Slashdot Mirror

Makarand writes "The height of the tropopause, the boundary layer between the troposphere and stratosphere and the roof of the Earth's lower atmosphere, has risen by an average of around 650 feet globally over the last 22 years according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation and warm the troposphere. The resulting tropospheric expansion is moving the tropopause upward. Also, the ozone depleted stratosphere is losing its ability to absorb sunlight causing it to cool and contract pulling the tropopause upward."

linuxwrangler writes "One hopes the /. crowd knows the perils of discarding storage with sensitive data but this article drives home the point. Two MIT grad students bought used drives from eBay and secondhand computer stores. Among the data found on the 158 drives were 5,000 credit-card numbers, porn, love-letters and medical information."

The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about laid-off techies getting desperate and going to work for, well, nothing. No offense to these people, if you're up against the wall you do whatever you can, but I hope they're aware that most of them are not going to get even the slightest compensation for their time.

DrewCapu writes "The SF Chronicle has an article which talks about the battles between SBC and AT&T & MCI over supposed unfair practices concerning DSL and switching phone companies. All sides have their own spin on it. Can't we all just get along? Things have been heating up ever since SBC got closer to offering LD in CA."

DrewCapu writes "The SF Chronicle has an article which talks about the battles between SBC and AT&T & MCI over supposed unfair practices concerning DSL and switching phone companies. All sides have their own spin on it. Can't we all just get along? Things have been heating up ever since SBC got closer to offering LD in CA."

DrewCapu writes "The SF Chronicle has an article which talks about the battles between SBC and AT&T & MCI over supposed unfair practices concerning DSL and switching phone companies. All sides have their own spin on it. Can't we all just get along? Things have been heating up ever since SBC got closer to offering LD in CA."

MarkRH writes "I know, it looked like a troll to me too. But apparently a Pentagon-funded group, the Highlands Forum, is investigating the possibility of fighting terrorism by postulating that terrorist networks are similar to the online communities found in MMORPGs. By studying interaction within a community like Everquest, the military hopes to find hints on how to crack Al Qaeda." See also the "Uncloaking Terrorist Networks" post of several months back.

linuxwrangler writes "After radiation damaged the recorders on Galileo it was feared that the data from the November flyby of Amalthea would be lost. Today NASA announced that they have repaired the recorder and are busy downloading the data. Meanwhile they also contacted pioneer 10 (64 bytes from pioneer10.nasa.gov: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=80700000 ms)"

simeonbeta2 writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about Pac Bell's dsl partnership with Yahoo. Initially touted as a new service, Pac Bell is apparently now mailing existing dsl customers to urge them to install additional client software that will enable 'incredible new features and services'. While SBC's privacy policy is not excessively intrusive, use of the new software is covered by Yahoo's privacy policy, which is just a bit more Orwellian." The story's a little overblown - Yahoo's privacy policy reads that way because they offer financial services and the like, where they may well need financial information from you to provide the service. The reporter needed to investigate this new software DSL users are being asked to install, and find out what sort of user tracking it enables.

CgiJobs writes "The critics aren't much impressed with the new Star trek: "The 10th entry in the Star Trek movie franchise ... is the dullest and drabbest of the lot"; "this ship-bound and lackluster entry tells a rather harebrained story"; "suffers from a nasty case of the cutes"; More at Google News. Of course, I'll still be going to see it." Calling this movie the worst of the series is a pretty harsh criticism...

