vlad valis - Slashdot User

Comment Open Source Economics proposal (Score 1) 259

by vlad valis on Sunday December 20, 2009 @06:34PM (#30507218) Attached to: Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation

Open source the whole economic system! And i want a pony too.

Is transparent capitalism possible? To find out, we need a different model for understanding economics. Legislation can be seen as a certain set of instructions with a very clear outlined syntax. Every individual is trying to get what they want, and they have to abide by this set of instructions (software) to become a part of an economic system. When the economic system crashes, so eventually does everybody's economic software. People have to fall back to various firmware boot cycles (to psychologists known as "imprinting phases"). If every individual had the ability to offer "patches" to their economic software (the set of laws they follow), and there were distributed authorities approving this new set of laws for that individual with a few basic guidelines (don't hurt anybody, don't steal anything, don't leave a mess), then wouldn't the system be much more resilient and stable? Most people in the United States know absolutely nothing about the economic software they are running. That's because it's not open source. All we see is the graphical user interface. The money changes color and value, but it always has the same dead masons on it.

Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation 259

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 20, 2009 @10:33AM from the still-looking-for-somebody-to-crucify dept.

VValdo writes "As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened, exactly. That may change. In a new op-ed piece, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force AIG to release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to 'break free' of our control. As the prosecutors put it, 'By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story.' Good idea?"

Comment Fossil fuel is organic, isn't it? (Score 1) 141

by vlad valis on Thursday December 17, 2009 @07:46PM (#30481244) Attached to: Did Chandrayaan Find Organic Matter On the Moon?

Could it not be residue from earlier moon missions? I sure hope so. Otherwise, we basically bombed the moon in 2009 only to find out in 2010 it's inhabited. Humans are the rednecks of the galaxy.

Comment Re:what it means (Score 4, Interesting) 141

by vlad valis on Monday August 17, 2009 @03:24AM (#29089101) Attached to: Open Source GSM Network At Dutch Hacker Convention

It's inevitable. Years from now when cheap community GSM towers are commonplace, this software project will be seen as a milestone in telecommunications. There are plenty of rural areas all over the world that could some day take advantage of this. And by the way, when we've got ubiquitous cheap GSM, what would we need 802.11 for? Great idea, awesome project! Someone give those guys money!

Open Source GSM Network At Dutch Hacker Convention 141

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 16, 2009 @08:15PM from the working-sort-of-within-the-system dept.

solevita writes "Harald Welte, who's been interviewed previously by Slashdot, has written on his blog about operating an Open Source GSM network at the recent HAR2009 conference. Photographs and a description of the setup, run under license of the Dutch regulatory authority, are provided; essentially the setup consisted of a pair of BTS' (Base Transceiver Stations) running at 100mW transmit power each and tied to a tree. In turn these provided access to the Base Station Controller (BSC), in this case a Linux server in a tent running OpenBSC. The system authenticated users with a token sent via SMS; in total 391 users subscribed to the service and were able to use their phones as if they were on any other network. Independent researchers are increasingly examining GSM networks and equipment, Welte's work proves that GSM is in the realm of the hackers now and that this realm of mobile networking could be set for a few surprises in the future."

Woman With Police-Monitoring Blog Arrested 847

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 16, 2009 @09:29AM from the there-are-better-hobbies dept.

Kris Thalamus writes "The Washington Post reports that a Virginia woman is being held in custody by police who allege that information she posted on her blog puts members of the Jefferson area drug enforcement task force at risk. 'In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements. Predictably, this annoyed law enforcement officials, who, it's fair to guess, comprised much of her readership before her arrest. But what seems to have sent them over the edge — and skewed their judgment — is Ms. Strom's decision to post the name and address of one of the officers with a street-view photo of his house. All this information was publicly available, including the photograph, which Ms. Strom gleaned from municipal records.'"

Comment make Rick Wagoner pay for it (Score 1) 1

by vlad valis on Saturday August 08, 2009 @11:25AM (#28996031) Attached to: GM gets to dump its polluted sites

Wait a sec, how many millions did Rick Wagoner get as a severance package from his company? You know, that company he drove into the ground making military transport vehicles for soccer moms?

