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Communications

Are You Using SPF Records? 263

Posted by timothy from the spf-50-should-be-enough dept.
gravyface writes "I've been setting up proper Sender Policy Framework records for all my clients for past year or so, hoping to either maintain or improve their 'reputation' in the email universe. However, there's a lot of IT admins I speak with who either haven't heard of SPF records or haven't bothered setting them up. How many of you are using SPF records for your mail domains? Does it help? How many anti-spam vendors out there use SPF records as part of their 'scorecard'?"
Role Playing (Games)

Online "Guilds" Mirror Real Life Gangs 160

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can't-quit-the-bloods dept.
j-beda writes "In June 2009, Dr. Neil Johnson published a paper titled 'Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic' in Physical Review E that found the way in which WoW 'guilds' form can be described by a mathematical model that can also be applied to an unrelated group of people: street gangs in Los Angeles. Since 'Any group that satisfies these fairly autonomous, competitive criteria would also (fit the model),' said Dr. Johnson, the findings are of interest to those combating international as well as local terrorist cells."
Biotech

Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines 248

Posted by kdawson from the lamp-unto-your-feet dept.
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."
Science

The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and the Chicago Cubs 194

Posted by kdawson from the all-the-time-in-the-world dept.
Following up our earlier discussion of the theory that the Higgs boson might time-travel to avoid being found, reader gpronger notes an interview with MIT (and LHC) physicist Steven Nahn, in which he comments on Nielsen and Ninomiya's unlikely-sounding theory. "The premise is fairly crazy, but many things in physics are constructed that way... The difference here is that... previous 'crazy' ideas gave consequences that were clearly testable and attestable to the new nature of the theory, in an objective manner, and involved the behavior of inanimate objects (i.e., not humans). However, in this case, the consequences seem quite contrived... Exactly in line with their argument, I could say that Nature abhors the Chicago Cubs, such that the theory which describes the evolution of our universe prescribed Steve Bartman to interfere on October 14, 2003, extending the 'bad luck' of the Cubbies."
The Internet

Postmortem for a Dead Newspaper 219

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what-not-to-do dept.
Techdirt points out a great postmortem for the Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper that ended up shutting down because they couldn't adapt to a world beyond print. While long, the talk (in both video and print) is incredibly candid coming from someone who lived through it and shares at least some portion of the blame. "It seems like pretty much everything was based on looking backwards, not forward. There was little effort to figure out how to better enable a community, or any recognition that the community of people who read the paper were the organizations true main asset. ... The same game is playing out not just in newspapers, but in a number of other businesses as well. Like the Rocky Mountain News, those businesses are looking backwards and defining themselves on the wrong terms, while newer startups don't have such legacy issues to deal with."
Biotech

Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets 427

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-be-beet dept.
countertrolling writes "A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. Beets supply about half the nation's sugar, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The Agriculture Department did conduct an environmental assessment before approving the genetically engineered beets in 2005 for widespread planting. But the department concluded there would be no significant impact, so a fuller environmental impact statement was not needed. But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets. He said that the 'potential elimination of farmer's choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer's choice to eat non-genetically engineered food' constituted a significant effect on the environment that necessitated an environmental impact statement. There's still hope, isn't there? That we can at least get this stuff labeled properly?"
Security

Spyware Prank Exposes Hospital Medical Records 319

Posted by kdawson from the epic-keylogger-fail dept.
cheerytt writes "Let this be a lesson to all the broken-hearted geeks out there. A 38-year-old Ohio man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he meant to install on the computer of a woman he'd had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at a children's hospital. Spyware was sent to the woman's Yahoo e-mail address in the hope it would be used to monitor what his former girlfriend was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery department. The spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures via e-mail, including details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 patients. The man will pay $33,000 to the hospital for damages and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison."
NASA

Sending Astronauts On a One-Way Trip To Mars 917

Posted by samzenpus from the and-don't-come-back dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, writes in the NY Times that with the investment needed to return to the moon likely to run in excess of $150 billion and the cost of a round trip to Mars easily two to four times that, there is a way to reduce the cost and technical requirements of a manned mission to Mars: send the astronauts on a one way trip. 'While the idea of sending astronauts aloft never to return is jarring upon first hearing, the rationale for one-way trips into space has both historical and practical roots,' writes Krauss. 'Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip.' There are more immediate and pragmatic reasons to consider one-way human space exploration missions including money. 'If the fuel for the return is carried on the ship, this greatly increases the mass of the ship, which in turn requires even more fuel.' But would anyone volunteer to go on such a trip? Krauss says that informal surveys show that many scientists would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space and that we might want to restrict the voyage to older astronauts, whose longevity is limited in any case. "
Medicine

