I was expecting this one to resurface -- it disappeared right about the time Slashdot posted a big political story -- but it hasn't come back yet. I'm guessing it's a dupe of a story over the weekend, but I haven't had time to go searching.

Your Rights Online: UK Government Refuses To Ditch IE6
Date: 08/02/2010
Orig link: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/08/02/169202
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the good-plan-guys dept.

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes
"The UK government has said it will not upgrade its departments computers from Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 because it would not be 'cost-effective'. A recent online petition posted to Number10.gov.uk received 6,223 signatures that called for the 'Prime Minister to encourage government departments to upgrade away from Internet Explorer 6' due to its alleged vulnerability to attack, and because it requires web developers to specially craft sites to support the browser. This raises the question, what is the cost of an upgrade compared to a massive security breach?"

This one was funny -- it was in red on the front page at the same time as the article that eventually posted for real, Talk On Chinese Cyber Army Pulled From Black Hat. Oops!

Black Hat Talk On China Cyber Army Pulled
Date: 07/15/2010
Orig link: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/07/15/1529241
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the nobody-ever-talks-about-the-purple-hats dept.

itwbennett writes
"A talk that would have given conference attendees a unique profile of China's secretive government-sponsored hacking efforts has been pulled from the Black Hat schedule. Wayne Huang, one of the presenters of the talk and CTO with Taiwanese security vendor Armorize, said that he decided to pull the talk after vetting it with several organizations that had contributed intelligence and getting pressure from several places, both in Taiwan and in China. Huang wouldn't say who complained or why, but he said that by pulling the talk Armorize will be able to maintain its good relations with the Asian security community. 'We ran the materials by some key people and they were not happy with it,' he said."

The first Ghost Article in many, many months shows some strange behind-the-scenes SlashCode action. When I reload the original page URL, I get the generic "Nothing to see here, move along". But when I click on the "title" link, the one in the header before the comments section, the page that results has the full article title. It's not just echoing the text in the URL, either... otherwise it would say "Man HIV Free" instead of "Man HIV-Free". That implies that the ghost is still in the database... somewhere.

Man HIV-Free 2 Years After Stem Cell Treatment
Date: 26 Feb 2010
Orig link: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/26/1637249
Title link: http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/26/1637249/Man-HIV-Free-2-Years-After-Stem-Cell-Treatment
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the good-genes dept.

kkleiner writes

"According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, a stem cell transplant performed in Germany has unexpectedly removed all signs of HIV from a 42-year-old American patient. The unnamed white male was treated two years ago for leukemia with a dose of donor stem cells, and his HIV RNA count has dropped to zero and remained there since. While the treatment was for leukemia, Dr. Gero Hutter and colleagues at the Charite Universitatsmedizen in Berlin had selected the stem cell donor for his HIV-resistant genes. While there are still many questions unanswered, this is the first such case of stem cells treating HIV that has been reported in a publication of the caliber of the NEJM."

... would be improved if one (all) would know who assessed what how.

Sorry, no time for fancy formatting. Here's the article... I don't keep up with the topic, so I don't know why it got yanked. Here's the link, in case it comes back: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/16/1945246 Enjoy!

The Long Term Impact of Jacobsen v. Katzer
Posted by timothy in The Mysterious Future!
from the stabs-in-the-dark dept.

snydeq (http://www.infoworld.com/) writes
"Lawyer Jonathan Moskin has called into question the long-term impact (http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/does-court-ruling-raise-risks-open-source-687) last year's Java Model Railroad Interface court ruling will have on open source adoption among corporate entities. For many, the case in question, Jacobsen v. Katzer (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/index.shtml), has represented a boon for open source, laying down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/03/1447248&tid=185). But as Moskin sees it, the ruling 'enables a set of potentially onerous monetary remedies for failures to comply with even modest license terms, and it subjects a potentially larger community of intellectual property users to liability (http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202429618746).' In other words, in Moskin's eyes, Jacobsen v. Katzer could make firms wary of using open source software because they fear that someone in the food chain has violated a copyright, thus exposing them to lawsuit. It should be noted that Moskin's firm has represented Microsoft in anti-trust litigation before the European Union."

