gadders - Slashdot User

Your Feces Is a Wonderland of Viruses 211

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @04:30PM from the and-so-can-you dept.

sciencehabit writes "Thanks to an anlaysis of fecal samples from four sets of Missouri-born female identical twins and their mothers, researchers have concluded that human guts harbor viruses as unique as the people they inhabit; the viral lineup differs even between identical twins. Even more surprising? These viruses may be doing good work inside of us."

ESRB Exposes Emails of Gamers Who Filed Privacy Complaints 75

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @01:10AM from the well-played dept.

simrook writes, "Many people filed privacy complaints with the ESRB over Blizzard's recent (and afterward recanted) move to require the display of users' real life names on Blizzard's official forums. 961 of those complainants had their email addresses exposed in the ESRB's response." The response itself didn't go into the organization's thoughts on Blizzard's plan, but they explained to the Opposable Thumbs blog that anonymity isn't a huge concern to them, as long as users are given the opportunity to opt out. "The role of the ESRB Privacy Online program is to make sure that member websites—those that display our seal on their pages — are compliant with an increasingly complex series of privacy protection laws and are offering a secure space for users to interact and do business online. ... But online privacy protection doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as anonymity. It's about making sure that websites collecting personal information from users are doing so not only in accordance with federal regulations but also with best practices for protecting individuals' personal information online."

"David After Dentist" Made $150k For Family 234

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @11:27AM from the is-this-real-life? dept.

It turns out recording your drugged child pays pretty well. 7-year-old David DeVore became an overnight sensation when his father posted a video of his ramblings after dental surgery. To date that video has made the DeVore family around $150,000. Most of the money came from YouTube, but the family has made $50k from licensing and merchandise. From the article: "The one seemingly minor decision to make the video available all over the Internet set off a whirlwind of changes for the DeVore family. Within just four days, 'David After Dentist' received 3 million views on YouTube and the younger David quickly became an Internet celebrity. His father quit his job in residential real estate (did we mention they live in Florida?), and the family started selling T-shirts featuring cartoon drawings of their son post-dental surgery."

Comment If I were Steve Jobs... (Score 1) 853

by gadders on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @05:16AM (#31919928) Attached to: Gizmodo Blows Whistle On 4G iPhone Loser

..I'd leave the guy in his job. Then when I do the official next gen iPhone launch and start the build up to announcing the details of the product, I'd then pause and say "Actually, I know someone who could do a better job than me at this. He got so much publicity last time..." and then bring on the tool of an engineer that lost the phone to help in the presentation.

Jobs looks good, Apple looks human, good publicity all round, and the engineer gets his career rehabilitated.

Facebook Mafiosi Go To the Mattresses vs. Zynga 102

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 17, 2009 @01:15AM from the concrete-galoshes dept.

sympleko writes "Zynga has the lion's share of traffic in Facebook applications, and Mafia Wars is one of their most popular social games. Collapsing under the weight of over 26 million users, Zynga has been scrambling to thwart hard-core gamers who reverse-engineer URLs or script the game to optimize their enjoyment. Many of the workarounds have annoyed users who were accustomed to various game features, and even worse, the hastily-deployed changes have resulted in many players losing access to the game, in-game prizes, or statistics. Fed up with a software company seemingly bent on discouraging people from enjoying their product, a number of tagged players have organized a boycott of all Zynga games. The first 24-hour boycott on Sunday 12/13 resulted in an 11% decline in Daily Active Users, and an emergency thread on Zynga's forums (from which most of the flames were deleted). The current boycott, extending Wednesday through Sunday is being supported by a 428K strong Facebook group. At issue is the social contract between software companies and their devoted user base, as well as the nefarious tactics Zynga has used to raise cash."

Hand Written Clock 86

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:11PM from the up-to-the-minute dept.

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Comment It depends... (Score 1) 467

by gadders on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @04:38AM (#29729533) Attached to: Is Working For the Gambling Industry a Black Mark?

Somewhere like betfair, I would view positively. They're effectively a stock-exchange for sports.

Some of these flash-based games that encourage poor people to gamble their benefits? I'd personally find it hard to work for them, but wouldn't use it as a black mark in hiring decisions.

Submission + - Check if your account is compromised

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @03:48AM

An anonymous reader writes: Serversniff.net provides a check, if a mailaddress is listed in the recently published lists of ~35.000 mailaccounts: http://beta.serversniff.de/mailaccounts
But for sure, you are a pro and won't need this for you change your passwords regularly and won't ever use a freemailaccount hosted by yahoo.com, hotmail.com or gmail.com, right?

Comment A couple of things.... (Score 3, Interesting) 301

by gadders on Saturday April 25, 2009 @05:56PM (#27716413) Attached to: Future of Financial Mathematics?

1) Taleb has a bit of the stopped clock quality about him. Anyone saying "bad things will happen" is bound to be right sooner or later. Plus, his writing is the most self-indulgent wankfest ever.

2) I don't know whether you will choose financial maths or not, but Banks will always need people that can do "fancy" maths. Although some maths is out of favour, high-frequency (algo) trading is currently still popular, and making money.

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