mytrip writes to mention that the same people who invented credit scores are working to create a similar system for hospitals and other health care providers. "The project, dubbed "MedFICO" in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient's ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BB reader Hagrid says, "I just blogged this stunning 1943 colour photo, released by the Library of Congress on Flickr. It turns that WWII icon, 'Rosie the Riveter,' on her head, by presenting her as she really was: African-American. Love the nails and ring, incidentally."

Previously: Library of Congress uses Flickr to crowdsource tagging and organizing its photo archive

Continuing the thread on decentralized Twitter...

I read this story on DBMS2, as part of the initial discussion, that explained there is commercial-grade software used by the financial industry that they believe can handle, reliably, much greater traffic than Twitter is handling now.

The category is called CEP, an acronym for Complex Event Processing.

This evening, a comment from Mark Tsimelzon, the CTO of Coral8, one of the leading companies in this area. He offers a pointer to their developer site, a download of the software, and help when needed.

An interesting turn!

Funkmaster F writes "At the KDE Developer Conference today, Trolltech CEO Havaard Nord announced that its Qt application development toolkit will be released under GPL 3. 'Here at the KDE release event, Nord's announcement was met with applause. Like Trolltech's initial decision to move from its own QPL license to the GPL, this announcement and the company's more recent decision to adopt the GPL for all platforms rather than just Linux, demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to openness.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few years back, after a major blackout hit the northeast, many people immediately assumed that it had something to do with a terrorist attack on the electricity system or perhaps a computer worm/cyber attack. It turned out to be neither, but it wasn't that surprising that people jumped to that conclusion. However, afterwards, people began discussing how likely it was that a cyberattack really could take out the power grid for a city, and some people felt that it was fairly unlikely to occur. The CIA, apparently, would disagree. Late Friday, a CIA official claimed that cyberattacks have been to blame for certain blackouts over the past few years, and that the agency had debated whether or not to release that information publicly. Of course, without much in the way of detail, it's difficult to have any sense of what's actually happening here and how accurate the information really is. However, we will repeat what we said after that huge blackout: even if it was a cyberattack, it wasn't particularly damaging. Yes, it was an inconvenience. And, yes, it was annoying, and some businesses were temporarily hurt due to the blackout. But, compared to other types of attacks, shutting off the power certainly seems relatively minor.

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In our culture where some companies (and their lawyers) have convinced people that intellectual property gives you total control over things, we start to see some bizarre and ridiculous trademark claims. The latest comes to us via the EFF, who point to a lawyer who has received a trademark on the term "cyberlaw" and is going after other lawyers who use the term which has been in fairly common usage for ages. As the EFF notes, it's especially upsetting that an intellectual property lawyer would abuse trademark law this way in a manner well beyond what trademark law is supposed to do -- while also warning that courts as well as tech companies don't tend to look kindly on people who abuse trademark law.

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jcatcw writes "Earlier this week actor Hayden Christensen, of Star Wars fame, and director Doug Liman discussed teleportation with MIT professors to compare the reality to the special effects version in the upcoming movie, Jumper. Edward Farhi, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, said, 'It's a little less exotic than what you see in the movie. Teleportation has been done, moving a single proton over two miles. [But] teleporting a person? That is pretty far down the line. The quantum state of a living creature is pretty formidable. That is just not in the foreseeable future.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Mooney's proposal for unionizing bloggers is pretty silly to begin with. There are absolutely no barriers to entry for blogging, so if a writer feels he's not being fairly compensated, he always has the option to jump to a new blog, or to start one of his own. And because a lot of bloggers work out of their homes, some common union concerns, such as workplace safety, just don't apply. But the thing that really irritates me about Mooney's proposal is the idea that the bloggers' union will "set up a structure that separates the workhorse bloggers from the pure hobbyists." It seems to me that this totally misses the point of blogging. Bloggers blog first and foremost because they enjoy it and are passionate about the subjects they're writing about. Some of us are lucky enough to make some money in the process. Many of us are not. But nobody is entitled to be paid for blogging. And we certainly don't need an official bureaucracy in charge of deciding whose blogging is "professional" enough to merit compensation. There's no reason to think that union's process for determining who gets a paycheck would be any less arbitrary than the system we've got now, but it would be guaranteed to generate a lot of needless bitterness and resentment.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Micheal Pettibone writes:

In Getting Real, there is an entire chapter dedicated to the subject of “Meetings are Toxic”.

It seems like you guys use Campfire extensively throughout the day as a replacement for the typical corporate (physical) meeting.

What I’m curious to know is how using Campfire all day is different from that of a typical corporate meeting. They both (chat or a physical meeting) seem to be a type of a “meeting”, which distracts you from your normal daily work load.

Also, as 37signals grows with employees – do you find that using chat (Campfire) becomes ever more difficult/distracting because the number of conversations between various co-workers multiplies?

Campfire differs from a traditional meeting in significant ways:

1. You can pay attention to something other than the meeting without offending or distracting anyone else.

2. You can leave the room and come back later and read everything you’ve missed. You can even search for specific terms in the transcript.

3. Typing forces people to be more economical in what they communicate. There’s a lot less extraneous chatter in a Campfire chat than there is in a typical meeting.

4. You can have a sidebar discussion without interrupting the flow of others. Create a separate room and chat about something you want to keep private or that doesn’t concern the whole team.