Ghosts of Slashdot: 11/13/2008
[This looked like an awesome story, and it's a new discovery, so I wondered why it got yanked. Turned out there was an even more awesome version in the pipeline, that referenced not one but two extraterrestrial systems being imaged, and threw in a jab at the Hubble to boot. Plus, this story linked to a page on the KeckObservatory.org site that doesn't have any actual content (perhaps it was about to get Slashdotted and they blanked it to avoid meltdown?).]

First Picture of an Alien Solar System
Posted by ScuttleMonkey in The Mysterious Future!
from the say-cheese dept.

dtolman writes

"Astronomers at the Keck Observatory have announced that they have taken the first image of an alien solar system. 'The new solar system orbits the dusty young star named HR8799, which is 140 light years away and about 1.5 times the size of our sun. Three planets, roughly 10, 9 and 6 times the mass of Jupiter, orbit the star. The sizes of the planets decrease with distance from the parent star, much like the giant planets do in our system.'"

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 10/24/2008
[Finally, I think this one will *stay* dead! No idea what it's all about, or why it didn't stay on the front page. Probably a dupe, but it's far enough outside my sphere of knowledge that I wouldn't know exactly what to search on. And, I have to admit, I'm not interested enough to find out...]

Antitrust Working For Samba and FSFE
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the in-an-ideal-world dept.

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes

"It's now just over a year since Microsoft lost their final court case in the EU regarding breaches of antitrust regulation. Samba developer Andrew Bartlet writes in his blog that the documentation and help MS was forced to deliver is proving truly useful: '[T]he bottleneck is our own pace of implementation and comprehension, not missing documentation or the difficult task of network analysis so often required in the past.' FSFE blogger Ciaran O'Riordan also explains the motivations for those years of work. Hint: it wasn't about fines."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 10/08/2008
[They're rarer, but sometimes the ghosts still make it to red-link front page status before they're hosed away. Not sure why this one got doused, but I suspect it's a dupe.]

Recovering Blurred Text Using Photoshop
Posted by Timothy in The Mysterious Future!
from the careful-how-you-hide-stuff dept.

An anonymous reader writes

"There's been a lot of talk about recovering blurred or pixelated text, but here's an actual implementation using nothing but Photoshop and a little JavaScript. Includes a Hollywood-esque video showing the uncovered letters slowly appearing."

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! And it's not the same as seeing an article come close-but-not-close-enough on the Firehose. These stories were accepted, posted on the front page for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

Ghosts of Slashdot: 08/20/2008
[Wow, it's been forever! But I finally caught one. I was going to send a note to the DaddyPants address warning them that this was a dupe, but I couldn't find the article it was a duplicate *of*. Someone did, though. Oh, and it's "Caucasus", not "Caucuses". It's Georgia, not Iowa.]

ISS Threatened by War in The Caucuses
Journal written by Presto Vivace (882157) and posted by samzenpus in The Mysterious Future!
from the no-space-for-you dept.

According to this report in the Washington Post, the ISS program could become a casualty of the war in the Caucuses. Our current space shuttle craft will be retired in 2010, with no replacements until 2015. In the meantime, in order for NASA to contract with Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, Congress would have to pass a waiver to a 2000 law forbidding government contracts with nations that help Iran and North Korea with their nuclear programs, as Russia has done. Even before the war in the Caucuses this was controversial, now the ISS mission is at great risk. It would be a shame if the ISS mission were jeopardized over this, a real shame.

What are the Ghosts of Slashdot?
As a Slashdot Subscriber, I get to see stories before they're posted to the general public. This means that I get to see the mistakes -- the articles that almost made it, but got sent to the cutting room floor at the last minute. They become the Ghosts of Slashdot, a URL that points to nothing.

Note that this is NOT the same as whining about article submissions that didn't get accepted! These stories were accepted, posted for subscribers, and then pulled from the site. Their brief existence gives us a glimpse into the Slashdot post-submission process, for those who are interested in what's going on behind the curtain.

By the way, any Subscriber can join the Ghost Hunt, but so far only morcheeba has shown the requisite sensitivity to ectoplasmic vibrations.

Not that it's an earth-shattering development -- I'm not creating miniature black holes or anything, but I did re-up my Slashdot subscription.

