A collection of stories tagged 'death' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:47:10 EST The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. 'We're really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,' says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. 'They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,' says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. 'You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. ... We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,' added Dr. Haak."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26246 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/11trOMbGdpA/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:05:01 EST HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Until now, HIV has no cure and has led to the deaths of over 25 million people. However, a possible cure has appeared. Dr. Gero Hutter, a brilliant physician in Germany, replaced the bone marrow of an HIV patient with the bone marrow of a donor who has natural immunity to HIV. The new bone marrow in the patient then produced immune-system cells that are immune to HIV. Being unable to hijack any immune cell, the HIV has simply disappeared. The patient has been free of HIV for about 2 years. Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26061 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wof1xSVOidQ/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:05:06 EST Many readers have submitted stories about the death of Michael Crichton. The 66-year-old author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain died unexpectedly Tuesday "after a courageous and private battle against cancer," a press release said. In addition to writing, he also directed such sci-fi classics as Westworld and Runaway. Crichton was married five times and had one child.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25994 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/AgVYYxz5rjw/article.pl Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:05:01 EST It's the beginning of the end for the Phoenix Mars Lander. As winter approaches in the Martian arctic, NASA says it's in a 'race against time and the elements' in its efforts to prolong the robotic spacecraft's life. Starting today, mission managers will begin to gradually shut the lander's systems down, hoping to conserve dwindling solar power and thereby extend the remaining systems' useful life. 'Originally scheduled to last 90 days, Phoenix has completed a fifth month of exploration in the Martian arctic. As expected, with the Martian northern hemisphere shifting from summer to fall, the lander is generating less power due to shorter days and fewer hours of sunlight reaching its solar panels. At the same time, the spacecraft requires more power to run several survival heaters that allow it to operate even as temperatures decline.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25863 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vR3-Tzs8x3s/article.pl Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:06:36 EDT It's the beginning of the end for the Phoenix Mars Lander. As winter approaches in the Martian arctic, NASA says it's in a 'race against time and the elements' in its efforts to prolong the robotic spacecraft's life. Starting today, mission managers will begin to gradually shut the lander's systems down, hoping to conserve dwindling solar power and thereby extend the remaining systems' useful life. 'Originally scheduled to last 90 days, Phoenix has completed a fifth month of exploration in the Martian arctic. As expected, with the Martian northern hemisphere shifting from summer to fall, the lander is generating less power due to shorter days and fewer hours of sunlight reaching its solar panels. At the same time, the spacecraft requires more power to run several survival heaters that allow it to operate even as temperatures decline.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25834 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vR3-Tzs8x3s/article.pl Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:05:06 EDT According to a series of tubes sites, Senator Ted Stevens has been found guilty of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor. He faces up to 5 years in jail, and the outcome of his current reelection bid is now in doubt. 'The conviction came after a tumultuous week in the jury room. First there were complaints about an unruly juror, then another had to be replaced when she left Washington following the death of her father. Finally, jurors on Monday discovered a discrepancy in the indictment that had been overlooked by prosecutors. Jury deliberations in this historic trial have at times been as contentious as some of the proceedings The Justice Department indicted Stevens on July 29, and the Alaska Republican took a huge legal gamble and asked for a speedy trial in order to resolve the charges before Election Day. Judge Emmet Sullivan complied with Stevens' request, and in less than three months from the time of his indictment, Stevens was found guilty.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25804 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/z18ifnsN4rE/article.pl Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:05:02 EDT stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25790 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/R5E9gGDM17A/article.pl Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:05:01 EDT Despite nationwide public support for his initial death sentence, a three-judge appeals court has reduced the sentence of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh to 20 years in prison. Kambakhsh was charged with circulating an article on women's rights that he found online. From the article: 'Family members have said Kambakhsh was beaten and threatened with death until he signed a confession and that local journalists who expressed support for him were warned they would be arrested if they persisted.