By Roblimo from
Slashdot's living-forever-sounds-kind-of-boring department:
Today's interviewee is
Cryonics Institute (CI) Director Andy Zawacki, who takes Slashdot's Robert Rozeboom into the facility where they keep the tanks with frozen people in them. Yesterday,
Rob talked with David Ettinger, who is both the group's lawyer and the son of CI founder
Robert Ettinger. For those of you who are obsessed with the process of
vitrification, here's a link to a story about
The Cryonics Institute's 69th Patient and how she was taken care of, starting at the moment of her deanimation (AKA death). The story has anatomical drawings, charts, and color pictures of Andy carrying out the actual procedure. But Cryonics, while
endorsed as a concept by numerous scientists, may not be as good a way to insure immortality as transplanting your brain into a fresh (probably robotic) body, as Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov
hopes to do by 2035. There are also many groups that claim to offer spiritual (as opposed to corporeal)
immortality. Which method of living forever works best? That remains to be seen, assuming any of them work at all. Perhaps we'll find out after the
Singularity.
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's works-for-pop-music department:
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Get 'em young: That could be LinkedIn's new motto, after the professional-networking Website opened itself up to universities and students. LinkedIn's University Pages offer schools a place to post updates about campus news and activities; they can also link to famous alumni, who will doubtlessly love when a couple thousand students try to connect with them all at once. Some 200 universities are setting up LinkedIn Pages, including NYU, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and more. Why this aggressive expansion into a younger demographic? Today's students are tomorrow's cubicle bees and entrepreneurs; by locking them into the network early, LinkedIn can (at least in theory) maintain a user base for many years to come. (It's safe to presume that at least a fraction of these young users will eventually engage LinkedIn's paid services, which makes this initiative a long-term revenue play.) Building a substantial base among students could also help LinkedIn head off future competition, such as Facebook moving more aggressively into the careers space. Or it could just open a whole lot of concerns over privacy and security, similar to what Facebook already faces with its teen audience."Read Replies (0)
By Roblimo from
Slashdot's living-forever-sounds-kind-of-boring department:
Today's interviewee is
Cryonics Institute (CI) Director Andy Zawacki, who takes Slashdot's Robert Rozeboom into the facility where they keep the tanks with frozen people in them. Yesterday,
Rob talked with David Ettinger, who is both the group's lawyer and the son of CI founder
Robert Ettinger. For those of you who are obsessed with the process of
vitrification, here's a link to a story about
The Cryonics Institute's 69th Patient and how she was taken care of, starting at the moment of her deanimation (AKA death). The story has anatomical drawings, charts, and color pictures of Andy carrying out the actual procedure. But Cryonics, while
endorsed as a concept by numerous scientists, may not be as good a way to insure immortality as transplanting your brain into a fresh (probably robotic) body, as Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov
hopes to do by 2035. There are also many groups that claim to offer spiritual (as opposed to corporeal)
immortality. Which method of living forever works best? That remains to be seen, assuming any of them work at all. Perhaps we'll find out after the
Singularity.
Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's for-the-birds department:
LeadSongDog writes
"The Ottawa Citizen reports on an enterprising private contractor who has been hired by a city government in Canada to drive geese off its island beaches using a small, remote-controlled drone. 'It’s proving amazingly effective, said Orléans Coun. Bob Monette. The place used to be haunted by as many as 140 geese, which can eat several pounds of grass in a day and poop out nearly as much in waste. “Now we’re down to anywhere from 15 to 20 on a daily basis,” Monette said. The weapon the city’s deployed is a “hexcopter,” a remote-controlled chopper with rotors that can hover, soar, circle and — most importantly — scoot along just above the ground, scaring the bejesus out of dozing geese. It’s operated by contractor Steve Wambolt, a former IT worker who launched his own business after one too many layoffs. “When he takes it out, they put their backs up straight and they’re watching,” Monette said. “When he starts it and it goes up off the ground, they sort of walk into a formation, and as soon as it starts moving, they all take off and they don’t come back until the next day.”'"Read Replies (0)
By Unknown Lamer from
Slashdot's slashdot-trolls-beware-cfaa department:
WillgasM writes
"Changing your IP address or using proxy servers to access public websites you've been forbidden to visit is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, according to a judge's broad ruling (PDF) during a case on Friday involving Craigslist and 3taps. Opponents argue that this creates a slippery slope that many unsuspecting web users may find themselves upon. With your typical connection being assigned an address dynamically, is an IP ban really a 'technological barrier' to be circumvented? How long until we see the first prosecution for unauthorized viewing of a noindex page?"Probably a long time; the judge in the case rejected the slippery slope argument: 'There, and sprinkled throughout its earlier, ostensibly text-based, arguments, 3taps posits outlandish scenarios where, for example, someone is criminally prosecuted for visiting a hypothetical website www.dontvisitme.com after a "friend" — apparently not a very good one — says the site has beautiful pictures but the homepage says that no one is allowed to click on the links to view the pictures. Needless to say, the Court’s decision [regarding 3taps' actions]... does not speak to whether the CFAA would apply to other sets of facts where an unsuspecting individual somehow stumbles on to an unauthorized site.' Willful evasion of blocks for commercial gain, on the other hand ...
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