Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Comment Re:Going to Oxford (Score 1) 1095

Go to Oxford... Have a pint or three at the Eagle and Child, where The Inklings writers' group (which included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) used to meet-up until 1962 (the Rabbit Room has various bits of memorabilia.). Then cross the road to the Lamb and Flag, where the Inklings group used to go to meet-up after 1962 and have a pint there.

As the saying goes "she was never bored because she was never boring"...
Security

Submission + - Firefox 3.6 locks out rogue add-ons (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: Mozilla will add a new lockdown feature to Firefox 3.6 that will prevent developers from sneaking add-ons into the program, the company said. Dubbed "component directory lockdown," the feature will bar access to Firefox's "components" directory, where most of the browser's own code is stored. Mozilla has billed the move as a way to boost the stability of its browser. "We're doing this for stability and user control [reasons]," said Johnathan Nightingale, manager of the Firefox front-end development team. "Dropping raw components in this way was never an officially supported way of doing things, which means it lacks things like a way to specify compatibility. When a new version of Firefox comes out that these components aren't compatible with, the result can be a real pain for our shared users ... Now that those components will be packaged like regular add-ons, they will specify the versions they are compatible with, and Firefox can disable any that it knows are likely to cause problems."

Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 712

The idea of a mobile phone isn't actually that new, a US patent for the wireless telephone was granted on 12th May 1908 (U.S. Patent 887,357) so the concept of the mobile phone is over 100 years old now. According to the font of all knowledge (wikipedia) the first mobile phone was introduced in 1945 - well within grannies life.

Even work on the foundations of the Internet very nearly happened in grannies lifetime as work began in the 60's on ARPANET.

Comment But would it actually run Linux?? (Score 2, Interesting) 326

Would such a system actually use ARM Linux? The reason I ask is that the ARM processor is commonly used PDAs and therefore has Windows CE (or whatever they call it now).

So I wouldn't be surprised if M$ just renamed it Windows 7 Green Edition and rolled it out for such netbooks. Joe Public would be all oooh it runs powerpoint and word and IE and they'd be happy.

Comment Re:Is it 1988 again? (Score 1) 715

VW does have a trade union, IG Metall, it has over 2 million members and is considered to be Germany's most powerful union.

Just last month strikes organised by IG Metall hit the factories of Audi, Mercedes, Daimler, MAN and Bosch.

I'm sorry but I doubt that the unions are solely to blame for the troubles at Ford, GM and Chrysler.

Wine

Submission + - SPAM: Linux has better Windows compatibility than Vista

twickline writes: "I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system perfotmance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista sucks.

But recently my blood has been set to a rolling boil by the fact that most of my games just don't work in Vista. At all. Its so bad that out of spite I have decided to make a list of games that work better in Linux under Wine than in Vista. These are games that were originally written to run in Windows XP, are broken in Vista, but magically work in Linux.

You are probably wondering what Wine is, so from the authors: ...an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix.

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.

Which means basically Wine is a program that lets you run Windows programs outside of Windows (on a Mac or Linux, for example). There is also a version of Wine called WineX / Cedega, which is written for playing games. Specifically, WineX supports DirectX. Unlike Wine, Cedega actually costs money, but its still cheap when you compare the cost of it to an actual Vista install. How could a handful of programmers working in their spare time beat thousands of full-time Microsoft employees at their own game (hey Vista only took 5+ years)? A couple of things: 1. the Wine guys are good at what they do. 2. Vista is a full scale train wreck.

All tests were run on the same dual-boot machine. My version of Vista is completely patched, and so are my video card drivers, in case you were wondering. For Linux, I am running Mepis 7.0. The hardware in my machine is: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1.5 GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 5 FX Series.

Enough introductions, onto the results."

Link to Original Source
The Courts

Submission + - SPAM: FTC wants contempt charges on MySpace pagejackers

coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission today U.S. district court to hold three Internet pagejackers in contempt and order them to give up any ill-gotten profits for violating a previous order barring their unfair and deceptive practices. According to papers filed by the FTC with the court, Walter Rines, his company, Online Turbo Merchant, and his business partner, Sanford Wallace, diverted users of MySpace.com to different Web sites and barraged them with ads to earn advertising commissions. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Graphics

Submission + - AMD HD 3800 Series Ushers New Life for Radeon (pcper.com) 2

SizeWise writes: "Last month we learned of the NVIDIA G92 8800 GT graphics card that turned in $400 performance for $250. AMD wasn't going to miss the boat either and their new RV670 GPU is being released in both the Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 cards targeting similar performance levels but lower prices. PC Perspective has tested both cards in games like Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Bioshock and several others and found that the lower priced HD 3850 is the real winner, performing nearly twice as good as similarly priced NVIDIA parts. The HD 3870 doesn't do quite as well but still turns out to be a reasonable GPU for the money that uses much less power than the previous AMD R600 cards."
Businesses

Submission + - flyMonarch.com joins forces with PayPal (peanuts.aero)

pulseblue writes: flyMonarch.com has joined forces with PayPal to be the first European airline to offer its customers the ability to pay for flights using their PayPal account. flyMonarch.com has introduced the service ensuring that in addition to debit and credit card transactions, customers can also now benefit from making payments via PayPal. http://peanuts.aero/low_cost_airline_news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5366&Itemid=59
The Courts

Submission + - AllOfMp3.com acquitted. RIAA demands pricefixing?

DataBroker writes: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/08/15/russia. site.reut/index.html

A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia's commitment to fighting piracy.

Denis Kvasov, head of MediaServices which owned the site, always said he was within the law because the site paid part of its income to ROMS, a Russian organisation which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders. The court has agreed, stating "Everybody who uses soundtracks has to pay a certain amount of their income to the rights holders and this company has done that," she said. "MediaServices has paid a certain amount of money to ROMS."

In short, the court says "a certain amount of their income" is proper and legal. By the prosecution appealing, are they really complaining that AllOfMp3 isn't cooperating with the monopolistic price-fixing? The guise of "protecting intellectual property rights" is looking thin when the court is agreeing with the defense.
Math

Submission + - Climate change not due to a change in solar output

Pentagram writes: "Skeptics of the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of climate change have frequently pointed to variation in solar activity as an alternative cause. However, new research published by Mike Lockwood and Claus Froehlich in Proceedings of the Royal Society A shows that the Sun's output has actually declined since 1985, apparently ruling this argument out as a cause of climate change over the last 20 years. As lead author Lockwood states, "The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about. They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not ... [the temperature] increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up.""

Slashdot Top Deals

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

Working...