Augmented Reality In a Contact Lens 196

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lookit-them-wires-in-there dept.
Toe, The writes "Bionanotechnology researcher Babak A Parviz writes about his research toward producing a computer interface in a contact lens. At the moment, they have only embedded a single LED, but they foresee a much more complex interface such as detailed in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Such lenses potentially could also read human bio-information from the eye, providing medical information on the order of what is now taken from blood tests, but on a continuous basis. An example would be monitoring glucose levels for diabetics. The author states that, 'All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place,' and details what refinements and advances will be necessary to bring this technology to reality."
Portables

FBI Investigating Mystery Laptops Sent To US Governors 329

Posted by timothy from the send-a-few-to-me dept.
itwbennett writes "The FBI is trying to find out who is sending laptops to state governors across the US, including the governors of Wyoming and West Virginia. The West Virginia laptops were delivered to the governor's office on August 5, according to the Charleston Gazette, which first reported the story. Kyle Schafer, West Virginia's chief technology officer, says he doesn't know what's on the laptops, but he handed them over to the authorities. 'Our expectation is that this is not a gesture of good will,' he said. 'People don't just send you five laptops for no good reason.'"
Programming

Dirty Coding Tricks To Make a Deadline 683

Posted by Soulskill from the it-ain't-pretty-but-it-ain't-crashing dept.
Gamasutra is running an article with a collection of anecdotes from game developers who had to employ some quick and dirty fixes to get their products to ship on time. Here's a brief excerpt: "Back at [company X] — I think it was near the end of [the project] — we had an object in one of the levels that needed to be hidden. We didn't want to re-export the level and we did not use checksum names. So right smack in the middle of the engine code we had something like the following. The game shipped with this in: if( level == 10 && object == 56 ) {HideObject();} Maybe a year later, an artist using our engine came to us very frustrated about why an object in their level was not showing up after exporting to what resolved to level 10. I wonder why?" Have you ever needed to insert terrible code to make something work at the last minute?
Mars

NASA To Team Up With Russia For Future Mars Flight 318

Posted by timothy from the you-bring-the-caviar-we'll-bring-the-twinkies dept.
xp65 writes "NASA has invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars, the head of NASA's Moscow office said on Tuesday. Russia is currently planning to send its own expedition to Mars some time in the future. Marc Bowman told an international aviation and space conference in Moscow that the Mars mission should take advantage of the achievements made by the International Space Station and use a multinational crew."

Comment Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge (Score 1) 587

by psiphiorg (#29059109) Attached to: Illinois Bans Social Network Use By Sex Offenders

The main problem with the Illinois law is not that it limits free speech, but that it is ex-post facto sentencing.

No, it's not. From the text of the law (Public Act 096-0262):

[730 ILCS 5/3-3-7(a) ...] The conditions of every parole and mandatory supervised release are that the subject:
[...]
(7.12) if convicted of a sex offense [...definition location...] committed on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 96th General Assembly, refrain from accessing or using a social networking website [...definition location...];

[730 ILCS 5/5-6-3(a)] The conditions of probation and of conditional discharge shall be that the person:
[...]
(8.9) if convicted of a sex offense [...definition location...] committed on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 96th General Assembly, refrain from accessing or using a social networking website [...definition location...];

[730 ILCS 5/5-6-3.1] (s) An offender placed on supervision for a sex offense [...definition location...] committed on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 96th General Assembly shall refrain from accessing or using a social networking website [...definition location...].

There is nothing ex post facto about this law. It only applies to people who are convicted of crimes committed after the law takes effect.

davidh

Comment Re:DB indexed on the wrong key, obviously ... (Score 2, Insightful) 299

by psiphiorg (#29045835) Attached to: Database Error Costs Social Security Victims $500M

when a 1500 page bill lands on a congresscritter's desk 2-3 days before the vote, what do you expect?

I expect them to vote "No", on the grounds that they don't know whether it's a good bill or not. Sure, whoever gave them the document said it was a good bill, but a Congressman should know better than to trust another Congressman.

davidh

Comment Re:Imperial measurements are for song lyrics *only (Score 1) 901

by psiphiorg (#28459565) Attached to: NASA Sticking To Imperial Units For Shuttle Replacement

"Driving speeds are in KM/H and distances in KM and meters, but western Canada was surveyed in miles, so we have mile roads, townships, acres, etc."

Fascinating... Canada has its own unique unit, the township, which apparently isn't in use anywhere else. In the US, a township is a political or organizational area which may be of any size. Actually, it looks like it is that way in much of Canada as well; it's only in a few provinces where "township" refers to a 6 mi × 6 mi square.

davidh

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