biomech - Slashdot User

Submission + - Einstein's twin paradox resolved

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @08:59AM

slashthedot writes: "An Indian American scientist Subhash Kak from Louisiana State University has resolved the 100+ years old Einstein's twin paradox. "The fact that time slows down on moving objects has been documented and verified over the years through repeated experimentation. But, in the previous scenario, the paradox is that the earthbound twin is the one who would be considered to be in motion — in relation to the sibling — and therefore should be the one aging more slowly. Einstein and other scientists have attempted to resolve this problem before, but none of the formulas they presented proved satisfactory. Kak's findings were published online in the International Journal of Theoretical Science, and will appear in the upcoming print version of the publication."
"The implications of this resolution will be widespread, generally enhancing the scientific community's comprehension of relativity. It may eventually even have some impact on quantum communications and computers, potentially making it possible to design more efficient and reliable communication systems for space applications."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/lsu -lpr021407.php"

Submission + - Translation of Macrovision Response to Jobs on DRM

Submitted by BoboB-69 on Sunday February 18, 2007 @08:01AM

BoboB-69 writes: Daring Fireball has posted a humorous, and accurate PR-speak to Plain English translation of Macrovision's CEO's response to Steve Jobs' Open Letter on DRM. Highly recommended reading for slashdotters everywhere.

Suppressed Report Shows Cancer Link to GM Potatoes 325

Posted by Zonk on Sunday February 18, 2007 @01:38AM from the politics-and-potatoes-and-science-mix-poorly dept.

Doc Ruby writes "After an 8-year-long court battle, Welsh activists have finally been allowed to released a Russian study showing an increased cancer risk linked to eating genetically modified potatoes. While the victory of the Welsh Greenpeace members in the courtroom would seem to vindicate the work of the Russian scientists that did the original research, there are still serious questions to be answered. The trials involved rats being fed several types of potatoes as feed. The rats who were fed GM potatoes suffered much more extensive damage to their organs than with any other type; just the same, serious questions remain about the validity of the findings. The Welsh group wants to use this information to stop the testing of GM crops in the UK, tests currently slated for the spring of this year."

Submission + - I'm releasing the Uncensored Bible

Submitted by

Jonathan Hayward

on Saturday February 17, 2007 @08:35PM

Jonathan Hayward writes: "This project began because there are some parts of the Bible that are simply hidden from the public, and began simply as an uncensored Bible. But once that was finished, there seemed to be more to uncover. Read more about the Uncensored Bible."

Creating Power From Wasted Heat 186

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 17, 2007 @08:31PM from the that's-borg-technology dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, about 90 percent of the world's electricity is created through an indirect and inefficient conversion of heat. It is estimated that two thirds of the heat used by thermoelectric converters are wasted and released. But now, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have found a new way to convert this wasted heat into electricity by trapping organic molecules between metal nanoparticles. So far, this method of creating electricity creation is in its very early stage, but if it can scale up to mass production it may lead to a new and inexpensive source of energy."

Submission + - Google Search Screws Over SomethingAwful.com

Submitted by on Saturday February 17, 2007 @07:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: You may have heard of the humour website SomethingAwful.com. Apparently, for all of their long history they've been having a problem where their website is listed far down Google's results (often last) for searches related to the site (such as the names of features and articles on the site). For example, when I google for "Photoshop Phriday", the site isn't in the first ten pages of results, despite the fact that Google has indexed the relevent page. In fact, the first result is a noproxy.us proxied version of the relevant page, and the rest of the results are blog and forum entries referring to Something Awful. (Results are apparently better on many non-English versions of Google, however.)

It's far from clear what's causing this; the site's PageRank is apparently fine. Attempts to contact Google have fallen on deaf ears and dumb autoresponders. The site was even recently redesigned in the hope of fixing the problem, with no luck so far. Is the world's most popular search engine really this broken, and how much money are people bringing in from knowing the black magic to work around it?

