Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment ROI for drug development (Score 5, Interesting) 390

by mrspoonsi (#47603359) Attached to: "Secret Serum" Used To Treat Americans With Ebola
Given that Ebola is currently confined to Africa, and that a relatively small number of people have caught it (less than 4000)...and these outbreaks seem to only come along once every 20 years, where was the incentive for the drug company to create this drug? Was it good timing that it has something ready to go just now. Will each dose be prohibitively expensive to administer in Africa, or it remains to be seen if WHO will foot the bill to the tune of 10's of millions $$.

Submission + - iOS global usage falls behind Android for the first time

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: For the first time, overall usage of iOS as an operating system has fallen behind its main competitor from over in Mountain View. While it’s well known that the majority market share in terms of install base has long been held by Android, this is one figure in which iOS has been top dog for quite some time. But at least according to research from Net Applications, that’s no longer the case. More people now use Android, too. For the longest time, Apple CEO Tim Cook would mock Android — Android tablets in particular — by saying no one uses them. Last year he said, "I don't know what these other tablets are doing. They must be in warehouses, or on store shelves, or maybe in somebody's bottom drawer!" But, he can't make fun of Android any more. Web traffic to Android is higher than iOS for the first time in history. This shows that Android users are getting more engaged with their devices, using them more and more.

Submission + - Secret Serum' Used To Treat American With Ebola

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Both of the Ebola-infected U.S. citizens in Liberia received a rare dose of what news reports called a "secret serum" to treat the virus before being transported to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, according to a CNN report. And while some people do fight off the disease on their own, in the case of the two Americans, that experimental serum may have saved their lives. As Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol waited in a Liberian hospital, someone from the National Institutes of Health reached out to Samaritan's Purse, one of the two North Carolina-based Christian relief groups the two were working with, and offered to have vials of an experimental drug called ZMapp sent to Liberia, according to CNN's unnamed source. Although the Food and Drug Administration does allow experimental drugs to occasionally be distributed in life-threatening circumstances without approval under the expanded access or "compassionate use" conditions. It's not yet clear whether that approval was granted in this case or not.
Brantly, who had been sick for nine days already, as his condition worsened, he asked for the first dose and had it given to him through an IV. Within an hour, he was able to breathe better and a rash on his body started to fade. The next day he was able to shower without help before boarding the air ambulance that flew him to Atlanta.

Submission + - Google Spotted Explicit Images Of A Child In Man's Email And Tipped Off Police 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A Houston man has been arrested after Google sent a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children saying the man had explicit images of a child in his email, according to Houston police. The man was a registered sex offender, convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 1994, reports Tim Wetzel at KHOU Channel 11 News in Houston. "He was keeping it inside of his email. I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can," Detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce told Channel 11. After Google reportedly tipped off the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Center alerted police, which used the information to get a warrant.

Submission + - DNA project 'to make UK world genetic research leader'

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A project aiming to revolutionise medicine by unlocking the secrets of DNA is under way in centres across England. Prime Minister David Cameron has said it "will see the UK lead the world in genetic research within years". The first genetic codes of people with cancer or rare diseases, out of a target of 100,000, have been sequenced. Experts believe it will lead to targeted therapies and could make chemotherapy "a thing of the past". Just one human genome contains more than three billion base pairs — the building blocks of DNA. Prof Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "I can see a future where genetics is going to come into every bit of medicine from cardiology to oncology to infectious diseases." "Twenty years from now there's going to be a plethora of those, we will have a series of mutations which academics and industry will have developed therapies for, which will be targeted at you and specific for that cancer." He said chemotherapy, which attacks all dividing cells in the body, would be replaced with such therapies. "We will look back in 20 years' time and think of blockbuster chemotherapy [as] a thing of the past and we'll think 'Gosh, what an era that was'." David Cameron has announced a series of investments across government, industry and charities totalling £300m ($500m).

Comment Re:Radicalization (Score 1) 868

by mrspoonsi (#47557657) Attached to: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline
...and what if your piano kills not just the guy with the knife, but 10 of his neighbors also? it was still justified because you were at risk? the neighbors are fair game because they live next to a guy with a knife?

Violence begets violence, simple as that.

>Since Hamas started tossing bombs into Israel a few weeks ago, how would you respond had you been in charge of Israel? Keep in mind that the Iron Dome is effective, but not 100%.

I would guess that more people had been killed by car crashes in that time frame, so if they really want to protect the lives of the population, mandate a country wide 15mph speed limit.

Comment Re:Radicalization (Score 5, Insightful) 868

by mrspoonsi (#47556821) Attached to: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline
It is more to do with proportional response. Those rockets they have killed what 2 or 3? there are over 1000 Palestinians dead. You also have to consider that the Palestinian people as a whole are not Hamas, in the same way the Northern Ireland population were not the IRA. The UK did not resort to carpet shelling Northern Ireland to remove the IRA, because it would never have worked, the IRA would only get stronger. Ireland had segregation, it did not work, only by integrating the people can you bring them around and ultimately onto the same side. For every innocent non-terrorist killed, that will recruit many terrorists.

