kroekle - Slashdot User

Pentagon Reveals News Correction Unit 757

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @05:16AM from the propaganda-juggernauts dept.

Jonas Wisser writes "BBC is reporting that a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories. From the article: 'The Pentagon has set up a new unit to focus on promoting its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. [...] A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.'"

X-Prize to Award $10M for Fast Sequencing 48

Posted by timothy on Friday October 13, 2006 @06:11AM from the prizes-for-possibilities dept.

Shipud writes "The X-Prize foundation has announced the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics — for the first privately financed group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. The motivation is to create an incentive for faster, cheaper genome seqeunceing, heralding the era of preventative personalized medicine. The winner will also receive an extra $1,000,000 for sequencing the genomes of 100 additional people; among them Larry King and Stephen Hawking. Apparently this is the largest medical prize in history."

David Brin Laments Absence of Programming For Kids 355

Posted by Zonk on Friday September 15, 2006 @03:33PM from the watch-johnny-run-run-johnny-run dept.

An anonymous reader writes "David Brin is an award-winning science fiction writer who has often written on social issues such as privacy and creativity. Now, he's written an essay for Salon.com titled 'Why Johnny Can't Code'. He discusses his son's years-long effort to find a way to use his math book's BASIC programming examples. All they were ever able to find, however, were either children's versions (on the Mac) or 'advanced' versions which attempted to support modern programming requirements (and which required constant review of the user's manual). Ultimately, they ended-up buying an old Commodore 64 on Ebay — Yes, for those of you under the age of 30, 'personal' computers like the Apple II and C64 used to all include BASIC in their ROMs."

Comment Re:You just seeing this? (Score 2, Informative) 467

by kroekle on Monday August 23, 2004 @09:22AM (#10043559) Attached to: Composite Of Earth At Night

Here's one from a few years ago. It's darker so you can see the lights better.

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