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Enlightenment

Submission + - Could a new type of football helmet save lives? (popsci.com)

Submitted by instupor
instupor writes: Popular Science reports on a growing number of former pro football players turning up with irreversible brain damage—the sort previously only seen in elderly dementia patients. These players are dying young as a result of mental illnesses that surface only after retirement and doctors believe both the physical damage and mental diseases can be traced to repeated concussions. While the NFL refuses to accept the studies, some high schools and universities have already adopted telemetry helmets with sensors that gauge concussive impacts and alert sidelines officials.
Power

Submission + - Artificial Tornadoes Could Solve Global Warming (thestar.com)

Submitted by Bomarrow1
Bomarrow1 writes: Louis Michaud believes that Man-Made Tornadoes could be the answer to global warming. He suggests that if hundreds of tornadoes were placed along the equator using warm water to power them they could solve the current energy problem. A side effect of this would be that they would aid in removing heat from the atmosphere by raising warm air to the outer limits of the atmosphere.
Movies

Submission + - Uwe Boll responds to Wired Postal review

Submitted by
rar
rar writes: "A few days ago Slashdot reported on a critical review of Uwe Boll's Postal movie in Wired. Upset by the negative review, Uwe has now decided to respond in his usual direct tone (some might even call it inflammatory); and the ensuing email exchange with Wired's Chris Kohler makes for a quite entertaining read. To balance the reporting, it can be noted that not everyone shares Chris' dislike for the movie."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Announced

Submitted by
Anthony Boyd
Anthony Boyd writes: "The official D&D page over at the Wizards of the Coast site now has a counter running with a few hours left (as I write this). It hints at something having to do with the number 4. Well, the cat's out of the bag. One company published an article a day early. And Wizards itself apparently left a hidden forum open to the public for an hour or two. By the time this hits the Slashdot front page, much more may have been revealed: 4th edition of D&D is coming. Nerds, get out your d20s. It's a whole new party."
Google

Submission + - google not responsive after gmail account cracked

Submitted by kawaldeep
kawaldeep writes: I recently had my gmail account cracked, the password brute forced/guessed, but I haven't been able to get anything out of google (and backdoors into the account have all been changed). I was googling (the irony!) for more info on retrieving cracked accounts, and everyone seems to have the same experience — a consistent nonresponse from google. With gmail becoming the primary email account of quite a few people, especially those on the tech edge, what is the expectation for free (ad sponsored) email? How do legitimate account owners fix these sorts of problems, considering that if I ever have issues with my banking account I can just go to their office with the right credentials and sort everything out?
Censorship

Submission + - Tool shows sophomoric edits to Wikipedia by CIA (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Itninja
Itninja writes: "The BBC recently published accounts of the CIA (among others) making juvenile edits to various Wikipedia entries. Among them, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, and Rush Limbaugh.

From the article: "On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.""
Anime

Submission + - Anime downloaders are getting sued in Singapore

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: GOING online to download content may soon offer less anonymity in Singapore than it used to, particularly for those getting copyrighted material illegally.

According to legal experts, the laws — and copyright owners — are starting to scale the walls of privacy in the name of intellectual property (IP).

The latest foothold they have secured is a court decision ordering Internet service provider (ISP) StarHub to reveal the identity of about 1,000 subscribers who have downloaded Japanese animé cartoons illegally.

Animé distributor Odex, which won the case, is likely to seek compensation of up to $5,000 from these individuals and an undertaking to halt such illegal downloads, The Straits Times reported.

While the enforcement net may not have been cast this wide in Singapore before, corporate counsel and Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong told Today it was "only a question of time" before widescale legal action taken elsewhere — such as those by the Recording Industry Association of America — were replicated here.
Music

Submission + - Limewire Goes Legit (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
gordette
gordette writes: "with 256Kbps DRM-free music sales. 'LimeWire announced yesterday that it plans to dive headfirst into digital music sales. Not only that, but the music will be available DRM-free, in the universally compatible MP3 format.'"
Power

Submission + - The Whole House-Off Switch 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wouldn't it be convenient if you had just one switch to power-off the whole house? Something like what you have at hotels, but over there it's your room key that does the trick. For homes its better to fit the Whole House-Off Switch by designer Jack Godfrey Wood. The idea behind the concept is to turn off of the unnecessary power in the house when you step out, with a single switch. The Whole House-Off Switch was designed to make "the green way the most convenient way," and was part of a larger project to "encourage 'green' action among the environmentally disenfranchised."
The Internet

Submission + - Bandwidth crunch looms for cable companies (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by coax4life
coax4life writes: While Verizon and AT&T lay fiber, cable companies are looking at a huge bandwidth crunch according to a new report. Increased demand for high-def programming on the TV side and faster download speeds on the ISP side of the business will leave cable companies in a rough spot — after spending over $100 billion in the last decade on infrastructure improvements. Jumping on the fiber bandwagon may help. 'Upgrading to a fiber infrastructure is a much more expensive proposition, and one more likely to occur in areas where the cable companies are facing more competition. It can happen, though — several years ago, Comcast's predecessor on the northwest side of Chicago laid fiber on top of its existing coaxial installation. The payoff is good for both cable companies and users, as it can result in more programming choices and faster Internet access.' Moving to switched digital video solutions will also help.
Microsoft

Cross-Platform Microsoft 348

Posted by kdawson from the good-tools-is-good-tools dept.
willdavid sends us to the ZDNet blogs for a provocative opinion piece by John Carroll. He points to Microsoft's evident cross-platform strategy with Silverlight, and wonders whether the company couldn't make money — and win friends — by extending its excellent development ecosystem cross-platorm. "Microsoft, apparently, is helping the folks at Mono to port Silverlight to Linux. This is good news, as the primary fear I've heard from developers is that Silverlight will be locked to Microsoft platforms and products. Microsoft has already committed to supporting Silverlight cross-browser on Windows, and has a version that runs on Mac OS X (which is even available from the Apple web site). The last step is Linux, and Microsoft is working with Novell and Mono to make this happen."
Movies

Submission + - Bad Movie Physics Hurt Scientific Understanding (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A paper published by UCF researchers claims that bad movie physics hurt students' understanding of real world physics. From the article, "Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed." The professors published this paper out of fear that society will pay the price. One of the authors commented on advancements in the past years "All the luxuries we have today, the modern conveniences, are a result of the science research that went on in the '60s during the space race. It didn't just happen. It took people doing hard science to do it." I commented on the physics of the most recent Die Hard having problems detracting from my enjoyment of the movie but is it really the root of a growing problem of poor science & math among students?"
Security

Ubuntu Servers Hacked 330

Posted by CmdrTaco from the zomg-alert-the-media dept.
An anonymous reader noted that "Ubuntu had to shutdown 5 of 8 production servers that are sponsored by Canonical, when they started attacking other systems. Canonical blames the community, saying they were community hosted, and were poorly maintained. However, kernel upgrades couldn't be done because of poor backwards compatibility with the very hardware that Canonical had sponsored! While people point fingers at each other it is pretty clear that both sides are equally to blame, the community administrators for practicing bad security practices, such as using unencrypted FTP transfers with accounts, not properly maintaining the system. However Canonical should have been well aware of what they are hosting. The question remains, if any of the files distributed to users have been compromised. A major blow for Canonical though who are attempting to enter the business market with Ubuntu Server."

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Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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