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Education

Submission + - 7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe

Submitted by
DesScorp
DesScorp writes: "There seem be a number of medical myths that even doctors buy into. LiveScience reports on an investigation performed by the British Medical Journal on the myths, and how they persist even among doctors. Among the myths are some classics; that we only use 10 percent of our brains, that Turkey makes us drowsy, and that hair and nails continue to grow after death."
Security

Submission + - Kaspersky quarantines Windows Explorer (zdnet.com)

Submitted by mike.rimov
mike.rimov writes: Ziff Davis is reporting that Kapersky AntiVirus has been mistakenly categorizing Windows Explorer as malicious code and quarantining it. (Of course, some of us at Slashdot might agree with the decision)
Censorship

Submission + - FL Universities pay big $$ to block file sharing

Submitted by bwcbwc
bwcbwc writes: The Palm Beach Post is reporting that Florida Universities are paying big bucks for software to block peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Florida Atlantic University paid US $500,000 plus annual maintenance of $50,000 for software that isn't even configurable to allow legal peer-to-peer networks. The University of South Florida seems to be getting a better deal at $75,000 initial purchase with annual maintenance in the same range. Their software is at least configurable, so their students will still be able to download those Knoppix DVD images. Sounds like another opportunity to PROFIT!!! (Fair warning to those with high blood pressure: the article has a decidedly pro-RIAA slant. Reading it may be hazardous to your health.)
Windows

Submission + - Vista SP1 to Kill the controversial kill switch (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
Khuffie
Khuffie writes: "In a reaction to a year of embarrasing WGA glitches, server outages and customer complains, Microsoft plans to strip away one of Vistas most annoying 'features': the ability for it to 'kill', or reduce the functionality of, installations of Vista it detects as pirated. Instead, you will merely get more notifications asking you to activate, and you will only be able to click 'Activate Later' after 15 seconds."
Windows

Submission + - Vista discount for pirates?

Submitted by hanshotfirst
hanshotfirst writes: Several sites, including this one: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15639/1103/ , are reporting this morning that Microsoft is relaxing their anti-piracy lockout in Vista. It apparently reduces functionality and pesters the user hourly to buy a license at a reduced cost. Does this give users of the pirated version a better discount than retail purchasers?
Security

Submission + - Catching thieves with Flickr (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by
devkhadka
devkhadka writes: "Social networks can not only be used to make new contacts, but also to track down thieves as events last week at Flickr.com showed. Four laptops and two iMacs, one of which had a web cam, were stolen from Canadian office services provider WorkSpace. The Flickrbooth plug-in for Apple's Photo Booth was installed on the iMac with the web cam. The program automatically sends photos taken with the web cam to the selected Flickr account. An employee at WorkSpace was naturally surprised when he looked into his Flickr account and saw that a new image had been uploaded — one of a tattooed man posing in front of the stolen iMac. The man apparently knew that the iMac was taking pictures of him, but not that it was sending them to Flickr. The image quickly became viral in forums and blogs all over the world. Shortly after, the suspected thief turned himself over to the police according to a report in the Vancouver Sun. He claims that he bought the computer from a friend of a friend but wished to return it. WorkSpace now hopes to get additional information about who the actual thieves are."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Reducing distribution updates bandwidth?

Submitted by
ptaff
ptaff writes: "I recently upgraded a friend's computer from an old Windows to the latest Ubuntu LTS (so that I can avoid reinstalling for a while). As he gets online through a dial-up connection, he now complains that downloading updates takes forever, compared to his old Win box. I understand that GNU/Linux distributions update all installed software, but I wonder, does the update process need to use such bandwidth just to fix buffer overflows and fix input validation? At least, why aren't executables and libraries (possibly insecure) separate packages from the data, docs and multimedia? Why isn't there a system to simply fetch and apply the fixes to the original package? Are all this limitations of package manager's designs or is there a more subtle explanation? As reducing update bandwidth seems so simple at first sight, what do you think are the reasons we still have to download so much to keep a GNU/Linux system secure?"
Censorship

Submission + - MoveOn.org Becomes Parody of Self

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The L.A. Times has an opinion piece about MoveOn.org in which they discuss attempts by MoveOn.org to squelch dissenting speech that incorporates their trademarks. T-shirts with phrases critical of MoveOn.org and that include the name MoveOn.org were demanded removed by MoveOn.org because they supposedly infringed on their merchandising rights. I hope MoveOn.org doesn't send a cease-and-desist letter because this post includes the name MoveOn.org.
Media

