Slashdot Mirror

Hugh Pickens writes "CNN reports that Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen has raised $300 million to launch a new venture capital firm that aims to reinvent the way money is doled out in Silicon Valley while reflecting Andreessen's unwavering view that the Internet will soon take over all aspects of our lives and that online services won't merely supplement your TV viewing or newspaper reading, but will replace those activities altogether. Andreessen, on the board of Facebook and an angel investor in Twitter, says that technology moves so quickly that only the young can keep up with what the latest stuff can do. 'So the 24-year-old coming out of Stanford will have a view of technology that the 29-year-old — who was 24 just five years ago — would never think of,' say Andreessen. 'We love that kind of thing.' Andreessen thinks that when companies are acquired too quickly, innovation slows down, and he says that YouTube might have come up with a path to profitability faster if it wasn't a part of Google. 'It is hard for big ones to out-execute up-and-comers,' Andreessen says. 'Our secret plan is to watch what gets acquired and fund the next company. A good template is to fund companies doing whichever the next-generation product would have been.'"

cin62 writes "The number of Internet scammers offering fake versions of the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu has surpassed those selling counterfeit Viagra, reports CNN. Since the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, was declared a global pandemic last month, there has been an increase in the number of Web sites and junk emails offering Tamiflu for sale. 'Every Web site that used to sell Viagra is now selling Tamiflu. We are pretty sure that the same people are making the Tamiflu as are making the Viagra,' said Director of Policy for the UK's Royal Pharmaceutical Society." This news fits in nicely with a report Wired ran a couple weeks ago about the hysteria behind H1N1.

SignalFreq writes "Tesla Motors, based in San Carlos, California, was approved yesterday for $465M in loans from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Tesla plans to use $365M of the money to finance a manufacturing facility for the Model S (review, Letterman video) and $100M for a powertrain manufacturing plant in the SF Bay Area. 'Tesla will use the ATVM loan precisely the way that Congress intended — as the capital needed to build sustainable transport,' said Tesla CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk. Tesla expects the Model S to ship in late 2011 and the base cost to be $57,400 ($49,900 after a federal tax credit). Ford received $5.9B and Nissan received $1.6B under the same program."

eldavojohn writes "CNN is running an article on a new angle of attack to reducing greenhouse gases. After meeting with the US Department of Energy on the concept, the researchers revealed the details that each 'tree' (really a small building structure in the concept design) would cost about as much as a Toyota and remove 1 ton of CO2 from the air per day. Don't worry, they're accounting for the energy the 'tree' uses to operate: 'By the time we make liquid C02 we have spent approximately 50 kilojoules [of electricity] per mole of C02. Compare that to the average power plant in the US, which produces one mole of C02 with every 230 kilojoules of electricity. In other words, if we simply plugged our device in to the power grid to satisfy its energy needs, for every roughly 1,000 kilograms [of carbon dioxide] we collected we would re-emit 200, so 800 we can chalk up as having been successful.' Each unit would remove 20 automobiles' worth of CO2 from the air and cost about as much as a Toyota... so the plan might be a five percent surcharge on automobiles to fund these synthetic tree farms."

18-year-old Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting and fever for eight years. She often missed school and her doctors were unable to figure out the cause of her sickness. Then one day in January someone was finally figured out what was wrong with Jessica. That person was her. While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue in her AP science class, Jessica noticed an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, which is an indication of Crohn's disease. "It's weird I had to solve my own medical problem," Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO in Seattle, Washington. "There were just no answers anywhere. ... I was always sick."

With Mr. Ravenblade, Mr. Xtreme, and Dark Guardian on patrol the streets are...probably just as dangerous as before but they are definitely a bit more awkward. Ever increasing numbers of average, everyday people are donning capes, masks, and boots to perform community service, help the homeless and even fight crime. "The movement is growing. A lot of them have gone through a sort of existential crisis and have had to discover who they are," said Ben Goldman, a real-life superhero historian.

niktemadur writes "In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus, and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon, 'Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,' the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question 'What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?' Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009. Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten."

