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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Read this a few days ago and had to laugh (Score 1) 398

by CoffeePlease (#30287610) Attached to: Harvard Says Computers Don't Save Hospitals Money
About 5 years ago I attended a dinner in Michigan where Senator Debbie Stabenow gave a speech on how we would save the auto industry by switching to electronic medical records. The theory was that that would reduce the 1200 or more per car that GM was spending on health insurance and pensions for retirees.

Comment I'm not sure I believe those numbers (Score 5, Interesting) 514

by CoffeePlease (#30142820) Attached to: Bing Gains 10% Marketshare
When I look at AWstats for my site:
Google 18020 pages (linked to from Google)
Google (Images) 976 pages
Bing 226 pages


And from Google Analytics:
Top traffic sources:
Google 26,738 visits 85.24%
Yahoo 676 visits 2.16%
Bing 346 visits 1.10%
Admittedly the site is not about shopping or entertainment - it's mainly about technical topics which maybe colors the results.

Comment You change the things that matter (Score 1) 549

by CoffeePlease (#30122138) Attached to: Are There Affordable Low-DPI Large-Screen LCD Monitors?
You change the things that matter, not the resolution. Change the font size, icon size, and widget sizes where possible. I wrote a post on making OS X usable for my father, but the same types of mods and more are possible on Windows. You just have to locate them all. For my own vision problems, I just insisted on a 30" monitor, set at its native HIGH resolution, and increase fonts and icon sizes as necessary. Get a pair of glasses set to the correct distance - in my case 26" from my face to the monitor. Making OS X more usable for seniors
Social Networks

Facebook Ordered To Turn Over Source Code 304

Posted by CmdrTaco from the revealing-trade-secret-super-poke-tech dept.
consonant writes "A Delaware District Court judge has ordered Facebook to turn over ALL its source code to Leader Technologies, who allege patent infringements by Facebook. The patent in question appears to be for 'associating a piece of data with multiple categories.' Additionally, while the judge in question deems it fine to let Leader Technologies look at Facebook's source (for a patent, no less!) in its entirety for a single feature, it would be 'overboard to ask a patent holder to disclose all of their products that practice any claim of the patent-in-suit.'"
Earth

Submission + - Dogs as Intelligent as Average Two-Year-Old Child

Submitted by
Ponca City, We love you
Ponca City, We love you writes: "The Telegraph reports that researchers using tests originally designed to demonstrate the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in human children have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations putting them on par with the average two-year-old child. While most dogs understand simple commands such as sit, fetch and stay, a border collie tested by Professor Coren showed a knowledge of 200 spoken words. "Obviously we are not going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with a dog, but like a two-year-old, they show that they can understand words and gestures," says Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Coren has also found that dogs can count using established tests developed for young children. and when something unexpected happens with an object, children and dogs will stare at it for a longer period of time. "Dogs can tell that one plus one should equal two and not one or three.," says Coren adding that dogs "can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life." Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. "They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.""
Biotech

Prehistoric Gene Reawakened To Battle HIV 360

Posted by kdawson from the learning-from-our-distant-cousins dept.
Linuss points out research published in PLoS Biology that demonstrates the reawakening of latent human cells' ability to manufacture an HIV defense. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman began with the knowledge that Old World monkeys have a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein that can prevent HIV from entering cell walls and starting an infection. They examined the human genome for any evidence of a latent gene that could manufacture such a protein, and found the capability in a stretch of what has been dismissively termed "junk DNA." "In this work, we reveal that, upon correction of the premature termination codon in theta-defensin pseudogenes, human myeloid cells produce cyclic, antiviral peptides (which we have termed 'retrocyclins'), indicating that the cells retain the intact machinery to make cyclic peptides. Furthermore, we exploited the ability of aminoglycoside antibiotics to read-through the premature termination codon within retrocyclin transcripts to produce functional peptides that are active against HIV-1. Given that the endogenous production of retrocyclins could also be restored in human cervicovaginal tissues, we propose that aminoglycoside-based topical microbicides might be useful in preventing sexual transmission of HIV-1."

Submission + - Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers Go Undergroun (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren't letting this stop them. They're taking their apps underground to an unauthorized store
Government

Submission + - Email your disinformation to the Whitehouse (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by
CoffeePlease
CoffeePlease writes: "The Whitehouse blog has announced a new way to report "disinformation" directly to the government. Here's your chance to turn in your neighbors, Nigerian scammers, senators, or friends that have sent you one too many chain emails.

"Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.""
Medicine

Submission + - Nicotine improves brain function in schizophrenics (cosmosmagazine.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nicotine enhances attention and memory in schizophrenics, says a study that supports the development of new treatments which could relieve symptoms and prevent smoking-related deaths.

A strong link between schizophrenia and smoking — with over three times as many schizophrenics smoking (70 to 90%) as the population at large — prompted scientists to investigate the link.

Researchers led by Ruth Barr, a psychiatrist at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, set out to find if the nicotine in cigarettes was helping patients to overcome their difficulties with cognitive function, such as planning and memory in social and work settings.

Comment Probably not ftp's fault (Score 1) 359

by CoffeePlease (#28685689) Attached to: R.I.P. FTP
More like you were attacked through one of the many http or sql injection attacks that are constantly being run out there. Which is not to say you aren't right - everything else uses encryption so why not FTP?

Comment I tried to solve this last fall. (Score 2, Interesting) 167

by CoffeePlease (#28583485) Attached to: Good PDF Reader Device With Internet Browsing?
I had to attend a workshop which required we have 100 or more white papers on tap and easy to read. I looked at all sorts of devices and settled on an Acer Aspire 1 netbook. None of the ebook readers at the time were good at PDF's. The Acer wasn't even close to perfect, but it did the job for that workshop. It has a fairly wide screen but I would prefer something larger, vanishingly thin, flexible and foldable. Oh, and it should run the application "Papers" by Mekentosj.com

Comment Google is giving half a million ebooks to Sony (Score 1) 107

by CoffeePlease (#27400485) Attached to: Questions Linger Over Google Book Rights Registry
I am not worried about Google controlling all these ebooks since they seem to be giving them away - at least the out-of-copyright ones. See these articles for examples. I'm not sure how they will deal with spreading around IN-copyright books. Google gives away half a million books to Sony eBook Storeâ¦. challenge to Amazon?? Academic libraries pave a new path away from Google
Censorship

Chinese Subvert Censorship With a Popular Pun 272

Posted by timothy from the what'dju-say-about-my-mother-horse-hemp-rebuke? dept.
Anonymusing writes "In spoken Chinese, 'grass-mud horse' sounds virtually identical to an obscenity (hint: it begins with "mother-") — and as a cartoon character, it has become an amazing phenomenon. Meant as a subversive attack on censors, the alpaca-like mythical creature has led to a cuddly stuffed animal — selling over 180,000 in a few weeks — and a wildly popular YouTube video with children's voices singing words that are either completely benign or incredibly offensive, depending on how you listen." Update: 03/13 09:29 GMT by T : Since this story was set up, the originally linked video seems to have been pulled. Searching YouTube reveals that there are some alternatives available, at least for now.

Slashdot Top Deals

Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"

Close