Today Google rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions — both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.
langelgjm writes “The US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school’s zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students’ free speech at school-sponsored events that take place off school property. The school described the strip-search as ‘not excessively intrusive in light of [the student’s] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.’ The Supreme Court’s last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student’s purse. Incidentally, the girl was found not to be in possession of any drugs, illegal or otherwise.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
destinyland writes “European researchers have discovered that chimpanzees have a built-in mental GPS, keeping ‘a geometric mental map of their home range, moving from point to point in nearly straight lines.’ Using GPS, two primatologists followed 15 chimpanzees for 217 days, and determined that the apes were ‘using a mental map built around geometric coordinates.’ They’re not just identifying landmarks in their surroundings, and in fact, even when swinging through trees, the chimps planned out their route several trees in advance. Here’s the paper in the journal Animal Behavior .”
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Lulfas writes “Steam is implementing a new anti-piracy solution that, according to them, removes all DRM. Called Computer Executable Generation (CEG), this system creates a unique copy of the game when it is purchased through Steam, essentially using a 100% unique keygen system. It will be installable on any system, but only playable by one person at a time (hooked into the correct Steam account, of course). Will this be enough to satisfy anti-DRM players while at the same time giving the publishing companies what they require?”
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tboulay writes “The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation. The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a large textbook market that many publishers write to the state’s standards, then market those books nationwide. ‘This is the most specific assault I’ve seen against evolution and modern science,’ said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution.” Both sides are saying the issue it too close to call. Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways.
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Catalyst writes “SWFScan is a free Flash security tool (download here), released by HP Software, which decompiles all versions of Flash and scans them for over 60 security vulnerabilities. The scan detects things like XSS, SQL inside of the Flash app, hard-coded authentication credentials, weak encryption, insecure function calls, cross-domain privilege escalation, and violations of Adobe’s security recommendations. There is also this video explaining a real, and amusing, attack against a Flash app. These issues are fairly widespread, with over 35% of SWF applications violating Adobe security advice.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
snydeq writes “Non-relational upstarts — tools that tack the letters ‘db’ onto a ‘pile of code that breaks with the traditional relational model’ — have grabbed attention in large part because they willfully ignore many of the rules that codify the hard lessons learned by the old database masters. Doing away with JOINs and introducing phrases like ‘eventual consistency,’ these ‘slacker DBs’ offer greater simplicity and improved means of storing data for Web apps, yet remain toys in the eyes of old guard DB admins. ‘This distinction between immediate and eventual consistency is deeply philosophical and depends on how important the data happens to be,’ writes InfoWorld’s Peter Wayner, who let down his old-guard leanings and tested slacker DBs — Amazon SimpleDB, Apache CouchDB, Google App Engine, and Persevere — to see how they are affecting the evolution of modern IT.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Arto Stimms writes “The author of the e text editor is using the principles of open source to transform his company into an Open Company. Not only is he releasing the source, the company itself becomes totally open: no concept of bosses or employees. Anyone can join in at any time, doing whatever task they find interesting, for whatever time they find appropriate. This is in service of the idea of ‘the real freedom zero’: the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to work on.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
snydeq writes “Non-relational upstarts — tools that tack the letters ‘db’ onto a ‘pile of code that breaks with the traditional relational model’ — have grabbed attention in large part because they willfully ignore many of the rules that codify the hard lessons learned by the old database masters. Doing away with JOINs and introducing phrases like ‘eventual consistency,’ these ‘slacker DBs’ offer greater simplicity and improved means of storing data for Web apps, yet remain toys in the eyes of old guard DB admins. ‘This distinction between immediate and eventual consistency is deeply philosophical and depends on how important the data happens to be,’ writes InfoWorld’s Peter Wayner, who let down his old-guard leanings and tested slacker DBs — Amazon SimpleDB, Apache CouchDB, Google App Engine, and Persevere — to see how they are affecting the evolution of modern IT.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Arto Stimms writes “The author of the e text editor is using the principles of open source to transform his company into an Open Company. Not only is he releasing the source, the company itself becomes totally open: no concept of bosses or employees. Anyone can join in at any time, doing whatever task they find interesting, for whatever time they find appropriate. This is in service of the idea of ‘the real freedom zero’: the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to work on.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