The first potential ghost article: Engineers Make Good Terrorists?. I don't think that one will get canned! Though it sure seems like a leftover April Fool's gag. Sadly, it's not... the source article is dated 4/3, not 4/1. Of course, the past seven-and-a-half years have been an extended April Fool's Day... but on the bright side, there are only 9 months 19 days 17 hours 3 minutes before the foolishness finally ends.

I haven't been able to take my usual peek behind the curtain of Slashdot, because my subscription has lapsed and I haven't been able to renew it. Woe is me!

I'm sure I'll get around to it again sometime soon. Heck, it's not like five or ten bucks will make the rent check bounce. But it would buy a used GameCube game for the little gamerz at home. If anyone wants to finance my ghost hunting exploits, please feel free... clicky the linky above and pop "622190" into the "Buy Gift Subscription For" box. I'm certain to think very fondly of you for at least five minutes.

Again, no formatting, just saving the story and links. This article got pulled because it's a dupe of one from several weeks back, maybe even a few months ago. I remember seeing it; it may have been this February article on Graphene Transistors, but I thought it was more recent than that.

Edit: The article has been restored. I guess the previous article was way back in February, so this one adds useful information.

Science: Replacing Copper With Pencil Graphite
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the carbon-all-the-way-down dept.
Late-Eight writes
"A key discovery at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could help advance the role of graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics. Researchers believe graphene's extremely efficient conductive properties can be exploited for use in nanoelectronics. Graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, eluded scientists for years but was finally made in the laboratory in 2004 with the help of everyday, store-bought transparent tape. The current research, which shows a way to control the conductivity of graphene, is an important first step towards mass producing metallic graphene that could one day replace copper as the primary interconnect material on nearly all computer chips."
Researchers are now hot to pursue graphene for this purpose over the previous favorite candidate, buckytubes (which are just rolled-up graphene). Farther down the road, semiconducting graphene might take over from silicon at the heart of logic chips.

Links:
Story: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/24/2123225
Submitter: http://www.shellscript.co.uk/
"graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics": http://www.physorg.com/news104473084.html

(By the way, it's strange that I can't get a Science icon. I went for the Sci-Fi icon instead, for lack of anything more appropriate.)

I'm going to try the rapid-response, no-formatting method again.

MacBook Hacked in Security Contest
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the caught-with-your-pants-down dept.
TheCybernator writes
"Macaulay, a software engineer, was able to hack into a MacBook through a zero-day security hole in Apple's Safari browser. The computer was one of two offered as a prize in the "PWN to Own" hack-a-Mac contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. The successful attack on the second and final day of the contest required a conference organizer to surf to a malicious website using Safari on the MacBook -- a type of attack familiar to Windows users. CanSecWest organizers relaxed the rules Friday after nobody at the event had breached either of the Macs on the previous day."

Links:

Story: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/23/1457220
hack into a MacBook: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39286793,00.htm

I'm too tired today to add the fancy formatting, sorry. I've got two other ghosts from last month sitting on my hard drive, and I don't want this one to join them for fear of ectoplasmic overload, or something. So here's the basics:

Science: "Smart Dust" to Explore Planets
Posted by ScuttleMonkey in The Mysterious Future!
from the new-but-not dept.
Ollabelle writes
"The BBC is reporting how tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back. 'The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved. The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.'"

Links: tiny chips with flexible skins

Article link: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1925206

Update: Good thing I didn't go to all that trouble, because the article was only playing dead. It went to "Nothing to see here", but remained in red on the front page and eventually went live.

I can't believe I missed it. I had a ghost slip right through my fingers!

When I came to work, I fired up my list of morning bookmarks. After checking email and half a dozen news and message boards, I got around to Slashdot. I ctl-shift-clicked the two red links and went on to read another dozen or so sites, and even went and got some work done.

When I happened to click the Slashdot links in another window, I saw "Nothing to see here. Please move along." Yikes! That meant that between when I first fired up the browser and when I shift-ctl-clicked, the article met its untimely (or perhaps just-in-timely) demise.

But there's nothing left of the ghost. I'd already gone on to read other Slashdot articles, and Opera 9 no longer seems to keep cached versions of pages -- when you hit "Back", it reloads with the current version.

I don't even know the original title of the article. All I have is the URL... like a feeling of cold in a creaky old house on a warm summer night.

Rest in peace, http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl? sid=07/03/06/1227222