An anonymous reader writes in to note that GM will sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. of China, a little-known industrial firm. For now, the deal will save 3,000 jobs in the US. (The military HumVees are made by a separate company and are not involved in this deal.) "As part of the deal, some GM plants will continue to build the Hummer brand for the new owner, at least for awhile. The company said its Shreveport, La., plant will keep building Hummers for the new owner until at least 2010. ... GM said it sold 5,013 Hummers worldwide in the first quarter, down 62% from the 13,050 that it sold in the same period the prior year." AP coverage has more details on GM's planned divestitures, including the shedding of Pontiac, Saturn, and Saab.

An anonymous reader sends in a story at CNN about how our predictions for the future tend to be somewhat accurate (whether or not we can do a thing) yet often too optimistic (whether or not it's practical). Obvious example: jetpacks. Quoting: "Joseph Corn, co-author of 'Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future,' found an inflated optimism about technology's impact on the future as far back as the 19th century, when writers like Jules Verne were creating wondrous versions of the future. Even then, people had a misplaced faith in the power of inventions to make life easier, Corn says. For example, the typical 19th-century American city was crowded and smelly. The problem was horses. They created traffic jams, filled the streets with their droppings and, when they died, their carcasses. But around the turn of the 20th century, Americans were predicting that another miraculous invention would deliver them from the burden of the horse and hurried urban life — the automobile, Corn says. 'There were a lot of predictions associated with early automobiles,' Corn says. 'They would help eliminate congestion in the city and the messy, unsanitary streets of the city.' Corn says Americans' faith in the power of technology to reshape the future is due in part to their history. Americans have never accepted a radical political transformation that would change their future. They prefer technology, not radical politics, to propel social change."

viyh writes with an update to the ongoing legal troubles faced by Craigslist over their adult-services ads. According to CNN, a South Carolina judge has told the office of the state's Attorney General, Henry McMaster, to cease their efforts to bring criminal charges against the operators of Craigslist. "On Friday, Judge Weston Houck granted Craigslist's request for a temporary restraining order preventing McMaster and his employees from 'initiating or pursuing [any] prosecution against Craigslist or its officers and employees in relation to content posted by third parties on Craigslist's Web site' until the court rules on the merits of the site's lawsuit. Craigslist's lawsuit cites an interview McMaster gave to Fox News on Monday, in which he likened the site 'to a hotel or motel owner that knows prostitution is going on on their premises and fails to do anything about it especially after having been told.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Not content to simply follow the 'anything to protect American lives' mantra, freshman Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has introduced a bill to prohibit mandatory full body scans at airports. Chaffetz states, 'The images offer a disturbingly accurate view of a person's body underneath clothing ... Americans should not be required to expose their bodies in this manner in order to fly.' He goes on to note that the ACLU has expressed support for the bill. Maybe we don't need tin-foil sports coats to go with our tin-foil hats. For reference, the Daily Herald has a story featuring images from the millimeter wavelength imager, and we've talked about the scanners before."

bkuhn writes "The ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation have filed a lawsuit charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer are unconstitutional and invalid. The lawsuit (PDF) was filed on behalf of four scientific organizations representing more than 150,000 geneticists, pathologists, and laboratory professionals, as well as individual researchers, breast cancer and women's health groups, and individual women. Individuals with certain mutations along these two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are at a significantly higher risk for developing hereditary breast and ovarian cancers."

Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is getting creative with its recruitment marketing. They have made a well produced eighteen-minute video complete with a hip-hop jihad feel. A voice raps, "Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell," during part of the recruitment tape. Intelligence experts say the video was recently made and comes on the heels of an audio message in March purportedly from Osama bin Laden. Industry insiders are intrigued by the tape, but point out that it fails to include any special appearances by other fledgling groups, which is a necessity in today's terrorist hip-hop market.

Marxist writes "The government of Mexico advises people to avoid shaking hands or kissing as a greeting, so what could the people do instead when meeting a friend? As social distancing becomes the norm due to swine flu, CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, advocates the el-bump, or bumping your elbows, as an alternative greeting that serves people's social needs while keeping them safer from swine flu compared to shaking hands. Probably we can expect more etiquette innovations as the swine flu virus spreads arround."

Solarch writes "Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the WHO raised the pandemic threat level for H1N1 "swine flu" to 5. Global media outlets(such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC) preempted normal broadcast coverage and immediately published stories on their websites. To clarify, the WHO's elevation is mainly a sign to governments that the virus is spreading quickly and that steps should be taken on a governmental level to stage supplies and medicines to combat a possible pandemic. Unfortunately, broadcast coverage focused on phrases like 'pandemic imminent' (CNN marquee). In other news, patient zero, the medical term for the initial human vector of a disease, has been tentatively identified in Mexico."

