Robo210 - Slashdot User

Submission + - New Mac OS Trojan produces BitCoins (techworld.com.au) 2

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Monday October 31, 2011 @06:49PM

angry tapir writes: "A newly identified Mac OS X Trojan bundles a component that leverages the processing power of video cards (GPUs) to generate Bitcoins, a popular type of virtual currency. The new Trojan was dubbed DevilRobber by antivirus vendors and is being distributed together with several software applications via BitTorrent sites."

Submission + - Human Blood Protein (HSA) from GMO Rice (google.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn on Monday October 31, 2011 @03:44PM

eldavojohn writes: Wuhan University researchers working with the National Research Council of Canada and the Center for Functional Genomics at the University at Albany have announced that they have genetically modified rice to produce a medically useful protein chemically identical to human serum albumin. This protein is used to treat burns, traumatic shock and liver disease at a global demand rate of 500 tons each year. Normally this would be extracted from blood donations but now you can just grow rice and extract it at a rate of 2.75 grams of protein per kilogram of rice. After testing on rats with liver cirrhosis, the same response was shown as the protein from blood. This is important for China after a spike in demand and lack of supply lead to fake albumin medicine flowing through Chinese hospitals. Worried about these GMO crops cross pollinating regular crops? The researchers referred to a study indicating "a very low frequency (0.04-0.80%) of pollen-mediated gene flow between genetically modified (GM) rice and adjacent non-GM plants." Nature has a slightly more detailed article with a reference to the peer review publication.

Comment Common Sense (Score 1) 200

by Robo210 on Saturday June 20, 2009 @03:14PM (#28403661) Attached to: Lies, Damn Lies, and Battery-Life Statistics

When I bought my EEE I did so because the website said I would get 7 hours of battery life from it. If this article is to be believed I should be getting about 3 hours of life out of each charge, yet in reality I regularly see 7 hours of battery life from it. Sure, I do keep the screen rather dim (but its still plenty bright to read slashdot) and don't peg the CPU at 100% the whole time, but it seems like common sense that if I did then the battery life would suffer. I can even keep the wireless turned on the whole time.

The summary seems to focus strongly on the setup of the laptops in these tests as optimized for battery life and yet somehow unfair. Meanwhile the article itself spends most of text playing up the bickering between Intel and AMD and in the end isn't really saying anything at all.

Everybody uses their laptops differently; some people use them as portable access to slashdot while others use them as portable desktops. These people are obviously going to see differing battery lifetimes. Instead of trying to come up with a realistic range or average battery lifetime for these different workloads it only makes sense to give the consumer the absolute maximum the battery will last and let common sense tell them that pegging the CPU or bumping the screen up to 11 will give lower times.

Choosing a Replacement Email System For a University? 485

Posted by timothy on Friday October 10, 2008 @06:27PM from the did-I-leap-off-the-page dept.

SmarkWoW writes "The university I attend is currently looking to change the way in which is provides its students with an email service. In the past they used a legacy mail system which can no longer fit their needs. A committee has narrowed the possibilities down to three vendors: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Representatives from these three vendors will be coming to our college and giving a presentation on the advantages of their systems. We're looking at other services these companies provide such as calendaring and integration with existing software that our university runs. What questions would Slashdot readers ask during these Q&A sessions? Which of these three companies would you recommend? Why? What advantages would each have that college-level students would take advantage of? What other aspects should we consider when making our decision?"

Submission + - Amazon asserts right to adjust prices after sale

Submitted by An anonymous reader on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @09:07AM

An anonymous reader writes: On December 23, Amazon advertised a "buy one get one free" sale on DVD boxsets, but did not test the promotion before going live. When anyone placed two boxsets in their cart, the website gave a double discount — so the "grand total" shown (before order submission) was $0.00 or something very small. Despite terms stating that Amazon checks order prices before shipping, Amazon shipped the vast majority of orders. Five days later (December 28), after orders had been received and presumably opened, Amazon emailed customers advising them to return the boxsets unopened or customers' credit cards would be charged an additional amount. (You can read more threads about this here and here.) Starting yesterday, Amazon has been (re)charging credit cards, often without authorization. On Amazon's side, they didn't advertise any double discount, and the free or nearly-free boxsets must have cost them a mint. But with Amazon continually giving unadvertised discounts that seem to be errors, is "return the merchandise or be charged" the new way that price glitches will be handled?

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