Comment Tax Included? (Score 1) 90
Does this mean we will finally see the actual price of items when we purchase them instead of being force to guess at tax?
Comment Re:Sounds like IT incompetence (Score 1) 564
It was a mistake, apparently a job was sent to the wrong place. Granted, it took them about 3 days to clean it up, but I don't know if anyone is losing their job over it.
Comment Encores (Score 1) 48
On one of your recent visits to Atlanta you had your merch-guy sing your encore. Is that common practice for you?
Comment What the yankees don't realize (Score 1) 290
We never want the south to be prepared for snow. Having a day off (or being forced to work from home) is exactly why we panic when it snows.
11-Year UK Study Reports No Health Danger From Mobile Phone Transmissions 180
Mark.JUK writes "The United Kingdom's 11-years long Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR) has today published a comprehensive report that summarizes 31 research projects, which investigated the potential for biological or adverse health effects of mobile phone and wireless signals on humans (e.g. as a cause for various cancers or other disorders). The good news is that the study, which has resulted in nearly 60 papers appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, found 'no evidence' of a danger from mobile transmissions in the typically low frequency radio spectrum bands (e.g. 900MHz and 1800MHz etc.)."
Comment Re:Such a great group of people. (Score 1) 174
The first on-topic post I have to /. in years and I forget to log in.
Comment Dancing (Score 1) 1354
Swing Dancing. You'd be amazed at how many of us are CS people, Engineers or scientists.
Comment Terrorism Wins ... again. (Score 1) 356
(Trust me, I hate how unverifiable this sounds)
One of my friend's father is connected with the government. I was told that there was the order to shutdown the power plants was actually given by homeland security due to a terrorist threat.
Submission + - The Cultures of Texting In Europe and America
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The cultures of text messaging are very different in Europe and North America and economics drive the differences says "internet sociologist" Danah Boyd. Americans and Canadians have historically paid to receive text messages creating a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 simply by deciding to send you something. But now "all-you-can-eat" plans are changing everything. Rather than having to mentally calculate the number of texts sent and received, a floodgate of opportunities is suddenly opened. The weights are lifted and freedom reigns. The result? Zero to a thousand text messages in under a month! All-you-can-eat plans are still relatively rare in Europe. When a European youth runs out of texts and can't afford to top up, they simply don't text. But they can still receive texts without cost so they aren't actually kept out of the loop. What you see in Europe is a muffled fluidity of communication, comfortable but not excessive. Back in America, older users are less inclined to be prolific texters, maybe because they are more accustomed to the onerous plans and never really developed a fluid texting practice while younger."
Feed Techdirt: Violent Crimes Keep Dropping As Violent Video Games Get More Popular (techdirt.com)
A few years back, we posted some research someone had done noting that youth violence had decreased drastically over the years as violent video games became more popular. Now Digg is highlighting a similar, and rather dramatic, drop in overall violent crime during the period since 1993 (when the video game Doom was released). Obviously, this is a correlation, not proving any kind of causal linkage. However, if it were true that these video games were convincing people to go out and commit actual crimes, it would be hard to bring that into line with this data. Combined with recent studies that have shown that violent crime decreases when violent movies are released, it certainly suggests that the "threat" of such movies and video games aren't as big as some would have you believe.
Journal Journal: Our Solar system was adopted? 4
Our Solar System is traveling at a 60 to 90 degree angle compared to the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy and scientists have now discovered why. It seems our solar system originated not in the Milky Way Galaxy, but in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which is in the process of being eaten by the Milky Way.
Submission + - Wikipedia gets state funding in Germany (heise.de)
tmk writes: "How can the Wikipedia be improved? The German government started today a project to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundret articles about renewable ressources in the Internet encyclopaedia. The project ist funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts."
Submission + - Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target (space.com)
Raver32 writes: "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""
Submission + - FBI to restrict student freedoms (pressesc.com)
amigoro writes: "US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside America, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI. Feds are going around briefing top universities including MIT about "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents and terrorists who might steal university research."
Journal Journal: Hacking an HTML Form for first graders 2
I've read a number of PHP sites (and have spoken with supposed PHP gurus) who say that, as a security matter, web sites should never draw information from $_REQUEST. They should only draw data from $_POST or $_GET. Basically GET data is the stuff in the URL. POST data is the stuff that comes from a form with method set to "post".
