christopherjrider - Slashdot User

A Lost Civilization Beneath the Persian Gulf? 277

Posted by kdawson on Friday December 10, 2010 @06:42PM from the tigris-is-for-neandertals dept.

Phoghat sends news of a new theory that a once-fertile landmass beneath the Persian Gulf may have supported some of the earliest humans outside of Africa. "Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago... These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."

Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do 369

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 01, 2009 @02:27PM from the goes-the-theory dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."

Google Releases Web Security Book 49

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 01, 2009 @12:53PM from the posted-from-my-own-chair dept.

northern squirrel writes "As reported by Security Focus, Google had publicly released their 50-page Browser Security Handbook (under a CC BY license, too). To quote, the document is 'meant to provide developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers with a one-stop reference to key security properties of contemporary web browsers,' and features a comparison of security features in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and — you guessed it — Chrome. Is it a belated Christmas gift to web developers, or just a reaction to recent bad publicity?"

Comment Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score 1) 2369

by christopherjrider on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @01:10PM (#25557613) Attached to: Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy

Perhaps because most of that third who don't pay can't even make a living. It's like getting blood out of a rock.

If that were true, then you'd expect the same pattern to be pretty consistent over time, right? But it's not - it used to be the case that more wage-earners paid at least something. Even low wage-earners should be paying some taxes, if for no other reason to make sure they have a stake in tax policy.

The problem with this argument is that real wages (i.e. wages adjusted for inflation) have been falling for some time. Back when wage earners were paying taxes, they were also making ends meet.

Google.org Invests $2.75M In Aptera Motors 110

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 24, 2008 @12:25PM from the hoping-for-a-smooth-ride dept.

Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has just invested the first funds from its RechargeIT program: $5.5 million for plug-in electric vehicles. Half of the money goes to Aptera, whose 230-mpg, 3-wheeled electric we have discussed before. The other half bolsters the efforts of ActaCell, a Texas company working on li-ion battery technology developed at UT Austin.

The Death of Nearly All Software Patents? 731

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 24, 2008 @11:25AM from the we-can-only-hope dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in article 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three — the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal — the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine.'"

How Ancient Mechanics Thought About Machines 76

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 01, 2008 @04:08PM from the first-practice-then-theory dept.

friedo writes "The NYTimes has an interesting piece about Prof. Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard classicist with an interest in the history of science. Schiefsky pores over ancient texts in Greek, Latin, and Arabic to decipher the origin of knowledge that's been taken for granted for millennia. For example, a Greek treatise published a generation before Archimedes' proofs of the lever laws explains why, if you were a galley slave, you'd want to work the oars near the center of the ship instead of closer to the hull."

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