Asteroid Highlighted as Impact Threat 297

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 17, 2007 @07:49PM from the please-bring-your-seatbacks-and-traytables dept.

Maggie McKee writes "The asteroid Apophis has been traversing the void of space for untold years; in just a few decades time it will make a very close pass to Earth, and could make an unwelcome stop on our planet's surface. Even still, it's nothing to get too worked up about. The 20-million-tonne object has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the Pacific Ocean in early April of 2036. If it did hit, it could trigger a tsunami that would do an untold amount of damage to the California coastline and many other places on Earth. Despite the low level of the threat, it's still a real enough danger to prompt the United Nations to develop a protocol about the scenario. We'll get a closeup look at the object in 2029, and at that point we should have a better idea of what 2036 will bring us."

Submission + - China

Submitted by

buy many thing here

on Saturday February 17, 2007 @07:18PM

buy many thing here writes: "Nothing going on worth mentioning. I've just been letting everything happen without me these days. Today was a total loss. Not much on my mind recently."

Submission + - Photos of cold Moscow today in the morning

Submitted by

Vladimir

on Saturday February 17, 2007 @07:18PM

Vladimir writes: "http://exfinancier.googlepages.com/moscowinthemorn ing Here is one day of Moscow life in the real time, pictures was made an hour ago, you can see what happens in that area, we`ll walk through the main street of the city to the Kremlin then go underground and went to the usual area of Moscow."

Submission + - Macrovisions Letter to Steve Jobs

Submitted by Martix on Saturday February 17, 2007 @06:54PM

Martix writes: To Steve Jobs and the Digital Entertainment Industry:

I would like to start by thanking Steve Jobs for offering his provocative perspective on the role of digital rights management (DRM) in the electronic content marketplace and for bringing to the forefront an issue of great importance to both the industry and consumers. Macrovision has been in the content protection industry for more than 20 years, working closely with content owners of many types, including the major Hollywood studios, to help navigate the transition from physical to digital distribution. We have been involved with and have supported both prevention technologies and DRM that are on literally billions of copies of music, movies, games, software and other content forms, as well as hundreds of millions of devices across the world.

Can Read more hear http://www.macrovision.com/company/news/drm/respon se_letter.shtml

Journal Journal: Choke points for spam

Journal by ILikeRed on Saturday February 17, 2007 @06:53PM

A large problem with spam is the collection of zombie systems (mostly Microsoft home computers) on residential broadband lines that act as relays for spam. Most of these users have simple firewalls supplied by their broadband providers that they never really configure that provide DNS proxy services, among other services. Is it not about time to start pressuri

Submission + - Redhat joins Novell

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17, 2007 @06:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: Redhat joined Novell and signed a deal with Microsoft.

5 Things the Boss Should Know About Spam Fighting 168

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 17, 2007 @05:36PM from the never-give-up-never-surrender dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Sysadmins and email administrators were asked to identify the one thing they wish the CIO understood about their efforts to fight spam. The CIO website is now running their five most important tips, in an effort to educate the corporate brass. Recommendations are mostly along the lines of informing corporate management; letting bosses know that there is no 'silver bullet', and that the battle will never really end. There's also a suggestion to educate on technical matters, bringing executives into the loop on terms like SMTP and POP. Their first recommendation, though, is to make sure no mail is lost. 'This is a risk management practice, and you need to decide where you want to put your risk. Would you rather risk getting spam with lower risk of losing/delaying messages you actually wanted to get, or would you rather risk losing/delaying legitimate messages with lower risk of spam? You can't have both, no matter how loudly you scream.'"

Feed Media Frenzy: The Old Guard Flexes Its Muscles (While It Still Can) (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Saturday February 17, 2007 @05:12PM

It has become evident that the question of who will rule video on the Web is incredibly tangled.

Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated 295

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 17, 2007 @04:39PM from the man-your-battlestations dept.

An anonymous reader writes " The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."

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