Get Me The Geeks!: “The increasingly complicated electronics our society relies on have given rise to the geeks - the essential technicians who set up our gadgets, including TVs, computers and hand-held devices. Steve Kroft reports.
(Via 60 Minutes: CBSNews.com.)
A Pill To Forget?: “Many of us would pay top dollar for a pill that would enhance our ability to remember. But Lesley Stahl found a scientist who is far more excited about a pill that promises to do exactly the opposite.
(Via 60 Minutes: CBSNews.com.)
SCOTUS Case May End Sale Prices: “An anonymous reader writes ‘If you own a mom & pop store and can’t get rid of some of your inventory, you can always clear out some shelf space by holding a sale. If the Supreme Court sides with business interests in a case they heard today, however, such sales may no longer be possible. Since 1911 it has been illegal for manufacturers to force retailers into setting a price floor for products — individual retailers get to decide how much they sell products for. But today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case seeking to overturn this longstanding rule. Should the Court do so, it would drive up consumer prices across the board. This case is particularly salient in the era of Internet shopping: consumers are now easily able to shop around to multiple retailers to find the best price. The Court could wipe out this advantage.’ From the article: ‘Should the Court abandon the… rule against minimum resale price maintenance… it would send a signal that the Roberts Court will continue to narrow the application of the antitrust laws and that the Court may disregard settled precedent and Congressional will in other areas of the law as well.’
(Via Slashdot.)
France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years - Yahoo! News: “PARIS (AFP) - France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.
The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.
‘It is a world first,’ said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of ‘non-identified aerospatial phenomena.’
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption.
‘Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper’ are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.
But many others involving multiple sightings — in at least one case involving thousands of people across France — and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.”
[…] Other countries collect data more or less systematically about unidentified flying objects, notably in Britain and in the United States, where information can be requested on a case-by-case basis under the Freedom of Information Act. “But we decided to do it the other way around and made everything available to the public,” Patenet said. The aim was to make it easier for scientists and other UFO buffs to access the data for research. The website itself — which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic — is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports. To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr.
Slobs Found To Be More Productive Than Neatniks: “writertype writes ‘Are you a slob? Do you pile papers on top of folders on top of game boxes? Here’s the thing that those anal neat people can’t even conceive of: you’re more productive than they are. That’s the conclusion of ‘A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,’ by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, a new book that argues neatness is overrated, costs money, wastes time and quashes creativity.’
(Via Slashdot.)
Paul Lamb - Nonprofits of the Future: ” Technology is changing the game for organizations in the social space. In this interview with John Powers, nonprofit technology consultant Paul Lamb explores how the web is already transforming nonprofits and NGOs. Lamb looks ahead to the potential that ubiquitous, mobile computing, virtual worlds, user generated content, and social networking have to up-end traditional constraints and to open new doors. Although the pace of change can be daunting, venturing into the tech frontier can increase effectiveness and help smaller nonprofits take destiny into their own hands.
(Via IT Conversations.)
Basics: Guidelines for Using a Cellphone Abroad: “While Americans have embraced the convenience of using cellphones, trying to dial from overseas often brings surprises.”
(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)
Cybercrime Treaty - Hidden Costs For All:
linuxtelephony writes in with an article at CIO Insight about a cybercrime treaty drafted in Europe with help from the US. It has implications for just about everyone with a network. From the article: “Civil libertarians are especially concerned about the sweeping authority given to participating countries to seize information from private parties as they investigate cybercrimes, even when the activity being investigated isn’t a crime in the country where the data is located… Telecommunications companies object to provisions that require member countries to establish and enforce potent data-retention policies for network traffic, and require any operator of a computer network to respond to requests for information from any participating country without compensation of any kind… The provisions for data retention and production apply to any operator of a computer network, not just telecoms… Worldwide law-enforcement agencies, in other words, may now avail themselves of the opportunity to outsource their most expensive problems to you.”