Rejected: 13:35 21st November, 2006

The Telegraph and several other news outlets are reporting on the international deal to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor that was signed in today. Representatives of the EU, the US, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and China signed the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) agreement in Paris, finalising the project which aims to develop nuclear fusion as a viable energy source to fossil fuels. According to the ITER consortium, fusion power offers the potential of "environmentally benign, widely applicable and essentially inexhaustible" electricity, properties that they believe will be needed as world energy demands increase while simultaneously greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced,justifying the expensive research project.

life, n: The whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

I'm sure all of you have seen the many articles about various wacko things Senator Orrin Hatch has done to support the RIAA and MPAA. Among other things, he'd like to empower the media industry to remotely destroy the computers of people they suspect of illegally sharing files.

Wouldn't be great to give him the boot? You can help, by doing nothing more than voting on a web site.

See, for the first time in quite a few years Hatch has a serious contender for his seat. Pete Ashdown is a smart, tech-savvy businessman who's taken a year off to run his campaign. Ashdown is the sort of moderate Democrat who has a chance to win in Utah, and Utahns have expressed their opinion in polls that Hatch has been in office long enough and they'd like a change.

However good Ashdown's chances in theory, though, campaigning is about money, and he needs it.

That's where this vote comes in. Barbara Boxer has some campaign cash she's going to give to one of the Democrats running against a long-term incumbent senator. If Ashdown can win that vote, he'll have a great warchest to start the campaign with. It won't be enough, but it will give him a good start and will hopefully prime the pump for other large democratic contributions.

So go vote, and get all of your friends and neighbors to do the same! Even if they're Republicans, they still have to appreciate that an utterly one-sided race like Hatch has had in the past is not good for democracy. Get them to vote!

Papercraft pinhole camera 19:22 22nd May, 2006 Rejected

Just happened to see this cool looking, do-it-yourself paper pinhole camera on BoingBoing.net. This camera, which you can download the design for, cut and build is capable of capturing an image on any 35mm film through a pinhole instead of a lens. Though the design was first published in 1979, it was converted to a digital design recently.

From here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185737&cid=15329817

As reported before [slashdot.org], Firefox does not have memory problems - it has a feature that is very memory intensive. To disable this feature, do the following: 1. type about:config in you address bar 2. scroll down to browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers 3. set its value to 0 (zero)

Submitted: Thursday May 11, 2006, @09:38AM
Rejected : Thursday May 11, 2006, @09:42AM

Google has unveiled two new search tools in it's growing inventory of products. Today Google released Google Trends and Google Coop. More information is available at their respective faq pages. While Google Trends seems like a variation of Google Zeitgeist, Google Coop seems like an effort to actively incorporate user feedback into their search engine. No word about this in the Google Blog yet.

It annoys me every time some smartalecky Slashdot "journalist" comments that the pay in other countries is only $5 an hour OMG, while failing to take into account the Purchasing Power Parity and other niceties that would actually make sense. A couple of posts from this story http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/30/0541254 ( "Life on the Other End of the Tech Support Line") that I wish to save for quick later reference.

The first by me: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=184468&cid=15231430

Ofcourse...
(Score:5, Informative)
by GillBates0 (664202) on Sunday April 30, @08:14AM (#15231430)
(http://slashdot.org/~GillBates0 | Last Journal: Thursday October 20, @02:54PM)
...comparing salaries in absolute Dollar terms (as the article summary does) makes _no_ sense, really without taking into account the Purchasing Power Parity [wikipedia.org]. In short, $1.00 would go significantly further in India than it would in the US.

As a rough of comparison, a loaf of bread which costs $2.50 in the US costs a little less than 25 Indian Rupees ($0.50). US $13000 is a little less than 600k INR [google.com] which by all means is quite a _comfortable_ if not princely salary to get by in India.

And another one my KFG: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=184468&cid=15231489

Re:Compartively..
(Score:5, Insightful)
by kfg (145172) FriendFriend of a Friend on Sunday April 30, @08:52AM (#15231489)
A "dollar" is what a dollar buys. It has no fixed value.

In third world economies a "dime" may well be "ten bucks," so long as you stick within the local economy for food, clothing and shelter. Living is actually quite cheap, which is why so many people from the first world choose to vacation/retire to the third. You may well find you can live, and live well, for a year for less than what it would cost you to spend two weeks at Disney/land/world/universe/whatever.

