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Submission + - NASA Employees fight invasive background check (iht.com)

Submitted by

Electron Barrage

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @03:47PM

Electron Barrage writes: "Longtime JPL scientists, many of whom do not work on classified materials, including rover drivers and Apollo veterans, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce today to fight highly invasive background checks, which include financial information, any and all retail business transactions, and even sexual orientation."

Submission + - Algorithm Rates Trustworthiness of Wikipedia Pages

Submitted by paleshadows on Thursday August 30, 2007 @11:57AM

paleshadows writes: Researchers at UCSC developed a tool that measures the trustworthiness of each wikipedia page. Roughly speaking, the algorithm analyzes the entire 7-year user-editing-history and utilzes the longevity of the content to learn which contributors are the most reliable: If your contribution lasts, you gain "reputation", whereas if it's edited out, your reputation falls. The trustworthiness of a newly inserted text is a function of the reputation of all its authors, a heuristic that turned out to be successful in identifying poor content. The interested reader can take a look at this demo (random page with white/orange background marking trusted/untrusted text, respectively; note "random page" link at the left for more demo pages), this presentation (pdf), and this paper (pdf).

Submission + - Brain electrodes help man speak again (yahoo.com)

Submitted by on Friday August 03, 2007 @07:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: "He was beaten and left for dead one night in a robbery while walking home in 1999. His skull was crushed and his brain severely damaged. The doctor said if he pulled through at all, he'd be a vegetable for the rest of his life." "Researchers chose him for an experimental attempt to rev up his brain by placing electrodes in it."

Journal Journal: Gates announce AIDS vaccine initiative

Journal by taketheleap on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @02:42PM

From the article:

Canada will be the site of a new facility to manufacture and test vaccines to fight HIV/AIDS, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates announced Tuesday in Ottawa. Ottawa will contribute up to $111 million toward the new Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, while the Microsoft founder, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will donate up to $28 million.

Viacom Turns to Joost, Spurns YouTube 139

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:55AM from the google-has-lost-please-turn-to-page-57 dept.

Vincenzo writes "Viacom has signed a deal with Joost that will see content from MTVI, Comedy Central, and CBS distributed on the new P2P distribution service. The move comes just two weeks after demanding YouTube pull over 100,000 videos offline. 'Joost's promise to protect their copyrights was a major factor in Viacom's decision, and also a stumbling block in their discussions with YouTube/Google. At the moment is it quite easy to download and store video content from YouTube, but no such exploit for Joost is known to exist.' It's also a 'secure' distribution medium in the eyes of many in the entertainment industry, since users can't upload content themselves.'"

Music Execs Think DRM Slows the Marketplace 224

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:22AM from the well-duh dept.

MacGod writes "From BBC News comes a story about a Jupiter Research survey conducted before Steve Jobs's anti-DRM essay, indicating that most music industry execs see DRM-free music as a way to expand sales on digital tracks. The survey covered large and small record labels, rights bodies, digital stores, and technology providers. To summarize: 54% of music execs think that current DRM is too restrictive and 62% think selling unencumbered music would be a way to boost sales. Even limiting the survey to the record labels themselves, 48% believe this. Yet, many also believe it's not going to happen without significant governmental intervention — even though most insiders think DRM is harmful, the labels are keen to stick with it. Is this yet another sign of the typical media industry 'head in the sand, refuse to change' approach, or might we be seeing the early stages or some actual change?"

Submission + - AOL Supports OpenID

Submitted by Nurgled on Thursday February 15, 2007 @08:08AM

Nurgled writes: On Sunday John Panzer announced that AOL now has experimental OpenID server support. This means that every AOL user now has an OpenID identifier. OpenID is a decentralized cross-site authentication system which has been growing in popularity over the last few months. AOL is the first large provider to offer OpenID services, and though they do not currently accept logins to their services with OpenID identifiers from elsewhere, they are apparently working on it. The next big challenge for OpenID proponents is teaching AOL's userbase how to make use of this new technology.

Submission + - Why Computer RPGs Waste Your Time

Submitted by

spidweb

on Thursday February 15, 2007 @03:24AM

spidweb writes: "RPGVault has an editorial about two particularly noxious qualities of computer role-playing games: They make you work forever to earn the right to do anything exciting, and they make you have to prove yourself by expending tons of your time. From the article: "So now, thinking about playing an RPG just makes me tired. I'm tired of starting a new game and being a loser. I'm tired of running the same errands to prove myself. The next time I enter my fantasy world, I want it to not assume that I'm a jackass."

The article is at:

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/763/763050p2.html "

Submission + - Social networking sites opening up

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @02:30PM

prostoalex writes: "Business Week magazine is looking at social networking sites opening their APIs to third-party developers to enable social applications not supported by the network itself. Facebook is setting an example by releasing their API from beta into 1.0, and many others are expected to follow the suit, since Facebook API now serves as a backbone to 100 or so applications: "Since Facebook, a network of 17 million college students, started a pilot program last summer, third-party developers have created some 100 new applications. Now a Facebook user name and password can be used to log in to content-sharing and chat site Mosoto, and to automatically import Facebook friends into Mosoto's buddy list for chat. Facebook itself does not offer a chat function""

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