Reader NCC1701E submitted a short write-up on the movie:

"First, the executive summary: wait for the video. Now, the Gory Details, in all their splendor. I somehow received an email invitation to an advance screening to the Paramount Theater in Times Square, here in NYC. I had to wait in line for 30 minutes, and there was some confusion in swapping my email print out for a pass. But they didn't even check names against a list; it was basically first-come, first served among those who had been inveigled there through various means. In the end, there were even some empty seats. The movie itself? Basically disappointing. IMHO, the weakest entry yet in the series. Production values and special effects were excellent. And it was great to see the movie in a big theater with Dolby sound. But NEMESIS is little more than a Western type "shoot out" movie. The bad guys attack. The good guys fight back, Then, there's more attacking and more fighting back. Then it happens again. And again. You get the idea. I'm a sucker for the hokey humanism that was the hallmark of Star Trek at its best. There was very little of that on display here. In fact, there was very little in the way of a plot. Just some mildly amusing cutesy scenes, plus some murky musings about the nature vs. nuture debate re: a Picard clone. So I didn't much care for the movie. And judging by the subdued response in the theater, neither did the audience. BTW, NY audiences can be cruel. This one snickered at corny lines that weren't supposed to be funny. The phrase "derisive laughter" leaps to mind. I predict NEMESIS will be a huge box office hit. But long-time fans may be as disappointed as I was."

SEWilco writes "A few years ago the life forms around deep-ocean thermal vents were a surprise. Now ancient bacteria alive in rock 2 miles down have been found. The story is in the San Francisco Chronicle. It is also at Nature.Com, but that server is already rejecting connects. Other bacteria survived frozen in the pressures of an ocean 100 miles deep. This increases the known limits of where life can exist on any planet. Thomas Gold undoubtedly is not surprised at hot, deep bacteria living on hydrogen."

linuxwrangler writes "Scientists in six countries have published a nearly-complete genetic code of the mouse. Results show striking similarities between human and mouse DNA and scientists are now working on side-beside mapping of the two genomes."

weakethics writes "The trial is scheduled to start today in the case of Adobe/DMCA versus Skylarov/Elcomsoft/right-thinking-people everywhere. The SF Chron has a story about it. It quotes a former DOJ attorney about the impact of the DMCA "I don't think it's had the effect that a lot of people have argued it would have -- with a single criminal case in four years." Who obviously (purposefully?) misses the point: it's about intimidation rather than litigation."

linuxwrangler writes "Criticizing the "loophole-filled deal" and saying "We are prepared to go it alone," Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly has announced that Massachusetts is appealing the Microsoft ruling. Seven other states have dropped out and are negotiating enforcement and attorney fees. West Virginia is still undecided on an appeal."

Makarand writes "If the claims made by the accomplished biophysicist Andras Pellionisz hold any water, life's blueprints may indeed be in fractal patterns found in the DNA. In a human, genes constitute only around 2-3% of the total DNA (the exons). The rest of the non-genic DNA (called introns) play a role that has not yet been understood and some have even suggested that these may merely be evolutionary leftovers. Removal of this "junk-DNA", however, has been proven to be lethal. The introns, he claims, may have the "building construction blueprints" in the form of fractal patterns that the exons use to build living tissue. A patent application covering attempts to count, measure and compare the fractal properties of introns for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes has been made. He hopes his patent will help him launch his company and make it a key player in this field."

linuxwrangler writes "Key3Media Group Inc. which produces the Comdex trade show may be unable to make it's debt payments and could declare bankruptcy. No decision will be made until after Fall Comdex opening on Monday. More info is available at Google News."

blamanj writes "According to a SF Chronicle story this morning, Pixar has been sued by artist Stanley Mouse. Mouse created a movie treatment titled "Excuse My Dust", which was set in "Monster City," where the animated monster characters worked for the "Monster Corporation of America." One of the characters was a a green, wisecracking, ambulatory eyeball. Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000, and discussed Mouse's work."

Hal Plotkin has a column pointing out a severe deficiency in how the U.S. government handles web sites - they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs. The practice of using official resources for partisan political purposes is not new - the big rush actually hit about 3-4 years ago - but we could make such better use of the web, if only...

