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Medicine

Submission + - Death of the consummate medical geek

Submitted by NIckGorton
NIckGorton writes: The father of modern heart surgery died this week at age 99. He was integral to the development of pretty much everything in modern cardiovascular surgery: bypass (heart-lung machines that made open heart surgery for the first time possible possible), coronary artery bypass surgery (he did the first one ever), carotid endarterectomey (again he performed the first one ever), the development of Dacron graft blood vessels, and the development of MASH units. He was a consummate geek and there are numerous surgical instruments that bear his name. He was also the first surgeon to videotape surgeries — in the 1960s. He was considered by the NEJM to be the single greatest surgeon alive until two days ago. In his career he performed over 50,000 heart surgeries and practiced medicine (though not surgery) until the day he died. Paradoxically in 2005, he underwent the Debakey procedure which he pioneered, to treat the aortic dissection he suffered.
The Internet

Submission + - How to deal with a non-responsive website host?

Submitted by
dirtysoccer
dirtysoccer writes: "I have recently taken over as the webmaster for a sports club at my university in England. We have a domain where we host our website, check email, have a gallery, mailing lists, etc. However, due to a mis-communication while the club's new committee started taking over last month, our website hosting company (GNHosting) has locked out our administrator account to our domain. Now we can make no updates, including changing web pages or email accounts, which is obviously a problem. Making matters worse, they use a "trouble ticket" system and have no other contact info available to resolve technical support problems (except email addresses that bounce back saying that trouble tickets must be submitted)... however, for over a month now they have not responded to a single trouble ticket that I have submitted to try to resolve this problem.

A whois query on their domain only returns the owner of the domain (a company which my host company sub-leases from and they are "unable to help" since it is a sub-leased provider). And I have been unable to find any other contact information to try to resolve this.

What else can I do to try to resolve this problem?"
Microsoft

Does Ballmer Need To Go? 568

Posted by kdawson from the strike-two-and-the-crowd-goes-wild dept.
Pickens notes a TechCrunch analysis wondering — after Windows Vista and the failed Yahoo bid — whether Steve Ballmer's days at Microsoft are numbered. "Ballmer has been the big driver behind [the Yahoo] deal at Microsoft — some would say to the point of obsession. After the disaster that has been Windows Vista, Ballmer may have realized he needed to redeem himself in the eyes of Microsoft's board. And the 'transformative' deal with Yahoo was the way he was going to do it... If Microsoft's board loses patience with him, it might have to ask Bill Gates to temporarily come back as CEO until it finds a replacement. After all, Ballmer has already made a strong and convincing case for why Microsoft needs Yahoo to make its online and advertising strategy work. It's not clear whether Microsoft can achieve its objectives on its own or through other acquisitions. Maybe Ballmer thinks he can still do the deal by making Yahoo's stock price collapse and come back with a hostile offer."
Math

Submission + - Surfer stuns physicists with theory of everything (telegraph.co.uk) 1

Submitted by j823777
j823777 writes: GARRETT LISI is an unlikely individual to be staking a claim for a theory of everything. He has no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii. In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, California, to teach snowboarding. Until recently, physics was not much more than a hobby.

That hasn't stopped some leading physicists sitting up and taking notice after Lisi made his theory public on the physics pre-print archive this week (www.arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770). By analysing the most elegant and intricate pattern known to mathematics, Lisi has uncovered a relationship underlying all the universe's particles and forces, including gravity — or so he hopes. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
Censorship

Submission + - Yahoo, MSN sign new Chinese gov't blogging pact (breitbart.com)

Submitted by kaufmanmoore
kaufmanmoore writes: AFP is reporting that Yahoo China and MSN have signed the new "self-discipline" pledge introduced this week and covered previously on slashdot. There are no more details at this point as to whether MSN or Yahoo will require detailed registration of personal information as encouraged by the Chinese government.
Security

Submission + - Mortgage foreclosure rescue scams growing rapidly (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is warning US homeowners that it has heard complaints from victims of online foreclosure rescue schemes in almost all 50 states. Not surprisingly, states with the highest foreclosure rates — such as Georgia, Colorado and Ohio — have an exceptionally high number of complaints for companies offering foreclosure rescue. An example of how fast the problem is growing: In the last three years, the Clearwater, FL BBB received 508 complaints for foreclosure services headquartered in their area. Of those complaints, 322 came within the last 12 months. The total amount of refunds requested by the complainants in the Clearwater area amounts to more than $600,000. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18726"
Communications

Skype Blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage 286

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ddos-ing-yourself dept.
brajesh writes to tell us that Skype has blamed its outage over the last week on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. Apparently the huge numbers of computers rebooting (and the resulting flood of login requests) revealed a problem with the network allocation algorithm resulting in a couple days of downtime. Skype further stressed that there was no malicious activity and user security was never in any danger.
Security

Submission + - Strict German Computer Crime Law Now in Effect (beskerming.com)

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "With little fanfare, section 202c of the German computer crime laws came into effect over the weekend. Worryingly for Security professionals, the laws make the mere possession of (creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to) many useful tools illegal. A similar law was proposed for the UK, however it was modified prior to passing through parliament due to the outcry from the industry.

Phenoelit, KisMAC, the CCC, and the Month of PHP Bugs are just some of the relatively high profile projects and groups to have already taken measures to remove or modify content under this law."
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T censors anti-Bush lyrics (go.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "The rock band Pearl Jam is upset after lyrics critical of President Bush were censored out of a live webcast of Lollapalooza last weekend by AT&T. The telecom company has apologized and said that the editing of the lyrics was a mistake that should not have happened. (ABCNEWS)"
Privacy

Submission + - Oxford using Facebook to discipline students (msn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oxford University is using facebook to investigate "trashings" (dousing classmates in eggs, flour and genereally making a mess) when the students involved post the pictures online. The school has taken to emailing the students fines from $80 to $200 for breaking the rules. In my mind this sounds like the school is playing judge, jury and executioner. What happens when it was all in good fun, no property damage involved and the clean up is a hot shower? I fear where this is turning to. Where someone can get judged by merely a picture. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19813092/
Censorship

Submission + - UK - 'Extreme' porn proposals spark row

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on the row over proposals by the UK Government to criminalise possession of "extreme" porn. The bill, published last week, would include fictional depictions of violence and images of acts between consenting adults. The law would also apply to screenshots taken from a legal film, if the screenshot was made for erotic purposes. Backlash opposes the law.

The bill follows from plans initially announced last August.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Will Linux Win the Next Presidential Election?

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: Douglas Karr has posted an interesting breakdown, complete with bar charts, of the operating systems and server software used by the websites for 23 declared and undeclared presidential candidates. The breakdown shows that there is nearly an equal split between Linux and Windows servers among the whole candidate pool. More interesting, all of the Democratic candidates except for Hillary favor Linux or FreeBSD. 69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows. Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?

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