quixote9 - Slashdot User

Submission + - IPowerWeb hosting service compromised by hackers?

Submitted by

quixote9

on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @01:45AM

quixote9 writes: "This come from Ethan Zuckerman's blog, My Heart's in Accra:

Stop Badware announced that there are 10,834 sites hosted by IPowerWeb in the Stop Badware index — this index is composed of sites that Google and other partners have identified as hosting code that could damage a visitor's machine. More than one in five of the sites Stop Badware analyzed was hosted by IPowerWeb. That statistic strongly suggests that IPowerWeb has been systematically compromised, allowing hackers to inject this hostile code, possibly through a bug in cpanel (which IPowerWeb runs on at least some of their servers.) ...

A major webhosting provider is vulnerable to attacks on hosted pages. Over 10,000 pages have been affected, and some now contain a Javascript designed to load a Windows trojan horse onto visitors' machines. That trojan horse may be sending data (including passwords entered into your browser!) to a cabal of Russian hackers.

As he says, it seems like the sort of story that should be getting more coverage from the tech community."

Submission + - a longevity gene found

Submitted by

quixote9

on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @11:23PM

quixote9 writes: "Calorie restriction while maintaining nutrient levels has long been known to dramatically increase life spans. Very different lab animals, from worms to mice, live up to 50% longer (or even more) on the restricted diets. However, so far, nobody has been able to figure out how this works. Scientists at the Salk Institute have found a specific gene in worms (there's a very similar one in people) that is directly involved in the longevity effect. That opens up the interesting possibility that doctors may someday be able to activate that gene directly and we can live long and prosper . . . without giving up chocolate."

Submission + - free speech versus death threats

Submitted by

quixote9

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @10:19AM

quixote9 writes: "(I'm sure you've received a thousand suggestions on this topic, but just in case you haven't, here it is anyway.)

The BBC has a story about Kathy Sierra who's been freaked into silence by threats in her blog comments. Another thing that struck me was Robert Scoble's comment: ""It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. ... whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man."

Free speech is only possible if we let each other speak. What do you think, Slashdtters?"

Submission + - Scriptural violence can foster aggression (Nature)

Submitted by

quixote9

on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:49PM

quixote9 writes: "Unfortunately, Nature isn't even posting the abstract on this one, "Scriptural violence can foster aggression" by Heidi Ledford and probably others. (Title listed here. ) The article is behind a paywall ($30, I believe).

The title is so intriguing, that I thought maybe Slashdot has a budget for this kind of thing ...? ;-} Bests, quixote9."

Submission + - Suggestions for comment / collaboration software?

Submitted by

quixote9

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @06:01PM

quixote9 writes: "I'm looking for an online way that a group of people can comment on each others' manuscripts. Ideally, the software would be a php script that runs in any browser. I'd like it to show the original ms in one pane, say on the left, and the comments, if any, in a right side pane. Comment position in the right pane would be fixed relative to the paragraph it relates to in the original ms. Multiple comments about the same original point would appear on separate lines, as close to the correct position as feasible. Comments could be collapsed completely, show just the first line, or be expanded to full length temporarily. The original could be saved with all the added comments, if desired.

For my purposes, this would be a system for collaborative review, not for a top-down, boss-worker, teacher-student type of situation. There's no need for grading, for someone's comments to have priority, for some people to be unable to comment, and the like. Although if these things are there, it doesn't matter so long as they're optional.

Is there anything like this out there anywhere? Moodle courseware has a "workshop" module, but it's top-down, and the original and the comments aren't visible together. I see complicated php scripts on sourceforge, freshmeat & some php sites for "enterprise level workflow coordination" and simple ones to coordinate calendars. I don't even know how to search for what I'd like. No matter what terms I use, I wind up back in enterprise whiteboard chatspace.

If the reason I can't find it is because it doesn't exist, any suggestins for how a complete n00b should go about cobbling together a php script to do this?"

Submission + - new nanoparticle cancer therapy

Submitted by

quixote9

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @11:10AM

quixote9 writes: "Tbe BBC reports on a new nanoparticle-based therapy that sounds particularly promising. Biologically, it makes sense. For the drug companies, they don't need to tailor individual drugs, which is their problem with monoclonal antibodies. Watch this one closely!

From the article:

"The researchers used the nanoparticles to zero in on the network of blood vessels that supply the tumours in mice with nutrients and oxygen. A potentially powerful function of nanoparticles is the ability to home in on particular targets inside the body. While various nanoparticles have been designed to target tumours, the efficiency is relatively low. The researchers developed a technique for amplifying this homing ability by designing a multifunctional nanoparticle that binds to a protein structure found only in tumours and associated blood vessels. ... The tests showed that within hours of the injection, the artificial platelets began blocking the supply without harming normal tissues. The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the tumour.

[PS. No "medicine" subtopic. Couldn't find a relevant subtopic.]"

Submission + - action needed to halt stoning of 7 Iranian women

Submitted by

quixote9

on Thursday October 05, 2006 @03:07PM

quixote9 writes: "On October 12th, seven women have been sentenced to death by stoning for "crimes against chastity." The crime here is the one against humanity. We need to let the UN (petitions for two of the women: Kobra, and Malak), and the Iranian government know that this barbarism has been noticed, and it needs to be stopped. Eteraz has sample messages as well as email addresses of Iranian leaders to whom to protest. Please, Slashdotters, there are thousands of us. We can make the difference. These horrible acts get stopped when they realize people have noticed. They've been stopped before, and we can do it now."

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