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Movies

MPAA Botched Study On College Downloading 215

Posted by kdawson from the math-is-hard dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press reports that in a 2005 study the MPAA conducted through an outfit called LEK, the movie trade association vastly overestimated how much college students engage in illegal movie downloading. Instead of '44 percent of the industry's domestic losses' owing to their piracy, it's 15 percent — and one expert is quoted as saying even that number is way too high. Dan 'Sammy' Glickman's gang admitted to the mishap, blaming 'human error,' and promised 'immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report.'"
Privacy

The Doctor Will See Your Credit Score Now 464

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what's-up-doc dept.
mytrip writes to mention that the same people who invented credit scores are working to create a similar system for hospitals and other health care providers. "The project, dubbed "MedFICO" in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient's ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive."
Music

Submission + - Musical Styles Linked to Genetics

Submitted by
Baltimore's Reservoir Hill
Baltimore's Reservoir Hill writes: "A study of 39 African cultures has shown that their genetics are closely linked to the songs they sing. Music, it seems, could reveal deeper biological connections between people than characteristics such as language that change rapidly when one culture meets another. "Other aspects of these populations' cultures have undergone tremendous change, but the music seems to persist," says Floyd Reed, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "In a way music is very resilient to cultural change." To reveal connections between musical styles, a system called cantometrics classifies vocal songs based on a sliding scale for 37 traits, such as yodelling and tempo. When Reed compared the graph of musical styles with a database of genotypes from more than 3,000 people in Africa, he found a correlation between genes and songs. In other words, cultures that had grouped together musically tended to share genetic markers. Reed says that it is hard to quantify culture but that cantometrics must tap into something fundamental, since the statistical significance of the link to genetics is so high."
Space

Submission + - Clues from Antarctica Suggest Water on Mars

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "In recent years, scientists have examined images of several sites on Mars where water appears to have flowed to the surface and left behind a trail of sediment. A new study says sites on Mars closely resemble Dry Valleys in Antarctica where water flows today bolstering the notion that liquid water could be flowing beneath the surface of Mars and that bacterial life could possibly exist on Mars as well. One of the sites in the Dry Valleys, a polar desert in Antarctica, has year-round saltwater flowing beneath the surface. With temperatures that dip as low as negative 85 degrees Fahrenheit, it's as cold as the Martian equator, and its iron-rich soil gives it a similar red color. "If you looked at pictures of both landscapes side by side, you couldn't tell them apart," says Berry Lyons, professor of earth sciences and director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. Because the suspected sediment sites on Mars closely resemble known sediment sites in the Dry Valleys, Lyons and his colleagues think that liquid saltwater is likely flowing beneath the Martian surface."
Upgrades

Submission + - Will Linux save the planet? (softpedia.com) 6

Submitted by 00_NOP
00_NOP writes: Acoording to a report on Softpedia, citing a UK government study, Linux PCs are likely to be used for 6 — 8 years instead of the typical 3 — 4 years of a Windows-based PC. With the price of copper and other commodities rocketing, seems like it is good news for the bank balance as well as, errr, the penguins. My oldest Linux box is from 2001 — what's yours?

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