The rub is that things from outside the local economy, imports, are priced at what a "dollar" is worth where they are made, and can thus be beyond the means of someone who would otherwise be considered middle class. Things like a simple radio or portable television may require the investment of an entire community which otherwise lacks nothing needed for sustaining a good life.

One can see the same affect in the first world when comparing rural vs. urban living. I turned down $60k/yr in Manhatten awhile ago, because $60k in Manhatten cannot buy me what I could get working a cruddy retail job upstate.

When comparing disparate economies you cannot think in terms of dollars. You have think in terms of hours per pound of rice/place to sleep. When you do this you may find that lower wages are often greater wealth. Money is not wealth. It is an abstraction. What your money buys you is wealth. The "stuff" itself.

KFG

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165789&cid=13831029

Construct a URL like this:
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?op=users&start=664202

Thanks to Zobier for pointing it out here:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165604&cid=13813977

Add following to Friends list when the maximum of 100 f/f limit is resolved or worked around:

steeltoe
rolltissue

I picked on in a /. comment today:

Your post involves a

( ) technical (x) social ( ) moral

comment about computer security. This comment is incorrect. Here's why it's incorrect:

( ) You have no idea how system security works
(x) You assume that popularity is inversely proportional to security
( ) You make improper use of technical language
(x) You assume that part of the problem is the entire problem
(x) You fail to account for different security models.

Specifically, your comment fails to consider that:

( ) Security flaws can be exploited in an automated manner
(x) Not all bugs are security flaws
( ) Security flaws can be exploited manually
( ) Legions of script kiddies use point-and-drool tools
( ) Dedicated black-hats can cause damage using home-designed tools
(x) Privilege separation prevents many problems
( ) Some security flaws are strictly theoretical
(x) Different systems are inherently more or less vulnerable to exploits
( ) Security flaws can be independently discovered
( ) Security flaw discovery and exploit does not require source code
(x) Not all security flaws are of the same severity
(x) Running as root is almost always a problem, no matter the system
( ) Not all viruses are transmitted by e-mail
( ) Not all viruses are self-propagating
( ) Not all security flaws are buffer overruns
( ) Stupid people do stupid things

and the following general objections may also apply:

( ) Full disclosure completely informs affected system administrators
( ) Exploit code has legitimate uses
(x) Security is by design, not accident
( ) Security isn't magic, and thinking of it that way is harmful
( ) Hackers/crackers aren't evil magicians who can get around anything
( ) Security starts with the user
( ) Why should we trust the government?
( ) Why should we trust you?

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Nice idea, but it's been said before and that doesn't make it any more true.
( ) That's an incredibly stupid idea, and you're stupid for suggesting it.
( ) You're a moron, and I'm surprised you have enough brain cells to continue breathing.

India backs cheap drug clampdown Tuesday March 22, @05:42PM Pending

According to this BBC story, the Indian Government is close to banning indigenously produced low-cost versions of patented drugs, to comply with WTO regulations. According to the current Indian patent law, drug makers are allowed to copy patented drugs as long as they use a different manufacturing process. Campaigners say the move will deprive millions of people around the world of access to cheap life-saving medicines . According to the article fifty percent of people with AIDS in the developing world depend on generic drugs from India. It should be mentioned that the last time the Indian government deliberated on WTO patent regulations was when US Company RiceTec obtained a patent on Basmati rice, a variety which has been grown in India for centuries.

Befriend once 100 limit is resolved.

CNN and Rediff are reporting that Bill Gates gets 4 million e-mails a day, making him world's most spammed person. However, unlike lesser mortals, he has an entire department dedicated to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually get through to his inbox, said Steve Ballmer at a Microsoft Research event in Singapore. Other sources are also reporting the breaking news story.

Submitted: 2004-11-04 15:14:08, Rejected

CNN's reporting that a scientist at the University of Florida has developed a "brain" grown from 25,000 neurons extracted from a rat's brain that is capable of flying a plane in the F-22 flight simulator. According to the article, the brain and the simulator established a two-way connection to send and receive signals and eventually, the brain learnt to control the flight of the plane based on the information it received about flight conditions.