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Submission + - Data-Mining Ban Struck Down by US Supreme Court (medpagetoday.com) 1

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: The Supreme Court struck down Sorrell vs IMS Health, a law banning data mining which has been in place since 2007. The court ruled that the data on medications prescribed by doctors is protected by the First Amendment and can be used for marketing by the pharmaceutical companies. This follows similar declarations in Maine and New Hamshire.
Robotics

MIT Student Builds Baking Bot 6

Posted by samzenpus from the grandmother-what-big-shiny-metal-arms-you-have! dept.
fysdt writes "Cookies are a pretty awesome treat, but sometimes making them from scratch can be a bit of a chore. Fortunately, there is now a robot created to specifically bake cookies--although it probably isn't good enough to replace human kitchen staff or grandma just yet. Created by MIT Lab student Mario Bollini, the PR2 Bakebot loves nothing more than to bake up a batch of cookies from scratch. The robot's left hand holds onto the mixing bowl, while its right hand does the hard work, mixing ingredients with a rubber spatula. Its head contains a laser scanner and sensor camera used to determine what each ingredients is and how much mixing and stirring it needs to do."
Spam

Explaining The Business of Spam 74

Posted by timothy from the wading-through-the-muck-even-now dept.
ATMAvatar writes "The IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy hosted in Oakland nearly three weeks ago featured a study on the economics of spam. It attempts to identify and analyze the chain of businesses behind spam and the products that are featured. The goal was to take a more comprehensive look at the mechanics behind the industry in an attempt to identify better, alternative means to combat spam."

Submission + - SCOTUS rules against AT&T on LEC access/pricin (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Established local telephone companies including AT&T Inc. (T) must share disputed parts of their networks with competitors at cost, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

The unanimous ruling backs the position taken by the Federal Communications Commission in a fight stemming from the 1996 law that injected competition into the local telephone business. The law requires so-called incumbent local carriers, whose ranks also include Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and CenturyLink Inc. (CTL), to share their facilities with rivals.
Iphone

Submission + - Apple Rips off Rejected App? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Haedrian
Haedrian writes: Apple is famous for going to absurd lengths to enforce its patents and trademarks. It recently sued Amazon for calling its app store Appstore. And it has publicly lectured competitors to “create their own original technology, not steal ours”.

Last year, UK-Developer Greg Hughes for submitted an app for wirelessly syncing iPhones with iTunes libraries, which was rejected from the official App Store.

Fast forward to Monday, when Apple unveiled a set of new features for the upcoming iOS 5, including the same wireless-syncing functionality. Cupertino wasn't even subtle about the appropriation, using the precise name and a near-identical logo to market the technology.

Submission + - The Onggoing Case of Rakofsky vs. Internet (newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com)

Submitted by Chmcginn
Chmcginn writes: Joseph Rakofsky, a New Jersey lawyer whose claim to internet fame is filing a lawsuit against the Washington Post and the American Bar Association for criticizing his performance at a Washington, DC, murder trial, has amended his suit to include a number of bloggers and internet forum members — for criticizing the lawsuit. Which is a bigger threat to free speech — direct government action, or fear of lawsuits for frivolous defamation charges?
The Courts

Submission + - Supreme Court Rules Against Microsoft In i4i Case (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a $300 million patent infringement ruling against Microsoft, granting a victory Thursday to i4i (PDF document), which filed the lawsuit back in 2007. The legal battle already forced Microsoft to modify certain functionality in its Word application in 2009, when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i and told Microsoft to stop selling Word in the U.S. At issue was an i4i patent that covers technology that lets users manipulate the architecture and content of a document, which i4i alleged Microsoft infringed upon by letting Word users create custom XML documents. Microsoft removed the feature. 'This case raised an important issue of law which the Supreme Court itself had questioned in an earlier decision and which we believed needed resolution. While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation,' Microsoft said in a statement."

Comment 60% - Offspring 100% (Score 1) 336

by slezakdj (#36322116) Attached to: I've had a personal email account for ...
Personally I am in the 40-60% bucket -- However, I grabbed popular free service email addresses for my children before they were born (based on their given name) anticipating their arrival. So I suppose they have had the addresses for >100% of their life (as defined by the local culture). I hope this poll surfaces again in 5-6 years so they can add some insight or a snarky comment.
Censorship

Submission + - DNS Heavyweights Raise Concern Over DNS Filtering (circleid.com) 1

Submitted by penciling_in
penciling_in writes: A group of DNS heavyweights have released a paper detailing serious concerns over the proposed DNS filtering requirements included as part of the bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate named Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 ("PROTECT IP Act”). The group which includes Paul Vixie, Dan Kaminsky, Steve Crocker, David Dagon and Danny McPherson, have detailed several serious technical and security concerns in the event that the mandated DNS filtering is enacted into law. Dan Kaminsky says: 'There are efforts afoot to manipulate the DNS on a remarkably large scale. The American PROTECT IP act contains several reasonable and well targeted remedies to copyright infringement. One of these remedies, however, is to leverage the millions of recursive DNS servers that act as accelerators for Internet traffic, and convert them into censors for domain names in an effort to block content.'
Music

Ask Jonathan Coulton About the Transformation From Code Monkey to Internet Star 122

Posted by samzenpus from the isn't-it-enough-to-know-that-I-ruined-a-pony-making-a-gift-for-you? dept.
Even though he created the definitive guide to enjoying yourself outside, Jonathan Coulton is best known for the programmer anthem Code Monkey, his Thing a Week project, and writing the theme song to Portal. In 2005 Coulton left his programming job to pursue his music career, and has since become a successful one man music label. Jonathan has agreed to answer your questions about robots, life, and internet stardom. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply.
Idle

Submission + - Say what?! US fancies a huge metaphor repository (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Researchers with the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors mind you but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? "Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them," IARPA says."
Displays

Submission + - Glossy vs matte screens: PC industry out of touch (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "A survey of PC Pro readers suggests PC makers are out of touch when it comes to glossy vs matte screens. Almost three quarters of those surveyed said they preferred matte screens, despite laptop makers moving almost exclusively to glossy screens. Apple was recently the subject of an online petition to introduce matte screens in its iMac line-up. Why is the industry hellbent on not giving the customers what they want?"
Medicine

US Preserves Smallpox For Defense 248

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it's-not-mine-i-swear dept.
lee1 writes "The US is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop bio-warfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."

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