Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment A Couple of Things (Score 2, Informative) 366

by blaster151 (#34005686) Attached to: How Do You Manage the Information In Your Life?
Look at the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology by David Allen. It's good at helping you keep track of all the stuff that's going on. Also, when I feel like my head is getting too cluttered, I do a brain dump into MindJet's MindManager software. It can help capture many disparate pieces of information visually and the process can yield some mental clarity . . .

Comment Henrietta Lacks (Score 2, Informative) 263

by blaster151 (#31666356) Attached to: US District Judge Rules Gene Patents Invalid
It was so surreal to see this as the most recent headline on Slashdot - two minutes before, I'd finished listening to the audio version of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which touches on issues surrounding genetic research and the unfortunate incursion of capitalism into tissue storage and research. The book itself is a fascinating mix of science and history, but the Afterword is all about the commercialism of genetic research and the obstacles it's introducing to scientific progress. Who owns human tissues and the research advances that come from them: the patients, the researchers, or the scientific community and the world? More information about the book can be found here: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I was dismayed to learn that it would cost millions to test one individual for all known genetic diseases, not because of inherent costs of the technology but because of all the patents and licensing fees. I hope that today's positive ruling cascades in positive ways to other realms of gene patenting and unthrottles scientific progress.

Comment Amazing (Score 5, Interesting) 155

by blaster151 (#31378702) Attached to: California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere
I had just read about this possibility today in this book, a fascinating compendium of mini-essays by leading thinkers about scientific or social developments that may be around the corner. Existing tests for biological organisms are geared towards a working asssumption that life forms will be part of the basic, familiar biological tree that we are based on. A "shadow biosphere" was discussed as something that could potentially be an alternative hierarchy of life, so unfamiliar that we haven't understood how to look for it even though it could be relatively populous in certain niche areas of the earth.

Finding an alternative pathway to the evolution of complex life forms could affect our perception of how common life is in the universe and could be a stunning treasure trove of discovery and insight for biologists.
Games

Submission + - The Return of the Holiday Boardgame Guide (gamingwithchildren.com)

Submitted by hapycamper
hapycamper writes: Perhaps the oldest running online holiday guide to boardgames, found over at Gaming With Children, returns to pitch a couple dozen titles for the new holiday season. Old favorites like Heroscape and Age of Steam are mixed in with the relatively new like the Tetris-like FITS, card game Dominon, or cooperative game Pandemic. A fair number of kids recommendations are included such as Animal Upon Animal and Go Away Monster!.

Submission + - Criagslist as Service (supertric.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CraigzCruzer is an experiment in building a domain specific semantic web crawler. Find an ad you like on Craigslist. Or, create an ISF one. Next, do a search that returns postings you think might contain what you are looking for. Enter these urls on the main page along with your email, and CraigsCruzer will search these search results once an hour and email you when it finds something it thinks is ``similar" to your sample ad. To see your results in table form and to remove searches, just enter your email on the main page.
Games

Dev Discusses Upcoming Spy-MMO, The Agency 75

Posted by Soulskill from the i-could-tell-you-but-then-i'd-have-to-gank-you dept.
Kheldon writes "The MMO Gamer recently sat down with Lorien Gremore, lead producer on SOE's upcoming spy-shooter MMO, The Agency. They discussed various aspects of its development, such as the 'stickiness' of session-based games, striking a balance between FPS and MMO players, and whether or not The Agency even falls under the definition of a traditional MMO at all. 'You might be in Prague, and experiencing play with a lot of different other players; you might have come in at your field office and gone out into the city, encountering many other players doing missions that you are also doing,' Gremore said. She added that the game's areas are large enough to have 'lots of different people in them, collecting intel, engaging in public combat, all of those types of things. These areas are big enough that there’s shops, there’s secret spaces, photos to be taken of suspicious objects, things like that. They’re all out there in the world. We’re really trying to create a balance, where you’re encountering a lot of social situations, chances to get into groups with other people, just by merit of the fact that you guys are doing the same sorts of things in the same sorts of places.'"
Linux

Slackware 13.0 Released 252

Posted by kdawson from the fresh-bits dept.
willy everlearn and several other readers let us know that Slackware 13.0 is out. "Wed Aug 26 10:00:38 CDT 2009: Slackware 13.0 x86_64 is released as stable! Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible — see the RELEASE_NOTES for the credits. The ISOs are off to the replicator. This time it will be a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We're taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com. Please consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Once again, thanks to the entire Slackware community for all the help testing and fixing things and offering suggestions during this development cycle. As always, have fun and enjoy!"
The Courts

Michael Robertson Sued Over Missing Linspire Cash 65

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the transparency-whether-you-like-it-or-not dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger and ex-Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony reports that Michael Robertson has been sued by a Linspire shareholder to get to the bottom of what happened to Linspire's assets. One hundred shareholders have been left uninformed as to what happened to the company and its assets after Linspire was sold to Xandros a few months back."
Intel

Submission + - Intel Answers Phenom with Unsupported CPU (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Sure the AMD Phenom is getting a lot of attention today but Intel wasn't going to let AMD's parade run without raining on it. In a response that seems more than a little strange, Intel brought in the release of performance data on the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor which runs at 3.20 GHz on a 1600 MHz front-side bus. What makes this release odd is that AMD's parts don't even come close to competing with the existing Intel high-end CPUs and that there is no chipset from Intel or elsewhere that actually supports a 1600 MHz FSB! Using current motherboards that were overclocked to run the QX9770, the performance of the new processor is simply the fastest desktop processor we have seen."
Announcements

Submission + - Burning Saltwater as Fuel (scifi.com)

Submitted by
blaster151
blaster151 writes: "A Pennsylvania man accidentally discovers how to generate energy from saltwater by stimulating it with radio waves to rapidly release the hydrogen and oxygen and burn it at high temperatures."

Slashdot Top Deals

An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.

Close