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Comment: Re:Typical Italian sense of time (Score 4, Funny) 442

by bindo (#38097642) Attached to: OPERA Group Repeats Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results

As an italian I can testify you are wrong.

You don't arrive late thinking you are in time.
You arrive late and blame traffic, war, biblical plagues; and share simpaty with other meeting partecipants.

I hope the neutrinos were early (for the sake of new physics), but still, they were behaving terribly rude! ;)

Comment: Re:Aging is probably NOT in the telomeres (Score 1) 371

by bindo (#34618166) Attached to: Free Radicals May Not Be Cause of Aging

germ cells.

AND

cancer cells.

Which is a good sign for the usefulness of telomerase for single cells.
And an obvious problem if instead you want to use it for whole organisms.

Most of the stuff we know helps cells live longer, cancer already knew. And its using it.

which makes it a little complicated to go from the lab to a pill that makes you live longer.

Censorship

Italy Floats Official Permission Requirement for Web Video Uploads 131

Posted by timothy
from the state-v.-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes with some bad news from Italy, noting that new rules proposed there would "require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web." Understandably, some say such controls represent a conflict of interest for Silvio Berlusconi, "who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset."

Ants that Count->

Submitted by steveb3210
steveb3210 writes "NPR this morning ran a story about how ants in the desert use an internal pedometer to navigate. In the forest ants can rely on their scent trail to lead them back; in the desert wind makes this approach impractical.

It's already known that ants use celestial clues to establish the general direction home, but how do they know exactly the number of steps to take that will lead them right to the entrance of their nest?"

To find out, scientists allowed a group of ants to go off foraging for food; while they were out, they extended the legs of some using sheep hair while shortening the legs of others. After releasing them to return home, it turns out that they all attempted to take the same number of steps on the return journey that it took to arrive. The ants with longer legs overshot the nest while the ants with shorter legs stopped too soon.

After returning them all home and allowing for a good night's sleep, they were again allowed to go out and forage for food retaining their new legs for both the journey and the return. Every ant regardless of leg length managed to make it back to the nest successfully."
Link to Original Source

Analytics at Twitter->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Twitter, like many web 2.0 apps, started life as a MySQL based RBDMS application. Today, Twitter is still using MySQL for much of their online operational functionality (although this is likely to change in the near future – think distributed), but on the analytics side of things Twitter has spent the last 6 months moving away from running SQL queries against MySQL data marts. This was because their need for timely data was becoming a struggle with MySQL, particularly when dealing with very large data volumes and complicated queries. For Web 2.0 the ability to understand, quantify and make timely predictions from user behavior is very much their life blood. When Kevin arrived at Twitter 6 months ago he was tasked with changing the way Twitter analyzed their data. Now the bulk of their analytics is executed using a Hadoop platform with Pig as the “querying language”."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Tipping point (Score 5, Insightful) 770

by bindo (#27058533) Attached to: Smart Immigrants Going Home

This is the end ....

my feeling, in 30 years this moment will be viewed as the tipping point, the moment in which america stopped being the siphon of the worlds best minds.

For the first time in history the melting pot hasn't managed to retain the best.
Those people will bring a BIG BOOST in their respoective countries ruling intellighentia.

lots of sour grapes here, but have no one else to blame ....

Businesses

The 1 million pound laptop

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) has imposed a fine of nearly £1m on the Nationwide — the largest building society in the country — because of poor controls over data on a laptop that was stolen from an employee's home. The laptop contained data on 11 million customers, but the Nationwide didn't take any action for 3 weeks. There is no evidence that the confidential data was actually used to disadvantage customers.

According to the FSA, the Nationwide: failed adequately to assess the risks in relation to the security of customer information; had procedures in relation to information security which failed adequately and effectively to manage the risks it faced; failed to implement adequate training and monitoring to ensure that its information security procedures were disseminated and understood by staff; and failed to implement adequate controls to mitigate information security risks, to ensure that employees followed its procedures, and to ensure that it provided an appropriate level of information security.

How many other businesses meet the standards of information security excellence demanded by the FSA?"

Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer.