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Comment Need an app to prioritize (Score 1) 121

by OutputLogic (#39362279) Attached to: Algorithm Finds Thousands of Unknown Drug Interaction Side Effects
So there is a short list of drugs a person is taking, medium list of person's medical conditions, and a long list of drug interaction side effects. All a person needs to do is to prioritize that interaction list according to severity: from "will kill you" at the top down to "skin reddening" or "facial swelling" at the bottom, and pick the least damaging drugs. This calls for a smartphone app.
Mozilla

Submission + - Why does Mozilla behave like Microsoft? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "The Mozilla home page has some blather about how because they are a non-profit, they are not manipulative in order to enforce market needs.

Then why is it, when I specified an alternate location for the Mozilla 10 installation, the installer over-wrote an entirely separate installation of the Mozilla 3.6 software?

That's the kind of thing Microsoft would do."

Submission + - The Biggest Loser contest at work (nbc.com)

Submitted by
OutputLogic
OutputLogic writes: "Everybody knows about obesity epidemic in the US and many other countries. There is a lot of media interest to this problem, including popular TV show "The Biggest Loser". However, it came to me as a shock when my employer, a mid-size high-tech publicly traded corporation, announced "The Biggest Loser" contest at work. Well, we have a fair amount of overweight employees. But still, the whole idea of having such a contest at a workplace is demeaning, to say the least. I wonder if such thing is becoming a commonplace and what /. readers think about it."
Open Source

Submission + - How Far Should GPL Enforcement Go? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "The debate over enforcement of the GPL flared up again this week when Red Hat kernel developer Matthew Garrett wrote in a blog post that Sony is looking to rewrite BusyBox to sidestep the GPL. Which is a perfectly legal undertaking. But it raises the question: 'Is there social pressure within the Linux kernel community to not undertake GPL compliance action?' writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'This may not be nefarious: maybe people just would rather not bother with enforcing compliance. Better, they may argue, to just let the violation go and get on with developing better code.'"
Security

Submission + - Half of Fortune 500 Infected w/ DNSChanger Malware (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Despite the recent success in taking down a criminal operation that operated a massive DNSChanger malware operation, new research shows that the malware is still prevalent and lingering in many corporate and government networks.

In fact, according to recent analysis, approximately half of all Fortune 500 companies and major U.S. federal agencies are infected with DNSChanger malware.

Security firm IID says that it found at least 250 of all Fortune 500 companies and 27 out of 55 major government entities had at least one computer or router that was infected with DNSChanger in early 2012.

If an enterprise’s employee has DNSChanger on their computer, it means that enterprise is susceptible to having their proprietary information stolen because DNSChanger disables Anti-Virus.

While the FBI replaced rogue DNS servers operated by the cybercriminals with legitimate servers for 120 days, without further court actions, on March 8, 2012, infected computers and routers will have no servers to handle their DNS requests, the Internet may literally go dark for people using those computers or routers and create a major help desk issue.
Earth

Submission + - Is the Earth Gaining or Losing Mass? 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC recently asked physicist and Cambridge University professor Dave Ansell to draw up a balance sheet of the mass that's coming in to the earth, and the mass going out to find out if the earth is gaining or losing mass. By far the biggest contributor to the world's mass is the 40,000 tonnes of dust that is falling from space to Earth every year. "The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust," says Dr. Chris Smith. Another factor increasing the earth's mass is global warming which adds about 160 tonnes a year because as the temperature of the Earth goes up, energy is added to the system, so the mass must go up. On the minus side, at the very center of the Earth, within the inner core, there exists a sphere of uranium five mile in diameter which acts as a natural nuclear reactor so these nuclear reactions cause a loss of mass of about 16 tonnes per year. What about launching rockets and satellites into space, like Phobos-Grunt? Smith discounts this as the mass is negligible and most of it will fall back down to Earth again anyway. But by far the biggest factor in earth's weight loss are the 95,000 tonnes of hydrogen that escape from the atmosphere every year. "The other very light gas this is happening to is helium and there is much less of that around, so it's about 1,600 tonnes a year of helium that we lose." Taking all the factors into account, Smith reckons the Earth is getting about 50,000 tonnes lighter a year, which is just less than half the gross weight of the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise liner, that ran aground recently."
Science

Submission + - Researchers Create Two-Dimensional Glass (sciencemag.org) 8

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have created the world's thinnest pane of glass. The glass, made of silicon and oxygen, formed accidentally when the scientists were making graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon, on copper-covered quartz. They believe an air leak caused the copper to react with the quartz, which is also made of silicon and oxygen, producing a glass layer with the graphene. The glass is a mere three atoms thick—the minimum thickness of silica glass—which makes it two-dimensional. The team notes that the structure "strikingly resembles" a diagram drawn by a glass theorist attempting to unravel its structure back in 1932. Such ultra-thin glass could be used in semiconductor or graphene transistors.

Comment Re:Quality Assurance (Score 1) 332

by OutputLogic (#38852051) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Money-Making Home-Based Tech Skills?
A simple QA can be done (and is done) by using Amazon Mechanical Turk. QA of complex software products that require domain-level expertise in electronics, chemistry, biology, etc., is unlikely to be done well by a part-time remote contractor. Also QA of software that needs to be attached to specialized hardware and requires a lab cannot be done remotely.

Comment Re:Do something local (Score 1) 332

by OutputLogic (#38851995) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Money-Making Home-Based Tech Skills?
True. That's why you approach candidate selection on Elance like you would if you were hiring him/her to work for you in a real company. You review their background, job history, and feedback from previous customers. You ask questions and see what questions they ask. You check-out their website, and other online presence, etc. There is a lot of supply and a few real "gems" out there. I've contracted out a couple of dozen jobs - client/server Java application, complex Perl scripts, hiring an attorney to draft a patent, proofread my book, design a logo, and the list goes on - with almost 100% success rate.

Comment Decline has to start at some age (Score 1) 295

by OutputLogic (#38646622) Attached to: New Research Shows Cognitive Decline Begins At 45
Everybody agrees that a person is sharper at 15-20 than at 60-80. If this is the case, cognitive decline has to start at some age. Is it relevant if it starts at 45 or some other age ? Probably not. What's important is that decline is gradual, not an instant drop. Just like other "characteristics" : health, looks, amount of energy, etc.

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