Slashdot

The father of modern heart surgery died this week at age 99. He was integral to the development of pretty much everything in modern cardiovascular surgery: bypass (heart-lung machines that made open heart surgery for the first time possible possible), coronary artery bypass surgery (he did the first one ever), carotid endarterectomey (again he performed the first one ever), the development of Dacron graft blood vessels, and the development of MASH units. He was a consummate geek and there are numerous surgical instruments that bear his name. He was also the first surgeon to videotape surgeries — in the 1960s. He was considered by the NEJM to be the single greatest surgeon alive until two days ago. In his career he performed over 50,000 heart surgeries and practiced medicine (though not surgery) until the day he died. Paradoxically in 2005, he underwent the Debakey procedure which he pioneered, to treat the aortic dissection he suffered.

There you guys sit, all laughing at me at pointing and jeering at my Tinfoil Hat 3000(tm), but look who's sitting pretty now! Ha! Fsckers!

NIckGorton writes "Wired has posted a story about a website that will send an email to your loved ones excatly six days after the rapture (or when three of their staffers fail to log in to check their email for six days, whichever comes first.) For $40 yearly, they will send a post-rapture email to 62 people and maintain 150 megabytes of documents encrypted by something that could be as complicated as a decoder ring (to give the recipient access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys). Otherwise, since there will be no bodies, your junk will be locked up in probate until the 7 year reign of the Antichrist is over. Which would obviously suck. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/service-lets-yo.html"
http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/

This article is confused and makes all sorts of horrible assumptions. In short, the author seems to believe that the only way people make money off free software by adding "differentiating" proprietary software to it. Since the whole point of the GPL is to prevent people from making the software under its purview non-free, it shouldn't really be surprising, then, that the author finds it a huge pain in the neck. Personally, I'd say the license is a success, and I suspect a lot of the companies making money from GPLed software would agree with me.

-- Brett Smith, License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

society Foo is NOT free. it significantly restricts the actions of MURDERERS, RAPISTS and CHILD MOLESTERS. thus it is clearly not free. laws are not nothing more than anti freedom licensing, and has significantly diminished all our freedoms. society Bar is a truly free place. it allows anyone to beat anyone else over the head with a cast iron pipe for no reason other than they enjoy doing it. laws that stop people doing what they enjoy is a huge step backwards, IMHO.

fixed that for you

NIckGorton writes "A new video game's objective is to go back in time and destroy the founders of the three big monos before to nip Islam, Christianity, and Judaism in the bud. Players do this by murdering Abraham and the authors of the Bible, before beheading Muhammad. http://www.wsls.com/sls/news/local/article/object_of_new_video_game_is_to_stop_the_spread_of_christianity_and_islam/11957/"

Apart from Articles 10 and 11 of European Convention on Human Rights? Part of Human Rights Act.

Try and remember that first section of US constitution is based on English Bill or Rights (1689) and Scottish Claim of Right, which itself carries on a tradition of defining the limits of state power and citizens rights dating back to Magna Carta (which predates Columbus by 200 years).

Worth thinking about every time americans get all misty eyed about their own history.

That's not to say the UK is a perfect democracy, but neither is the US.

Once again, what would seem a basic 'right' is being brutally oppressed by an organization under the cloak of 'religion'. I wonder just how much longer this will continue? Until we are all 'clears' or cleared out of our money from the lawsuits?

NIckGorton writes "A sexually frustrated seal was caught on camera attempting to have sex with an unconsenting penguin. The description of this unusual behavior was published in the Journal of Ethology, complete with interspecies pron. According to one of the authors and witnesses to the event: 'At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin, but then we realised that the seal's intentions were rather more amorous.' The researchers speculated that the seal, who was too inexperienced to get access to females, in a state of frustrated sexual arousal turned to a penguin for release."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7379554.stm

An anonymous reader writes "The Church of Scientology has been advertising heavily through Google AdWords lately, and one of the sites where their ads appeared was Enturbulation.org — a prominent discussion board for "Anonymous" Scientology critics. One could understand it if of Scientology wanted to use the block feature in AdWords to remove their ads from this particular site, and thus stop paying their critics through Google. Instead, Google has now terminated Enturbulation.org's AdSense account. Owners of political and news sites may want to take notice that if your site contains any kind of "advocacy against any individual, group, or organization" Google doesn't want your business; except if you want to exterminate psychiatry by sending figurative hand grenades to the US Capitol."

NIckGorton writes "A report, "Allocation of Ventilators in a Public Health Disaster," in the current issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness evaluates the ethics of deciding who gets (and who doesn't get) ventilator support (and hence who lives and dies) in a public health disaster like a flu pandemic. When a pandemic hits, it will not be pretty. On a good day we are using a large percentage of the vents we have. With even double the current usage, we will be in a crunch. With tens of thousands (if not more) of additional people potentially needing ventilator and ICU support, we will be hosed. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/health/25vent.html?ex=1364184000&en=af4c518e965534b8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/health/25vent.html?ex=1364184000&en=af4c518e965534b8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

NIckGorton writes "Bush uses 9th veto of his presidency to stop Congress' attempt to prevent interrogation techniques like waterboarding whose use is prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies in the us (aka torture)."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/washington/08cnd-policy.html?em&ex=1205125200&en=a82d4a826021d30d&ei=5087%0A

NIckGorton writes "Two ten year old boys experiment to see if your tongue really will freeze to a flagpole in sub-zero weather. Turns out they do. Ouch. http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2008/01/26/news/top_news/doc1bcbc32da2b0aab0862573dc00097f23.txt"
http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2008/01/26/news/top_news/doc1bcbc32da2b0aab0862573dc00097f23.txt

Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"