Andrew Kismet - Slashdot User

Submission + - Second Life Ends First Land Program

Submitted by

RancidPickle

on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:39PM

RancidPickle writes: "Second Life, the virtual word created and run by Linden Labs, announced they were no longer issuing First Land to premium members.

Effective immediately, the supply of cheap First Land parcels by Linden Lab will cease. Premium accounts will still be able to own up to 512m of land as part of their Premium membership package as they do now, the only change is that we will not be supplying the discounted parcels as we have done in the past. The website and knowledgebase will be amended to reflect this change shortly.

As a premium SL user who spent hours looking for First Land, this does not bode well for me or the users who will be left out in the cold — literally."

Ten Predictions for XML in 2007 71

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:14PM from the crystal-balls dept.

An anonymous reader writes "2007 is shaping up to be the most exciting year since the community drove off the XML highway into the Web services swamp half a decade ago. XQuery, Atom, Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), XProc, and GRRDL are all promising new power. Some slightly older technologies like XForms and XSLT are having new life breathed into them. 2007 will be a very good year to work with XML."

Submission + - Getting rid of DRM! How?

Submitted by FredDC on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:40AM

FredDC writes: Lately it seems that every day I read one or more stories about someone saying DRM is bad. I think the question no longer is if DRM is bad or not. Everyone, or most anyway, involved seem to agree on that by now. The real question is, what is being done to get rid of DRM? So far, not alot! The problem is that noone is willing to take the first step... What can we, the consumer, do to push those involved into getting rid of DRM? To get someone to take the first step!

Submission + - In case of a terrorist attack...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Dept. of Homeland Security has released these signs to help you prepare for an attack. Now safenow.org has provided their own interpretation, hilarity ensued. http://homeland.gov.safenow.org/

Submission + - biggest military computer hacker back in court ..

Submitted by

rs232

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:24AM

rs232 writes: "biggest military computer hacker back in court ..

Gary McKinnon, who carried out the 'biggest military computer hack of all time', is back in court to fight his extradition to the US. His lawyers argue that he was subject to improper threats that infringed the European Convention on Human Rights and also that he would be subject to an unknown amount of pre-trial detention.

McKinnon, hack consisted of logging into passwordless desktops and installing RemotelyAnywhere in a search for evidence of a UFO coverup by Nasa, and/or the Pentagon. He states that the systems was wide open and at the same tims as him, there were hackers online from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Turkey and Thailand. He also states that he can't remember a lot as he was smoking a lot of dope at the time. If they allow him to light up in the dock, it may all come back to him, it always has worked for me .. :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_we st/6360917.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1523143 ,00.html"

Submission + - SPAM: 1 million $130 laptops already ordered

Submitted by

alphadogg

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @10:59AM

alphadogg writes: "Quanta Computer has confirmed orders for 1 million notebook PCs for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The machines cost $130, though the goal is to get them down to $100. [spam URL stripped]m illion-olpc-laptop-orders.html"

Quantum Computer Demoed, Plays Sudoku 309

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 15, 2007 @10:45AM from the more-qubits dept.

prostoalex writes "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer (discussed here earlier) that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has a more technical description of how the quantum computer works, as well as possible areas of application: 'The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles.' Another attendee provides some videos from the demo." Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)?

Submission + - Amazing Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed.

Submitted by

sporkme

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:26AM

sporkme writes: "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. From the article:

"I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died," Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. "The co-author on my paper said,' Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?' I said 'Oh', and took a closer look." They ran several tests and found the compound killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen."
Lab test results on hapless mice have resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick. The PPAR-gamma compound is expected to be especially useful in combating treatment-resistant types of cancer."

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