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Canada

Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363

Posted by timothy
from the good-enough-for-the-likes-of-you dept.
John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."
Image

Air Canada Ordered To Provide Nut-Free Zone 643

Posted by samzenpus
from the no-nuts dept.
JamJam writes "Air Canada has been told to create a special 'buffer zone' on flights for people who are allergic to nuts. The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that passengers who have nut allergies should be considered disabled and accommodated by the airline. Air Canada has a month to come up with an appropriate section of seats where passengers with nut allergies would be seated. The ruling involved a complaint from Sophia Huyer, who has a severe nut allergy and travels frequently. Ms. Huyer once spent 40 minutes in the washroom during a flight while snacks were being served."
Bug

Driver stuck on cruise control for 30 minutes->

Submitted by Benaiah
Benaiah writes "In something seemingly out of a Keanu Reeves movie, an Australian driver was unable to make his freeway exit when his car failed to slow down as he applied the brake. For those of you too lazy to RTFA he tried everything to stop the car including turning off the ignition but to no avail, the computer was in control. Police at one point escorted him down the wrong side of the road at 80km/h(50mp/h) until he eventually was able to stop it by bringing by repeatedly stepping on the brake pedal. Ford Australia spokeswoman Sinead McAlary said there has been a recall on that make of car but for a different reason."
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Space

Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger? 3

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. "We're talking about initiating communication with other civilizations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities, or intent," says SETI researcher John Billingham. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action. Billingham urges a broad, interdisciplinary discussion of Active SETI. "At the very least we ought to talk about it first, and not just SETI people. We have a responsibility to the future well-being and survival of humankind.""
Operating Systems

FreeBSD: The best server OS->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Linux Today has a story about the virtues of FreeBSD. From the article: 'When talking about operating systems, there are a lot of points to debate about. The big deal used to be which one was more stable and which one supported the crazy file system configurations none of us normal people will ever use. Well, they are all fairly stable now (yes, even Windows) and honestly who is going to set up 10 machines with a distributed ReiserFS? People today seem to be obsessed with micro kernel details such as the process scheduler, something you may never understand and probably will never see a significant performance change from switching on. This leaves me with the real issues, such as...'"
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Space

Missing Potenital Earth-busting Asteroid Found->

Submitted by
Billosaur
Billosaur writes "A potentially disastrous 40-year-old mystery has been solved: Where is asteroid 6344 P-L? Back in 1960, asteroid 6344 P-L was identified and classified as a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid," meaning that it's orbit brings it perilously close to Earth's orbit (on the cosmic scale). Unfortunately, it then disappeared, or more precisely, was lost from view. Flash forward to 2007 and scientists believe that 6344 P-L has been rediscovered as 2007 RR9. Further, they are not sure it is an actual asteroid, but actually a comet fragment, which won't hit the Earth anytime soon but bears watching."
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Businesses

THIS IS GOING TO BE HUGE...NO-ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND->

Submitted by
mummy9
mummy9 writes "Here's your chance to align yourself with the Next Internet Giant....gibLink!

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If you join the program "YOU WILL BE PAID".

Not only will this not interfere with whatever it is you are presently doing, but you can use it to advertise whatever it is you are presently doing

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and a Home for EVERY Network Marketer!

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What is gibLink?

Click here to see
http://www.gibline.com/mummy9

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For a 3 month registration....

Thank you for reading....

mummy9"
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Power

16 Reasons Why It's Time for a Four Day Work Week->

Submitted by
Prof. Goose
Prof. Goose writes "The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work. But the notion that the majority of the workforce should keep these hours is based on nothing more than an idea put forth but the Federal government almost 70 years ago. To be sure it was an improvement in the lives of many Americans who were at the time forced to work 10+ hours a day, sometimes 6 days of the week. So a 40 hour work week was seen as an upgrade in the lives of many of U.S. citizens. 8 is a nice round number; one third of each 24 hour day. In theory it leaves 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, raising children and enjoying life. But the notion that we should work for 5 of these days in a row before taking 2 for ourselves is, as best I can tell, rather arbitrary.

The idea of a shorter work week is not a new one to anyone old enough to have lived through the energy shocks of the 1970's. It should be fairly obvious to anyone interested in conserving oil that reducing the number of daily commutes per week would reduce the overall demand for oil. There are about 133 million workers in America. Around 80% of them get to work by driving alone in a car. The average commute covers about 16 miles each way.

So let's stop and do some math...and I'll try to argue for 16 reasons why a four day work week is a good idea.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2996"
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Communications

Canadian class action against mobile carriers->

Submitted by
jonathan
jonathan writes "The Toronto star reports that a class-action lawsuit accusing Canada's big cellphone companies of gouging customers with an unfair system access fee has been certified by a Saskatchewan court. The companies in question gave customers a false impression that the access fee is govermnment mandated, when in fact it is just way to increase prices. Michael Geist has a few more details."
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It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.