5. You don’t have to be there. Want to focus 100% on the task at hand? Just log out of Campfire and get to work.

As for the second part of the question: With our growth, the chat room has gotten somewhat busier. In order to prevent distraction, we have more sidebar conversations in different rooms.

We’ve also tried to cut down on inessential banter. At the same time, we don’t want to put a muzzle on the normal “water cooler” conversations that our remote team only gets via Campfire. It’s a balancing act.

Now, there are those who claim the government already has the ability to monitor all internet communications, but it looks like it's about to become official. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told a reporter from The New Yorker that he's prepared a "cyber security policy" that would grant the federal government the right to monitor all internet communications. The report also notes that President Bush hasn't yet announced this policy. The reporter from the New Yorker states: "it may be the only way to protect transportation, security, and other critical systems that rely on the Internet." That is a bizarre statement that seems totally unsupportable. It almost goes without saying, but the old (supposedly) Ben Franklin quote applies: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also not clear from this report whether this is just a policy or an actual system for monitoring internet content -- as that makes quite a big difference. Either way, expect to see more people become a lot more interested in encrypting their communications soon.

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drcagn writes "Ars Technica> reports that Apple's new 1.1.3 firmware update unbricks iPhones damaged from unlocking and updating the firmware months ago. In September, users who hacked their iPhone's firmware to unlock it found their iPhone bricked when they updated to new firmware, creating a massive upset and internet furor. Although Apple claimed this was not an intended effect of the update, it held the stance that it is not their responsibility to ensure that updates work with users' warranty-voiding hacks, and many cried foul. This update, which provides new features Jobs showed off at Macworld, while not officially unbricking the iPhone, has restored iPhones from Gizmodo and a reader of the Unofficial Apple Weblog."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's episode three of the delightfully demented video tutorial, You Suck at Photoshop.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• You Suck at Photoshop #2
• Funny tutorial: "You Sucjk at Photoshop"

An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a Canadian DMCA including the creation of a Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000 members. Having delayed the legislation, he now outlines what Canadians should be fighting for — more flexible fair dealing, a balanced implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties, an ISP safe harbor, and a modernized backup copy provision."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hit video game, Rock Band, is proving to be a lucrative new revenue stream for the music industry. The game comes with 58 playable songs, but through the XBOX Live Marketplace, gamers can download new songs for around $2 per track. In the eight weeks since the game has been on sale, 2.5 million songs have been downloaded. Indeed, this is a welcome new revenue stream for the music industry, and yet another example of how embracing technology can open up new markets. In the original version of the similar game Guitar Hero, most of the tracks were actually done by a cover band, since the original bands made it prohibitively expensive to use the "real" version (and in some cases, the covered version was considered too close to the original). Now, more bands are finally realizing the benefit of being included in the game, and are now lining up to get their tracks included. That said, only about three new tracks are released each week. So, what is the hold up? If it's a technological issue, it's one thing, but really, there's no good reason to be artificially limiting the number of tracks available to Rock Band players. Having more available tracks increases the fun of the game for all, and for the bands, it's a fantastic promotional opportunity.

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Here's a list of words that (mostly) describe sexual behavior.

Faunoiphilia (FAW-nay-FIL-ee-uh) - An abnormal desire to watch animals copulate.

Brassirothesauriast (bruh-zeer-oh-thuh-SAW-ree-ast) - A person who collects brassieres or pictures of women wearing them.

Eunoterpsia (YOO-noh-TURP-see-uh) - The doctrine that pursuing sexual pleasure is the goal of life.

Typhlobasia (TIF-luh-BAY-zee-uh) - Kissing with the eyes closed.

Amychesis (AM-i-KEE-sis) - The involuntary act of scratching or clawing your partner in the heat of passion.

Mammaquatia (MAM-uh-KWAY-shee-uh) - The bobbing or jiggling of a woman's breasts when she walks, dances, or exercises.

Ozoamblyrosis (OH-zoh-AM-bli-ROH-sis) - Loss of sexual apetite because your partner has wicked B.O.

Amomaxia (AM-uh-MAX-see-uh) - Love-making in a parked car.

Colpocoquette (KAHL-puh-koh-KET) - A woman who knows she has an attractive bosom, and who makes good use of its allure.

Melolagnia (MEL-uh-LAG-nee-uh) - Amorous feelings inspired by music.

Link (Via sexoteric NSFW)

Google invited me to create an example theme for its new iGoogle Themes API. The theme changes throughout the day to tell a little story.

I also worked on a gadget with RSS feeds for the different blogs, videos, and podcasts I contribute to. You can add the theme and gadget to your iGoogle page here.

The iGoogle Themes API allows you to personalize iGoogle by modifying the page's design. Your theme can modify the header and footer images, text colors, link colors, gadget frames, and more. Your theme can also update the page's design based on time of day. This makes it easy to create a story that unfolds throughout the day, landscapes that change as the sun rises and sets, and abstract images that become more complex. Creating a dynamic theme is as simple as specifying a time with a theme's visual attributes.

You can see other example themes by Yves Behar/fuseproject, John Maeda, and Troy Lee here.

Link

Noah Shachtman at Wired's DANGER ROOM blog says:

This is beyond ridiculous. The federal government is now going to track every farm animal across the country, from birth to death, because it wants to watch out for the extremely faint possibility of a bioterrorist attacking the food chain.

Snip from LA Times article:

A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bioterrorist. Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, will eventually be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the vet and county fairs. But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.

Link to DANGER ROOM post.

Image: "Three Pigs," from Xirzon's photostream.