their disruptive workplace behavior and ascend to previously unattainable levels of authority. Boddy points out psychopaths are primarily attracted to money, status and power, currently found in unparalleled abundance in the global banking sector. As if to prove the point, many of the world's money traders self identify as the "masters of the universe." Solution? Screening with psychological tests. Who would pay for it? The insurance industry, since such bosses-from-hell leave behind vast wakes of psychological wreckage, with payouts to victims usually the result.
39767271
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
In a 7-to-0 decision, the Supreme Court Of Canada has ruled that Pfizer Canada Inc.'s patent on well-known erectile dysfunction remedy Viagra is now invalid due to insufficient information in Pfizer's patent application. The upshot is that competitors can now manufacture cheaper, generic versions of Viagra for sale in Canada. A problem with spreading this news item is that many email filters will not allow the topic, so cheers to /.
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
In the 1950s, self-taught inventor Stanford Ovshinsky created an entirely new realm of materials science, which in turn has given new life to the engineering of semiconductors, solar energy, and electric cars. Although not a well known name like Tesla or Edison, today's high tech world prominently uses a bevy of Ovshinsky's inventions, such as: an environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which has been widely used in laptop computers, digital cameras, cell phones, and electric and hybrid cars; continuous web multi-junction flexible thin-film solar energy laminates and panels; flat screen liquid crystal displays; rewritable CD and DVD discs; hydrogen fuel cells; and nonvolatile phase-change memory. He founded a whole field of electronics known as ovonics, covering energy conversion principles in physical use. Stanford Ovshinsky died of prostate cancer Wednesday at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan at age 89.
38565225
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Robert Bork, the fiery former federal judge whose U.S. Supreme Court nomination battle galvanized a generation of conservative activists, spent the late 1990s arguing that Microsoft should be carved up into multiple pieces because of antitrust violations. Bork, an antitrust scholar and author of a landmark book on the topic, is now saying that Google is no Microsoft. In a new analysis released at an event in Washington, D.C., today, Bork offers a point-by-point refutation of claims that Google has violated the law or acted in an anticompetitive fashion. Rather, Bork says, it's a case of competitors' sour grapes. 'None of the purported antitrust problems that Google's critics have raised indicates that Google is behaving anticompetitively,' concludes the 29-page legal analysis. 'Given the serious factual, logical, and economic flaws in the antitrust complaints about Google's practices, one can reasonably conclude only that Google's competitors are seeking to use antitrust law to protect their own market positions.'
37820193
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Drawing on new data released Wednesday by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) that the Arctic ice pack has melted to an all time low (video), NASA climate scientist James Hansen has declared the current reality a "planetary emergency". As pointed out by Prof. David Barber from the University of Manitoba, 'The thaw this year broke all the records that we had previous to this and it didn’t just break them, it smashed them.' So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story? 'It's hard for the public to realize,' Hansen said, 'because they stick their head out the window and don't see much going on.' Thankfully some people are noticing, as Bill McKibben’s recent Rolling Stone article, Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math has gone viral.
35294765
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Until recently the news for Linux users regarding upcoming hardware to be sold with Windows 8's locked in/out UEFI settings has been less than palatable. Thankfully an Intel initiative is tackling a UEFI workaround that may prove suitable for Linux distributions. Will it work?
35292513
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Until recently the news for Linux users regarding new hardware sold with Windows 8 UEFI settings has been less than palatable. Thanfkully an Intel initiative is tackling a UEFI workaround that may prove suitable for Linux distributions. Will it work?
35186743
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
From over at spaceweather.com comes this news flash: 'Big sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. Because this sunspot is directly facing Earth, everything about the blast was geoeffective. For one thing, it hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward our planet. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME will hit Earth on July 14th around 10:20 UT (+/- 7 hours) and could spark strong geomagnetic storms. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend.' The article continues: '
Warning Condition: Onset
Potential Impacts: An enhancement in the energetic portion of the solar radiation spectrum may indicate increased biological risk to astronauts or passengers and crew in high latitude, high altitude flights. Additionally, energetic particles may represent an increased risk to all satellite systems susceptible to single event effects'
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Shera Bechard, the Canadian-born former girlfriend of Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner, would not be an obvious candidate for the special visas that the U.S. government reserves for “individuals with extraordinary ability.” Playboy magazine named Bechard Miss November in 2010, and she also started an online photo-sharing craze called “Frisky Friday.” Neither seems quite on the level of an “internationally recognized award, such as a Nobel Prize,” which the government cites as a possible qualification. But Los Angeles immigration lawyer Chris Wright argued that Bechard’s accomplishments earned her a slot. The government ultimately agreed. That kind of success has put Wright on the map as the go-to visa fixer for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It also highlights the use of so-called genius visas known as O-1s and EB-1s, which have largely escaped political controversy and are now the immigration solution of choice for many entrepreneurs.
34665463
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
In a speech Wednesday, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt. The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said. Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press, and advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Danny Sullivan over at Marketing Land has been tipped over the edge by various colleagues: 'After seeing yet another “hands-on” review of the Microsoft Surface tablet, I thought it would be interesting to shed more light on what exactly the journalists who assembled in Hollywood this week for the Surface launch event actually got to do with the tablets. In short, not a lot. Come along as I explain the hands-off reality of what I saw.' In response to Sullivan's criticisms, TechRadar contributor Mary To Many rebuts that merely touching something that does not operate nor even truly exist equates to an actual hands-on review. So, what do Slashdotters expect a "hands-on" review to reveal and/or include?
34145909
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Akamai's Guy Podjarny reveals after testing: SPDY is different than HTTP in many ways, but its primary value comes from being able to multiplex many requests/responses from client to server over a single (or few) TCP connections.
Previous benchmarks tout great benefits, ranging from making pages load 2x faster to making mobile sites 23% faster using SPDY and HTTPS than over clear HTTP. However, when testing real world sites I did not see any such gains. In fact, my tests showed SPDY is only marginally faster than HTTPS and is slower than HTTP.
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Freshly Exhumed writes:
Marine biologist-cum-TV personality Luke Tipple attached a 50-milliwatt green laser to a lemon shark off the coast of the Bahamas in late April. The escapade was sponsored by Wicked Lasers, a consumer-focused laser manufacturer based in Hong Kong that produces some of the most brilliant — and potentially dangerous — handheld lasers in the world.
“This was definitely a world first,” Tipple told Wired. “Initially, I told them no. I thought it was a frivolous stunt. But then I considered that it would give us an opportunity to test our clips and attachments, and whatever is attached to that clip, I really don’t care. It was a low-powered laser that couldn’t be dangerous to anyone, and there’s actually useful applications in having a laser attached to the animal.”
