superdan2k - Slashdot User

Submission + - Possible manipulation around OOXML process in Pola (polishlinux.org)

Submitted by

michuk

on Thursday March 27, 2008 @06:23AM

michuk writes: "This is a follow-up post to my recent report on OOXML process in Poland (also covered by Groklaw). It looks like things are going bad this time. At least as bad as in October. IBM representative for KT182 accused commitee's chairman, Andrukiewicz of intentionally manipulating the process."

Journal SPAM: Spooks Looking for Terrorists in MMRPG 1

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @08:07PM

In another bogglingly absurd and potentially abusive reach of surveillance by military and intelligence agencies, it appears that US spies believe that Osama Bin Laden may have fled caves in Tora Bora, to a secret base in World of Warcraft. After the US Congress mandated the Director of National Intelligence to submit a public re

Submission + - Reggie: DS Users To Download Full Games Thru Wii (xuecast.com)

Submitted by

XueCast

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @07:05PM

XueCast writes: "http://www.xuecast.com/?p=432, Nintendo Of America's President and Chief Operating Officer, Reginald Fils-Aime in a recent interview with NY Times said that they are planning to further integrate Nintendo DS to Wii by offering full version game titles for Nintendo DS that can be downloaded to the portable video game console through it's bigger brother, Nintendo Wii."

Submission + - Can nerves really regenerate?

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @02:05PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "People suffering of injury to the brain or spinal cord cannot currently be treated because central nervous system neurons have a very limited capability of self-repair and regeneration. But now, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a potentially promising strategy for encouraging the regeneration of damaged neurons. Their new technique uses "a biodegradable polymer containing a chemical group that mimics the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to spur the growth of neurites." According to the scientists, this method could be used to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's in a few years. But read more for additional references and to see the 'inside front cover' of the December 2007 issue of Advanced Materials which reports about this research work."

Submission + - Is Ron Paul really being censored

Submitted by Guy_Warwick on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @01:38AM

Guy_Warwick writes: Black helicopters, aliens in zoot suits, communist mind control and other conspiracy theories are not my favourite reading matter. I believe in the stupidity theory — that is, generally things get done for the dumbest of reasons. I was sick of hearing about Ron Paul being censored and until I gave in and tried a basic search in myspace, facebook and redstate — I could not believe that nothing turned up. I tried the same with Guilani, Obama and Clinton — sure enough there they were. It's not strictly true to say Ron Paul is censored — tweak the search paramaters and you will find Ron Paul but it's not easy. Even more bizarre was to see him temporaily removed from an MSNBC Poll and comments supporting him removed from the CNN site. What have you Americans got against him. He may at times appear to be idealogically zealous and ignore mainstream consensus but this is a guy who say No to War, No to Torture, Yes to habeas corpuse and most importantly tries to put himself in the shoes of foreigners who might be invaded, bombed or occupied by the US. Sixty years ago the world loved the US. You were the big guys with the big stick that were quick to listen and slow to use the big stick. Now the rest of the world sees Clinton and Giuliani sharing one thing in common, the absoute conviction that the US knows best. In short you get to choose between the world's policeman or the world's schoolmarm. Allowing Ron Paul visibility even if he has no chance of winning demonstrates one vital thing, that is, Americans actually take into consideration what other nations might feel before froming a foreign policy. Some of you might have some ideas as to how to lift the veil of quasi censorship if only to demonstate The USA values debate.

Submission + - Judge Rules Investigation Into CIA Tapes Legal (aljazeera.net)

Submitted by TDarwin on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @11:12PM

TDarwin writes: Many may know that the Bush Administration, through the Justice Department, tried to stop the investigation into the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes by saying that the incidents didn't happen in Guantanamo and therefore were not protected by previous orders to keep any evidence of the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. On December 19th, A Federal Judge ruled that this was not the case and that the investigation into the tapes' deletion could continue. For more, see this article from Al Jazeera.

Submission + - Don't Call. Ever. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:04PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Now that both the House and Senate have passed updated versions of the Do Not Call list, it appears that we may soon have a Do Not Call — Ever list. Phone numbers that have been previously registered will not have to be registered again unless removed by the owner, disconnected, or reassigned. At this rate, the only people who seem likely to get left out are those who registered right when the list first went into effect and forgot to renew."

Submission + - The Great Leopard Fallacy

Submitted by El Lobo on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @01:50PM

El Lobo writes: MacTopic is featuring an article about how big of a disappointment Leopard acyually is. The article doesn't talk about the firewall debacle or the broken Time Machine, but it focuses instead on much simplier things like "the Finder from hell". From the article: "No cutting in the Finder. You can copy, you can paste, but you can't cut... Open and Save dialogue boxes from hell. The open and save dialogue boxes are moronically disabled..., Column view is irritating and doesn't work right....,The amazing bad design of the transparent toolbar, etc...". The author was flummoxed that even Steve Jobs would have the balls to hint at forthcoming "secret features" and then get on stage and reveal the lame tacked-on additions to the OS that he did. He must have been mortified to say that he was going to reveal 10 new features and then only reveal 3...while pretending that they were all new, despite having given them away a long time ago.

