Samhain13 - Slashdot User

Reversing Undesirable Fish Evolution 216

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 05, 2009 @01:54AM from the make-them-bun-shaped dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "Your granddad's approach to fishing — throw the little 'uns back — may have hurt their evolution, but we can reverse that, says a group of researchers, with a change of policy. Fish have been 'reprogramming' themselves to be smaller and live longer. Welcome to evolutionary dynamics, Lamarck. But, no, they are serious. And it can be fixed within 12 generations. What do the smart people out there think about this? Are they using the term 'evolution' the wrong way?"

350,000 Linux (Virtual) Desktops Land In Brazil 109

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 19, 2009 @01:12PM from the rip-helio-gracie dept.

xufem writes "Millions of Brazilian schoolchildren will soon be 'brought up right' running Linux on over 350,000 seats each using PC sharing hardware and software from Userful and KDE. This is world's largest virtual desktop deployment and probably also the world's largest Linux deployment, and seems to have been selected over OLPC by Brazil. Definitely a moment to celebrate — and just in time for Brazilian Carnival which starts tomorrow!"

The Presidential Portrait Goes Digital 295

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 15, 2009 @10:21AM from the oh-oh-obamania dept.

alphadogg writes "Barack Obama's election to US president has already brought a string of firsts, and on Wednesday there came another. The official presidential portrait was shot on a digital camera for the first time. The picture was taken by the White House's new official photographer, Pete Souza, and issued by The Office of the President Elect through its Web site. It was taken on Tuesday evening at 5:38 p.m. using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, according to the metadata embedded in the image file."

Hippies Say WiFi Network Is Harming Their Chakras 432

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 08, 2009 @01:58AM from the what's-with-all-the-negative-waves dept.

Anti-Globalism writes "A group of hippies is complaining that a recently installed WiFi mesh network in the UK village of Glastonbury is causing health problems. To combat the signals from the Wi-Fi hotspots, the hippies have placed orgone generators around the antennae." Although there have been many studies that show no correlation between WiFi and health issues the hippies say, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

FCC Commissioner Lauds DRM, ISP Filtering 217

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @10:10PM from the by-some-definition-of-"effective" dept.

snydeq writes "Ars Technica's Nate Anderson and InfoWorld's Paul Venezia provide worthwhile commentary on a recent speech by FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate (PDF), in which she praised DRM as 'very effective' and raised a flag in favor of ISP filtering. Anderson: 'Having commissioners who feel that the government has a duty to partner with and back educational classroom content from the RIAA; who really believe that ISP filtering is so unproblematic we can stop considering objections; and who think that universities worry about file-swapping because tuition might be raised to pay for the needed "expansion of storage capabilities" (huh?) isn't good for the FCC and isn't good for America.' Venezia: 'Leave the ISPs out of it — it's not their job to protect a failing business model, and a movement toward a tiered and filtered Internet will do nothing to stem the tide of piracy, but will result in great restrictions on innovation, freedoms, and the general use of the Internet. There's nothing to be gained down that path other than possibly to expand the wallets of a few companies.'"

Sending Secret Messages Via Google's SearchWiki 160

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @01:23AM from the your-mission-should-you-choose-to-accept-it dept.

We discussed the advent of Google's SearchWiki when it was introduced a few days back. Now Lauren Weinstein offers a thought experiment in transmitting coded messages using SearchWiki, with a working example encoded into the results of this Google search.

Schneier on Security 204

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 20, 2008 @02:42PM from the protect-ya-neck dept.

brothke writes "There is a perception in both the private and government sector, that security, both physical and digital, is something you can buy. Witness the mammoth growth of airport security products following 9/11, and the sheer number of vendors at security conferences. With that, government officials and corporate executives often think you can simply buy products and magically get instant security by flipping on the switch. The reality is that security is not something you can buy; it is something you must get." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

Comment Cancer genomics (Score 1) 60

by Samhain13 on Thursday May 22, 2008 @01:20AM (#23501238) Attached to: Career Choices for Computational Biologists?

I work as a molecular biologist at a large pharma company and we had a fabulous speaker come the other day (damned if I can remember his name) and talked about the sheer amount of data that is coming in for cancer genomics. As a cancer researcher, this seems like a goldmine, if only the data can be harnessed correctly.

Additionally, the new sequencing technologies (for RNA and DNA) are making microarrays obsolete to some researchers, but the increase in data presents a new challenge.

These areas seem a lot more interesting to me than modeling and docking, which don't seem (to me) to involve much need for an intensive computer background.

The good news is that you've got a few years to figure it out, and you will go to many seminars in that time. I'd be more concerned with joining the right lab...

Good luck.

OpenOffice 2.3 Released 293

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @01:23AM from the yay-free-software dept.

ClickOnThis writes "Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.3! From the website: 'Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it. Plus: It is only with 2.3 that users can make full use of our growing extensions library.' You can download it but be kind and use a P2P client instead, such as bittorrent."

Mathematicians Design Invisible Tunnel 171

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 06, 2007 @06:05PM from the worms-need-light-too dept.

New calculations show how to make an electromagnetic "wormhole" — a tube that is invisible from the sides but allows light to shine down the center. The practical applications are a ways off, as even the design of a spherical invisibility cloak has not advanced beyond working (in theory) for a single wavelength of visible light.

New York To Ban iPods While Crossing Street? 487

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @05:58PM from the he-wants-us-to-think-for-ourselves dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention Reuters is reporting that New York State Senator Carl Kruger is looking to institute a $100 fine for using electronic gadgets while crossing the street. Citing three pedestrian deaths in his Brooklyn district as the main driving reason he believe Government has an obligation to protect its citizens. "Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes. 'I'm not trying to intrude on that,' Kruger said. 'But what's happening is when they're tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they're walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It's becoming a nationwide problem.'"

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