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Comment Re:Missing option (Score 1) 1104

by Blahgerton (#25055985) Attached to: Who do you blame for the US Financial Situation
The thrifts lost money in the early '80s. The regulations were "loosened" and all hell broke loose. The US taxpayer got the bill; a huge deficit loomed so Bush 41 reneged on his "no new taxes" pledge; Clinton is elected.

Interestingly, the thrift bust was also due to mortgage loans.

Important lesson: don't lend money to people who can't pay you back.
Biotech

Submission + - Gehrig's Discovery Sparks Hope (thestar.com)

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "Hunched over her microscope at the University of Toronto, Janice Robertson is focused on innocuous-looking brown blobs. She's been hunting for life-saving clues into the mystery of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the muscle-destroying killer known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It has perplexed researchers for nearly 140 years and it is a mystery that has captivated Robertson as she watches the microscopic round cells — motor neurons in minuscule sections of human spinal cord and brain. In ALS, these motor neurons are killed by mutant genes that make defective proteins, she explains, causing paralysis and death usually within five years. Named for the New York Yankees player killed by the disease in 1941, Lou Gehrig's has also laid waste to physicist Stephen Hawking and claimed the lives of Sesame Street director Jon Stone, jazz legend Charlie Mingus, actor David Niven, composer Dimitri Shostakovich, and Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. Effective treatment and a cure do not exist. But Robertson and a Toronto team of scientists have developed the world's first antibody to the abnormal protein derived from the mutant superoxide-dimutase-1 (SOD1) gene, the only known cause of Lou Gehrig's, and responsible for 2 per cent of all cases. This antibody could be used to detect and remove the abnormal forms of the protein. The scientists say their findings, published in the June edition of Nature Medicine, open the door to ways for better treatments, prevention and earlier diagnosis."
United States

Submission + - FEC Will Not Regulate Political Blogging (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Despite complaints that political bloggers should be subject to campaign finance laws since they are donating huge amounts of money in the form of advertising and media services to candidates, the FEC will not regulate political blogging. From the FEC statement: "While the complaint asserts that DailyKos advocates for the election of Democrats for federal office, the commission has repeatedly stated that an entity that would otherwise qualify for the media exemption does not lose its eligibility because it features news or commentary lacking objectivity or expressly advocates in its editorial the election or defeat of a federal candidate.""
Businesses

Submission + - Dell begins their largest layoff ever. 3

Submitted by cyphercell
cyphercell writes: Dell has begun their largest series of layoffs ever. This morning at about 10:00am more than two hundred employees at Dell's Roseburg Oregon Call center found out that they no longer had jobs. Sparking what appears to be the beginning of year long run of layoffs for the company. http://www.newsreview.info/article/20070802/NEWS/7 0802014

Refuting local suspicions of malice Dell spokesman David Frink states:

... the closure has nothing to do with a lawsuit filed by employees of the Roseburg center in February, claiming Dell violated federal and state wage and hour laws.
http://www.newsreview.info/article/20070213/NEWS/7 0213020

and later says

...plans to reduce employment worldwide by 10 percent at the end of May.


Their plans to reduce employment can be found here:
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business /stories/technology/06/01/1dell.html

Here are some highlights:

Dell set to shed 8,800 workers...

Dell has 82,200 permanent workers, including 18,000 in Central Texas, and 5,300 temporary workers worldwide. The layoffs are expected to affect both groups...

In its last large-scale layoffs, Dell cut more than 5,000 jobs in Austin after the high-tech bust in 2001.

...many of the layoffs could come in Central Texas, where Dell is headquartered. In a March 29 report to clients, Goldman Sachs analysts said Dell might reduce the work force at its test and assembly facilities in the U.S. and Malaysia.
Slashdot.org

Introducing the Slashdot Firehose 320

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-wants-to-drink-from-the-firehose dept.
Logged in users have noticed for some time the request to drink from the Slashdot Firehose. Well now we're ready to start having everybody test it out. It's partially a collaborative news system, partially a redesigned & dynamic next-generation Slashdot index. It's got a lot of really cool features, and a lot of equally annoying new problems for us to find and fix for the next few weeks. I've attached a rough draft of the FAQ to the end of this article. A quick read of it will probably answer most questions from how it works, what all the color codes mean, to what we intend to do with it.
Software

Submission + - Microsoft delays Office 2008 for Mac until mid-Jan (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by i_hate_robots
i_hate_robots writes: AppleInsider is reporting that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) said Thursday that the release of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac has been pushed back from the second half of 2007 until mid-January. The Redmond-based firm now anticipates showing a final version of the software at the Macworld trade show and conference in January, with global availability to commence in the first quarter of 2008. "This was a business decision based on the Mac BU's commitment to deliver a high-quality product," said Mac BU General Manager Craig Eisler. "Our number one priority is to deliver quality software to our customers and partners, and in order to achieve this we are shifting availability."
Security

Submission + - Should We Rebuild America with Minneapolis Bridge? (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: The tragic collapse last night in Minneapolis of a truss bridge—one that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation found "structurally deficient" two years ago—raises an important issue beyond just the engineering of one single span. As national security expert Stephen Flynn pleads in an op-ed on American infrastructure in the wake of yesterday's disaster, "The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless." Do we need to start spending to rebuild America?
Education

Submission + - Linux as a Short-Lived Project

Submitted by LinuxNut
LinuxNut writes: Continuing their historical series looking at the early Linux kernels, KernelTrap is discussing the 0.02 and 0.03 kernels released in late 1991. Though the actual source code has been lost to time, the article offers an interesting collection of emails by Linux creator Linus Torvalds about his new operating system, 'for hackers by a hacker.' Version 0.02 was the first usable release, gaining the ability to run programs such as gcc if compiled on Minix. Version 0.03 fixed buffer-cache issues that made it possible to compile gcc from Linux. Interestingly enough, at this point Linus thought of Linux as a short-lived project saying, 'wait for Hurd if you want something real. It's fun hacking it, though (but I'm biased).' Though not short-lived, Linux has continued to prove to be fun to hack.

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