Submission + - GM gets to dump its polluted sites 1

Submitted by

ParticleGirl

on Saturday August 08, 2009 @10:00AM

ParticleGirl writes: "GM emerged from bankruptcy and "was freed of obligations for polluted properties at discarded plant sites that will require millions of dollars to clean up." Industrial waste is no joke-- there are implications for the health of the local economy, individuals, communities and environment. Industry should be responsible for cleaning up their own messes, right? But it's such a double bind-- businesses don't always recognize the implications of their own policies, and they often would rather not find out. How do we make this happen? What ARE there exceptions-- like bankruptcy-- and can there be a backup plan in these cases?"

Submission + - Malaysian government wants Internet filtering (fudzilla.com) 1

Submitted by

adewolf

on Friday August 07, 2009 @03:38PM

adewolf writes: "According to Fudzilia the Malaysian government is looking to filter anti-government blogers under the guise of porn blocking.
"..Yatim claimed that porn on computers had led to child sex because apparently we didn't have paedophiles before the advent of the Internet..." what a joke."

Nicotine Improves Brain Function In Schizophrenics 297

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 07, 2009 @09:01AM from the hallucinations-are-a-drag dept.

An anonymous reader suggests a Cosmos Magazine note that nicotine has been shown to enhance attention and memory in schizophrenics. Research is now aimed at developing new treatments that could relieve symptoms and prevent smoking-related deaths. "A strong link between schizophrenia and smoking — with over three times as many schizophrenics smoking (70 to 90%) as the population at large — prompted scientists to investigate the link. Researchers led by Ruth Barr, a psychiatrist at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, set out to find if the nicotine in cigarettes was helping patients to overcome their difficulties with cognitive function, such as planning and memory in social and work settings."

Submission + - Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV (dailygalaxy.com) 3

Submitted by Linuss on Friday August 07, 2009 @07:11AM

Linuss writes: About 95% of the human genome has once been designated as "junk" DNA. While much of this sequence may be an evolutionary artifact that serves no present-day purpose, some junk DNA may function in ways that are not currently understood. The conservation of some junk DNA over many millions of years of evolution may imply an essential function that has been "turned off." Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on.

What these scientists have done could give us the first bulletproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures; they published their ground-breaking research in PLoS Biology.
A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV — one that worked with the body's own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which can prevent HIV from entering cell walls and starting an infection. So they began poring over the human genome, looking to see if humans had a latent gene that could manufacture retrocyclin too. It turned out that we did, but a "nonsense mutation" in the gene had turned it off at some point in our evolutionary history.
Nonsense mutations are caused when random DNA code shows up in the middle of a gene, preventing it from beginning the process of manufacturing proteins in the cell. Venkataraman and her team decided to investigate this gene further, doing a series of tests to see if the retrocyclin it produced would keep HIV out of human cells. It did.
At last, they knew that if they could just figure out a way to reawaken the "junk" gene that creates retrocyclin in humans, they might be able to stop HIV infections. The researchers just needed to figure out a way to remove that nonsense mutation and get the target gene to start manufacturing retrocyclin again.
Here's where things really get interesting. The team found a way to use a compound called aminoglycosides, which itself can cause errors when RNA transcribes information from DNA to make proteins. But this time, the aminoglycoside error would work in their favor: It would cause that RNA to ignore the nonsense mutation in the junk gene, and therefore start making retrocyclin again. In preliminary tests, their scheme worked. The human cells made retrocyclin, fended off HIV, and effectively became AIDS-resistant. And it was done entirely using the latent potential in the so-called junk DNA of the human genome.
After more research is done, the researchers believe this might become a viable way to make humans immune to HIV infection.
What's especially intriguing, beyond the amazing idea of an AIDS vaccine, is that aminoglycosides have the potential to unlock the uses for other pieces of junk DNA. In Darwin's Radio, certain portions of these "non-sense" sequences, remnants of prehistoric retroviruses, have been activated by aminoglycosides.
In the novel, humans start rapidly evolving after their junk DNA re-awakens in response to stress. Could we induce instant mutations, or gain other new immunities by using aminoglycosides on our junk DNA?

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