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Comment They are a 'Fallacy of the Middle' party (Score 1) 249

by Linnen (#38539916) Attached to: New Group Paves Way For 2012 Online Primary
Another example of 'High Broderism' made into a political party, like Bloomberg's try or the 'No Labels' party. When one party's response to a cut finger is to recommend to cut off the patient's hand and the other party's recommendation is to cut the patient's arm off at the shoulder, these 'centralists' would compromise and just cut the patient's arm off at the elbow instead of getting out the band-aide.

America Elect is a group of campaign consultants looking for a front man.
Space

Submission + - Atom Smashers Get an Antimatter Surprise (io9.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The Large Hadron Collider is constantly on the hunt for "new physics" — discoveries that confound and expand our current understanding of the universe... and it may have found one in the decay patterns of a subatomic particle and its antimatter counterpart.

Specifically, particles called D-mesons appear to decay in a slightly different way than their antiparticles, and this seemingly small finding could explain why the early universe became dominated by matter instead of antimatter. According to project physicist Matthew Charles, the results have a statistical certainty of 3.5 sigma — meaning there's a 99.95% chance that these results will hold up, but still short of the 5 sigma level needed to declare this a formal discovery.

However, the team still has a huge amount of data still to work through, so there's an excellent chance that we'll know one way or the other about this result in the near future.

http://io9.com/5859845/the-large-hadron-collider-may-have-discovered-why-we-dont-live-in-a-universe-of-antimatter
Security

Submission + - Did Adobe hide 400 Flash Player security fixes? (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A high-profile Google information security engineer is accusing Adobe of burying documentation on 400 security vulnerabilities in the latest Flash Player update.
Science

Submission + - Gene study offers clues on memory puzzle (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "Scientists have shed light on why it is easier to learn about things related to what we already know than it is to learn about unfamiliar things, according to a new study.

The team says this is a paradox, as very different things are arguably more novel, yet adding to what we already know is so much easier.

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Tokyo have found that building on existing knowledge activates a key set of genes in the brain.

These 'plasticity' genes do not respond so well to subjects about which we know very little, making it harder for us to form new memories about unfamiliar topics.

The team says this could help us understand how professionals acquire their knowledge gradually over time and may inform new educational strategies to boost learning."

Submission + - NJ Judge Rules GPS Tracking of Spouse Legal (nj.com)

Submitted by Endoflow2010
Endoflow2010 writes: The use of a GPS device to track your whereabouts is not an invasion of privacy in New Jersey, a state appellate court panel ruled today.

Based on the battle of a divorcing Gloucester County couple, the decision helps clarify the rules governing a technology increasingly employed by suspicious spouses — many of whom hire private investigators.

No state law governs the use of GPS tracking devices, and the ruling, which does not affect police officers, is the first to address the issue, said Jimmie Mesis, past president of the New Jersey Licensed Private Investigators Association.

“We only use it when we are sure we have the appropriate conditions,’’ Reed said, noting that investigators make sure GPS devises are installed in cars on public streets and not private areas, and that the spouse must have some legal or financial connection to the car.

Appellate Judge Joseph Lisa, Jack Sabatino and Carmen Alvarez said Villanova had no right to expect privacy because the GPS tracked his movements on public streets.

“There is no direct evidence in this record to establish that during the approximately 40 days the GPS was in the ... glove compartment the device captured a movement of plaintiff into a secluded location that was not in public view, and, if so, that such information was passed along by Mrs. Villanova to (Leonard),” Lisa wrote.

Comment Re:cheaters (Score 1) 163

by Linnen (#36178640) Attached to: The Future of Shopping
The implemented solution is random audits. Your order is flagged at random and the cashier in charge of the area comes over and rescans some or all of your items. I do not know what happens if there is a discrepancy.
Cloud

Submission + - Amazon outage shows limits of failover "zones" (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "For cloud customers willing to pony up a little extra cash, Amazon has an enticing proposition: Spread your application across multiple availability zones for a near-guarantee that it won't suffer from downtime. "By launching instances in separate Availability Zones, you can protect your applications from failure of a single location," Amazon says in pitching its Elastic Compute Cloud service. But the availability zones are close together and can fail at the same time, as we saw today. The outage and ongoing attempts to restore service call into question the effectiveness of the availability zones, and put a spotlight on Amazon's failure to provide load balancing between the east and west coasts."
Power

Submission + - Fukushima Core Melts Through Containment Vessel (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Radiation levels are skyrocketing around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant as reports indicate that a radioactive core has overheated and melted through its containment vessel and onto a concrete floor. Radiation levels inside reactor two were recently gauged at 1,000 millisieverts per hour — a level so high that workers could only remain in the area for 15 minutes under current exposure guideline.

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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