I am Jack's username writes "The New York times has an article (no registration required) about an increase in profound autism in California of 273% between 1987 and 1998. Between 1999 and 2001 more than 6 500 cases were reported, similar to the number reported between 1970 to 1995. The increase cannot be accounted for by misdiagnosis, increased awareness, childhood immunizations, emigration, birth injuries, and genetics. Some autism experts think the actual cases to be dramatically more than reported in the UC study. See also previous discussions about high-function geek rich areas like silicon valley."

ohmygod2 wrote to us with a story from SF Gate that Apple, unsurprisingly, is going to be one of the purchasers of IBM's PowerPC 970. At this time, though, it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip.Update: 10/14 15:53 GMT by H : Follow-up to Tim's story.

Quaryon writes "The Patriot Act apears to have some chilling effects with respect to libraries and booksellers. An FBI agent can get a warrant, without any evidence, in order to compel a librarian to reveal lending details on a suspect. The librarian cannot tell anyone about the search, including the target of the search, and the details of how many such searches are done are not made public. Articles at SFGate News and Common Dreams give more details." We had a related Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago.

MooRogue points to this article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, which reports U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel's ruling that Paypal "attempts to isolate itself from challenges," noting "Judge Fogel also refused to dismiss the class-action lawsuit going against Paypal." I guess I've been lucky with PayPal so far, but I know a few people who haven't.

Ellen Spertus writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an interesting article on printer makers' ploys, such as lying about print speeds and selling printers with crippled cartridges. I'm sure that slashdot readers could identify more deceptions. Are there any printers that actually live up to the manufacturers' claims, ideally with Linux support?"

sphughes writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that banks, insurance companies and other corporations spent more than $20 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to defeat a recent consumer privacy bill SB773. The story can be found here. These are preliminary figures through July and may actually run much higher. The bill had been modified from opt-in to opt-out but was still killed."

sphughes writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that banks, insurance companies and other corporations spent more than $20 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to defeat a recent consumer privacy bill SB773. The story can be found here. These are preliminary figures through July and may actually run much higher. The bill had been modified from opt-in to opt-out but was still killed."

ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Covad, who filed for bankruptcy protection last year, is slowly regaining strength. With $246 million in cash, Covad claims it has enough to carry it to profitability. They've also struck a deal with AOL to provide high-speed connectivity to AOL customers. The battle isn't over, though, as Pacific Bell continues to undercut Covad's offerings. Covad is effectively Pacific Bell's only remaining competitor for DSL service. As a happy Covad customer through Speakeasy.net, I'm pleased I won't be forced into PacBell's or AT&T's hands any time soon."

ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Covad, who filed for bankruptcy protection last year, is slowly regaining strength. With $246 million in cash, Covad claims it has enough to carry it to profitability. They've also struck a deal with AOL to provide high-speed connectivity to AOL customers. The battle isn't over, though, as Pacific Bell continues to undercut Covad's offerings. Covad is effectively Pacific Bell's only remaining competitor for DSL service. As a happy Covad customer through Speakeasy.net, I'm pleased I won't be forced into PacBell's or AT&T's hands any time soon."

bhoman writes "The San Francisco Chronicle (sfgate.com) has an article today about Stanford biochemist Patrick O. Brown, who helped develop low-cost DNA microarrays for gene research. He is seeking $20M to start a foundation that would fund peer-review of research papers and then make them available for free over the web, thereby avoiding the high-cost of subscriptions common in existing research publications. Predictably, some publishers seem to be warning that their publishing model is hard to improve upon. The article mentions that a previous effort by Brown and others, The Public Library of Science garnered the signatures of 30,000 supporters, but then implies that it basically failed, suggesting that academics need the journals more than vice versa. Sounds like Brown's idea is exactly what the web is made for."

Bruce Perens writes: "At the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, Hal Plotkin points to Sincere Choice as the right compromise for an IT renaissance in Government including both Open Source and proprietary software. The article is extremely flattering to yours truly, but a good push in the right direction from a well-respected commentator."

