cds0922 - Slashdot User

The Coder Behind the Mortgage Meltdown 379

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @03:25PM from the tua-culpa dept.

axjms writes "New York Magazine has a confessional/abdication from the man who wrote the software that turns mortgages into bonds and those nasty little things called CMOs. An interesting first-person account from a coder whose work reached far beyond what he or anyone could have anticipated."

eBay Fakes Devalue the Craft of Tomb Robbing 153

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @02:36PM from the disintermediation-of-the-illicit dept.

James McP writes "According to an article on Archaeology, fake artifacts being sold on eBay have caused the bottom to drop out of the low-end artifact market. This outcome is exactly opposite to what archeologists feared would happen when eBay came on the scene. A side effect of more and more forgers getting in on the act has been a dramatic increase in high-quality fakes that can fool experts and illicit collectors alike, lowering the price for high-end artifacts as well. It's a lot less cost-effective to go tomb raiding than to make your own fakes, especially since selling fake artifacts isn't really illegal."

Amazon Wins First Kindle Patent; Bigger Screen Expected Soon 50

Posted by timothy on Tuesday May 05, 2009 @12:55PM from the would-you-like-some-e-coffee-with-that? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "One day before Amazon is scheduled to unveil its widescreen Kindle aimed at newspaper readers, the e-commerce giant has been awarded its first US patent for an e-book reader. The new patent, D591,741, is a design patent which protects the look and feel of the Kindle shell, not for fundamental technologies. Those patents are mostly held by E Ink Corp., which makes the 'liquidless paper' display. Sony, IBM, and the Discovery cable TV network also have e-book patents. Amazon, though the leading e-book seller, has none, but the patent award indicates they've applied for at least four recently." Also in Kindle news, PC World has a brief article up on the larger-screen Kindle DX (expected to launch Wednesday), including pictures first spotted on Engadget.

Seeing the Forest For the Trees 1

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 05, 2009 @02:14PM from the keep-looking dept.

Sometimes what you seek most isn't right in front of you, it's sitting on your head.

Comment Re:Nature vs. Nurture (Score 1) 114

by cds0922 on Wednesday October 04, 2006 @04:42PM (#16311385) Attached to: The Next X Prize

There is a high-throughput project to look at epigenetic markers in humans. Its called the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project (http://genome.gov/10005107) in which 10% of the human genome is being studied in extream detail for a variety characteristics including the best understood epigenetic marks (histone modification, DNA methylation etc).

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