GMO - Slashdot User

Submission + - A torrid tale of plagiarizing paleontologists (nature.com)

Submitted by its hard to think of on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @07:47PM

its hard to think of writes: There's an interesting story up at Nature News about scientific ethics. It seems that while one group of scientists is figuring out details about aetosaurs (ancient crocodiles), another group in New Mexico is repeatedly taking credit for their work and naming the new animals they discover. It also looks like the state government, which has been asked to intervene, is trying to sidestep the issue. How widespread is this kind of thing?

Comment The Register? The Inquirer, surely? (Score 2, Informative) 471

by GMO on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @12:15PM (#21672811) Attached to: US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia

Er. Isn't the link to a publication called "The Inquirer", not the Register. Great fact checking, there...

Submission + - More Antarctic dinosaurs 2

Submitted by RockDoctor on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @07:22AM

RockDoctor writes: The highly respected palaeontology journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica has published its December number for free access on the web, with the headline paper concerning new discoveries of dinosaurs from Antarctica.

The first major part of these discoveries were made as isolated bones of a sauropod (a relative of the well-known Brontosaurus) which were associated with a theropod (ancestor or cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex). These specimens were discovered at an altitude of 4100m, above the Beardmore Glacier in the TransAntarctic Mountains in 1991. Further field work during the following 13 years produced more material, seemingly from the same specimens and allowed more accurate description of the sauropod and it's naming as Glacialisaurus hammeri (the reason for the genus name is obvious ; Professor Hammer lead the field expeditions under "extremely difficult conditions"). The herbivore was some 25ft long and weighed-in at 4~6 tonnes ; at the time of life, the area was between 55 and 65 degrees south, suggesting a climate similar to the Falkland Islands or Tierra del Fuego.

The popular conception of dinosaurs as slow-moving, cold-blooded animals has long been challenged by such finds of high-latitude dinosaurs. One would expect the mainstream news sites (Slashdot included) to pick up on this publication as further evidence that the dinosaurs were much more diverse than that. After all, the only significant land animals in present-day Antarctica are penguins ; penguins are birds ; birds are dinosaurs (for any meaningful use of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs") ; so one could make a good case that Antarctica IS the continent which has been dominated by dinosaurs for the last 200 million years. Quoth the penguin : "we don't need no steenkin' furry Mammalia on this here continent!"
However, since Antarctica is probably the most Linux-laden continent on the planet, and Antarctica is also the "dinosaur continent" (as I've just argued), then some FUD-merchant is going to make the false deduction that this means Linux is a dinosaur, instead of the correct deduction that dinosaurs are really well adapted to their extreme environments.

For the editors : Why is this under Topic:Mozilla? Because it's the closest match available in the list of topics — theropod and all that jazz.

Submission + - Voyager 2 finds solar system's shape is 'dented' (reuters.com)

Submitted by

Selikoff

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @05:34AM

Selikoff writes: "NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has found that our solar system is not round but is "dented" by the local interstellar magnetic field of deep space, space experts said on Monday. The data was gathered by the craft on its 30-year journey into the edge of the solar system when it crossed into a sweeping region called the termination shock, they said. It showed that the southern hemisphere of the solar system's heliosphere is being pushed in or "dented." Voyager 2 is the second spacecraft to enter this region of the solar system behind Voyager 1, which entered the northern region of the heliosheath in December 2004."

Submission + - HTML5 now officially devoid of Ogg Vorbis / Theora (rudd-o.com) 4

Submitted by

Rudd-O

on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @04:14AM

Rudd-O writes: "It's official. Ogg technology has been removed from the HTML5 spec, after Ian caved in the face of pressure from Apple and Nokia. Unless massive pressure is exerted on the HTML5 spec editing process, the Web authoring world will continue to endure our modern proprietary Tower of Babel.

Note that HTML5 in no way required Ogg (as denoted by the word "should" instead of "must" in the earlier draft). Adding this to the fact that there are widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg technology, there is really no excuse for Apple and Nokia to say that they couldn't in good faith implement HTML5 as previously formulated."

Submission + - Microsoft disses Windows to sell...more Windows (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by

mjasay

on Monday December 10, 2007 @04:51AM

mjasay writes: "I stumbled across this fascinating Microsoft tutorial entitled "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." It's an attempt to coach IT professionals on how to sell Windows desktop upgrades internally. Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent, requiring detailed instructions on how to connive and cajole into an upgrade from XP. The most intriguing thing about the tutorial is its implicit rejection of Microsoft's older technology. Just a few years ago Microsoft was pitching the world on how secure and cool XP was. Now it's telling us largely the opposite, implying that XP is a security threat, costs too much to run, and so on. With Microsoft marketing against itself, perhaps the Mac and Linux camps can simply wait for Microsoft to self-destruct?"

Submission + - Linux is about to take over the low end of PCs (desktoplinux.com) 3

Submitted by on Sunday December 09, 2007 @01:03PM

An anonymous reader writes: Desktop Linux has a recent commentary on the inevitable growth of Linux on the cheaper end of the desktop market. According to the article, the availability of under-$500 usable hardware, combined with free a operating system, free desktop office products, and free or cheap "Software as a service" online applications, opens a new market in which Microsoft cannot compete. "Microsoft will fight this trend tooth and nail. It will cut prices to the point where it'll be bleeding ink on some of its product lines. And Windows XP is going to stick around much longer than Microsoft ever wanted it to. Still, it won't be enough. By attacking from the bottom, where Microsoft can no longer successfully compete, Linux will finally cut itself a large slice of the desktop market pie."

Submission + - BBC creates 'Perl on Rails' 2

Submitted by Bogtha on Friday November 30, 2007 @05:16PM

Bogtha writes: Long-time users of Perl for their public websites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails' that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their websites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well.

Submission + - Man hacks 911 system, sends SWAT on bogus raid. 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @12:57AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Orange County Register reports that a 19 year old from Washington state broke into the Orange County California 911 emergency system. He randomly selected the name and address of a Lake Forest, California couple and electronically transferred false information into the 911 system. The Orange County California Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics Team was immediately sent to the couple's home. The armed officers surrounded the home.Inside the home lived a couple with two toddlers who were asleep and unsuspecting of what was going outside the home. The SWAT team handcuffed the husband and wife before deciding it was a prank.

Submission + - Is the internet bad for professional writers? (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by

destinyland

on Monday October 08, 2007 @03:20AM

destinyland writes: "The internet democratized writing — but has there been collateral damage? A former magazine editor asks 10 professional writers how the net has changed their profession, and even the act of writing itself. Has the net changed the demand for longer articles, or created more opportunities for more kinds of writing? It's a fascinating read that belongs in a time capsule for the variety of reactions captured — including the author who complains reading time was traded away for time to maintain our applications, and adding "Gates and Jobs...ought to be disemboweled — yes, on the internet.""

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