LukeLuke - Slashdot User

Cure For Radiation Sickness Found? 385

Posted by kdawson on Friday July 17, 2009 @09:38AM from the since-my-fallout-with-you dept.

Summit writes "A scientist has claimed to have discovered a radioprotectant that all but eliminates acute radiation sickness even in cases of lethal doses of radiation in tests on rats and monkeys, when injected up to 72 hours after exposure. They also claim the drug, a protein, has no observed negative effects in humans. They have not irradiated any people just yet, but if this turns out to be true, it could mean everything from curing cancer to making manned interplanetary space expeditions feasible... not to mention treatment for radiation exposures in nuclear/radiological accidents/attacks. If this drug works, it would mean a true breakthrough as past experiments with radioprotectants were not particularly promising in any respect." The only source for the story at this time is an exclusive in YNet News, a site with the subtitle "Israel At Your Fingertips." Such a radioprotectant would be huge news for Israel. Make of it what you will.

Comment Re:Nice. He won't even have to learn Russian (Score 1) 170

by LukeLuke on Thursday June 12, 2008 @12:58AM (#23759443) Attached to: Google's Brin Books a Space Flight

Sergey Brin *is* Russian. So I don't expect any communication problem on the ISS...

Submission + - AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation (phoronix.com)

Submitted by

Michael Larabel

on Saturday February 23, 2008 @04:33AM

Michael Larabel writes: "With the Free Open Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) starting today, where John Bridgman of AMD will be addressing the X.Org developers, AMD has this morning released their 3D programming documentation. This information covers not only the recent R500 series, but goes back in detail to the R300/400 series. This is another one of AMD's open source documentation offerings, which they had started doing at the X Developer Summit 2007 with releasing 900 pages of basic documentation. Phoronix has a detailed analysis of what is being offered with today's information as well as information on sample code being released soon. This information will allow open source 3D/OpenGL work to get underway with ATI's newer graphics cards."

Submission + - Cell Phone Encryption Exploit Demonstrated

Submitted by Saxophonist on Thursday February 21, 2008 @08:28PM

Saxophonist writes: Two individuals presenting at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C., demonstrated an efficient way to break the encryption on cellular telephone signals that use the GSM protocol. David Hulton and Steve Muller claim that one such method can be done in about half an hour with $1,000 worth of hardware. They plan to release that method for free, but they have another, faster method that they plan to sell for $200,000 to $500,000. They claim that this faster method can decrypt a signal in about thirty seconds.

Submission + - The List of Obsolete Technical Skills 3

Submitted by

Ponca City, We Love You

on Tuesday February 19, 2008 @02:09PM

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Robert Scoble had an interesting post on his blog a few days ago on obsolete technical skills — "things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us." Scoble's initial list included dialing a rotary phone, using carbon paper to make copies, and changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor. The list has now been expanded into a wiki with a much larger list of these obsolete skills that includes resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board, assembly language programming, and stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next. "Feel free to contribute more if you can, and if you have the time, please make a page with a short description of the skill," writes Brad Kellett."

Submission + - BitTorrent Devs Introduce Comcast Proof Encryption

Submitted by Dean Garfield on Friday February 15, 2008 @05:10PM

Dean Garfield writes: TorrentFreak reports: Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.

The goal of this new type of encryption (or obfuscation) is to prevent ISPs from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections that span between the receiver of a tracker response and any peer IP-port appearing in that tracker response, according to the proposal.

Submission + - Facebook is Sticky as Superglue 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Monday February 11, 2008 @01:40PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times has an interesting article on how Facebook is so sticky it is nearly impossible to get loose. While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely and many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network. "It's like the Hotel California," said Nipon Das, a user who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." It took Mr. Das two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook's customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das's empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network. Facebook's quiet archiving of information from deactivated accounts has increased concerns about the network's potential abuse of private data, especially in the wake of its fumbled Beacon advertising feature but spokeswoman Amy Sezak says Facebook is doing you a favor: "Deactivated accounts mean that a user can reactivate at any time, and their information will be available again just as they left it.""