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25715 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vC3-HWeRLj0/article.pl Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:05:19 EDT A nice little old lady I know has had her number spoofed by some car warranty scammers. They're calling hundreds of potential victims per day pretending to use her phone number, and the angry ones call her back; some of them have even left death threats. She's terrified. Some well-intending anti-telemarketing folks have posted her address on the 'net as well. How can we figure out where these scammer bastards are, and what's the state of the current legislation to prevent caller ID spoofing? I calle the FBI in Boston (near where she lives) and they said they can't help. She's called her phone company, but they said they can't help either. She's had the same number for over 50 years and doesn't want to change it." If the Feds can't or won't handle it, what's the best approach here?Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25687 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/IwsfZmPD5uo/article.pl Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:05:19 EDT Several readers have pointed out that Sony's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet has hit a snag and will be delayed worldwide. The delay came after it was discovered that a song licensed for use in the soundtrack contained audio samples from the Qur'an. All advanced copies sent to retailers for the target release of October 21 in North America, 22 in PAL territories, and 24 in the UK and Ireland, have been recalled. "The post, by user 'Solid08', indicates of the specific references in the composition: 'In the 18th second: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: "Every soul shall have the taste of death' ... almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: "All that is on earth will perish".'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25602 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ltREtEvNNq0/article.pl Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:05:01 EDT Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of simple hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth's early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labelled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids." Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25598 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gjXHVwikFSw/article.pl Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:05:04 EDT Russian security firm Elcomsoft has released software that uses Nvidia GPUs to speed up the cracking of WPA and WPA2 keys by a factor of 100. Since the software allows them to network thousands of PCs, this anouncement effectively signals the death of wireless networking in business networks; any network handling sensitive data should start using VPN encryption on machines connecting over Wi-Fi networks, or stop using these networks altogether."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25471 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QYG6ej1YsNQ/article.pl Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:05:01 EDT Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, better known in the industry as 'Woz', believes that the iPod is on its way out and has revealed his discomfort with some aspects of the iPhone. Wozniak said that the iPod has had a long time as the world's most popular media player, and that it will fall from grace due to oversupply. Wozniak also commented on the iPhone's proprietary nature and locked service provider, and compared it to Google's open Android platform. "Consumers are not getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down," he said. "I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed.""Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25380 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ii1c1EAUkM4/article.pl Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:05:00 EDT Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Space Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies, in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25289 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/H6scyqQDBlI/article.pl Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:05:01 EDT There are still places on the world where having anonymity might mean the difference between life and death. Covering one's tracks is considered to be of such paramount importance that we are now witnessing the rise of a Linux distro catering to the most paranoid. The 'alpha-alpha' version of ParanoidLinux is now out. But is this the best way to protect oneself? Couldn't it be easily circumvented? The article asks, 'Why is it necessary to put the applications and services designed to protect anonymity, to encrypt files, to make the user nameless and faceless, all together, in one distribution? Let's think in a truly paranoid manner. Wouldn't it be far easier for a nefarious government organization to target that distribution's repositories, mirror that singular distribution's disk images with files of its own design, and leave every last one of that distribution's users in the great wide open?' What should truly paranoid user do?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25279 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tpFet35eMkw/article.pl Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:05:14 EDT Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Space Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies, in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25274 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/H6scyqQDBlI/article.pl Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:05:01 EDT There are still places on the world where having anonymity might mean the difference between life and death. Covering one's tracks is considered to be of such paramount importance that we are now witnessing the rise of a Linux distro catering to the most paranoid. The 'alpha-alpha' version of ParanoidLinux is now out. But is this the best way to protect oneself? Couldn't it be easily circumvented? The article asks, 'Why is it necessary to put the applications and services designed to protect anonymity, to encrypt files, to make the user nameless and faceless, all together, in one distribution? Let's think in a truly paranoid manner. Wouldn't it be far easier for a nefarious government organization to target that distribution's repositories, mirror that singular distribution's disk images with files of its own design, and leave every last one of that distribution's users in the great wide open?' What should truly paranoid user do?