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The Internet

Submission + - Australian ISPs to disconnect botnet "zombies" (theaustralian.com.au) 4

jibjibjib writes: Some of Australia's largest ISPs are preparing an industry code of conduct to identify and respond to users with botnet-infected computers. The Internet Industry Association, made up of over 200 ISPs and technology companies, is preparing the code in response to an ultimatum from the federal government.

ISPs will try to contact the user, slow down their connection, and ultimately terminate the connection if the user refuses to fix the problem. It is hoped that this will reduce the growth of botnets in Australia, which had the world's third-highest rate of new "zombies" (behind the US and China)

Comment Re:All I have is an anecdote (Score 1) 430

The H1N1 virus does not represent "the grave" for me.

Spoken like a true Darwin Award contender. H1N1 has presented a strain that is very virulent and that has been fatal for young healthy individuals. Of course, you can argue the finer points, weigh up the overall risks for yourself by understanding the disease better (recommended) and come to a decision, but should you chose not to vaccinate yourself against it, you should keep in mind the possibility that you may carry the disease on to people you care about whom may or may not be adversely impacted.

Comment Re:All I have is an anecdote (Score 1) 430

There is, after all, a type of natural selection in effect here. If you change the virus's environment (by vaccinating the hosts) to select against a few strains, then those strains will decline and other strains will become dominant.

The problem I see with this is that it implies that the flu strains are competing with one another when in fact they are not. I don't see why it's not possible for a person to come down with two or more flu's at the one time, thereby all being successful, and one not disqualifying the other(s). The victim would be in a pretty bad state I expect and greatly benefit from having been vaccinated against any one. The (un-natural) selection pressure is real in terms of diminished host environments for one of these flus, and while it may appear that the other flus have been selected "for", eliminating one does not make the others more or less successful.

In line with this thinking then, if a flu weakened immune system is enough to make another less prevalent virus, more successful, then not vaccinating and getting a bad flu may assist a less virulent flu at becoming more successful.

United States

Submission + - Alaskan Volcano goes boom

Michael the Great writes: "http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php http://twitter.com/alaska_avo Alaska volcano, Readoubt, is currently errupting. This began late Sunday evening. Lava is not an issue, but ash can be. Currently, it looks like the ash is heading directly to the Kenai Penninsula where almost 50,000 people live. The last time Readout blew, 1989, it caused $160 million in damages."
Earth

3-Man Team Begins Ice-Survey Trek To the North Pole 137

Hugh Pickens writes "Satellites have shown how the Arctic sea-ice has been shrinking in recent years, but a three-man scientific team making an expedition to the North Pole should give scientists a better idea of how thin the ice is becoming. 'We're making the surface journey because that's the only way we have of gathering these direct observations of how thick the snow and the ice is,' said team leader Pen Hadow, who in 2003 became the first person to trek solo and without support from Canada to the North Pole. 'That's what the scientists really need to know.' There is more at stake for the British team than achieving some invented personal goal: 'The journey's going to be about 700 miles in distance, taking about three months,' said Hadow. 'In the earlier phases, the temperatures are about minus 50 degrees ... And we're towing sledges with our camping equipment and our survey equipment — almost twice our body weights — for most of the distance.'"

Comment Re:Wrong Premise (Score 1) 1108

That sure makes some rivetting reading. Having read a dozen or so of the bio's I started to get the feeling that some of these guys haven't put that much thought into it. Not that reading such a small and relativly random sample of the 650 is entirely representative, but after a whole series of bad links to a skeptics website, plus reading of an aging Norweigian that reckons he could do with a little warming (Norway is apparently cold), and a mathematician who admits to not understanding why the incoming solar radiation isn't absorbed by the atmosphere but the reflected radiation is; it started to detract from the credibility of the document. Anyone else taken a look at it?

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