Subgenius - Slashdot User

Submission + - Truly Open Source Biology? (plosjournals.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02, 2007 @11:21AM

An anonymous reader writes: Recent posts in Slashdot have dealt with "open source" synthetic biology http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/3 0/1927205
In an article in PloS Biology, James Boyle and Arti Rai claim that synthetic biology may be the "perfect storm" for intellectual property — allowing the courts to combine the dumb things they have done with both software patents and gene patents, and apply them to an immature technological field — like patenting Boolean algebra right at the birth of computer science. One response? An attempt to build a truly open source synthetic biology — standard biological parts, perhaps even covered by a GPL style license. Viral licensing indeed.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request= get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050058
(Interestingly, they argue a public domain approach might work better.)

Submission + - H1-B Abuse: the smoking gun (dailykos.com)

Submitted by

MsGeek

on Monday June 18, 2007 @03:30PM

MsGeek writes: "Ever gotten suspicious about IT want ads? Ever thought that they aren't really looking for IT workers in good faith, but are looking to justify hiring people from Russia or India or China via the H1-B program? Guess what: you're right! The Programmer's Guild has released a video from a seminar held by an immigration law firm about how to game the job search process to make sure that no American IT worker can ever be qualified enough to fill the sham position.

This makes it possible for the firm to go to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and say, "Gosh, we ran an ad for a month and we got no qualified applicants...can we look for H1-B workers to fill this position?" H1-B visas are being abused. This is the smoking gun. They don't want qualified American IT workers to fill the position, they want foreign slave labor that they can pay peanuts to and bully around.

IT jobs are not going begging. IT jobs are not being offered to American IT professionals in good faith, so that companies don't have to pay prevailing American wages. Write your congresscritter and senators. This is an outrage."

Submission + - ABC news and What happened to the 10th candidate?

Submitted by isotope23 on Friday May 04, 2007 @06:00PM

isotope23 writes: Regardless of your political stripe, this country is supposed to be about freedom of speech and ideas. There were 10 candidates in the Republican debates last night, so why did ABC only list 9 in their "who won the debate last night" poll? It's kind of hard IMO to "overlook" the Only Republican candidate who voted AGAINST the Iraq war from the start. Is it any wonder people are looking to the internet for alternate news sources as opposed to the "Mainstream Media"??? Perhaps a quick comment to ABC is in order?

Submission + - USB key breaks OS X security

Submitted by thoughtlover on Monday April 30, 2007 @06:45PM

thoughtlover writes: Need to get access to someone's Mac but don't have the awesome hacking skills necessary to bust through their passwords? Just get a MacLockPick, a USB thumb drive that'll cut through any Apple Computer's security like a hot knife through butter.

Submission + - E-Gold Taken Down by Feds for Money Laundering

Submitted by loqi on Monday April 30, 2007 @03:36PM

loqi writes: Citing child pornographers and online scammers as the beneficiaries of an effectively anonymous payment system, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed charges of conspiracy and money laundering against the online payment system E-Gold. With advances in cryptographic techniques like Brands credentials and transparent servers, will money laundering laws continue to be enforceable?

Submission + - 5 Basic Mistakes Not to Make With DNS

Submitted by

blackbearnh

on Thursday April 26, 2007 @07:00PM

blackbearnh writes: "An article on O'Reilly's Sysadmin Site today has a list of 5 basic mistakes you can make setting up a DNS server, and that can contribute to the onslaught of bogus DNS queries arriving at the Root servers. These may represent as much as 98% of the total traffic. From correctly reverse-mapping your private network IP addres to making sure your domain doesn't suffer from Lame Delegation, these are quick and easy fixes that can make a big difference to the overall health of the DNS universe."

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