Submission + - Android Fake ID bug exposes smartphones and tablets

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: An Android flaw has been uncovered that lets malware insert malicious code into other apps, gain access to the user's credit card data and take control of the device's settings. BlueBox Labs said it was particularly concerning as phone and tablet owners did not need to grant the malware special permissions for it to act. The company added it had alerted Google to the problem in advance to allow it to mend its operating system. Google confirmed it had created a fix. "We appreciate BlueBox responsibly reporting this vulnerability to us. Third-party research is one of the ways Android is made stronger for users," said a spokeswoman. "After receiving word of this vulnerability, we quickly issued a patch that was distributed to Android partners, as well as to the Android Open Source Project."

Submission + - Police placing anti-piracy warning ads on illegal sites 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative."

Submission + - NVIDIA found a way to quadruple display performance in low-res LCDs

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Problem: how do they manufacture low-cost products with high-resolution screens? NVIDIA researchers have one solution — stack two low-resolution panels on top of each other to increase pixel density on the cheap. The solution is so simple it sounds ridiculous, but apparently, it works. Researchers disassembled two 1,280 x 800 LCD panels and rebuilt them into a single display with slightly offset pixels, a filter to weed out polarization conflicts and a bit of customized software to force the display components to work in tandem. NVIDIA calls the resulting prototype a "cascaded display," and in tests it has quadrupled the spatial resolution of the original panels (thanks, in part, to how the pixel offset crams an additional four pixels behind every one of the first panel's visible pixel).

Submission + - Overwhelming majority of UK broadband users opting out of porn filters

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: By all accounts, the UK's national porn filters have been a disaster. The network-level filters were introduced at the insistence of the government, which said that companies could either implement them voluntarily, or face legislation to force them to do so. After their introduction, more tech savvy users were able to avoid the filters entirely by simply using a browser extension. But 'ordinary' users found that many entirely innocent and non-pornographic sites being blocked due to the over-zealous nature of the filtering. Internet service providers (ISPs) didn't want them, many government ministers didn't want them, and now it is clear that the overwhelming majority of users don't want them either, according to the findings of an official study by the UK's telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. On three of the UK's top four ISPs, over 92% of users opted out of the porn filters. Just 5% of users on BT chose to keep the filters in place.

Submission + - Sony agrees to $15m settlement for 2011 PSN attack

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The Anonymous-sponsored attacks lead to a loss of names, passwords, identity theft, and possibly even stolen credit card information. As such, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company. Due to this, Sony has finally agreed to a preliminary settlement of $15m, which may be able to appease most of the customers that suffered from this attack. The PlayStation Network users that did not partake in the "Welcome Back" program that Sony unveiled shortly after their online services were brought back will be able to choose from two of the following benefit options: One PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable game selected from a list of 14 games; three PlayStation 3 themes selected from a list of six themes; or a three-month subscription to PlayStation Plus free of charge. Claiming these benefits will be done on a first come, first serve basis, according to the Washington Examiner's report, and are subject to a $6m cap. The settlement isn't just about free games or services. Customers with documented identity theft charges are eligible for up to $2,500 per claim.

Submission + - The Time The US Blew Up A Passenger Plane — And Tried To Cover It Up

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Fury and frustration still mount over the downing of Malaysia Air Flight 17, and justly so. But before accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of war crimes or dismissing the entire episode as a tragic fluke, it’s worth looking back at another doomed passenger plane—Iran Air Flight 655—shot down on July 3, 1988, not by some scruffy rebel on contested soil but by a U.S. Navy captain in command of an Aegis-class cruiser called the Vincennes. A quarter-century later, the Vincennes is almost completely forgotten, but it still ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest air disaster (Malaysia Air Flight 17 is the sixth) and one of the Pentagon’s most inexcusable disgraces. In several ways, the two calamities are similar. The Malaysian Boeing 777 wandered into a messy civil war in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border; the Iranian Airbus A300 wandered into a naval skirmish—one of many clashes in the ongoing “Tanker War” (another forgotten conflict)—in the Strait of Hormuz. In 1992, four years after the event (and shortly after I moved on to a different beat), Adm. Crowe admitted on ABC’s Nightline that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time it shot down the plane. Back in 1988, he and others had said that the ship was in international waters. Not long after the shoot-down, Iran asked the United Nations Security Council to censure the United States for its “criminal act” against Iran Air Flight 655. Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, “I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are.”

Submission + - Arizona execution takes two hours

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him. Wood, a double murderer, was executed by lethal injection. His lawyers filed an appeal for an emergency stay of execution, after he had been "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" in the death chamber. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she has ordered a full review of the execution, although she said that Wood "died in a lawful manner". Wood's lawyers argued the extended execution process violated his right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment.

Slashdot Top Deals

8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss

Close