Bruce Perens writes: "At the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, Hal Plotkin points to Sincere Choice as the right compromise for an IT renaissance in Government including both Open Source and proprietary software. The article is extremely flattering to yours truly, but a good push in the right direction from a well-respected commentator."

linuxwrangler writes "Fed up with junk faxes which have been illegal since 1991, a Silicon Valley businessman has launched a lawsuit against junk faxer fax.com. Steve Kirsch seeks the damages provided in the law: $500/fax for the last four years. If certified as a class-action on behalf of the 3 million receipients of the faxes that fax.com claims to send each day the total damages would reach 2.2 billion even without invoking the "triple-damages" clause for "willful" violations. Federal regulators hit fax.com with a 5.4 million fine just two weeks ago after the company ignored numerous warnings from the FCC and was found to be in "flagrant violation" of the law. Fax.com maintains that their actions are protected by the constitution and court decisions in this case could lay the foundation for the future of junk email regulation"

linuxwrangler writes "Fed up with junk faxes which have been illegal since 1991, a Silicon Valley businessman has launched a lawsuit against junk faxer fax.com. Steve Kirsch seeks the damages provided in the law: $500/fax for the last four years. If certified as a class-action on behalf of the 3 million receipients of the faxes that fax.com claims to send each day the total damages would reach 2.2 billion even without invoking the "triple-damages" clause for "willful" violations. Federal regulators hit fax.com with a 5.4 million fine just two weeks ago after the company ignored numerous warnings from the FCC and was found to be in "flagrant violation" of the law. Fax.com maintains that their actions are protected by the constitution and court decisions in this case could lay the foundation for the future of junk email regulation"

prostoalex writes "Every four years the Fields Medals are awarded to top mathematicians for outstanding research. This year's winners, as this San Francisco Chronicle article reports are Vladimir Voevodsky from Institute for Advanced Study and Laurent Lafforgue from Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques. 'True to form, Lafforgue and Voevodsky's mathematical research has no known practical applications', notes SF Chronicle."

linuxwrangler writes "This article in the San Francisco chronicle describes the new "Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center" software created at Sandia labs. Work started on the software, modeled after the popular Sim* series of games, well before 9/11. It is designed to simulate a "war room" atmosphere and looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use. Now if I could just download the tarball...." Be sure to examine the picture of it running on their CAVE like system.

linuxwrangler writes "This article in the San Francisco chronicle describes the new "Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center" software created at Sandia labs. Work started on the software, modeled after the popular Sim* series of games, well before 9/11. It is designed to simulate a "war room" atmosphere and looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use. Now if I could just download the tarball...." Be sure to examine the picture of it running on their CAVE like system.

linuxwrangler writes: "According to this article in the SF Chronicle, NASA lost contact with the Comet Nucleus Tour ('Contour') satellite just after firing engines to boost it out of orbit. The spacecraft was launched July 3 with the mission to probe comet Encke in 2003, Schwassman-Wachmann 3 in 2006 and perhaps d'Arrest in 2008. NASA is calculating possible trajectories in an attempt to search for and contact the probe. Let's hope they regain contact/control. This sounded like a cool project." Liquor adds: "The BBC has a report that indicates that the launch window for the $159M spacecraft closes tomorrow. If it hasn't successfully fired the engine by then, it can't make the planned mission."

obtuse writes "Direct monitoring of traffic sounds pretty cool, but some people don't want their toll transponders tracked. They aren't installing direct driver tracking for law enforcement now, but the collected data could be subpoenaed. Of course, anyone who didn't want to be tracked could just put it in the glovebox anyway, so they won't be catching clever felons or tracking real paranoiacs."

I thought CNN's gushing forth of breathless admiration in today's piece: 'Disposable cell phones on the way' sounded familiar. Yep, it's Hop-On, the same company Slashdotters took to task last March ('Disposable' Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia) after reading the San Francisco Chronicle's expose ("Sample 'new' cell phone really just modified Nokia [8260]"). Maybe this time the technology is for real. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical for my own good. Caveat lector.

