Comment Re:Didn't quit (Score 1) 284
He's not hidden any of those things as far as I can see... See this image I just captured:
http://tinypic.com/r/11rt72q/7
Submission + - SpiderOak Encrypted Online Storage Now Offers 50GB (spideroak.com)
wikdwarlock writes: "Perhaps you've heard about the privacy concerns surrounding DropBox's online storage solution. This might lead you to investigate other services with a better approach to securing your in-the-cloud files, and that might lead you further to SpiderOak. They now offer 50GB for referrals for current and new users, and that's a pretty decent amount of free storage!"
Submission + - U.S. Power Quality Downgrade (nwsource.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: In spite of virtually every line-powered clock in the U.S. using the 60 Hz line power frequency as their timebase, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is planning on stopping regulation of the quality of the 60 Hz frequency used in U.S. power.
Tweaking the power grid's frequency is expensive and takes a lot of effort, said Joe McClelland, head of electric reliability at FERC http://www.ferc.gov/
"Is anyone using the grid to keep track of time?" McClelland said. "Let's see if anyone complains if we eliminate it."
Tweaking the power grid's frequency is expensive and takes a lot of effort, said Joe McClelland, head of electric reliability at FERC http://www.ferc.gov/
"Is anyone using the grid to keep track of time?" McClelland said. "Let's see if anyone complains if we eliminate it."
Submission + - Your Game Has Been Patched. Wait, What? (cheathappens.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cheat Happens explores the recent trend of "over-patching" video games including quotes from game developers and insiders. Discover why games today require as many as 20 patches where games of previous years only required a small handful, if any.
Submission + - Social Wars: Google Vs. Facebook By The Numbers (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: "With its still-in-limited-field-test social network Google+, Google looks poised to challenge Facebook head-on in the increasingly important social media space. Some analysts give the edge to Facebook with its large head start — the company claims more than half a billion active users worldwide, half of whom log onto the site each day. Other pundits point to Google's large number of users across multiple products along with its engineering prowess as factors making it a formidable challenger. How do the companies stack up head to head? Here's a look at some of the available statistics."
Submission + - French Deputy Aims to Block Porn At ISP Level (owni.fr)
Alarash writes: French Deputy Christian Vanneste wants to submit a law (Google translation) where French Internet users would have to explicitly ask their ISP not to block pornographic websites. He claims it's to protect the children because parental control software "doesn't work" and is "easy to disable." He also says that pornography is a "form of terrorism." Mr Vanneste has been condemned to a 3000€ fine in 2006 for claiming during a Parliament session that "homosexuality is a threat to humanity" and is "morally inferior to heterosexuality." His official blog cannot be reached at the moment.
Submission + - First synthetic organ transplant (bbc.co.uk) 2
Bob the Super Hamste writes: The BBC is reporting that surgeons in Sweden have transplanted a synthetic windpipe into a patient. The synthetic windpipe was grown from a scaffolding and coated with the patients own stem cell. The scaffolding was made using 3D images of the patients own windpipe. The new windpipe was made by scientists in London.
Submission + - Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforc (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: American Internet users, get ready for three strikes "six strikes." Major US Internet providers—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth "strike," you won't necessarily be "out."
Submission + - NASA's next big space telescope faces termination (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "The political wrangling over NASA's future direction won't get any prettier in the coming weeks as congress will debate the future of the agency and whether or not to kill of one its most ambitious projects: The James Webb Space Telescope. The House Appropriations Committee today released the fiscal year 2012 bill that includes the cut."
Law Professors vs the PROTECT IP Act 212
Freddybear writes "Along with 90 (and still counting) other Internet law and IP law professors, David Post of the Volokh Conspiracy law blog has drafted and signed a letter in opposition to Senator Leahy's 'PROTECT IP Act.' Quoting: 'The Act would allow the government to break the Internet addressing system. It requires Internet service providers, and operators of Internet name servers, to refuse to recognize Internet domains that a court considers "dedicated to infringing activities." But rather than wait until a Web site is actually judged infringing before imposing the equivalent of an Internet death penalty, the Act would allow courts to order any Internet service provider to stop recognizing the site even on a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction issued the same day the complaint is filed. Courts could issue such an order even if the owner of that domain name was never given notice that a case against it had been filed at all.'"
Office 365: Suffer 18 Days' Outage, Still Pay Half Price 137
rtfa-troll writes "Microsoft is preparing its customers for plenty of outage time according to the Register, with a scheme for Office 365 which will give customers some money back. The offer seems to be Microsoft's answer to Google offering a '100% uptime guarantee' (they even pay for maintenance time) The most interesting thing about the scheme is that you can have a one and a half day outage every month (or is that 18 solid days a year?) and still expect to pay half price. I wonder Microsoft have put the Sidekick management in charge of their customer's data. Looking forward my expense forms have getting eaten by the cloud so I have to fill them in again."
