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An anonymous reader points out an article up at Science News on a question that, remarkably, is still being debated after a few thousand years: is mathematics discovered, or is it invented? Those who answer "discovered" are the intellectual descendants of Plato; their number includes Roger Penrose. The article notes that one difficulty with the Platonic view: if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state. The European Mathematical Society recently devoted space to the debate. One of the papers, Let Platonism die, can be found on page 24 of this PDF. The author believes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science."

Rinisari writes "Creative Labs message boards user Daniel_K had been modifying the Vista driver to re-enable functionality which was apparently available on Windows XP but disabled for Vista. In a somewhat DMCA-like claim this past Friday, Phil O'Shaughnessy, VP Corporate Communications at Creative Labs, wrote a message on Creative's message boards asking using user Daniel_K "to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP." This created an immense outcry from folks who have paid a premium for Creative's X-Fi line of sound cards, which is "intentionally crippled" on Vista. Creative doesn't seem to care, though. "If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make." It appears that the modified drivers are still available, but will no longer be updated as per Creative's request."
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

When was the last time you installed a fresh copy of Windows XP SP2? The process is still straightforward and relatively quick...but then you think "I'll just make sure the patches are up to date", and then proceed to stare with horror at the 100+ security updates and critical fixes which Windows Update or WSUS demands you install. And it takes forever. Now, a group has put all of the updates into one downloadable CD, from which you can update PCs without an internet connection. It's poor man's XP SP3, but even when SP3 is out, the project will continue to offer a CD which will install all patches offline.
http://apcmag.com/8006/patch_windows_xp_from_a_cd

Rinisari writes "February 4 is a significant day because it's the day before the February 5 Super Tuesday elections, when a large, large number of states will hold their primaries or caucuses. Recognizing that many voters have either never read the US Constitution or haven't read it in a very long time, I urge the people of the Internet to post the entirety of the US Constitution on their blogs, in their forums, and in any other public space to which they can post it. A brief statement of statement of intent, directions, and both HTML and BBcode versions of the Constitution are available at my blog post entitled, "Post the Constitution Day"."
http://cad.cx/blog/2008/02/01/post-the-constitution-day/

kevin olson writes "I'm curating a gallery show based on ANSI and ASCII artwork, this is artwork that was made back in the late 80's and early 90's using text characters before we had GUI's like Windows, etc. Back in the days of BBSES (before the internet was really used).

All sorts of people are starting to come out of the woodwork for this, Jason Scott who directed the BBS documentaries is flying out from Utah for this, Christian Wirth, who ran the biggest art group during the ANSI era, and who still tours the world this day giving speeches on ANSI and ASCII artwork will be there, I think the main reason being this has never really been done before. And anyone who was into computers and networking at this time definately remembers ANSI and ASCII artwork.

I threw up a general description of ANSI here http://ansi.notchill.com/article/1/about . The opening will be on January 12th, 7-11PM, at 20 goto 10 (http://www.twentygoto10.com/).

Also the general blog on the progress of the show is http://ansi.notchill.com/, we will presenting the artwork on 4 to 6 feet tall lightboxes, and LCD screens w/ these parallax boards mounted against the wall.

-kevin"
http://ansi.notchill.com/

BIOS_LEVEL writes "The XO is the laptop produced by the One Laptop Per Child program (OLPC) headed by Mr. Nicholas Negroponte. The goal of OLPC is to provide every child a laptop which they can use to experience technology and the Internet. Through the Give One Get One program (G1G1), residents of North America are able donate $400 to the OLPC foundation, $200 of which finances a laptop for a child, and $200 of which pays for the cost of delivering one to the donor. Colin Dean was one of the first to participate in G1G1, and this is his review of it."
http://www.bioslevel.com/index.php/reviews/aid/1197819730

Most people, at least Slashdot readers, have heard or read that Comcast is allegedly using some sort of packet shaping or packet inspection to "delay" BitTorrent seeding (uploading in BitTorrent parlance). Downloading works fine, but seeding is nearly impossible unless one enables encryption. I've seen this myself—I attempted to download Ubuntu 7.10 and let it seed last weekend while I was out of town for a wedding. After two days, I had completed the download, but I'd uploaded a mere 28 MB. There were more than 5,000 seeds, too.

