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Comment: Re:Awesome! (Score 1) 713

by Amiga Trombone (#39990761) Attached to: Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore

de-associate icons with tech and the problem of being out of date goes out of date

I don't think the icons being out of date is even a problem. Even Slashdot uses an antique phonograph with a horn icon to indicate music stories. It's doubtful that any one posting on Slashdot was even born when that tech was common, but everyone recognizes what it means. The important thing is that people associate that image with a particular function. Is anybody actually complaining about not being able to recognize the symbolism of current common icon sets?

Comment: Re:simple (Score 1) 204

And where is corporate speech protected in the Constitution?

Nowhere. But then, neither is anyone else's:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The 1st Amendment simply prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech. It makes no distinction as to whether the speech originates from people, corporations, chimpanzees or disembodied spirits. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Period.

Science

Better brain wiring linked to family genes->

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes "How well our brain functions is largely based on our family’s genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study.

The study published in the international publication The Journal of Neuroscience provides the first evidence of a genetic effect on how ‘cost-efficient’ our brain network wiring is, shedding light on some of the brain’s make up.

Lead author Dr. Alex Fornito from the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases."
Link to Original Source
Science

Adventures in Very Recent Evolution->

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes "Ten thousand years ago, people in southern China began to cultivate rice and quickly made an all-too-tempting discovery — the cereal could be fermented into alcoholic liquors. Carousing and drunkenness must have started to pose a serious threat to survival because a variant gene that protects against alcohol became almost universal among southern Chinese and spread throughout the rest of China in the wake of rice cultivation.

The variant gene rapidly degrades alcohol to a chemical that is not intoxicating but makes people flush, leaving many people of Asian descent a legacy of turning red in the face when they drink alcohol.

Many have assumed that humans ceased to evolve in the distant past, perhaps when people first learned to protect themselves against cold, famine and other harsh agents of natural selection. But in the last few years, biologists peering into the human genome sequences now available from around the world have found increasing evidence of natural selection at work in the last few thousand years, leading many to assume that human evolution is still in progress."
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Media

Journalists plot to kill stories critical of Obama->

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes "Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.""
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IBM

IBM execs named in $100M racketeering suit->

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes "A Pennsylvania-based information technology partner of IBM is suing the technology giant for some $100 million, alleging a Ponzi scheme and racketeering.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Pennsylvania on June 16, Devon IT accused IBM and several senior executives by name of misusing $12 million that Devon invested in two IBM projects.

“As part of their scheme, the RICO Defendants intentionally misrepresented the market potential of the products they touted and continued to demand funding from Devon – an admittedly smaller company with less resources than IBM – even after the RICO Defendants secretly canceled at least one of the subject development projects,” the company alleges in the suit."
Link to Original Source

Israel attacks international humanitarian convoy-> 23

Submitted by chainLynx
chainLynx writes "Israeli forces attacked an international aid flotilla bringing much-needed supplies to the blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza. Israeli commandos dropped from helicopters onto the ship and used live ammunition, killing at least 10 people and wounding others. The convoy has many noted participants, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney."
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Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year. -- C.N. Parkinson