Comment Re:Now I know I'm among friends here on slashdot (Score 1) 840
Hell, it's even an acquired SMELL. One which I can't stand without wrinkling my nose and counting the seconds until I can get away from it.
Comment Re:No feedback mechanism (Score 1) 123
The "will be rejected" part, I think, is where the issue comes in. Rejected based on what? Comparison to a known good database is demonstrably suspect and is in fact the main point of TFA. If I can find 90% of the non-human DNA corruption in the database and delete it, that now cleaned database becomes the standard. The other 10% of non-human DNA that wasn't caught in the database is now even more vetted, more certified, and less easily detected and deleted by the same database scanning algorithm. Thus, a new and better (i.e. evolved) algorithm is created and some new percentage of the non-human data is cleaned out, but the stuff that's left this time is even more well hidden (i.e. evolved, more similar to human DNA) and suspected more to be authentically human.
If there's ever use of the data, transcribing it back into actual viable DNA molecules, these newly manufactured DNA could presumably be checked in molecular biology labs for purity/accuracy and picked up by their already happily-infecting-the-lab cousins and the loop is closed. Now granted, the chances are that such a mutation for digital resilience is unlikely to be beneficial in the wider universe where the bacteria lives, but it's a numbers game and it could be helpful or neutral. Or, if the digital scanning algorithms are based on techniques inspired by nature (perhaps the bacteria is attacked by a virus and using that virus' DNA as a search pattern could improve algorithm performance), the bacterial DNA can beat the digital implementation and have a successful mutation that need only get transcribed into actual viable DNA and infect a lab somewhere and the loop is closed again.
If there's ever use of the data, transcribing it back into actual viable DNA molecules, these newly manufactured DNA could presumably be checked in molecular biology labs for purity/accuracy and picked up by their already happily-infecting-the-lab cousins and the loop is closed. Now granted, the chances are that such a mutation for digital resilience is unlikely to be beneficial in the wider universe where the bacteria lives, but it's a numbers game and it could be helpful or neutral. Or, if the digital scanning algorithms are based on techniques inspired by nature (perhaps the bacteria is attacked by a virus and using that virus' DNA as a search pattern could improve algorithm performance), the bacterial DNA can beat the digital implementation and have a successful mutation that need only get transcribed into actual viable DNA and infect a lab somewhere and the loop is closed again.
"Expert Body" To Decide Which Sites To Block For Copyright Infringement 173
Barence writes "Rights holders in the UK are proposing to appoint a 'council' and an 'expert body' to decide which websites should be blocked by ISPs for infringing copyright. The controversial Digital Economy Act made provisions for sites accused of hosting copyrighted material to be blocked by British ISPs. 'The cost of the proposed scheme is not indicated, but is likely to be substantial, including the running cost of two non-judicial independent bodies and the cost to ISPs of permanently blocking websites,' Consumer Focus said."
Comment Re:Screw You Darwin! Evolution is Extinct! (Score 1) 358
The counter argument, of course, is that other, more beneficial genetic information may be contained in otherwise non-optimal DNA sequences. Color blindness is genetic, and even dangerous for primitive Man who might eat a poison red berry mistakenly, but it's not fatal necessarily. If a color blind Neanderthal discovered fire and cooked his food and had a healthier family because of it, his intelligence/ingenuity was more valuable than the color blindness defect. A partial understanding of genetics leads people to believe that what THEY see as a hopelessly flawed DNA sequence (as expressed in an organism w/ one or more defects) has no value to the gene pool in general. Maybe such a defect is the precursor to a slightly tweaked evolution that boost immunity, metabolism, or any number of future things. Maybe it's just a pressure that helps other, unrelated mutations in later generations. The possibilities for any one mutation to be GOOD or BAD are too many to count, and too difficult to predict besides.
Without any judgment of the woman in TFA, perhaps she's got really great genes otherwise whose benefit more than makes up for a reproductive disorder. And, on top of that, perhaps the human evolutionary track is directed by more than just DNA now, and includes memes, culture, and macro scale things based on people and not DNA exclusively. Without being able to see the entire human race with resolution down the the individual A's, T's, C's and G's, you're wildly speculating at best, and being judgmental and self important at the worse.
Without any judgment of the woman in TFA, perhaps she's got really great genes otherwise whose benefit more than makes up for a reproductive disorder. And, on top of that, perhaps the human evolutionary track is directed by more than just DNA now, and includes memes, culture, and macro scale things based on people and not DNA exclusively. Without being able to see the entire human race with resolution down the the individual A's, T's, C's and G's, you're wildly speculating at best, and being judgmental and self important at the worse.
