Comment Re:Is this for real? Who would do this? (Score 1) 70
My thoughts exactly. Being absorbed by the skin is an observation effect as far as the universe is concerned and would collapse the wave function.
Comment Re:The Slashdot system seems to work pretty well (Score 1) 393
I believe you touched on part of the core issue, that apropos of nothing, the average citizen's opinion on the average news story is not worth printing. The trick then, as part of a comment/moderation system, is to put some purpose or function behind it that is more than just airing a personal opinion.
What if a comment/user feedback system was built in to the news article publishing system? What if users could submit corrections, related stories, updates, and other valuable pieces of information that an editor, moderator, or AI could then integrate into the article itself (or somewhere above the fold of general comments)?
This doesn't in theory solve the problem of requiring skilled moderation, but it changes the name of the game from "say anything you want" to "say something productive in a specific format".
You could also combine this with features like thumbs up/down buttons or less personalized ways of expressing a general opinion (similar to the scoring of posts here)... What if below each article it just had tallies of how many readers found the article (Interesting | Insightful | Biased | Incorrect | Noteworthy)... then people can make their opinion known without words that nobody wants to read.
Submission + - iPhone Hacked for Third-Party Software (businessweek.com)
OpenSourceNut writes: "The iPhone has been hacked offering access to third party programs. Businessweek has a full article explaining the various functions of the programs now being used. Hello World!"
Submission + - Diebold's e-voting software found vulnerable again
Futurepower(R) writes: "A new report commissioned by the Florida Department of State says, 'A flaw in the optical scan software, for example, enables a hacker to introduce an unofficial memory card into an active terminal before the polls open, according to the report. "This memory card can be preprogrammed to redistribute votes cast for selected candidates on that terminal, including swapping the votes for two candidates," it states.'
Reading that quote from a technically knowledgeable university researcher in a TechNewsWorld article, you might think that changes will be made. But the non-technical press sometimes reports e-voting vulnerabilities very differently.
For example, in this Associated Press article in a business publication, the non-technical press accepts a response from a 'spokeswoman' that changes the subject to 'voting system reliability', which includes hardware and other failures that don't affect the vote count. Sample quote from an article titled, Voting Machine Companies Attack Review, 'Voting system reliability is something we're always working at improving,' said Michelle Shafer, a Sequoia spokeswoman. 'Security is never finished.'"
Reading that quote from a technically knowledgeable university researcher in a TechNewsWorld article, you might think that changes will be made. But the non-technical press sometimes reports e-voting vulnerabilities very differently.
For example, in this Associated Press article in a business publication, the non-technical press accepts a response from a 'spokeswoman' that changes the subject to 'voting system reliability', which includes hardware and other failures that don't affect the vote count. Sample quote from an article titled, Voting Machine Companies Attack Review, 'Voting system reliability is something we're always working at improving,' said Michelle Shafer, a Sequoia spokeswoman. 'Security is never finished.'"
Submission + - Researcher Discovers bugs, Writes Worm to Patch (beskerming.com)
SkiifGeek writes: "After discovering a number of vulnerabilities affecting Wordpress, beNi wrote a beneficial worm that allows Wordpress administrators to automatically self-patch the holes. Unsurprisingly, this move has drawn mixed reactions."