Solarch writes "Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, the WHO raised the pandemic threat level for H1N1 "swine flu" to 5. Global media outlets(such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC) preempted normal broadcast coverage and immediately published stories on their websites. To clarify, the WHO's elevation is mainly a sign to governments that the virus is spreading quickly and that steps should be taken on a governmental level to stage supplies and medicines to combat a possible pandemic. Unfortunately, broadcast coverage focused on phrases like 'pandemic imminent' (CNN marquee). In other news, patient zero, the medical term for the initial human vector of a disease, has been tentatively identified in Mexico."

mallumax sends word from the NYTimes that US government officials today declared a public health emergency over increasing cases of the swine flu first seen in Mexico. Here is additional coverage from CNN. From the Times: "American health officials [say]... that they had confirmed 20 cases of the disease in the United States and expected to see more as investigators fan out to track down the path of the outbreak. Other governments around the world stepped up their response to the incipient outbreak, racing to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases from New Zealand to Hong Kong to Spain, raising concerns about the potential for a global pandemic. The cases in US looked to be similar to the deadly strain of swine flu that has killed more than 80 people in Mexico and infected 1,300 more." Reader "The man who walks in the woods" sends a link to accounts emailed to the BBC from readers in Mexico. While these are anecdotal, they do paint a picture of a more serious situation than government announcements have indicated so far.

nandemoari writes "With only a few weeks until Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices." Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company's 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.

The large sums of ransom money being paid out to pirates has led some Somali women to venture to the port town of Bosaso in hopes of finding a treasure map to their heart. Kaj Larsen, a former US Navy SEAL says, "One of the interesting demographic things that's happening right now is that single Somali women are flocking to the port town Bosaso where these pirates come out of in the hopes of marrying a pirate. So you can see that it really is — the root conditions of poverty, lawlessness and civil war on the ground in Somalia are really what are breeding this problem."

palegray.net writes "CNN is running an article on the notorious effects of caffeine withdrawal, a problem that seems to be affecting an increasing number of people. Citing numerous reasons why people might need to cut back on their caffeine intake (pregnancy, pre-surgery requirements, etc), the story notes a significant number of people who are simply unable to quit. I drink around eight cups of coffee a day, along with a soda or two, and I definitely suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms without my fix."

MollyB sends this excerpt from CNN: "A large ice shelf is 'imminently' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday. Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said. ... The Wilkins Ice Shelf — a large mass of floating ice — would still be connected to Latady Island, which is also part of the peninsula, and Alexander Island, which is not, said professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ... If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say. Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse."

ByOhTek writes "A man is being charged for driving under the influence, on a motorized bar stool. He stated that it was only a minor accident, from the report, nobody else was injured. According to the police report, 'Wygle claims his unique vehicle can reach a speed of 38 miles per hour, though at the time of the crash he was going around 20.' At 38 miles per hour, he could do a lot of harm if he struck someone. Should such a vehicle be considered when DUI charges are applied?"

cjstaples noted a CNN story proclaiming that Jupiter's signature red spot is shrinking. Over a 10 year study, the giant storm lost just over half a kilometer per day for a total loss of about 15%. Scientists know about shrinkage, right?

SpuriousLogic sends in a CNN report that begins "The Supreme Court has passed up a chance to examine how far states can go to restrict unsolicited e-mails in efforts to block spammers from bombarding computer users. The high court without comment Monday rejected Virginia's appeal to keep its Computer Crimes Act in place. It was one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation, the only one to ban noncommercial — as well as commercial — spam e-mail to consumers in that state. The justices' refusal to intervene also means the conviction of prolific commercial spammer Jeremy Jaynes will not be reinstated." Jaynes remains behind bars because of a federal securities fraud conviction unrelated to the matter of spamming.

tritonman writes "A new scientific study suggests that crabs can feel and remember pain. From the article: '"More research is needed in this area where a potentially very large problem is being ignored," said Elwood. Legislation to protect crustaceans has been proposed but it is likely to cover only scientific research. Millions of crustacean are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry. There is no protection for these animals (with the possible exception of certain states in Australia) as the presumption is that they cannot experience pain.' Perhaps soon there will be a study to determine that vegetables feel pain as well, then all of the vegans will only be allowed to eat rocks."

