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Slashback: Little Red Hoax, Firefly, Google

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including the "Little Red Hoax", a follow up on the Firefly post-mortem, another episode in the Intelligent Design battle, the EU's Galileo project gets off the ground, deconstructing AOL's decision to go with Google over Microsoft, endgame for the Blackberry patent case and more. Read on for details.

A little red hoax. MyNameIsFred writes "In an earlier Slashdot story, it was reported that a student was investigated for requesting Mao's Little Red Book on inter-library loan. It appears that the story was a hoax."

Firefly franchise death greatly exaggerated. Kazzahdrane writes "Joss Whedon has spoken out against the Entertainment Weekly that claimed he has turned his back on the Firefly/Serenity franchise. From his post at Whedonesque: 'All right, now I have to jump in and set the record straight. EW is a fine rag, but they do take things out of context. Obviously when I said I had "closure", what I meant was "I hate Serenity, I hated Firefly, I think my fans are stupid and Nathan Fillion smells like turnips." But EW's always got to put some weird negative spin on it.'"

Intelligent Design tantamount to teaching religion. rcs1000 writes "After much deliberation Judge John Jones has ruled that teaching Intelligent Design is tantamount to teaching religion. The judge was pretty forthright, arguing that 'it is unconstitutional to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'"

EU launches first Galileo navigation satellite. Xserv writes "The EU launched the first in the series of Galileo Navigation Satellites signifying the start of a lessening of dependency on US Military GPS Systems in Europe. The new Galileo system is touted to be much more accurate and will also be more accessible on higher latitude zones where the US GPS system is known to be less than ideal."

Why AOL chose Google over Microsoft. gambit3 writes to tell us that the Wall Street Journal has a nice article deconstructing AOL's decision to go with Google instead of Microsoft. From the article: "Two weeks ago, when Time Warner Inc. was on the cusp of signing a sweeping online deal with Microsoft Corp., a team of executives from the media company's AOL unit traveled to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to make sure everything was in order. When the executives returned, they reported back to Time Warner's top deal negotiator, Olaf Olafsson, with some less-than-satisfactory findings. They had found some of Microsoft's technology to be clunky, while the contemplated joint venture with the software king contained what they thought were financial pitfalls."

Endgame in Blackberry patent case. waynegoode writes "The New York Times is reporting that a recent decision could spell the end of the NTP vs. RIM Blackberry case. The US Patent Office apparently took the unusual step of telling NTP & RIM it will likely reject all 5 of NTP's patents, meaning the basis for NTP's lawsuit and it's billion dollar claim will most likely disappear. This puts pressure on the judge to not issue an injunction against RIM but to instead delay until the USPTO gets around to actually rejecting the patents."

Katrina aftermath still making waves. An anonymous reader writes "Approximately 50 people have been indicted in relation to a scheme that drained almost $200,000 from a Red Cross fund designed to put money into the hands of Hurricane Katrina victims. From the article: 'Seventeen of the accused worked at the Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, Calif., which handled calls from storm victims across the country and authorized cash payments to them. The others were the workers' relatives and friends, prosecutors said last week.'"

More cloning doubts emerge. LukePieStalker writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that the South Korean cloning team whose troubles have recently been chronicled here on Slashdot used "borrowed" photos in their Science journal article that "appear in the journal Molecules and Cells, in a research article by another Korean team, submitted before the Science paper". In the earlier article, the cells in the photo are described as having been created without cloning."

4 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. RIM is getting special treatment by bodrell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with the 10% of Blackberry users who work for the federal government. Don't get me wrong--I'm also sure NTP's patents are bogus, but that hasn't stopped the millions of other bogus patents (such as Myriad Genetics' downright immoral patent of breast cancer genes), or any of the many software patents that keep popping up in /. articles. Why the special treatment for RIM? If I were less cynical, I'd think this was the dawn of an age of rejecting bogus patents, but let's be realistic.

    --
    Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
  2. Re:A little red hoax by geekoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These orginization did not make up the story, they reported what the person said happened.
    Of course they jumped on it, they should have, no matter who is in office.
    The person who failed here is the liar.

    I am so sick of hearing the media called 'liberal'. There is no liberal media, and looking at how they lambasted Clinton over his lie ought to prove that. But then, who would people have to blame for the failings of there party?

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. Hoax Hoax? by lousyd · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just for the record, if you believed so readily in the "fact" that Homeland Security was visiting this guy for requesting the Little Red Book, then what makes you think you're not doing it again with the "fact" that it's a hoax? Is there any more evidence or proof that it's a hoax than that it was true in the first place? If an article on the Internet can deceive you in the first place, what makes you think it's set you straight now?

    Just food for thought. I believe there is a reality, and that there's a truth in this situation. But I'm not sure I have the evidence for what it is. "It's a hoax!" just means that we have to start thinking rationally and not be so ready to accept everything we read. Let's start right here.

    --
    If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
  4. Re:Intelligent Design tantamount to teaching relig by phritz · · Score: 3, Interesting
    How do you prove a negative?

    Two ways:
    1)if a theory says A is true, find an example where A is not true. I.e., a counter-example = proof of a negative.
    2)Logical deduction, i.e. mathematical proof. Hidden variables are proved not to exist by a mathematical theorem (Bell's Theorem, specifically).

    You can't prove there's no god, because God isn't formulated as a scientific theory. You can prove there are no hidden variables, since quantum mechanics is a scientific theory.