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Comment Re:Government-orchestrated? Please (Score 1) 172

You know, in Russia "Kremlin operation" is like one bad guy telling second one to attack them. And the right people will do it. And there is nobody in the whole country to pin them. And, anyway, electorate, knowing, would like it... Think of mafia. Is mafia not well organized? "Russian government" is just name.

And about estonian products: it *is* political issue, not market one.
Education

OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay 248

Acer500 writes "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project. From the newspaper articles: 'The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'" More information below.
Media

Disney - Blu-ray's Fair Weather Friend 138

An anonymous reader writes "One day they're out, the next day they're in. Back in March, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to indicate that his company (which has exclusively backed Blu-ray since the start of the high-def format war) was on the verge of supporting *both* high-def formats. What a difference a couple of months of good press for Blu-ray makes: this week, the CEO reversed his earlier position, saying 'the single greatest thing we can do right now is to not waffle, but to be very, very blunt about it, (and) to continue our support of Blu-ray because we sense a real advantage.'"
Media

Submission + - Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

An anonymous reader writes: An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the "tragedy of the uncommon": Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?
Wireless Networking

Cambridge's Streetlamp-Powered Wireless Network 75

Serpentegena writes "A joint research project by scientists at Harvard University and BBn Technologies may have spawned a new breed of Metronet. The wireless network, code-named CitySense, which will consist of 100 streetlamp-mounted nodes by 2011, will draw power off the Cambridge, Mass. public grid and be used at first for weather and pollution monitoring. The intention is to also allow 'academic researchers worldwide [...] to submit their own research programs to run on the network.' Sounds remarkably similar to the beginning of the ARPANET, except the network hosts will be running Linux."
Biotech

Scientists Create Artificial Blood 225

simm1701 wrote us with a BBC article link on a sort of artificial blood substitute being developed by an English university. The substance is light, can survive at room temperature, and keeps longer than real blood, allowing it to be used as a stand-in in emergency situations. "The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body. The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing ... A sample of the artificial blood prototype will be on display at the Science Museum in London from 22 May as part of an exhibition about the history of plastics."
Science

Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better? 923

mikee805 writes "A lengthy article in Spiegel explores the possibility that global warming might make life on Earth better, not just for humans, but all species. The article argues that 'worst-case scenarios' are often the result of inaccurate simulations made in the 1980s. While climate change is a reality, as far as the article is concerned, some planning and forethought may mean that more benefits than drawbacks will result from higher temperatures. From the article:'The medical benefits of higher average temperatures have also been ignored. According to Richard Tol, an environmental economist, "warming temperatures will mean that in 2050 there will be about 40,000 fewer deaths in Germany attributable to cold-related illnesses like the flu." Another widespread fear about global warming -- that it will cause super-storms that could devastate towns and villages with unprecedented fury -- also appears to be unfounded. Current long-term simulations, at any rate, do not suggest that such a trend will in fact materialize.'"
The Courts

How the RIAA has Dodged RICO Charges 126

Gerardo writes "Wondering why the RIAA hasn't been hit with racketeering charges over its shady legal fight against file-sharing? Ars Technica looks at why the RIAA has been able to dodge RICO charges. '"Right off the bat there are some problems with the predicate claims for RICO," explained IP attorney Rich Vazquez. "You have to have a pattern of racketeering activity: either criminal acts where there is a one-year jail penalty, or mail or wire fraud." Any RICO action brought against the RIAA would have to focus on the wire fraud component, likely accusing the record labels of poking around someone's PC without permission.' That's going to be a difficult argument to make, given that Kazaa's default settings give users no reasonable expectation of privacy."
Editorial

Submission + - MySpace photo sagas continue

gwoodrow writes: We've all heard the "fired because of myspace" issues, where a simple blog or picture gets someone canned. But even as it's getting worse, the targets are fighting back:

"Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page 'promoting underage drinking.' As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages."

The offending picture? A picture from halloween 2005 of Stacy in a pirate outfit drinking from a cup.

Feed A keyhole for your system's back door (slashdot.org)

While a properly set up SSH service can give you secure remote access to a server, you might not like the idea of having an SSH server always running on your machine. Secure Back Door (SBD) can open an encrypted connection to your system, allowing...
Games

What is Your Desert Island Game? 409

1up has a feature today asking games industry heavyweights what their 'desert island game' would be. Games from the Civilization series are backed by the likes of Sony's Phil Harrison, David Jaffe, and Bethesda's Todd Howard, while Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has waiting-for-rescue fans among a number of the list respondents. Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka has an interesting answer to the question while talking about his pick: StarCraft. " It's an unusual choice for me in that I'd normally pick a role-playing game. But StarCraft has a strong campaign editor to make new content (including making either combat-oriented or story-based campaigns), plus you can play both the solid single-player campaign and against the A.I., and -- here's the trick -- you can play on a LAN or WAN (you said no Internet, but didn't mention local or wide area networks...my goal would be to build a WAN -- I'd explain how, but that would be telling -- connecting other folks similarly dropped onto nearby desert islands by other videogame online sites, who are equally eager to play some competitive multiplayer RTS or try out the campaigns I've created to kill time on the long days where there's nothing else to do but collect coconuts and build rafts." So, assuming that you have everything you need to play, what game would you want to take with you into seclusion?
Music

Jobs to Labels- Lose the DRM & We'll Talk Price 459

eldavojohn writes "Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been talking smack about DRM and has recently issued a verbal offer to major music lables stating that if they are willing to lose the DRM, he'd be willing to raise his 99 cent price for those iTunes songs. These tracks (such as the recent EMI deal) would also have better sound quality & cost about 30 cents more."
Supercomputing

Submission + - The Ability to "controllably Couple qubits"

Timogen writes: While large-scale quantum computers remain in the domain of science fiction, a joint team from Japan announced Thursday that it has been able to take a small but crucial step in pursuit of this advanced goal. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007 /05/quantumcoupling NEC, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, or RIKEN, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency, published a paper in the May 4 issue of the journal Science, outlining the ability to "controllably couple qubits." In classical computer science, bits — or binary digits — hold data encoded as ones and zeros. In quantum computing, data is measured in qubits, or quantum bits. As such, a qubit can have three possible states — one, zero or a "superposition" of one and zero. This unique property theoretically makes quantum computing able to solve large-scale calculations that would dwarf today's supercomputers. But qubits in isolation are not very useful. It's only when they can be connected to one another that large-scale processing becomes possible.

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