Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Feed Schneier: Initial Thoughts on the Boston Bombings (schneier.com)

I rewrote my "refuse to be terrorized" essay for the Atlantic. David Rothkoph (author of the great book Power, Inc.) wrote something similar, and so did John Cole. It's interesting to see how much more resonance this idea has today than it did a dozen years ago. If other people have written similar essays, please post links in the comments....

Submission + - Moore's Law and the Origin of Life 1

DoctorBit writes: MIT Technology Review is running a story about an arXiv paper in which geneticists Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon propose that life as we know it originated 9.7 billion years ago.

The researchers estimated the genetic complexity of phyla in the paleontological record by counting the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides in typical genomes of modern day descendants of each phylum. When plotting genetic complexity against time, the researchers found that genetic complexity increases exponentially, just as with Moore's law, but with a doubling rate of about once every 376 million years.

Extrapolating backwards, the researchers estimate that life began about 4 billion years after the universe formed and evolved the first bacteria just before the earth was formed. One might image that the supernova debris that formed the early solar system could have included bacteria-bearing chunks of rock from doomed planets circling supernova progenitor stars. If true, this retro-prediction has some interesting consequences in partly resolving the Fermi Paradox.

Another interesting consequence for those attempting to recreate life's origins in a lab: bacteria may have evolved under conditions very different from those on earth.

Submission + - Netflix to go HTML5, but not without DRM 1

FuzzNugget writes: In a recent blog post, Netflix details their plans to transition from Silverlight to HTML5, but with one caveat: HTML5 needs to include a built-in DRM scheme. With the W3C's proposed Encrypted Media Extensions, this may come to frition. But what would we sacrificing in openness and the web as we know it? How will developers of open source browsers like Firefox respond to this?

Submission + - ZDNet proclaims "Windows: It's over" 1

plastick writes: "You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end."

ZDNet is known to take the side of Microsoft in the past. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains "The very day the debate came to an end, this headline appeared: IDC: Global PC shipments plunge in worst drop in a generation. Sure, a lot of that was due to the growth of tablets and smartphones and the rise of the cloud, but Windows 8 gets to take a lot of the blame too. After all, the debate wasn't whether or not Windows 8 was any good. It's not. The debate was over whether it could be saved."

Comment Re:Openshot Kickstart Program (Score 2) 105

I love seeing different projects supporting each other on Kickstarter. OpenShot is awesome, and this seems like a great way for it to be improved (in addition to the two new platforms, the OpenShot folks have some pretty cool features planned). I have to say, I'm more excited about enhancements to OpenShot, than I am about Cox's new film :-)

Comment Re:Ignorance (Score 1) 461

No. Genetic material can enter the the bloodstream, despite the digestive process.

http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v22/n1/full/cr2011158a.html

In short, the above study found white rice micro-RNA in observable quantities in the serum/plamsa of a statistically significant sample of human particpants. Here's some mainstream coverage of the study:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamins-minerals-and-microrna
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/09/21/2251238/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes

Do we know what the effect of long-term exposure to this foreign genetic material actually has? It's difficult to, since the vector of introduction was only discovered 18 months ago. Labelling might be a prudent choice until we have a nice 10-20yr study to show some conclusive results over a large and diverse population under test.

Comment Re:Ignorance (Score 1) 461

This is a highly specious argument. You're stating "espousing one untested toxin vs another more effective one, is equivalent to cargo cult plumbing", when in fact what you are calling "natural pesticides" is rarely the specific and heavy application of a specific "traditional" toxin.

Usually, it's more of a policy of IPM/IPC (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management ) which is more work-intensive, but contributes less to a pollution point-source, amongst other benefits, by utilizing a collection of methods rather than heavy reliance on a particular manufactured substance. Also, these methodologies decrease financial support of the potentially dubious production/manufacturing process of popular artificial pesticides (organophosphates and IGR's like methoprene). Additionally, it's important to recognize that this same argument uses unspecific wording to group all "natural" pesticides/insecticides together (such as neonicotinoids/pyrethroids/ryanoids versus other common mild herbicide/insectides). That alone should raise "straw-man" fallacy red flags.

I hope you're not really trying to equate RoundUp (or similar) with draping a net over your fruit tree.

Comment Re:2m? Not even close (Score 1) 119

Oh, how do you figure? The traditional investment portion was to be some $8M (to bring the budget up to ~$10M), and is supposedly already lined up, modulo the initial funding goal (I believe Chris stated as much during one of the Reddit AMA's).

Moreover, of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved FPS mode"...) have already pledged. Also, are you Seumas on Kickstarter as well? If so, then of all people, you should realize that Linux support has a greatly different level of importance on a crowd-funding campaign (where the Linux community is heavily active) than the wider gaming world.

Games

Submission + - Will Star Citizen project fund Linux and Mac ports for CryENGINE 3? (robertsspaceindustries.com) 2

Mr. Jaggers writes: "Chris Roberts, game designer of Wing Commander fame, has had great success with his new crowd-funded Star Citizen project — so much that the $2m base goal has been smashed with weeks to go on the kickstarter portion of the campaign. Now Chris is floating a list of stretch goals for fans to vote on, with Linux and Mac support both listed as stretch goal candidates. Since Star Citizen is based on the popular CryENGINE 3 game engine, these stretch goals are equivalent to funding Linux and Mac ports of CryENGINE. Chris couldn't make any absolute promises yet, since he doesn't own the engine, but CryENGINE 3 already supports Android so at least there is existing OpenGL ES support to be leveraged towards adding Linux and Mac OpenGL support. If there is enough outpouring of cross-platform support from fans in this poll, Star Citizen could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities — analogous to the role played by Wasteland 2 in bringing official Linux support to the Unity 4 engine popular among so many Indie developers."
United Kingdom

Submission + - Apple Hides Samsung Apology So It Can't Be Seen Without Scrolling

An anonymous reader writes: Apple today posted its second Samsung apology to its UK website, complying with requests by the UK Court of Appeal to say its original apology was inaccurate and link to a new statement. As users on Hacker News and Reddit point out, however, Apple modified its website recently to ensure the message is never displayed without visitors having to scroll down to the bottom first.

Slashdot Top Deals

You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.

Working...