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Comment Re:do you want a CMS, or a wiki? (Score 1) 369

I have set my employer up with Deki Wiki, which is a FOSS version of their Enterprise Mindtouch Deki software.

This is built as a fork from the same codebase as mediawiki, wikipedia's software. Also, Mindtouch, or Deki or whatever, offers Enterprise features as an upgrade with hosted solutions and various support levels if they find the cost internally is growing out of control.

Also, as someone mentioned above about the power of just doing it, I was able to set it up on old hardware out of my house in order to showcase the feature set to my boss. By doing so she saw that this was something I understood, and could teach someone to manage as I had taught her how to use the majority of the admin features in an hour or so.

I guess it is called Mindtouch Core v10 now.... and they make it a bit harder to get the unlimited core features, with out the trial period sunset, of course. But, stick with MindTouch Core in the selections and you should be fine, provided you have a little know how and a can do attitude.

www.mindtouch.com/downloads

Good luck! And NO, I do not work for them. I like the free version of their software and found it an easy sell to the suits.
United Kingdom

Dogs Can Be Pessimistic 99

Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.

Comment This sounds like the worst job ever... (Score 5, Funny) 364

I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, so bear with me if you wood...

But seriously, figuring out an algorithm to ID wangs; sounds like those developers are going to be eyebrow deep in junk for a while. That's a job, much like plumbing, that I can appreciate for the value of the product, but can't fathom the drive to devote oneself to.

Submission + - Why isn't AT&T Femotcell Technology an App?

hajihill writes: "The technology behind a femtocell is essentially a network bridge which connects to a cell phone signal and bridges that signal via an authenticated VOIP connection back to, in this case, AT&T where it is routed as a phone call normally would be. This is understood. What I don't get is why a smartphone, with wifi capabilities, would need a femtocell to operate where there is already an available wireless connection in place. At the point where AT&T has worked out how to authenticate a call routed over the open internet as coming from your handset, isn't this extra piece of hardware they are charging us for superfluous?

I hope you choose to carry this story as it seems to be a case of AT&T blatantly profiting from customer ignorance and really shouldn't be tolerated. AT&T instead should release an AT&T branded VOIP app for it's iPhone handsets, instead of peddling additional hardware to it's customers when it should have beefed up it's wireless networks in the first place. Of course, the same could be said of others carriers and their respective smartphones, however, with the connectivity issues experienced by AT&T and iPhone users, I think this is particularly pertinent."

Comment Re:Are we guppies (Score 1) 834

Good point.

Corollary question for consideration: Did cheetahs have this problem before the advent of modern poaching/hunting practices brought down their numbers drastically (assuming this was the case)?

Could we be witnessing, through globalization and the blurring of the lines between cultures, a minimization of variance and an increased risk of serious genetic disorders? Could this reduce our survivability as a species in the face of some dire consequence?

Honestly, I'm guessing we'll be able to engineer our way around any such problem, but I would; I'm here.

Comment Re:GATTACA (Score 1) 203

I said this all once here, but here it is again, just as pertinent:

I had a conversation and a dream about this just last week. No joke. And this time your tin foil hats won't help you.

I think the technology is there for the government to take genetic samples from everyone in the U.S. armed forces, and thereby build a database in which they could match any found genetic material by gene clade, and describe your relationship, and triangulate your placement in the larger family tree, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

More simply put, a hair or skin flake on the ground could tell them who your brother, cousin, second cousin, uncle, all in different branches of your family, are. With that information it wouldn't be hard to find you.

Really, I'd be more surprised to find out definitively that this wasn't already in place.

Anyway, I feel a bit like a nutter saying it, but with enough computing power, we already have algorithms that do almost, if not, all of this.

Comment Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score 2, Interesting) 199

I had a conversation and a dream about this just last week. No joke. And this time your tin foil hats won't help you.

I think the technology is there for the government to take genetic samples from everyone in the U.S. armed forces, and thereby build a database in which they could match any found genetic material by gene clade, and describe your relationship, and triangulate your placement in the larger family tree, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

More simply put, a hair or skin flake on the ground could tell them who your brother, cousin, second cousin, uncle, all in different branches of your family, are. With that information it wouldn't be hard to find you.

Really, I'd be more surprised to find out definitively that this wasn't already in place.

Anyway, I feel a bit like a nutter saying it, but with enough computing power, we already have algorithms that do almost, if not, all of this.

Comment Re:Great... (Score 1) 246

No seriously, though.

The United States Military isn't, in my opinion (get out your tin-foil hats), in the habit of developing a brand-new and potentially game-winning technology, and promptly running to the phone to make a press release. Between this and several other more benign, as several medical advances reported on recently, I can't help but wonder what has happened in the international community that would prompt this type of activity. What type of non-public intel would instigate a response of this kind from the U.S. Military, an organization that has previously only let the world know they had radar evading aircraft some twenty years (or some such) after they had been in operation? Could it be that some other potentially less-than-friendly has developed some other or similar "Star Wars" type tech? And, I mean other than those we currently suspect of trying to develop nukes.

And please, don't hesitate to tell me I can go back to my conspiracy theorist secret bunker, as I've got plenty of canned food to last.
Earth

Submission + - New Material Captures Entire Spectrum of Rainbow (inhabitat.com) 1

Jason writes: Scientists at the Ohio State Institute for Materials Research recently announced that they have developed a new hyper-efficient solar material that is able to capture light from every spectrum of the rainbow. Whereas most photovoltaics are limited to collecting energy from a small range of frequencies, the new material is able to absorb energy from all spectrums of visible light at once.
Medicine

Submission + - Fat cells used to create beating heart cells (bobim.org)

Amenacier writes: Melbourne scientists recently made the discovery that stem cells isolated from adult fat cells could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the usage of fat stem cells in the reparation of cardiac damage, or to fix such cardiac problems as holes in the heart.

It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle cells through the action of signals from the heart cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells required to effect the process, without any danger of rejection by the body.

The original article can be found at the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery website: http://bobim.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=37

I for one welcome our rat-fat-heart cell overlords, what about you?

Image

"Stayin Alive" Helps You Stay Alive Screenshot-sm 31

In a small study conducted at the University of Illinois medical school, doctors and students maintained close to the ideal number of chest compressions doing CPR while listening to the Bee Gees hit, "Stayin' Alive." At 103 beats per minute, the old disco song has almost the perfect rhythm to help keep accurate time while doing chest compressions. The study showed the song helped people who already know how to do CPR, and the results were promising enough to warrant larger, more definitive studies with real patients or untrained people. I wonder what intrinsic power is contained in "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?"

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