Here's where it gets fishy. The day prior, I'd downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 on a Windows® box with uTorrent. It seeded just fine—uTorrent enables encryption by default. However, I used another computer to seed during the weekend, one running KTorrent on Kubuntu 7.04. Encryption was not enabled. I enabled it remotely (ssh tunnel to vnc), and suddenly, the seeding started. In the next two days before I returned, I'd seeded more than 2 GB.

So, this brings me to my actual question, or petition for assistance. How can I tell if Comcast is actively injecting RST packets as the AP and TorrentFreak have confirmed? How can I test this, other than by watching peers attempt to connect vainly?

I want to conduct the same tests so that I have the results for myself. There are three local newspapers in my area which service Comcast customers, and a well-written, data-backed letter to the editor might get enough people in a furor to actually call the local Comcast office and complain.

BlueMerle writes with news that Verizon is offering 20 Mbps symmetrical service for current FiOS customers in NY, CT, and NJ. It will cost $65 a month. Cable companies aren't in a position to match this capability.

SkiifGeek writes "A survey carried out by McAfee and the NCSA found that while more than 90% of users believed that they were protected by antivirus or antimalware products that were updated at least once a week, only 51% actually were. 'Even with significantly growing awareness by everyday users of the need for efficient and effective antivirus / antimalware software, and the increasing market penetration achieved by the security industry, the nature of rapidly evolving Information Security threats means that the baseline of protection is outstripping the ability of users to keep up (without some form of extra help).' The study is available online in PDF format. What sort of an effect does this sort of thinking, and practice, have on the overall security of your systems, networks, and efforts to educate?"

Christopher Blanc writes "Many Mozilla community members, including both volunteers and Mozilla Corporation employees, have been helping to reduce Firefox's memory usage and fix memory leak bugs lately. Hopefully, the result of this effort will be that Firefox 3 uses less memory than Firefox 2 did, especially after it has been used for several hours." Here's hoping. Frequent restarts of things on my computer make me furious. I can't imagine why anyone would tolerate such things.

i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NYTimes, high school freshmen at many high schools across the nation are now being forced to pick a major. Starting this Fall, 9th graders in Florida will have to choose to major from among a set of state-approved subjects, while some students in Mississippi will have to follow one of nine designated career paths. High school administrators hope that having students declare majors will lead to greater student interest in school until graduation. College administrators think otherwise: 'youngsters should instead concentrate on developing a broad range of critical thinking and communication skills,' says Debra Humphreys from the Association of American Colleges and Universities."

This latest version (1.5.0.11) of FF is seriously kicking my ass. I used to be able to have 4x the amount of tabs open before I hit this kind of slowdown.

And Thunderbird's not playing nice with my host's new spam-fu.

Nothing's ever fucking simple, is it?

msoren writes "This may be a non-story, but I just tried to access my AOL mail account from my Firefox 2.0.0.3 browser — as usual — and I get this: This product has been tested with the following combination of operating systems and browsers and therefore supports: * Windows® 98 o Internet Explorer® 5.5 and 6.0 * Windows® 2000 o Internet Explorer® 6.0 * Windows® XP (Professional and Home) o Internet Explorer® 6.0 and 7.0 o Firefox® 1.5 o AOL® Explorer 1.0 o Netscape® 7.2 * Mac OS X® 10.3.7 o Safari® 1.3 o Firefox® 1.5 — Why has AOL made its free email program incompatible with the latest Firefox browser when it WAS compatible until today? Thanks!"

JHarrison writes "Spaceflight Now is running a story on the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch yesterday. Those of you watching the stream will have no doubt noticed the telemetry failure at 04:50, and turns out that was more than them turning the webcast off.. "A year after its maiden flight met a disastrous end, the SpaceX booster lifted off at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 GMT Wednesday) from a remote launch pad on Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controllers lost contact with the Falcon during the burn of the second stage that would have placed the rocket into orbit around Earth. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said in a post-launch call with reporters. Live video from cameras mounted aboard the rocket's second stage showed increasing oscillations about five minutes after liftoff, just before the public webcast was cut off. The rolling prevented the necessary speed to achieve a safe orbit, instead sending the stage on a suborbital trajectory back into the atmosphere.""

rednuhter writes "Nature online is reporting scientists have used drugs to selectively remove one memory while not affecting another. Musical tones were played to the rats and at the same time the subjects were given a mild electric shock. Half the study group were given the drug (not approved for use in humans) and then the experiment was repeated with a new tone. The following day the rats that had not been given the treatment were afraid of both tones while the treated half were only afraid of the second tone: the memory of fear of the first had been erased."