MImeKillEr writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that states PacBell is going to be hit with a $27 million fine for "incorrectly billing" between 30,000 and 70,000 users for DSL access they didn't request or recieve, or received but didn't work, or cancelled, tacking late fees onto disputed charges, etc."

donkeyDevil writes "Forget free software, contribute to free books! The Chronicle has an interesting story about bookcrossing.com's effort to track feral books through their captors. Read about it, then do it. (Although the focus of the story is on Bay Arean book releasors, it looks like you'd have a better chance of snagging a free book here.)"

Five foot slide rules? Brass and Wood balances? Bakelite Metering Equipment. This and more are up on the block as a result of UC Berkeley's physics department wanting to clear out old gear (they need the room). The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about auction. Apparantly, about 20 items will be auctioned in a "test the waters" sales this Sunday, and the balance of the 1000 pieces will be sold July 28th...

YeOldeCurmudgeon writes "This story just posted on Yahoo: Federal Judge Denies Microsoft Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Case. Microsoft's motion to dismiss the suit filed by the 9 dissenting states was denied. The judge agrees the states can sue." An article in the San Francisco Chronicle summarizes the case's current state and what's coming up next.

guttentag writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bush's Homeland Security plan calls for transferring $1.2 billion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $1.5 billion budget to a new Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge. However, the plan transfers only 4 percent of the lab's employees. Ridge's explanation of the numbers: "I cannot give you the kind of explanation you need to deal with that imbalance." LLNL funded and houses the ASCI White supercomputer, among other cool projects." While Livermore has an impressive research record, we would miss most the laser lab from Tron.

stdin writes "Saw this on SFGate. Nanotech's first fruits are nearing the consumer market." Not little machines, yet, but a variety of products using very small components.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The FBI apparently used Carivore in an attempt to collect information on Osama bin Laden't network. Unfortunately they screwed up and collected information on "non-covered targets" (*ahem*, isn't this the sort of thing we weren't supposed to worry about...). Then the FBI tech was "so upset" that he destroyed ALL of the collected email, not only the information that was not covered by the warrant. Here is the SF Gate Story and EPIC's press release."

MikeKD writes "according to SFGate, KaZaA has announced that it will fold due to the cost of defending itself against the RIAA & MPAA. The timing is notable since on Monday, Altnet (owned by Brillant Digital) announced plans for "sponsored listings in peer-to-peer search" on its "separate [and] secure P2P resource-sharing network"."

MikeKD writes "according to SFGate, KaZaA has announced that it will fold due to the cost of defending itself against the RIAA & MPAA. The timing is notable since on Monday, Altnet (owned by Brillant Digital) announced plans for "sponsored listings in peer-to-peer search" on its "separate [and] secure P2P resource-sharing network"."

s20451 writes "Bell Labs' claims to have manufactured transistors consisting of a single-molecule switch are being met with skepticism in the scientific community, following difficulties in reproducing the experiment. Now a panel has been formed to investigate research misconduct related to not only that claim, but others regarding organic transistors." We've run several stories about the extremely tiny transistors and the innovative ways of assembling them which Lucent has been working on. A reader's summary of a subscriber-only story on Science's website suggests that there is strong evidence that some of the data in the published papers was faked.

An anonymous reader sent in news that AOL is settling a class action suit over their AOL 5.0 software, which usurped people's dial-up networking settings when installed. There's a website for the suit and a news article about the settlement. Of course, you have to admit you use AOL.

mpawlo writes "Creative Commons just opened to the public. From the initial statement: "We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works." Read also the article in the New York Times." There's also an older story that summarizes the concept behind the site, although I think their FAQ's do a pretty good job. A page at the Berkman Center documents some of the development of the project (although it doesn't render properly in konqueror for whatever reason). rbeattie describes it like so: "At O'Reilly's ongoing Emerging Technology Conference today, Creative Commons gave a presentation about their new service, an "easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution." They've provided an online wizard where you can choose the type of license and restrictions you want to put on your work, and then they'll provide a circled CC logo you can put on your website with links to the license. In addition they are providing search functionality for those looking for public domain content - the license is provided in "machine readable form" (read: XML probably) so that it can be easily indexed/searched."