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Programming

Submission + - Fun With Redistricting! (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by
CrabbMan
CrabbMan writes: ""The Redistricting Game" was developed at the University of Southern California to help teach voters that "mapmakers" can have more control over an election outcome than candidates or issues. Politically engineered redistricting, which can protect incumbents and party dominance even if voters are inclined differently, was most recently a hot topic in a Supreme Court decision last year and in the political fall of former GOP top dog Tom DeLay. Lawmakers concerned "the system is out of whack" invited the game's developers to the Hill yesterday."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - EU Considering Regulating Sale of Violent Games (lawbean.com)

Submitted by
Spamicles
Spamicles writes: "European Union justice ministers met today in order to discuss the regulation of sales of violent video games to minors. Europeans were riled up last year when a German gunman shot several people before taking his life at a secondary school. A European Union Commissioner is taking advantage of the shootings last year called for stricter regulations in the video game industry. A motion introduced last month calls for legislators to "put in place all necessary measures to ban the sale of particularly violent and cruel video games.""
Linux Business

Submission + - Ubuntu and the Unions (ericlee.info)

Submitted by
Eric Lee
Eric Lee writes: "Linux Today is reporting on the question of whether Ubuntu Linux has a special significance for trade unions, which are not usually thought of as being on the cutting edge of information technology use. The founding editor of LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement, argues that it does, and makes the case for unions to adopt open source software."
Bug

Submission + - computer failures disrupt East Coast air traffic

Submitted by jcgam69
jcgam69 writes: A cascading computer failure in the nation's air-traffic control system caused severe flight delays and some cancellations along the East Coast yesterday. A computer system in Atlanta that processes pilots' flight plans and sends them to air-traffic controllers failed early yesterday, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said. In response, the agency rerouted the system's functions to another computer in Salt Lake City, which overloaded under the increased volume of data, magnifying the problem.
Biotech

Submission + - Partner choice 'shaped by father'

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "Much as she might hate to admit it, a woman's choice of partner may depend a lot on her own father ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6745121.stm ). Scientists have found women who were treated well by their dad during childhood are attracted to men who resemble their father facially. But the link is lost on women who did not have good relationships with their fathers. Women in the study were asked to rate pictures of men's faces for attractiveness, and assess their relationship with their fathers. They found in women who reported more positive relationships with their fathers, there was a link between the faces the women found most attractive and their father's faces. The study was the first of its kind to use facial measurements to assess the similarity of the faces."
Businesses

Submission + - AT&T to Block Content For RIAA/MPAA

Submitted by Nom du Keyboard
Nom du Keyboard writes: Several sources are reporting an agreement between AT&T and the RIAA/MPAA alliance to block copyrighted material on their network. And as has been pointed out, AT&T has a lot of network, meaning most packets traverse a piece of it at some point. Money quote: "As AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company has realized that its interests are more closely aligned with Hollywood." Nice to know that their interests aren't aligned with their paying customers any longer.
Announcements

Submission + - Plants 'recognize' their siblings (pressesc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Biologists have discovered that just like humans, plants can also recognize their relatives. Researchers at McMaster University have found that plants get fiercely competitive when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but they're accommodating when potted with their siblings.
Google

Submission + - Google Teams Up With Salesforce.com

Submitted by pazu13
pazu13 writes: The Economist is reporting on a new partnership between Google and Salesforce.com, an online CRM database system for businesses. As noted in the article, "[After a user clicks on an AdWord] Salesforce's service kicks in, collecting information about the user which then pops up on the Salesforce page of the advertiser's sales team, allowing them to follow up and sell something." (Salesforce discusses it here.) I recognize that business is business, and AdWords is a huge seller, but I wonder how this ties into not being evil, especially in light of Google's recent privacy rating.
The Internet

Submission + - AT&T willing to do MPAA, RIAA's dirty work (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Peerless
Peerless writes: AT&T plans to begin monitoring its network for pirated content. An AT&T VP says that his company's decision to offer IPTV made them realize that their interests are a lot more closely aligned with those of Hollywood than they used to be, but it's going to be tough to pull this off. 'The company says it will target only repeat offenders and that it will not violate user privacy or FCC directives on network openness. Who knows how this is all supposed to work, especially as legal, unencrypted files flow across the Internet from sites like iTunes and eMusic, along with thousands of smaller sites that serve as promotional vehicles for independent bands and filmmakers? We suspect that AT&T will start small, deploying some sort of P2P solution that looks for the transfer of unencrypted Hollywood blockbusters and major-label bands in complete form.' Ars points out that even if the solution is 99.5% effective, that's still going to result in a huge number of false positives. First the NSA, and now the MPAA and RIAA. Is there anyone AT&T won't spy for?
Games

Submission + - How PC Gaming Will Save the Xbox 360 (about.com)

Submitted by DreamWinkle
DreamWinkle writes: For years, people have been talking about the death of PC gaming. In response to a recent article on DailyGame.net that discusses the possibility that Microsoft is trying to kill PC gaming, an article on About.com points out that, in fact, Microsoft is relying on PC Gaming to save the Xbox 360. Because developing for the Xbox 360 using XNA allows games to run on Windows as well, the article suggests that Microsoft is relying on the PC gaming user base to attract developers to develop for the 360, even if the Wii ultimately sells more consoles. XNA and the PC gaming users are the secret weapon that Nintendo and Sony simply don't have.

From the article:

"Yet instead of devolving over the years into a second-rate sidekick of console gaming, PC gaming has been picked up by Microsoft as its overlooked secret weapon against Sony and Nintendo. Is Microsoft killing PC gaming? Far from it, they're using it as the tool that will potentially save the Xbox 360, making PC gaming and Microsoft's XNA programming framework one of the Nintendo Wii's most subtle and deadly threats."
Television

Submission + - "Mr. Wizard" dead at 89

Submitted by linuxwrangler
linuxwrangler writes: Don Herbert, television's "Mr. Wizard", died this morning of bone cancer. Over the decades, the Peabody Award winning Mr. Wizard introduced several generations to science using basic household items in his demonstrations and encouraging viewers to duplicate the experiments at home. Herbert died at his home. He was 89 years old.
Censorship

Submission + - Law students sue anonymous message board posters (wsj.com)

Submitted by
The Xoxo Reader
The Xoxo Reader writes: "The Wall Street Journal reports that two female students at Yale Law School have filed suit for defamation and infliction of emotional distress against an administrator and several anonymous posters (identified only by their pseudoynms) at AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." One of the claims is that the posters have violated copyright laws by reposting pictures of the women without their permission. Since AutoAdmit's administrators have previously said that they do not retain IP logs of posters, it is unclear how the plaintiffs will ultimately be able to identify the actual people behind the pseudonyms named in the complaint. Apparently, one method was to post the summons on the message board itself and ask the posters to step forward. The controversy leading to this lawsuit was previously discussed on Slashdot here."

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