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Television

Submission + - From the "No-Wonder-I-Can't-Pay-Attention"

Submitted by oDDmON oUT
oDDmON oUT writes: While your mother may have told you that sitting too close to the tellie was bad for your eyes, the folks over at New Scientist have published a story relating that it's bad for your attention span:

"Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a large long-term study."

What distinguishes this research is its longitudinal nature:

"The team studied the long-term habits and behaviours of more than 1000 children born in Dunedin, between April 1972 and March 1973. The children aged 5 to 11 watched an average of 2.05 hours of weekday television. From age 13 to 15, time spent in front of the television rose to an average of 3.1 hours a day."

It would be nice if....uh.....what was I doing?
The Internet

Submission + - Facebook Leaves Advertisers Exposed to Hate Speech (newscloud.com) 1

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "Does Facebook believe that no publicity is bad publicity? Why else would they leave a group called, "Fuck Islam" open since July 21, 2007 despite more than 53,482 members joining an opposing group called petiton: if "f**k Islam" is not shut down..we r quitting facebook group. Furthermore, advertisers such as Sprint, Verizon, T Mobile, Target, Qwest and French's wouldn't be too happy to learn that they are paying for ads on the "Fuck Islam" group pages.

I'm not advocating a policy against free speech, just strict enforcement of Facebook's own Terms of Use. The group name is clearly vulgar and obscene. Arguably, inflammatory and hateful. Facebook has positioned itself as the darling of the social network world, without the spam, porn and the sex offender problems of MySpace. Yet, this sort of thing isn't new to Facebook (see Facing Up to Facebook Racism and Elder hate groups on facebook. There's even an active group called I hate Iraqis targeting Iraqi refugees fleeing to Jordan.
Shouldn't a startup like Facebook, worth reportedly more than a billion dollars with over a hundred employees be expected to comply with its Terms of Use in less than six weeks?"

Feed Linux.com: Get a daily dose of comics (linux.com)

From feed by lcfeed
When I first started learning to read, my primary motivation was to gain the ability to read the comics in my local paper. I had no idea at that time that there were so many comics in the world. Now I know that there are comics all over the Web, but who has time to go to each site each day and read the latest strip? Thanks to the world of open source software, you can gather all your favorite comics on one page automatically, ready for you to read each morning.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Sexuality And The Sims (rockpapershotgun.com)

Submitted by
Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol writes: "This article discusses how The Sims (mostly the original, but also the sequel) gets used for sexual purposes, and also examines how this kind of response is essential to the appeal of the game. Here's a extract:

"On sites like Simulated, Eight Deadly Sims, Pandora's Sims and Strange Sims we see increasingly bizarre uses of the modding tools. While mainstream sites are for all ages, these have reached such a level of risqué or alternative content that the majority hide behind pay-for-access barriers to ensure that the users at least have a credit card (i.e. aren't minors), and to earn a little cash. Of all the mod cultures online — and virtually every PC game has users making their own additional content either in publisher-supported or unofficial ways — it's only The Sims which has such an obvious number of sites which demand money for access. This is particularly unusual: there's a clause in EA's tool license that they can only be used "on your personal non-commercial website". That Electronic Arts hasn't gone after such a sizeable community is interesting in and of itself.""
Businesses

Submission + - Financial services firms simulate flu pandemic (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: The U.S. Government is co-sponsoring a three-week exercise that will simulate the impact of a flu pandemic on financial services firms, including their ability to support telecommuters. The exercise is expected to be the largest in U.S. history and will involve more than 1,800 firms. It won't cause long lines at ATMs or offline banking sites that might occur in a real pandemic.
Software

Submission + - Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian Translator Created (marketwire.com)

Submitted by DrJackson
DrJackson writes: A new ancient languages online translator has been developed. It can translate Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian and the hieroglyphic script of Egyptian (1 of the 3 anyway). This is the website: virtualsecrets.com . This is the first time I ever saw a translator for cuneiform. Something like this would be great for translating interesting historical records like the Amarna Letters.
Biotech

Journal Journal: Brain implants relieve Alzheimer's damage 143

Journal by stemceller
Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life. The first published report of the experiments, done by Selkoe and other
Communications

Submission + - FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act, Wired News reports. The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
Linux Business

Submission + - The impact of pirated software on free software (tlug.jp)

Submitted by
jmglov
jmglov writes: "Dave Gutteridge has an interesting take on why people are not interested in saving money by using a free-as-in-beer OS like Linux or *BSD: because Windows is free. At least, that is an all-too-common perception, thanks to bundling and piracy. Bundling is a well-known problem to the adoption of Open Source operating systems, so Dave takes a look at the piracy issue in depth. His title may offend you, but his well-written article will most likely get you thinking hard about the question, "how much *does* Windows cost?"."
Displays

Submission + - 3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities. Maybe.
Republicans

Journal Journal: Bush Censored Climate Reports

Journal by AkumaReloaded

The Bush administration actively censored reports on the environment from the World Bank. This was discovered by the Government Accountability Project (GAP). Apparently Paul Wolfowitz was actively engaged in this censorship. How does this effect the deminishing credit of the World Bank. And can it lower the faith in the Bush administration even more?

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