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Biotech

Scientists Map Neanderthal Genome 229

Posted by timothy
from the first-draft-means-they-can-still-send-it-back dept.
goran72 writes "In a development which could reveal the links between modern humans and their prehistoric cousins, scientists said they have mapped a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. Researchers used DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian fossils to map out more than 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome by sequencing three billion bases of DNA."
Classic Games (Games)

Adventure Game Interfaces and Puzzle Theory 149

Posted by Soulskill
from the use-square-peg-on-round-hole dept.
MarkN writes "It seems like whenever broad topics of game design are discussed on Slashdot, a few people bring up examples of Adventure Games, possibly owing to the age and interests of our members. I'd be interested to hear the community's thoughts on a piece I wrote on Adventure Games, talking about the evolution they underwent in terms of interfaces, and how the choice of interface affects some aspects of the puzzles and design. My basic premise is that an Adventure Game is an exercise in abstract puzzle solving — you could represent the same game with a parser or a point and click interface and still have the same underlying puzzle structure, and required player actions. What the interface does affect is how the player specifies those actions. Point and click games typically have a bare handful of verbs compared to parser games, where the player is forced to describe the desired interaction much more precisely in a way that doesn't lend itself to brute force fiddling. It's a point Yahtzee has made in the past; he went so far as to design a modern graphic adventure game with a parser input to demonstrate its potential." Read on for the rest of MarkN's comments.
United States

Dossia looking to reshape Healthcare in USA

Submitted by
adickerson0
adickerson0 writes "Applied Materials, BP America, Intel Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Wal-Mart and Cardinal Health have joined together to start Dossia. This group plans to create a free (beer) system that allows hospitals and clinics across the country to digitize and share patient records. Furthermore they plan to integrate this with EMT Services, Labs, and Pharmacies. One of the major voices in this movement is Lee Scott of Wal-Mart. Who in February announced the Better Health Care Together Coalition which involves Wal-Mart, AT&T, SEIU, CWA, Center for American Progress and the Howard Baker Center. All of which comes on the heels of the Wal-Mart $4 prescription drug plan and the opening of 76 in store health clinics (2000 planned in 5-7 years). With the support of so many large groups and what seems to be a developing health care network to support Dossia, what can the Linux community and Slashdot do to support this initiative? http://www.omnimedix.org/"
The Almighty Buck

Is "ad-supported free" really "free

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Another story about some free product or service that is ad-supported is making the rounds (google for "peter gabriel" and "we7" in case you missed it), but I am wondering ... ... the ads are payed for by companies whose products "we" buy (or are supposed to buy), so effectively by "our" money, only that we did not explicitly choose to put "our" money there!

So how free is free, if for everything that we buy there's an "ad tax" that we pay that goes towards paying everything ad-supported? Wouldn't everything be much cheaper if without the ad-tax that, in addition to paying for everything ad-supported, must also pay the advertising industry?

But the ad industry has probably done a good job of presenting itself as oil, rather than sand, in the cogworks of our economy ... although us community of all consumers feeding the ad-industry through the ad-tax on nearly everything that we buy seems to me like a communist-style solidarity, a sharing inmidst the otherwise egoistical capitalism. We could of course also call it vampirism?"
Databases

Storing international addresses

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In designing a database for a company that deals international, its important to store address information in a way that supports all types of address formats to be dealt with. What ways have people attempted to deal with storing international address information in a relational database?"
Spam

Is There Any Reason to Report Spammers to ISPs? 117

Posted by Cliff
from the does-it-do-any-good dept.
marko_ramius asks: "For years I've been a good netizen and reported spam that I get to the appropriate contacts at various ISPs. In the entire time that I've done this I've gotten (maybe) 5 or 6 responses from those ISPs informing me that they have taken action against the spammer. In recent years however, I haven't gotten any responses. Are the ISP's so overwhelmed with abuse reports that they aren't able to respond to the spam reports? Do they even bother acting on said reports? Is there any real reason to report spammers?"

Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. -- Philippe Schnoebelen