Submission + - Popular Coverage of Science Research Often Bunk

Submitted by
Eagle5596
Eagle5596 writes: "Many of you will remember the recent UCLA research story which covered supposed differences between liberals and conservatives. Turns out that, like in many cases, the media coverage was wrong, or misled. An interesting article goes into details on the problems with many conclusions drawn by scientific research by the popular press, and why the media often gets it all wrong. From the article:
"People love to draw broad conclusions from results that are utterly unable to support them. Due to media buzz, increasing popular influence, and just plain old bad science, this has become an increasing problem. Whats worse is that it detracts from the credibility of scientists everywhere, and public understanding of what science is."
Microsoft

Submission + - CNet reporter calls for Microsoft to abandon Vista (news.com)

Submitted by mr_mischief
mr_mischief writes: As it's hard to miss the stories lately, all of us on /. are likely to know people are underwhelmed with Windows Vista. Well, Don Reisinger over at CNet's News.com is not quite just underwhelmed. He suggests that Vista may be the downfall of Microsoft because the company has really just missed the mark with the operating system. Despite years in development, Reisinger says Vista was delivered to market too early. He also says it's overpriced and plain doesn't work well enough for its users, among other complaints. His suggestion? Support those who are running it, but ditch Vista and move on.
Handhelds

Submission + - TomTom uses Linux, but doesn't support Linux users 3

Submitted by
Michele Alessandrini
Michele Alessandrini writes: "Having bought several TomTom One navigation systems here at work (Italy), I was browsing their web site to find information about maps. There are several pages of documentation about their devices. In one of them, they proudly inform you that their devices use Linux, as a warranty of power and stability. But, when you come to the software (the one used to manage updates, set locations, etc), they only support Windows and Mac OS. Not that surprise, and not that the software is really necessary. But the point is: they probably saved million dollars using a free kernel, and they didn't even care supporting Linux users. Am I the only one disappointed?"
Biotech

Submission + - Mutant Algae to Fuel Cars of Tomorrow?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Algae has long been known as a promising source of biodiesel, however algae also produce a small amount of hydrogen during photosynthesis. The MIT Technology Review reports that now researchers have created a mutant algae that makes better use of sunlight to increase the amount of hydrogen that the algae produce. In a commercial bioreactor, the top layers of algae absorb most of the sunlight but can only use a fraction of it. Anastasios Melis and his team at the University of California have manipulated the genes that control the amount of chlorophyll in the algae's chloroplasts reducing the chlorophyll so that the algae absorb less sunlight. This lets more light penetrate into the deeper algae layers so that more cells use the sunlight to make hydrogen. Although the process is still at least five years from being used for hydrogen generation, Melis estimates that if 50% of capacity of the photosynthesis of the algae could be directed toward hydrogen production, an acre could produce 40 kilograms of hydrogen per day bringing the cost of producing hydrogen to $2.80 a kilogram. At this price, hydrogen could compete with gasoline, since a kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent in energy to a gallon of gasoline."
Power

Submission + - Florida announces new massive solar plant.

Submitted by genegeek
genegeek writes: On the heels of yesterday's slashdot submission about the first new nuclear power plant in three decades, it might be nice to note that yesterday Florida's governor Crist, ex-president Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt gathered at a news conference with Florida Power and Light to announce a new solar power plant to generate electricity. It's to be a 300 megawatt facility, making it one of the largest in the world. According to the article, the $2.4 billion investment also will fund an additional 200 megawatts for California. The Florida plant will eliminate 11 million tons of C02 emissions in two decades of operation. However, it is only a start: FP&L currently has a 25,000-megawatt capacity, mostly from natural gas and nuclear.
Security

Submission + - Shared folders vulnerable to buffer overflow (neowin.net)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "Another exploitable bug has already surfaced, a buffer overflow error that affects the Sharing folders feature in Windows Live Messenger 8.1 (and maybe other versions) running on Windows XP.

The safety of the Sharing folder feature got questioned before, but we now have a concrete example of how it can be abused. A Spanish security expert going by the name of Lostmon Lords has discovered that an attacker can cause a Denial-of-Service (DoS) or even execute arbitrary code in Windows Live Messenger 8.1 by means of a specially crafted jpg, wmf, gif, ico or doc-file.

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42819"
Announcements

Submission + - BBC iPlayer to be cross platform (pm.gov.uk)

Submitted by
ddrichardson
ddrichardson writes: "The BBC iPlayer service is no longer to be tied to Windows only. Following a scucessful online government petition, the BBC trust in conjunction with Ofcom have decided to make the system cross-platform. From the Government response:

The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible."

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