Comment The actual tour is better (Score 1) 97
At least I hope it is when I go on mine in September.
H1N1 Appears To Be Transmittable From Human To Pig 132
mpetch writes "In an interesting twist, it appears that H1N1 influenza can be transmitted from humans to swine. Apparently a Canadian pig farmer vacationed in Mexico, returned to Canada and infected about 10% of the swine on an Alberta farm. The swine subsequently developed flu symptoms."
Researchers Claim To Be Able To Determine Political Leaning By How Messy You Are
592
According to a study to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, you can tell someone's political affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Conservatives tend to be neat and liberals love a mess. Researchers found that the bedrooms and offices of liberals tend to be colorful and full of books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia. Their conservative contemporaries, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials. Their bedrooms and offices are well lit and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags — especially American ones. Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, says these room cues are "behavioral residue." The findings are just the latest in a series of recent attempts to unearth politics in personality, the brain and DNA. I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.
Slashdot's Disagree Mail
202
Slashdot has one of the best discussion systems there is. It's grown
and adapted over the years to meet various challenges and suit the
needs of our users. A lot of time and effort has gone into it and we
are always open to user input to help make it better. Some of our best
ideas start as user suggestions and we appreciate the feedback. Of
course they can't all be gems and sometimes the suggestions we get are
unworkable or just bizarre. Here are a few of my favorite unhelpful,
helpful suggestions.
Slashdot's Disagree Mail
251
There is no shortage of comments about us selling out or running advertisements as stories. As you might expect there is no shortage of mail with the same theme. What I enjoy most about them is all the different corporate entities and sometimes political parties, that we are supposedly working for. If even half of them were true, I would have a stack of W-2s as long as my arm every year for the tax man. The truth of the matter is, nobody here sits in their Microsoft smart chair, talking on their minion iPhone, while playing in the Google money pool. (If someone knows how to get into the Google money pool, please send me a mail.) Conspiracy theories have been around as long as man, so I guess it should come as no surprise that Slashdot has a few of it's own. Read below to find out who is pulling our strings.
Comment Re:Not quite (Score 1) 243
Actually, it's more like this:
Suppose the guys at Evil Hat decided that they wanted to publish a 4E adventure and sell it under the GSL. Now they are faced with a choice: do I publish this 4E adventure or do I stop selling Fate, Spirit of the Century, and the Dresden Files? Now, none of these games have anything to do with the fantasy RPG genre, but they were published under the OGL, and therefore supposedly subject to the restrictions of the GSL if Evil Hat wanted to publish that 4E adventure.
Chinese Blogs, Netizens React To the Tibet Issue 926
Bibek Paudel writes "Over the past few weeks Chinese bloggers and people on Internet forums have been reacting to events in Tibet and the protests disrupting the torch relay. The BBC and Global Voices have interesting insights on the recent happenings on the Net. A western commentator says, 'Lots of Chinese people now view the Western media, human rights groups, and Western leaders' criticisms of their country as part of the Racist Western Conspiracy to Stop China From Being Successful.' One of the most vocal appeals by the Chinese blogs, forums, and text-messages has been to boycott French goods in response to the protests that accompanied the torch relay in Paris. One response post reads, 'Who is abusing human rights? Who is bringing violence to this world?' There also are two versions of music video of the song Don't Be Too CNN, and its lyric has assumed the status of a cult catch-phrase. Sina.com has a popular page: 'Don't be too CNN, fire to the Western media.' Many analysts believe that the protests over Tibet have only served to strengthen Chinese nationalism rather than evoke sympathy for the Tibetan cause. Sina.com has a petition against the Western media which has reportedly accumulated millions of signatures. There is also Mutant Palm, a blog by an expatriate in China who has been watching and commenting on the fallout from Tibet and torch protests online."
SecondLife Bans Unregistered In-World Banks 353
GuruBuckaroo writes "Virtual Ponzi schemes — pardon, "Banks" — have finally been given the boot by the policymakers at Linden Lab's Second Life. According to the company's latest blog post: 'As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. We're implementing this policy after reviewing Resident complaints, banking activities, and the law, and we're doing it to protect our Residents and the integrity of our economy.'"
Submission + - Nascar to shorten races due to gas price increases
darvijen writes: "http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/246751/na scar_to_shorten_races_surging_gas.html
Proving that the cost of gas has impacted the entire country, stock car racing is now feeling the heat. With viewership down, NASCAR looks to mix things up."
Submission + - Achieving Enterprise app security: Effective Softw
BlueVoodoo writes: "Learn how to use best practices and tools to keep your testing teams aligned with business priorities."
Submission + - Intel Unveils P35 with DDR3 and 45nm CPU Support
bigwophh writes: Intel is officially unleashing their newest mainstream desktop chipset today,
the P35, a member of the formerly codenamed "Bearlake" family. In addition to a
new ICH9 Southbridge,
the P35 chipset ushers in support for DDR3 system memory for the desktop. It
also supports legacy DDR2 memory, depending on the motherboard's DIMM slot
configuration. Here is
a performance evaluation on a pair of P35-based motherboards from Asus with
both DDR2 and DDR3 memory installed. As you'll note, thanks to some relatively
high latencies currently, DDR3 doesn't affect performance all that much
currently. It does show serious promise though, with the ability to hit speeds
in excess of
1700MHz DDR.
Feed Graying Aerospace Industry Seeks Out New Blood, on Their Turf (wired.com)
Feed Microsoft vouchers undercut patent claims (theregister.com)
No best before date on Novell vouchers
Novell's deal with Microsoft (on behalf of its customers, of course) could end up benefiting everyone in the open source community after all, thanks to a missing expiration date and a nifty little clause in GPLv3.
Feed IBM grills HP with 4.7GHz Power6-based box (theregister.com)
Feed Facebook Going Platform (techdirt.com)
It's no secret that Facebook has big ambitions and has supposedly turned down huge buyout offers. However, at the same time, there's been a lot of talk about how, despite tons of page views, advertisers weren't entirely thrilled with the returns they got from advertising in Facebook. Still, the site is unquestionably popular, and in many ways more palatable than MySpace, which has built up a tremendously negative reputation in the eyes of many. Over the past year, Facebook has also been aggressive in rolling out a variety of new features to make it start looking like much more than "yet another social network," and the latest is that the company is going to start positioning itself much more as a platform for others to build on. It's already made some effort to allow others to build on its platform via APIs, but this sounds like they're going even further in that direction. There's certainly no guarantee that this will actually catch on, but we've long believed that the strategy to really "own" the next generation of internet users has to be based on being the platform on which apps are built. This is something Google should have done three years ago, but they continue to fall down on the job and certainly have opened up a huge opportunity for others to do it instead. Seeing Facebook as the latest such entrant isn't necessarily a huge surprise, but it again shows that Google's inability to focus on the platform side of things has opened the door for many others.
