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Government

Rep. Mike Rogers Dismisses CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeter On the Internet" 222

Posted by samzenpus
from the foot-in-mouth dept.
gale the simple writes "Mike Rodgers made a minor splash Tuesday when he decided to liken CISPA opponents to 14-year-old basement dwellers. The EFF, naturally, picked up on this generalization and asked everyone to let the representative know that it is not just the 14-year-olds that care about privacy."
Medicine

Vein Grown From Her Own Stem Cells Saves 10-Year-Old 169

Posted by samzenpus
from the vat-kiddies dept.
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about a milestone in stem cell medicine. "A ten year old girl became the first person in the world to get a major blood vessel replaced by one grown using her own stem cells. The 10-year-old from Sweden had a blockage of a vein from her liver. The doctors decided to give her a new vein instead of a liver transplant or giving her a vein from her own body, Associated Press reported. The team from University of Gothenburg first took 9 cm vein segment from a dead man and stripped all living cells from it, leaving behind only a protein structure. They later reconstructed the vein by using cells from the girl's own bone marrow. The new graft was then put in the girl's body two weeks later."

Comment: Re:Change schools. (Score 1) 416

by ChrisMounce (#40189259) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With a Math Degree?

I have a hunch that she has an empathy for children which is what drove her to pursue the education thing. While it might be more practical to choose a different career, it is unlikely that she would ever be happy with anything less than engaging young minds.

Oh, how I wish I had mod points right now. This is an excellent point that is missing from almost all of the comments here.

The Almighty Buck

Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars 199

Posted by samzenpus
from the things-we-knew dept.
TheGift73 writes with a Techdirt story about a House Oversight Committee report that is very critical of the TSA's handling of money. "The House Oversight Committee has come out with a report slamming the TSA for tremendous amounts of waste, specifically in the 'deployment and storage' of its scanning equipment. Basically, it sounds like the TSA likes to go on giant spending sprees, buying up security equipment and then never, ever using it." Earlier this month Rand Paul laid out his plan for dealing with the TSA.
Books

Neal Stephenson Says Video Games Are the Metaverse 176

Posted by timothy
from the wish-those-games-didn't-bore-me-so-quickly dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Neal Stephenson says the 'Metaverse' he created in his seminal novel Snow Crash missed the point — and that video games like World of Warcraft are the true future of cyberspace." Forbes writer David Ewalt seems taken with Stephenson's new book, REAMDE, which I'm looking forward to getting my hands on.

Comment: Re:Steve Jobs on video codecs and patents (Score 1) 149

by ChrisMounce (#35380750) Attached to: DOJ Anti-trust Investigation of MPEG-LA
Variable-lifetime patents already exist to a certain extent (utility patents vs. design patents). But it would be interesting to extend the idea further.

As long as we can make arbitrary changes to patent law, I think the most valuable thing you could do is to mandate a periodic investigation into whether or not the current policies encourage innovation. Are algorithm patents slowing down innovation? Shorten their duration by a few years/be stricter about what you accept.

  • Frivolous lawsuits would be severely discouraged. And I mean severely.
  • The patent process now involves wrestling with a live bear. Anyone who successfully survives the experience is awarded the patent.

I can only imagine the punishment you have in mind for a frivolous lawsuit.

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