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25270 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tpFet35eMkw/article.pl Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:05:17 EDT Neil McAllister cuts through VMware's marketing hype to examine the potential impact of VMware's newly pronounced 'virtual datacenter OS' — which the company has touted as the death knell for the traditional OS. Literally an operating system for the virtual datacenter, VDC OS is an umbrella concept to build services and APIs that make it easier to provision and allocate resources for apps in an abstract way. Under the system, McAllister writes, apps are reduced to 'application workloads' tailored through vApp, a tool that will allow developers to 'encapsulate the entire app infrastructure in a single bundle — servers and all.' The concept could help solve the current bugbear of programming, parallel processing, McAllister concludes, assuming VMware succeeds."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24919 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/K426r5YtHZ0/article.pl Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:05:01 EDT A month ago we talked about the impending death of streaming music site Pandora thanks to a very backwards fight over royalties. PopMech follows up with an article that, besides noting how insane it is that Pandora has to pay record labels for the bad songs that users skip, also gets the (three-member) Copyright Royalty Board to try and defend itself about why the government is determining royalty rates for the music industry. Quoting: 'It was uninvited,' says Richard Strasser, senior attorney for the Copyright Royalty Board. 'I don't think anybody was jumping up and down with joy in the government that they have this responsibility, but the former systems just weren't working out.'" No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24845 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PDL2S2jZMeA/article.pl Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:05:01 EDT cecom writes to share that Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games and the main brain behind the Unreal engine, recently sat down at NVIDIA's NVISION con to share his thoughts on the rise and (what he says is) the impending fall of the GPU: "...a fall that he maintains will also sound the death knell for graphics APIs like Microsoft's DirectX and the venerable, SGI-authored OpenGL. Game engine writers will, Sweeney explains, be faced with a C compiler, a blank text editor, and a stifling array of possibilities for bending a new generation of general-purpose, data-parallel hardware toward the task of putting pixels on a screen."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24816 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9zhvNoGrulI/article.pl Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:05:24 EDT cecom writes to share that Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games and the main brain behind the Unreal engine, recently sat down at NVIDIA's NVISION con to share his thoughts on the rise and (what he says is) the impending fall of the GPU: "...a fall that he maintains will also sound the death knell for graphics APIs like Microsoft's DirectX and the venerable, SGI-authored OpenGL. Game engine writers will, Sweeney explains, be faced with a C compiler, a blank text editor, and a stifling array of possibilities for bending a new generation of general-purpose, data-parallel hardware toward the task of putting pixels on a screen."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24805 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9zhvNoGrulI/article.pl Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:05:01 EDT ruphus13 writes with some more news for people foretelling the death of VMware. Sun has open sourced their xVM server, their bare-metal hypervisor virtualization solution. What used to once be the cash cow for VMware is now coming under increased threat, and Sun is once again turning to the Open Source community as a weapon. "Sun xVM Server is an outgrowth of the Xen project — which raises the question of why a company would go with Sun's version rather than the Xen one. Apart from its support for SPARC and Solaris (as well as other chips and operating systems), Sun is also building a services and sales organization around a commercial version of xVM server... If you want to kick the tires or cut your costs, you can hop over to xVMServer.org, download the source (GPL 3) and join the community. But Sun is betting that, as deployments move from an initial testing phase to active usage, large organizations will be willing to pay for guaranteed support (starting at $500 per year per physical server)."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24729 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/03dFYnj3vUg/article.pl Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:05:01 EDT Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24716 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mCucVBf15w8/article.pl Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:05:50 EDT Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24705 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mCucVBf15w8/article.pl Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:05:05 EDT Former MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson offers commentary at The Register saying any attempts to build a sanctioned digital music site today is doomed from the outset. 'The internet companies I talk to don't mind giving some direct benefit to music companies. What torpedoes that possibility is the big financial requests from labels for "past infringement," plus a hefty fee for future usage. Any company agreeing to these demands is signing their own financial death sentence. The root cause is not the labels — chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24672 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GGURLam63hw/article.pl Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:05:00 EDT