theatrecade was one of a few folks to note that Google Labs has added the five-second rule to email. Once upon a time this rule only applied to delicious foodstuffs dropped on the floor, but at long last you can change your mind on that email to your boss or ex. We shall see peace in our lifetimes.

cryfreedomlove brings news that YouTube has once again been blocked in China. The Google-owned video site was censored in China last year because of videos about the protests in Tibet, and that may be the impetus behind this latest restriction. According to a New York Times report, "'The instant speculation is that YouTube is being blocked because the Tibetan government in exile released a particular video,' said Xiao Qiang, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley... Mr. Xiao said that the blocking of YouTube fit with what appeared to be an effort by China to step up its censorship of the Internet in recent months. Mr. Xiao said he was not surprised that YouTube was a target. It also hosts videos about the Tiananmen Square protests and many other subjects that Chinese authorities find objectionable."

Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN is reporting that the page recovery.gov is not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are: 1. The user is greeted by a large pie chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions. 2. Finding projects involves a complicated search, information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov 3. The format of the information available is of poor quality (the article specifically mentions a PDF document that was created from a scanned sideways copy of roadwork projects from New York state). Given that this site was meant to make the spending of the new stimulus money more transparent to the citizens of the Unites States of America it seems oddly opaque. CNN does seem to praise the ability for government agencies to be able to exchange HTML based information between systems, which for government I would call a massive accomplishment. I tried to find information for my state and searched for Minnesota. I got 4 matches, 2 of which were generic ones: one was the Minnesota state certification that is required for a state to receive funds and one that lays out public transportation spending for all states of which Minnesota gets $94,093,115."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A New Zealand court has allowed a plaintiff to serve papers on a defendant via Facebook, following a similar ruling from an Australian court last year. But as these rulings do not necessarily mean, as Facebook announced in a press release, that the courts have endorsed Facebook 'as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.' The trend could lead to abuses if courts start taking 'Facebook service' too seriously." For more of the many words written by Bennett, hop on that curiously named link right below.

A New Zealand court has ruled that a plaintiff can serve papers on a defendant via a message sent to their Facebook account. Last December, an Australian court ruled that a company could serve papers on a couple after failed attempts to reach them by regular mail and e-mail. Facebook responded to the ruling with a statement that said, "We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication. The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people's lives." I think there are two interesting questions here: (1) Is that really how courts view service via Facebook? And (2) What will happen if courts do begin to view service via Facebook that way?

As to the first question — the court's endorsement of service via Facebook does not mean that they think the service is necessarily secure or reliable. Courts often let you serve papers on a party in a court case via means that are less reliable than normal channels, provided that you've exhausted the more reliable means first. When I was trying to earn my way into heaven by suing spammers in Small Claims court, some states allowed corporations to be served by serving the papers on the Secretary of State in the corporation's home state, but only if you could prove that you had tried and failed to serve the corporation at their registered address. In cases where I served the Secretary of State, it's unlikely that the defendant ever even saw the papers (since the only thing the Secretary of State could do with them was forward them to the defendants' address on file, where I'd already tried to locate them), but it still "counted" because I had exhausted the regular means of serving the documents. Sometimes when serving an individual, if the sheriff couldn't reach someone at home, a judge would sign an order allowing the legal papers to be stuck to their front door (which is neither "secure" nor "reliable"), but only after the sheriff had been unable to deliver it to them in person. So a court's endorsement of Facebook as a means of service doesn't necessarily mean the court thinks that the means of service is reliable. It just means it's a good last resort when conventional methods haven't worked.

Facebook is not, after all, secure or reliable, although these limitations are not the fault of Facebook itself. By "not reliable," I don't mean that it loses or mis-routes messages — I've never seen that happen — but that you have no idea whether someone has signed in to read a message, or deleted it by accident, or lost it among all the other messages that they received. As for whether it's "secure," like most services, the greatest weakness in Facebook's security is in the 'forgot your password' feature — if you compromise someone's e-mail account, then you can have a password reset link sent to their e-mail address and compromise their Facebook account as well. So your Facebook account is only as secure as your e-mail account, and e-mail accounts are usually vulnerable in their own "forgot your password" feature, which often lets you access someone's e-mail account just by knowing their birth date, their zip code, and the answer to an easy question like "Who is your favorite fictional character?" And in any case, obtaining "service" via Facebook doesn't preclude the possibility that the person you served on Facebook was an impostor, or another person who happened to have the same name.