You're Too Fat to Eat Here 7

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 04, 2008 @12:44PM

Mississippi legislators have introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons. The work of Republicans W. T. Mayhall Jr., John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows, the bill proposes that the state's Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi's Council on Obesity. Some in the Mississippi legislature worry that the new law would be too draconian in nature, not making allowances for the chunky, thick, husky or big boned.

Submission + - MIT researchers fight gridlock with Linux (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by nerdyH on Saturday February 02, 2008 @03:55PM

nerdyH writes: At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers are testing a Linux-based automotive telematics system intended to reduce traffic congestion. CarTel is a distributed, GPS-enabled mobile sensor network that uses WiFi "opportunistically" to exploit brief windows of coverage to update a central traffic analysis program. "Instead of asking the shortest time or shortest distance from point A to point B, you ask what route should be taken, say, for the highest probability of getting to the airport by a certain time depending on the time selected," says CarTel researcher Sam Madden.

French Police Ditching Windows for Linux 122

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:26PM from the viva-la-revolucion dept.

esocid writes "In another European blow to Microsoft the French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break. The gendarmerie began severing its ties with Microsoft in 2005 when it moved to open source office applications like word processing. It switched to open source Internet browsers in 2006."

Submission + - Some People Never Learn (tfot.info) 2

Submitted by

Iddo Genuth

on Wednesday January 23, 2008 @09:50PM

Iddo Genuth writes: "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation, are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."

Submission + - Tools for Understanding Code 2

Submitted by

ewhac

on Friday January 18, 2008 @05:13AM

ewhac writes: "Having just recently taken a new job, I find myself confronted with an enormous pile of existing, unfamiliar code written for a (somewhat) unfamiliar platform, and an implicit understanding that I'll grok it all Real Soon Now. Simply firing up an editor and reading through it has proven unequal to the task. What sorts of tools exist for effectively analyzing and understanding a large code base? (You should not assume the development or target platform is Windows.)

I'm familiar with cscope , but it doesn't really seem to analyze program structure, per se. It's just a very fancy 'grep' package with a rudimentary understanding of C syntax. As such, I've only put minimal effort in to it. A new-ish tool called ncc looks very interesting, as it appears to be based on an actual C/C++ parser, but the UI is klunky, and there doesn't appear to be any facility for integrating/communicating with an editor."

Submission + - SPAM: State of US science report shows disturbing trends 1

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday January 17, 2008 @12:44PM

coondoggie writes: "The National Science Board this week said leading science and engineering indicators tell a mixed story regarding the achievement of the US in science, research and development, and math in international comparisons. For example, US schools continue to lag behind internationally in science and math education. On the other hand, the US is the largest, single, R&D-performing nation in the world pumping some $340 billion into future-related technologies. The US also leads the world in patent development. The board's conclusions and Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 are contained in the group's biennial report on the state of science and engineering research and education in the United States sent to the President and Congress this week. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Some DNS requests ruled illegal in North Dakota (circleid.com) 1

Submitted by

jgreco

on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @05:38PM

jgreco writes: "A judge in North Dakota has just ruled that requesting a zone transfer from a public DNS server is criminal activity within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crimes Law. A zone transfer is a simple request that a DNS server hand over information in bulk, and a DNS server may be configured to allow or deny such requests. That the owner of a DNS server would configure the server to allow such requests, and then claim such requests were unauthorized, is simply stunning.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611_david_ritz_court_spam/"

Submission + - Saying Goodbye to Old Hard Drives?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11, 2008 @04:06PM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a stack of old hard drives sitting around and doesn't know what to do with them. I always remove the hard drives of my parents' and friends' computers before they recycle them or get a new computer, so now I've got a whole bunch sitting around. One, I'd like to dispose of them and know that whatever data was there is gone, but before that, I'd like to hook them up, one by one, and scan them to make sure there's nothing vital there worth saving. Some are years old and may be totally dead for all I know, but is there a good system for hooking up a hard drive as an additional device, perhaps via USB? And what's a PGW (pretty good way) to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data?

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