carpeweb - Slashdot User

Comment Costs, Benefits and Evidence (Score 1) 474

by carpeweb on Tuesday February 24, 2009 @02:15AM (#26966305) Attached to: Linked In Or Out?

OK, I'll agree that identity theft is a potential cost. You seem to think the benefits are negligible while dismissing non-techies (at least senior ones) as "morons".

Evidence

Do you have any hard evidence that active networkers in general suffer more identity theft than non networkers? Anything specific to LinkedIn? Based on your post, I'd expect to see a long line of "morons" at the Social Security office and on soup lines ... maybe I missed the 60 Minutes episode on that.

Avoiding the Word "Evolution" 895

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @04:45AM from the can't-say-that-wait-two-years dept.

jakosc tips us to a disturbing article in PloS Biology on the avoidance of the word "Evolution" in scientific papers and grants. From the paper: "In spite of the importance of antimicrobial resistance, we show that the actual word 'evolution' is rarely used in the papers describing this research. Instead, antimicrobial resistance is said to 'emerge,' 'arise,' or 'spread' rather than 'evolve.' Moreover, we show that the failure to use the word 'evolution' by the scientific community may have a direct impact on the public perception of the importance of evolutionary biology in our everyday lives... It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word 'evolution' in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy."

The Role of Prizes In Innovation 87

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 25, 2007 @09:11PM from the throwing-money-at-a-problem dept.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel assesses the impact on innovation of the increasing number of prizes, such as the X Prize, that reward solvers of intractable problems. From the column: 'Prizes prompt a lot of effort, far more than any sponsor could devote itself, but they generally pay only for success. That's "an important piece of shifting risk from inside the walls of the company and moving it out to the solver community," says Jill Panetta, InnoCentive's chief scientific officer. Competitors for the $10 million prize for the space vehicle spent 10 times that amount trying to win it. Contests also are a mechanism to tap scientific knowledge that's widely dispersed geographically, and not always in obvious places. Since posting its algorithm bounty in October, Netflix has drawn 15,000 entrants from 126 countries. The leading team is from Budapest University of Technology and Economics.'"

At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies 392

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 25, 2007 @07:29PM from the you-or-someone-you-know dept.

ThinSkin writes "Roughly 18 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally downloaded a full-length movie at some point in the past, according to a telephone and online study of 2,600 Americans. A typical movie downloader is 29 years of age, while 63 percent of all downloaders are male, and 37 percent are female. Kaan Yigit, director of the study, observes, 'There is a Robin Hood effect — most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don't think of movie downloading as a big deal. The current crop of 'download to own' movie services and the new ones coming into the market will need to offer greater flexibility of use, selection and low prices to convert the current users to their services — otherwise file-sharing will continue to thrive.'"

Diebold Security Foiled Again 201

Posted by Zonk on Thursday January 25, 2007 @05:11PM from the please-think-then-vote dept.

XenoPhage writes "Yet again, Diebold has shown their security prowess. This time they posted, on their website, a picture of the actual key used to open all of their Diebold voting machines. Ross Kinard of Sploitcast crafted three keys based on this photo. Amazingly enough, two of the three keys successfully opened one of the voting machines. But fear not, Diebold has removed the offending picture, replacing it with a picture of their digital card key. Take that, hackers!"

Journal Journal: Virgin Komodo Dragon Gives Birth 1

Journal by moej0j0j0 on Thursday January 25, 2007 @02:24PM

At some point in the future will men not be needed any more?
"In an evolutionary twist, the newborns' 8-year-old mother, Flora, shocked staff at Chester Zoo in northern England when she became pregnant without ever having a male partner or even being exposed to the opposite sex."

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