What would really change the game would be if courts started ruling that service via Facebook was valid even without first attempting to serve a party via mail or other means. I had my own experience with a case like this in 2000, when programmers Matthew Skala and Eddy Jansson released a program called "CPHack" which could decode the encrypted list of sites blocked by a program called Cyber Patrol, so that people who owned copies of the program could use CPHack to decrypt the list of blocked sites. (One of the more controversial aspects of such blocking software is that the list of blocked sites is hidden from purchasers of the program.) A judge granted Cyber Patrol a ruling forbidding the authors from distributing the program, and ordering anyone hosting a mirror copy of the program to remove it as well. That same day, I received a copy of the ruling via e-mail from Cyber Patrol's lawyer, ordering us to remove the mirror from the Peacefire site. I asked a lawyer if that was considered valid service (this was back when I still thought that a legal question like that always had an objective answer, as opposed to the question of "valid service" being an entirely subjective one that depended on what judge you happened to get), and he said that I shouldn't take any chances and should take the mirror down anyway, which we did. Dozens of other mirror sites, which had sprung up in anticipation of the legal controversy, were also served with papers, although the overseas ones mostly ignored them.

So this was very different from a ruling made by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals two years later, allowing a Las Vegas casino to serve an offshore company via e-mail because regular methods had failed. The court in that case wrote, "When faced with an international e-business scofflaw playing hide-and-seek with the federal court, e-mail may be the only means of effecting service of process." But I was a domestic scofflaw whose mailing address was publicly known (in the WHOIS registration for the Peacefire site). What was the rationale for allowing me to be served by e-mail?

Unfortunately I think it's probably just a case where the rules were vague enough that the judge felt entitled to bend them to achieve an outcome that he wanted. The 9th Circuit didn't leave much doubt as to the level of objectivity in their ruling on e-mail service either, in calling the defendant an "international e-business scofflaw."

And these are the two main reasons why I think that allowing electronic "insta-service" via e-mail or Facebook — in cases where parties have not first tried to serve papers via regular means — would erode the rights of the little guy. First, in most of the cases I can think of where a powerful plaintiff was playing "whack-a-mole" with multiple defendants by using electronic service of process to shut down new sites as fast as they were springing up, the goal they were trying to achieve was (a) futile, if half the mirror sites were overseas anyway, and (b) ultimately incompatible with civil liberties. (Why shouldn't people have the right to decrypt the list of sites blocked by Cyber Patrol? After the ACLU got involved on appeal, a higher court ultimately ruled that mirror sites could not be ordered to take down CPHack. The HD DVD encryption key controversy is another well-known example.) In cases where a plaintiff has a legitimate claim against multiple sites — for example, sites that are violating the plaintiff's copyright by hosting unauthorized copies of content that they own — most service providers already publish an e-mail address where copyright owners can send a DMCA takedown notice, and where the copyright owner is risking large statutory financial penalties if they send a takedown notice that turns out to be baseless. There are no similar protections to prevent abuses of the system through electronic service of other kinds of legal notices.

The other reason this trend could work against the average person, is that any vague rule that is not consistently followed by different judges, puts non-lawyers at a disadvantage in court. Partly because it may confuse non-lawyers who hear that e-mail service was allowed in one case, and think that's part of "the rules," and then find that e-mail service was disallowed in another case, and wonder how "the rules" could allow it in one case but not in another, all the while laboring under the mistaken impression that there actually are "rules" which unambiguously determine whether or not e-mail service is allowed, when the truth is that it's just up to each individual judge. But also because every ambiguity in the rules is another opportunity for the judge's prejudices to influence the outcome. I do not think that most judges are prejudiced against people based on race or gender, but I doubt you could find any legal professional who thinks that most judges would take a case equally seriously regardless of whether it was brought by a professional lawyer or by a layperson representing themselves. (At one point in my spammer-suing career, I had only about a 50-50 chance of my motions even being read.)

So, let's not get carried away applauding judges for being "hip" and "with it" for allowing service via e-mail or Facebook. And if they start allowing it more frequently, can we at least ask that they pick one rule and stick with it?

