SlantyBard - Slashdot User

Comment Easier said than done. (Score 1) 269

by SlantyBard on Sunday December 09, 2007 @04:11PM (#21633395) Attached to: Bar Codes Keep Surgical Objects Outside Patients

Easier said than done. You really need to see the stuff we work with. The abdomen contains such a mass of organs that make it quite easy to loose the small stuff. For example, the small and large intestines are approximately 20 feet and 5 feet long respectively. As well, both are extremely floppy and slippery making it hard to see every aspect in the abdomen. Suture needles can be very small and when they break off, can be very hard to see. Added to this, there can be a lot of blood making things both stressful and messy - for example, I have been involved in dealing with many "salvage laparotomies" where the abdomen is filled with over 4 litres of blood. Further, surgeons often work in teams multitasking different aspects of the surgery with easily double digits of items inside the patient from sponges, clamps, sutures, ties, retractors and other equipment. So even though everyone is skilled, there are a lot of factors that can lead to such a potentially tragic error.

Submission + - Texas Curriculum Director Fired for Anti-ID E-Mail (wired.com) 1

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday December 03, 2007 @01:42PM

eldavojohn writes: "A Texas Science Curriculum Director was fired for insubordination linked to questioning intelligent design. The director used her e-mail address to circulate an announcement for an upcoming speech by by Barbara Forrest, co-author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design." From the article,

Hours after Corner used her work email account to forward the Forrest announcement to friends and a few online communities, Texas Education Agency adviser Lizzette Reynolds emailed Corner's bosses and called for her dismissal. A former legislative adviser to President Bush during his Texas governorship and later a Department of Education appointee, Reynolds wrote, "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports." Education Agency officials mentioned Reynolds' e-mail in their decision to fire Corner. Informing people about Forrest's lecture, they said, "directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science ... [And] implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."
This is honestly disturbing whether you look at it from either side of the issue. Should the act of encouraging people to go to speeches — whether they be for or against your side — be penalized this heavily? How do you open the door to new ideas of this is your stance?"

Submission + - 2007 Board Games Gift Guide

Submitted by SlantyBard on Monday December 03, 2007 @01:31PM

SlantyBard writes: Once again, Mathew Baldwin of The Morning News has written his annual Good Gift Games Guide. From the Morning News article: "Growing up, I never had difficulty selecting Christmas presents for my sister. I would simply pick out something I wanted, give it to her as a gift, and reclaim it shortly thereafter. Oh, you should have seen the look of what I can only assume was elation when she opened the Land of the Jawas Action Playset in 1979, and the Van Halen's Diver Down LP in 1982. It's harder to pull this stunt as an adult, alas, as my wife tumbled to all my crafty stratagems about a decade ago. I don't think she was fooled last year when I gave her a Nintendo Wii and a subscription to Details." Mathew goes on to suggest some great additions to your gaming drawer, cupboard or shrine. If you want to read some other resources, don't forget BoardGameGeek's Board Game Gift Guide 2007 or Funagain Game's All Time Bestsellers List for great gift ideas for family and friends.

Submission + - Call of Duty 4 Tops Halo 3 for Best Shooter at E3 (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Saturday July 14, 2007 @10:47PM

mattnyc99 writes: At an E3 where big-thinking, different new games like Rock Band and Wii Fit stole the show, there was quiet surprise: Call of Duty 4, with its heart-pumping, innovative, war-like gameplay, looked better than Halo 3. So says Popular Mechanics in its solid round-up of the top five first-person shooters at E3.

Submission + - Fast-Moving Web Threat Spreads Around The World

Submitted by Adam on Monday June 18, 2007 @06:52PM

Adam writes: HNS has a story about an accelerating infection in Italy of seemingly legitimate web pages loaded with malicious code that could plant a keylogger to steal user passwords, or turn computers into proxy servers for various other attacks. Tens of thousands of users worldwide have already accessed compromised URLs, oblivious to the threat as a result of their natural web surfing activity. The initial HTML malware takes advantage of a vulnerability in so-called "iFrames" that are commonly used on websites and commonly exploited.

Submission + - 'Italian job' Web attack hits 10,000 sites

Submitted by maximus1 on Monday June 18, 2007 @06:36PM

maximus1 writes: Online criminals have installed malware on more than 10,000 Web sites over the past few days, primarily in Italy, according to Trend Micro Inc. and Websense Inc. Infected Web sites contain a short piece of HTML "iFrame" code that redirects the victim's Web browser to a server that attempts to infect the victim's computer using a tool called MPack which installs a keylogger and a Trojan downloader program on compromised PCs. Insiders refer to the attack as the "Italian Job" which refers to the Michael Caine heist film.

Submission + - Major Website Attack Hits Italy Tourism Sites (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 18, 2007 @02:56PM

Raver32 writes: "In an Internet attack dubbed "The Italian Job," several thousand Italian tourism websites have been infected by software that quietly gains control of computers visiting them and seeks out confidential financial data, a computer security firm said Monday. Trend Micro Inc. said it detected more than 4,500 travel sites in Italy that have been infected as part of a scheme through which data on computers that visit those sites is being stolen and sent to a server located in Chicago, said David Perry, a spokesman for the Japan-based company. This marks the most widespread attack ever in which malicious software has been spread by using infected Web sites, Perry said."

Submission + - Fake nuclear explosion on Czech television

Submitted by ledvinap on Monday June 18, 2007 @11:42AM

ledvinap writes: Those who watched a Czech public TV channel in the morning could have seen the nuclear explosion (youtube) in the Krkonose Mountains during a program that normally shows weather at different places.

Artistic group Ztohoven broke via the internet into a camera / camera server which provided images from the Krkonose Mountains as part of the morning panorama program. They fed a 30 second film which showed images of an atomic explosion and the group's web address. According to initial investigations by the Czech authorities, the CT2 network itself was not affected, the compromised camera server was operated by an outside contractor.

CT2 has reported the matter to the police, and should someone be successfully prosecuted, a one year prison sentence could be imposed.

English links here and here, lot's of coverage in Czech media media

Submission + - Sony CEO admits PS3 too expensive (trustedreviews.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 18, 2007 @11:03AM

Raver32 writes: "You know the PlayStation 3 costs too much, I know the PlayStation 3 costs too much, but now — finally — Sony CEO Howard Stringer has admitted the PlayStation 3 costs too much. Speaking towards the end of last week with the Financial Times Stringer admitted, "Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper (*cough* — Gordon). That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.""

Submission + - 5 USB Thumb-Drive Software Tricks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @08:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: Want to run software off of your thumb-drive without using Sandisk's proprietary U3 platform? Then see Put Your USB Drive To Work: 5 Strategies For Going Mobile. The tips, of middling but useful technical intensity, include where to get robust encryption for your thumb drive for free (hint: Try TrueCrypt); where to find free application suites and individual apps (try the OperaUSB browser); and how to run a standalone operating system off your USB drive. For the latter, the article shows how to use BartPE, a utility that builds a copy of Windows's Preinstallation Environment from an existing Windows install. With tools like this, do you think USB drives are about to finally fulfill their promise as mobile repositories which make the concept of maintaining separate PCs at different locations obsolete?

Submission + - BTK killer busted by an rtf file (kansas.com)

Submitted by

edsyc

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @08:09PM

edsyc writes: "This excerpt from a book on the BTK killer shows that you don't have to be a computer genius to be a serial killer. BTK sent a disk containing an rtf file to the local television station, and the cops then got the disk. The police department's "computer whiz" was smart enough to check the properties of the rtf file, which led to BTK's capture. Maybe BTK should have stuck with hand-written notes; or maybe used Linux?"

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