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Biotech

Engineered Hens Lay Cancer-Fighting Eggs 92

Posted by kdawson from the egg-a-day-keeps-the-tumors-away dept.
celardore writes "Hens that lay eggs containing cancer-fighting proteins have been developed in Scotland. While not themselves cancer-antagonistic, the proteins can be used to create drugs that have cancer-fighting potential. The hens are, in effect, factories for cancer drugs. It is still unknown whether the resulting drugs would work in practice, and clinical trials are 5 years off. This research was conducted by the Roslin Institute, the ones responsible responsible for Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal."
Science

UK Lab Traces Polonium To Russian Nuclear Plant 413

Posted by kdawson from the couldn't-make-it-up dept.
reporter writes "British authorities had identified polonium 210 to be the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who defected to Great Britain. Now, according to a disturbing report, the authorities have identified the source of the poison to be Russia. Bloomberg ominously reports, 'Scientists at the U.K.'s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn't return calls.' A cold chill just fell on relations between Russia and the West." In another twist to this developing story, the shadowy Italian security consultant who dined with Litvinenko has also fallen ill with radiation poisoning.
The Courts

Judge To SCO — Quit Whining 156

Posted by kdawson from the and-wipe-your-nose dept.
chiark writes, "Back in June, the magistrate judge presiding over SCO vs IBM gutted SCO's claims, as discussed on Slashdot. SCO cried 'foul,' appealed to the District Judge, and today that judge has ruled against SCO, succinctly and concisely affirming every point of the original damning judgement. Also included in this ruling is the news that the Novell vs. SCO trial will go first: 'After deciding the pending dispositive motions in this case, and after deciding the dispositive motions in Novell, which should be fully briefed in May 2007, the court will set a trial date for any remaining claims in this action.' It's notable that the judge conducted the review using a more exhaustive standard than required out of an 'abundance of caution,' and still found against SCO." As Groklaw asks and answers: "What does it mean? It means SCO is toast."

UK Woman Charged As Terrorist For Computer Files 470

Posted by Zonk from the more-you-know dept.
Terror Alert Brown writes "Reuters is reporting that a UK woman has been charged as a terrorist because of computer files on her hard drive. According to the article, these files included 'the Al Qaeda Manual, The Terrorists Handbook, The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a manual for a Dragunov sniper rifle, and The Firearms and RPG Handbook.' She was picked up in connection with the plot stopped in August to detonate explosives in airplanes flying out of Heathrow airport. Now might be a good time to delete any copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook you once read for amusement and still have floating around on your hard drive."

Worst Christmas Ever For Gadgets? 305

Posted by kdawson from the please-santa dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "CNet says this will be the most disappointing Christmas ever for gadget-lovers. The Playstation 3 is delayed across most of the world, the Zune MP3 player is cancelled for everyone outside the US, Vista won't be out for home users before the big day, and even Final Fantasy XII won't reach Europe in time. From the article: 'It's enough to make you slit your wrists with the shards of a smashed Christmas tree bauble... Santa fails to deliver on almost all of his Yuletide promises. Most of the major technologies that were supposed to be ready for purchase have been delayed until next year.' The writer goes on to suggest phrases to use over Christmas dinner when the offending companies' products are mentioned. To reduce the pain of a Zune-less party, he suggests remarking: 'Imagine the stability and usability of Windows migrated to an MP3 player. In short, imagine a small portable version of Hell.'"

Face Recognition - Real or Science Fiction? 202

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oops-i-did-it-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Facial recognition software has been touted as one of the technologies that will change our future, particularly in law enforcement. How close are we to being recognized by a computer anywhere we go, as portrayed in movies like Minority Report? According to the industry's recent Public Relations releases, these products are closer than we think. The reality though, is that current products work only when utilizing a small comparative sample, and any attempts for an individual to disguise themselves typically throw off the results. To see how far this technology needs to go before becoming mainstream, one site utilized Government-tested face recognition software, available freely through MyHeritage.com, to compare hundreds of famous people, animals, and cartoons to a database of 2,000 celebrities. Some of the results showed promise for the technology, but most were just funny — for example, who would mistake Barbara Streisand for Shrek, or Lance Bass of N'Sync for a Teletubby?"

Battlefield 2142 to Bundle Spyware? 439

Posted by Zonk from the not-cool-ea-not-cool dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku reports on a Shacknews Post. Battlefield 2142, the new Electronic Arts game, is expected to include mandatory spyware in the retail package. The software will apparently monitor web browser and other computer usage; this information will be used to deliver targeted in-game advertisements. Other popular game titles have included spyware in the past to aid anti-cheating measures. Is spyware acceptable to the public when it comes with a game, or has EA made a PR misstep?"

Does the NSA Need More Electricity? 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the paranoid-much-lately dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."

Vim 7 Released 665

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-get-your-upgrade-on dept.
houseofmore writes "After many years of development, Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, today announced version 7 of the widely used editor. New features included spell checking in up to 50 languages, intelligent completion, tab pages, extended undo branches and much more. Downloads available here for Unix, Windows, Mac and more."

Bush Admin. Appoints Civil-Liberties Officer 292

Posted by Zonk from the can't-make-things-worse-right dept.
Zephyros writes "The WSJ reports that the Bush administration has appointed a Civil Liberties Protection Officer in order to assuage the public's privacy concerns. From the article: 'As the son of a U.S. aid worker stationed in Guatemala during the 1970s civil war, Alex Joel recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it. Those first-hand brushes with totalitarianism, says Mr. [Alex] Joel, have led him to take the rights of individuals very seriously.' It remains to be seen how effective he will be, but at least they're recognizing the concern."

AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA? 682

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the will-it-never-end dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SpamDailyNews is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a brief that claims AT&T has been forwarding internet traffic directly into the hands of the NSA. The brief was filed under seal (a procedure that allows only the judge and the litigants to view the document) in order to give the court time to review the information. From the article: 'More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.'"

The Real Purpose of DRM 235

Posted by CowboyNeal from the man-keeping-us-down dept.
Roberto writes "Gorgeous nerd Annalee Newitz hacked a political interpretation to recent vacuum cleaner cockfights at O'Reilly's ETech: 'Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines. You haven't seen ugly until you've watched what a DVD player without DRM can do to a TiVo.' Don't try to even think of this at home."

Sandals and Ponytails Behind Slow Linux Adoption 948

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shave-and-a-haircut dept.
Eric Giguere writes "CNet is reporting that according to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn 'the lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments.' In particular, Quinn blames the 'sandal and ponytail set' for sluggish adoption of Linux by businesses and governments." From the article: "Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public."

Stanislaw Lem Dies in Krakow 296

Posted by Zonk
1Eye wrote to mention that well-known SF author Stanislaw Lem passed away today. The Polish author was 84, and was probably best known for the novel 'Solaris'. From the AP article: "Solaris, published in 1961 and set on an isolated space stations, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Sodebergh and starring George Clooney."

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