Muad'Dave writes "CNN is reporting that the crew of the International Space Station was forced to take refuge from a possible collision of the ISS with a piece of space debris Thursday. From the article: 'Floating debris from a satellite forced the crew of the international space station to retreat to a safety capsule Thursday, according to a NASA news release. .. The debris was too close for the space station to move out of the way, so the station's three crew members were temporarily evacuated to a the station's Soyuz TMA-13 capsule, NASA said.'" Update: 03/12 18:42 GMT by T : The original story incorrectly said the ISS had 18 crew members. Luckily for the three in the Soyuz, that was a mistake.

Workers at a state school for mentally handicapped adults in Texas are accused of staging a "fight club" among residents. A cell phone containing videos of the fights, believed to have taken place in a school dormitory at the Corpus Christi State School, was turned over to police. Corpus Christi police Capt. Tim Wilson said, "This has been going on for some time. That is what makes this an exceptional case. It is not the workers abusing the clients, so to speak. The workers are not hitting them, but they are allowing these clients to fight with each other, thereby endangering their well-being. These people are charged with the care and custody of these clients, and they are exploiting (them)." The first and second rule of running a school for the mentally disabled is, no fight club.

je ne sais quoi writes "The Apple rumor mill is churning today. Reuters and the DOW Jones news wire are reporting that an anonymous source in Taiwan has leaked that Apple has ordered some 10-inch touch-screens from WinTek, the maker of the touch-screen for the iPhone. It looks like an Apple netbook could possibly be in the works for a delivery date in Q3 of this year, in time for back-to-school sales. CNET and Engadget have completely unsubstantiated mock-ups."

thefickler writes "The credit crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for newspapers, which were already suffering at the hands of the Internet. Now it seems that the Hearst Corporation is planning to launch an e-reader later this year to try to save its dwindling newspaper readerships. Apparently the e-reader will have a bigger screen than the Kindle, helping it to accommodate ads. It's not clear whether Hearst will go it alone, or try to gather wider industry support for its venture. As one pundit observed, 'it seems a slender thread on which to hang the entire American newspaper industry.'"

Ben Burtt was robbed of his overly deserved Oscars for the sound on Wall-E, and Heath Ledger's Joker unsurprisingly got a posthumous statue, but the big winner for the night was Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire with Picture, Director, Song, and five others. Go ahead movie nerds: talk amongst yourself.

rarel writes "CNN and other media outlets report that Facebook reverted their TOS update and went back to using the previous one. 'The site posted a brief message on users' home pages that said it was returning to its previous "Terms of Use" policy "while we resolve the issues that people have raised."' Facebook's controversial changes to its Terms of Service, previously commented on Slashdot, included a mention that (users) 'may remove (their) User Content from the Site at any time. ... However, (they) acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of (their) User Content,' triggering a massive uproar from users and privacy groups."

A Chinese man who could no longer afford his five mistresses held a competition to determine which one he'd keep. The man held a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold. The competition turned deadly when one of his special lady friends drove the man and her four competitors off a cliff. This demonstrates what a bad idea it is to have a driving round in your mistress-off.

gclef writes "Buried deep in the details of the US stimulus package is an interesting provision that might go a long way toward helping Open Source software break into the medical area. It says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services should study the availability of open source health technology systems (PDF, page 488), compare their TCO against proprietary systems and report on what they find no later than Oct 1, 2010. Slashdotters may also be interested in the language that starts on page 553 of that PDF to see just what the final package says about broadband." The stimulus plan was approved by the Senate on Friday and is expected to be signed by President Obama by Monday.

the4thdimension writes "CNN is running an article covering the technology used at Sea-Tac for preventing airplane bird strikes, like the one that occurred weeks ago to the now famous Flight 1549. The hardware used ranges from low-tech pyrotechnics, to netting, to lasers, to avian radar. Using a combination of all these technologies, Sea-Tac believes they save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in avoiding dangerous bird strikes."

pdabbadabba points out a CNN report on changes to the planned economic stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [PDF]) that will remove the $2 billion allocated to broadband development. The changes also eliminated smaller amounts allocated to NASA, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation. $16 billion in school construction funding was removed, as well as another $3.5 billion for higher education construction. A variety of environmental projects were also cut or reduced (half of the $7 billion set aside for energy-efficient federal buildings, half of the $600 million for hybrid federal vehicles), and over $8 billion in health-related provisions are gone. The bill will likely go to vote in the Senate on Tuesday.

