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Submission + - Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Constitutional (supremecourt.gov) 17

reebmmm writes: The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care act and it's most contentious provision: the individual mandate. In a split decision, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority said the individual mandate survives as a tax.
Medicine

Killing Cancer With Engineered Viruses 144

techfun89 writes "Viruses can make us all sick, but one day could be engineered to defeat cancer. Cancer cells have one trait that may leave them open to attack. They aren't good at killing off viral infections, hence, at least in theory, you could use a virus to kill cancer cells without affecting the patient. Dr. Ian Mohr, a virologist at New York University, altered the herpes virus so that it isn't attacked by the immune system and kills cancer cells more efficiently. Another virus that is proving effective for liver cancer is Vaccinia. Vaccinia is used to protect against smallpox and so far the results have been promising. Several groups of patients have had an increase in survival times. Meanwhile other viruses are being used for things like melanoma, bladder cancer, and head and neck cancer."

Comment Re:I will be doing one thing about it. (Score 1) 412

Interesting fact: "Telephone sanitizer" is actually a euphemism for toilet cleaner. The term came about when indoor plumbing was popularized. Women who couldn't afford servants but still had money would hire out people to come in and clean their toilets. Nobody wanted a truck parked outside of their house that had "WC cleaner" written on it, so one enterprising businessman put "Telephone Sanitizing" on the side of his truck, which implied that these middle class housewives had adopted another new technology: the telephone. Thus, a euphemism was born.

Source: http://tlb.org/telsan.html

Bitcoin

Value of Bitcoin "Crashes" 709

souravzzz writes with an update on the state of Bitcoin. Quoting the Ars Technica article: "Bitcoin, the world's first peer-to-peer digital currency, fell below $3 on Monday. That represents a 90 percent fall since the currency hit its peak in early June." That's still three times its value in April 2011.

Comment Re:Something we should add... (Score 1) 263

Get enough Asshole stickers and you get a ticket.

Also, give enough Asshole stickers and you get a ticket. My anecdotal evidence suggests that the people who complain the most about bad drivers tend to be pretty terrible drivers themselves. That would mean that the ones going crazy giving out tickets would likely be causing the other drivers around them to seem like they are driving poorly.

Communications

DoT Grants $15M To Test Car-To-Car Communication 263

itwbennett writes "Car-to-car communications is about to get its first large-scale, real-world test in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute will be putting as many as 3,000 cars equipped with short-range radio on the roads, thanks to a $14.9 million grant it just got from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. DoT reports predict that up to 82 percent of serious accidents among unimpaired drivers can be eliminated or reduced by a little car-to-car negotiation, or an early warning that a sedan three cars ahead just hit the brakes even though you can't see it through the giant SUV directly in front of you."
Censorship

Online Parody Cartoon Targeted For Prosecution 327

SeattleGameboy writes "It seems that the Renton (suburb of Seattle) police need a remedial course on the U.S. Constitution," linking to a story at Seattle TV station KIRO which says "The Renton City Prosecutor wants to send a cartoonist to jail for mocking the police department in a series of animated Internet videos. The 'South-Park'-style animations parody everything from officers having sex on duty to certain personnel getting promoted without necessary qualifications. While the city wants to criminalize the cartoons, First Amendment rights advocates say the move is an 'extreme abuse of power.'"

Comment Re:All of those studies are the same (Score 1) 380

Point for point, you are wrong. Pro-gaming culture is nearly the same in South Korea as sports culture is in many other parts of the world. In the US, many kids play sports outside, or at least they have until video games started replacing physical games as the "normal" pastime, there, they play Starcraft. In the US, we have entire channels devoted to sports. In Korea, they have entire TV channels devoted to Starcraft. In the US, we have cheerleaders at our events, in Korea they have pop singers at their events. Here, we have our favorite teams which we live and die with. There, they have their favorite players from favorite teams that they live and die with. Also, replace "beer" with "energy drinks" and you can make the same arguments for video games in general.

Your entire post comes across as pathetic whining because you were(maybe are) one of the kids who got picked on by the jocks.

Comment Re:Slashdot Bias shows through (Score 1) 207

I haven't been around Slashdot too much lately, but I thought that most pharmaceuticals were well-hated around here, especially the ones for over-diagnosed illnesses like depression and ADHD.

That said, I also hate the marketing schemes of "It's good because it's natural" and "It's good because it's not made by a giant pharmaceutical company." Because so many folk medicines use those gimmicks, I tend to shy away from them.

Google

Submission + - Tech giants go to war... in StarCraft II (thinq.co.uk)

jayme0227 writes: It's a common sight for technology companies to attack each other publicly, but rarely does it spill over from the courtrooms and press into another realm. A new battleground has emerged for Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Yelp, and Zynga, however: StarCraft II.

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