DkY - Slashdot User

Terminator gene ban suggested in Canada

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb on Monday June 04 2007, @04:56PM

innocent_white_lamb writes "A member of the Canadian Parliament has proposed legislation to outlaw the development and deployment of "terminator genes" that prevent seeds from germinating so farmers have to re-purchase seed every year instead of saving the seeds from last year's crop. The legislation is not expected to pass due to opposition from the Agriculture Minister."

eyeOS 1.0 released, OSS Web Operating System and I->

Submitted by eneas on Monday June 04 2007, @04:55PM

eneas writes "eyeOS 1.0 has been released, introducing the eyeOS Toolkit to develop complex web applications as in a traditional IDE. eyeOS 1.0 tries to break up with the "webOS" tendence to imitate a desktop without innovating. The new eyeOS 1.0 allows new libraries and services to be introduced easily to the system, providing a really flexible solution, and creating a real Operating System, that can be used online. It's Open Source, can be downloaded here and used here."
Link to Original Source

Does SPF really work?

Submitted by

Intelopment

on Monday May 28 2007, @11:08PM

Intelopment writes "My Domain name has recently been used a lot as the REPLY field by some inconsiderate spammer and my ISP has suggested that I consider using the Open SPF service (http://openspf.org/) as a way to stop spammers from using my domain name for their REPLY field. From what I can tell it requires the receiving mail server to actually participate in the SPF service, which is where I get my doubts. Does anyone have any experience with this service? Does it work? Are many ISPs using openSFP?"

Microsoft Ordered Off New Zealand School Macs.

Submitted by

BiggerIsBetter

on Monday May 28 2007, @09:49PM

BiggerIsBetter writes "The New Zealand Education Ministry has ordered the removal of Microsoft Office software from 25,000 Apple Macintoshes used in schools around New Zealand. The reason being that Microsoft wanted machines to be licensed whether they used the software or not. "The ministry could not justify the extra $2.7 million being given to Microsoft for software that would not be used," Education Minister Steve Maharey is quoted as saying."

Five things the Linux community doesn't understand

Submitted by

AlexGr

on Tuesday May 22 2007, @11:36AM

AlexGr writes "By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (ZDNet Blogs) This question may seem to be flame bait, but it raises a valid point: Why is it that the average computer user still chooses to spend hundreds of dollars on Windows or Mac when there are countless Linux alternatives that they could download, install and make use of completely free of charge? http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=420"

26 climate change myths debunked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2007, @12:21PM

An anonymous reader writes "There's a lot at stake with global warming, so for those not sure what to believe, New Scientist has debunked the most common climate myths. It has the key graphs, links to all the original research, but it also acknowledges that the scientists themselves sometimes exaggerate. My favourite: It's all down to cosmic rays."

NASA Detects "California-sized" Antarctic

Submitted by

u-bend

on Wednesday May 16 2007, @12:13PM

u-bend writes "Discovery has an article about a massive melt detected in a region of Antarctica previously thought to be virtually impervious to such a climate shift.

From the article:
'A team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the University of Colorado said new satellite imagery had revealed a vast expanse of snow melt in 2005 where it had previously been considered unlikely.

The NASA statement described the findings as "the most significant melt observed using satellites during the past three decades."'

Rather interesting in light of recent discussions about the pros and cons of global warming."

Amazon to Launch DRM-free Music Store

Submitted by Strudelkugel on Wednesday May 16 2007, @11:15AM

Strudelkugel writes "Business Wire reports Amazon.com will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels. EMI Music's digital catalog is the latest addition to the store. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software. Amazon's DRM-free MP3s will free customers to play their music on virtually any of their personal devices — including PCs, Macs(TM), iPods(TM), Zunes(TM), Zens(TM) — and to burn songs to CDs for personal use."

Better communication with non-technical people?

Submitted by tinpan on Monday May 14 2007, @12:19PM

tinpan writes "I've got a communication problem. When non-technical managers ask me to explain technical choices, they often make choices I recommend against and they later regret. I can tell that they do not understand their choice because of how they are explaining things to each other, but they usually refuse further explanation.

So it's time for some education. I want to get better at communicating technical subjects to non-technical people. More accurately, I want to get better at helping non-technical people make better technical decisions and I'm willing to accept it may include some understanding of "selling your idea."

What books, online courses and/or seminars do you recommend and why?"

Cold Fusionat room temperature possible after all?

Submitted by StarfishOne on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:25PM

StarfishOne writes "DailyTech reports the following interesting bit of news today:

" Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream — a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing, but so far unattainable.

However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (Spawar) in San Diego throws cold water on skeptics of cold fusion. Appearing in the respected journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein among its distinguished authors, the article claims that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LERN) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community."

NewScientist is also running an article on this subject, but that article is only available for subscribers."