It's fair to call Barbara and Scott Humpherys penny-pinchers, and they are making sure their daughters end up the same way. The family scours parking lots, sidewalks and every other place you can imagine for for other people's lost money. "It's not so much that we need the money," Barbara said, "it's to show an example to our children. The more change you see, that penny becomes 99 more, and it becomes a dollar." "With the economy the way it is right now, it's important that they realize Dad is not this endless tap of cash," added Scott, a U.S. Army career counselor. I think this is a great thing to do with your family. It teaches resourcefulness, financial responsibility and that child hands are the perfect size for slipping between sewer grates.

In order to demonstrate the ridiculousness of some recent studies which grabbed media headlines by claiming "links" between video games and all sorts of negative behavior (such as violence and the lower-quality relationships), Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera did an experiment of his own: "I started calling people I knew, and I asked if they had one or more video games in the house. Then I asked if they breast-fed their children. To my great shock, most answered 'yes' to both. One couple I contacted switched to formula after their child's birth, and told me that they didn't play video games. The data, based on my first round of calls, was conclusive: if you play video games, you are much more likely to breast-feed your children. You're probably ready to shoot five thousand holes in my argument. ... I did my job though, and you clicked on the headline." He goes on point out flaws in media reports and legislation involving such claims.

jamie found a story on research about what concussions do to athletes, with the insights coming mostly from the study of the donated brains of dead athletes. The NFL has the biggest profile in the piece, but other sports make an appearance too. Turns out that repeated concussions can result in depression, insomnia, and the beginnings of something that looks a lot like Alzheimer's. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."

bradgoodman writes to tell us that tomorrow will mark the 25th anniversary of the first Macintosh, debuting just 2 days after the famous Super Bowl XVIII commercial. "'The Macintosh demonstrated that it was possible and profitable to create a machine to be used by millions and millions of people,' said Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, research director for the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, California, think tank, and chief force behind 'Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley,' an online historical exhibit. 'The gold standard now for personal electronics is, "Is it easy enough for my grandmother to use it?" People on the Macintosh project were the first people to talk about a product in that way.'"

dogmatixpsych writes "The FDA recently approved a privately funded study where human embryonic stem cells will be transplanted into subjects with complete spinal cord injuries. All trials will be paid for and conducted by researchers working for Geron Corporation. The stem cells come from the existing lines Pres. Bush approved federal funding for in August 2001. With Barack Obama now president, many scientists believe federal funding will soon become available for embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines, resulting in additional similar studies."

Normally I try to avoid posting straight business news, but I think that these 3 stories combine to something meaningful. Muleguy noted Microsoft is laying off 5,000, Mspangler reports that Intel is cutting 5-6k, while nonyabidness afraid4myjob submitted that IBM Layoffs have begun with no number, but estimates as high as 16,000.

bsharma is amongst the hordes of people wanting us to share the news that long beleaguered retailer Circuit City has finally decided to close for good, asking for court approval to close the remaining 567 US stores. "Whalin said management mistakes over the past few years combined with the recession brought down Circuit City. 'This company made massive mistakes,' he said, citing a decision to get rid of sales people and other mismanagement. What's more, given the credit market freeze, Whalin added that no manufacturer wants to sell to any retailer who doesn't have money to pay for the merchandise. At the same time, Whalin said there's still a very slim chance that one or more firms that have expressed an interest in buying Circuit City could still buy it out of bankruptcy over the next few days."

An anonymous reader writes "In two weeks, older emergency locator beacons will no longer be monitored by satellites. USA Today noticed that 85% of private aircraft in the US have not switched to the 406 MHz beacons. I thought I'd send up a flare about this. And this should not be relevant to the airplane which landed in the Hudson River today, as that was a commercial plane and its location was known by a number of bystanders, one of whom helped crash TwitPic."

An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."

Misch writes "Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) will be taking the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Rep. Boucher has been an advocate for consumers rights, is a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and has participated in a Slashdot Interview. He was instrumental in defeating key escrow, back in the day."

An anonymous reader writes "From the CNN Political Ticker: "Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry."" I guess these hard economic times are a bit too much to swallow for everyone.