Slashdot

chareverie writes "A law just passed in New York now requires labels for violent content in video games that are already rated, as well as having parent-controlled lockout features installed in consoles by 2010. The law has caused an uproar with civil rights groups who claim that such a law is unconstitutional. A legal challenge is already in the works by the New York Civil Liberties Union who cite that similar laws that have been brought to courts in California, Illinois, Minessota, and Washington state have been deemed as unconstitutional. NYCLU legislative director Robert Perry also says that the 'new law is a "back door" way of regulating video game content.'"

As someone who is extremely skeptical myself of the value of space exploration, I think it would be just as important to ask conversely "Where are the space critics?" The whole idea of space exploration seems to elicit and great big "ho hum" from the American people now (not sure about the rest of the world). Politicians are neither willing to adequately support it nor actively oppose it. So NASA limps along with neither the funding boost to actually go to the moon/Mars nor the funding cut necessary to move the space program entirely into the private domain.

Personally, I would love nothing better than the abolish NASA and move this whole thing over to the private sector. If the work is truly as important as NASA supporters assert, they should have no problem getting private funding (as companies like Scaled Composites did). If it isn't that important, and it's just some baby-boomer pipe dream, than the market will reflect that too.

Either way, the leaders of this country need to make up their mind whether they ACTUALLY want to do what they claim and send men to the moon/Mars (in which case they need to seriously boost NASA's funding) or whether they need to just scrap the whole thing altogether and stop bullshitting us about lofty goals that they have no intention of funding adequately.

molex333 writes "PC World has an article about 10 gadgets that are available in Asia but not here. It is a review of some quirky toys that the Japanese have and we don't!" Unfortunately it's one of those obnoxious stories that you have to click like 30x to read the whole thing, but there's some neat stuff.

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "When do you use salutations and valedictions in emails?

* Never
* Only when being formal
* All the time
* .sig suffices
* It's all in the header anyway
* Dear CowboyNeal"

The Narrative Fallacy writes "The LA Times has an interesting story on the state of Wikipedia's finances and how with 300 million page views a day, the organization could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if it sold advertising space. Without advertising the foundation has a tough time raising its annual budget of $4.6 million. The 45,000 or so individuals who contribute annually give an average of $33 each, so campaigns, which are conducted online, raise only about one-third of what's needed. As Wikimedia adds features to its pages, such as videos, costs will rise. 'Without financial stability and strong planning, the foundation runs the risk of needing to take drastic steps at some point in the next couple years,' said Nathan Awrich, a Wikipedia editor who supports advertising."

MikeyVB writes "An anecdote in a recent Economist perfectly summed up the problems facing the major music labels. After EMI, the smallest of the Big Four, invited a teen focus group to its London headquarters in 2006, it wanted to give the teens something for their time. The response is worth quoting in full.

At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.

The full Ars Technica article can be read here"
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/state-of-digital-music-2007.ars

zig007 writes "Are we witnessing the beginning of something new? Doping seems to have nothing up on some good old cybernetics.

Oscar Pistorius of South Africa has been barred from entering the Olympics by the IAAF, because of the huge advantage he is getting by using a prosthetic lower-leg.
I guess it is only a matter of time until they start scanning the contestants for "improvements".
Where do we draw the line? Will it be OK to compete with the replacement ankle "Boingboing 3000"?

Well, I for one welcomes our new paralympic.."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/beijing2008/amputee-barred-from-competing-at-olympics/2008/01/15/1200159369624.html

Microsoft will be rolling out later this year at ShopRite supermarkets computerized shopping carts. Thesse carts will allow people with a ShopRite card to enter their lists on the ShopRite site at home and then get the list pulled up on their grocery cart when they swipe their card. The new carts will also use RFID technology to send you advertisements depending on where in the supermarket you are.

Chronically_Dissatisfied writes "An Indian man was "mistakenly" sent to jail for 50 days and tortured when his ISP Bharti Airtel turned in the wrong IP address. The Bangalore based software engineer had allegedly posted unpolitical comments about a religious leader, which in turn was revealed to the Police by Google's Orkut. The Service provider, which has subsequently been sued, has apologized for the "inconvinience", but had the effrontery to send a text message to the accused's mobile phone about an impending bill payment."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2513869,prtpage-1.cms

headkase writes "Via BoingBoing. Your car, your camera, your picture but you apparently don't own it. The latest round of the copyright/wrong wars has emerged and its downright stupefying. In a way I'm glad to see the stupidity rise to this level — after all it's only going to bring about a revolt faster."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "For years, the major record labels have fought a pitched battle against the MP3 format. Although major labels like EMI and the Universal Music Group have embraced MP3s in recent months, a story from the Mercury News says early returns from those moves indicate they've had little impact on the industry's fortunes — for better or for worse. 'These are ailing businesses on their last legs,' said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a market research company focused on digital media. The question of copy protection on song downloads 'matters a whole lot less to them than it once did.' The industry has a bigger problem. Consumers used to buy CDs for $10 or $15 a pop. Increasingly, they're buying songs at about $1 apiece instead. So, even if transactions continue to increase, the industry is seeing far less money each time consumers buy and it's having a difficult time making up the difference."

CaptainCrunchyApple writes "According to cnet.co.uk the oft-rumoured Apple Tablet PC is actually very real, and on its way soon. CNET claims to have spoken to an anonymous tipster at Asus who claims to be working with Apple to produce the tablet. 'We're guessing it'll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we've seen in the iPhone and iPod touch. All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is 'yes'. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.'"

Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser, in protest at the "notability purges" taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia's contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening? Is Deletionism becoming a dominant ethos on Wikipedia? Are the right people holding the reigns?

I'm an applied mathematician who has recently needed to obtain good numerical approximations to the classic second order wave equation, preferably in three space dimensions. A lot of googling has not revealed much on what I had assumed would be a well studied problem. Most of the standard numerical methods, finite difference/finite element methods, don't seem to work very well in the case of variable wave speed at different points in the domain, which is exactly the case that I need. Are there any slashdotters working on numerically solving wave equation problems? What numerical methods do you use, and which programs do you find best suited to the task? How do you deal with stability issues, boundary/initial values and other pitfalls? Are there different methods for electromagnetic wave problems? Finally, when the numbers have all been crunched, how do you visualize your hard earned data?