Submission + - MIT dude disproves Wolfram on 44 conjectures 2

Submitted by blue2 on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @01:00PM

blue2 writes: Fresh out of press from the "Journal of cellular automata" ... geeky author Evangelos Georgiadis disproves legendary Stephen Wolfram on 44 conjectures. Abstract reads: In this note, we disprove 44 claims in [4] on minimal Boolean formula size of one-dimensional two-state nearest neighbor cellular automata as well as set a new lowersize bound. http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/JCA/JCA%202.4%20abstracts/GEORGIADIS.html

Submission + - Arthur C Clarke's 90th Birthday Wish List 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday December 16, 2007 @08:37AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "British science-fiction author, inventor, and futurist Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, celebrates his 90th birthday today and has marked it by releasing a video on YouTube. In the nine-minute message, recorded at his home in Sri Lanka, Clarke makes three wishes: First, he would like evidence of extraterrestrial life. 'I have always believed that we are not alone in the universe,' he says. 'But we are still waiting for ETs to call us — or give us some kind of a sign.' Clarke's second wish concerns global warming: 'I would like to see us kick our addiction to oil and adopt clean energy sources. For more than a decade, I've been monitoring various new energy experiments, but they have yet to produce commercial scale results.' His third wish concerns his home: 'I've been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years and, half that time, I've been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country. I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible.'"

Submission + - Guantanamo deleted detainee IDs from Wikipedia (ljsf.org) 1

Submitted by James Hardine on Sunday December 16, 2007 @01:15AM

James Hardine writes: The New York Times and The Inquirer are reporting that Wikileaks, the transparency group that published two manuals leaked from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba earlier this month has now caught US armed forces personnel there conducting propaganda attacks over the Internet. The activities uncovered by Wikileaks include deleting Guantanamo detainees' ID numbers from Wikipedia, posting of self-praising comments on news websites in response to negative articles, promoting pro-Guantanamo stories on the Internet news focus website Digg, and even altering Wikipedia's entry on Cuban President Fidel Castro to describe him as "an admitted transexual". Guantanamo spokesman Lt. Col. Bush blasted Wikileaks for identifying one "mass communications officer" by name, who has since received death threats for "simply doing his job — posting positive comments on the Internet about Gitmo". In response Wikileaks has posted independent confirmation of their analysis by security expert Bruce Schneier.

Submission + - The Epic Battle between Microsoft and Google 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:59PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.""

Submission + - The Twitter/T-Mobile Battle (bibleboy.org)

Submitted by

bblboy54

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @08:17PM

bblboy54 writes: "Starting Sunday December 9th, many T-Mobile customers began having issues sending SMS messages to the Twitter service. Initially this was thought to be a bug but customers began investigating and received very strong e-mail responses from T-Mobile's President's office. On Thursday, AlternaGeek reported the speculation. It was then later confirmed by the emails customers were receiving from T-Mobile and TechCrunch picked up the story. After a huge outcry from the Twitter community, it was just reported by a representative of Twitter that the problem was found to be technical and not political but this is not only after the direct emails from T-Mobile but also Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, announced T-Mobile was blocking Twitter. The motives and actions of what happened are up for debate but, at the very least, T-Mobile owes their customers and explanation for the way they were treated."

Submission + - Utah Cop Tases Man for Speeding

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @08:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: It's a disturbing trend lately. People are getting tased by cops for just about every infraction imaginable. We're all familiar with most of them, as they have made their way to YouTube, but a recent incident in Utah is especially disturbing. Not only was the man tased for a trivial "crime" (speeding), but the officer in question also refused to read him his rights as he was arresting him, despite being asked repeatedly to do so. From the article:

The victim of police brutality was a motorist named Jared Massey. Mr. Massey was pulled over on a Utah highway for allegedly speeding. When Mr. Massey asked the officer why he was being pulled over, and then to help him understand why he was accused of speeding before he signed the ticket, the officer ordered him to exit the vehicle. Mr. Massey was then asked to turn around and put his hands behind his back. Mr. Massey began walking back towards the car, obviously confused as to why he was being ordered to put his hands behind his back, and less than 10 seconds later was tased.

A video of the incident is available, from the records of the police vehicle.

Submission + - FBI slammed as Amazon wins customer privacy battle

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @04:50PM

Stony Stevenson writes: The FBI has been slammed in a court ruling after attempting to get Amazon to hand over details on its customers and their reading habits. The agency had taken Amazon to court after the company refused to hand over customer records.

"The [subpoena's] chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America," US magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker wrote in an August 2006 ruling which he has just unsealed. "Well-founded or not, rumours of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon's customers could frighten countless potential customers into cancelling planned online book purchases."

Slashdot Top Deals