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Medicine

Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality 438

Posted by kdawson from the probably-a-funny-bump-on-the-head-too dept.
mmmscience writes "A group of scientists has identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared with controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdala (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. The results were published as 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy' in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial." The study's results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.
Music

The Music Industry's Crisis Writ Large 554

Posted by kdawson from the day-the-music-faded dept.
The NY Times has an opinion piece that makes starkly clear the financial decline of the music industry. It's accompanied by an infographic that cleverly renders the drop-off. The latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the music business is free, legal online music streaming. "Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna's 60th birthday. ... 13- to 17-year-olds acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent. ... [T]he percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music 'regularly' and nearly a third listen to it every day."
Image

Ireland Criminalizes Blasphemy Screenshot-sm 1376

Posted by samzenpus from the who-wants-a-flogging dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Another European country clamps down on free speech. From the article: 'It does seem bizarre that, in 2009, a modern European nation would seek to shield religious belief from criticism — yet that is what is happening in Ireland right now. In repealing the 1961 Defamation Act, the Irish government sought to expunge the worst excesses of Ireland's draconian laws restricting free speech, but in the process it has ended up making offending religious belief a criminal offence. Aside from a 25,000 fine (reduced from the 100,000 originally sought by the government), the new Defamation Act gives the authorities the power to stage raids on publishers: the courts may now issue a warrant authorising the police to enter, using "reasonable force," premises where they have grounds for believing there are copies of "blasphemous statements."'"
Security

New Linux Kernel Flaw Allows Null Pointer Exploits 391

Posted by Soulskill from the recipe-for-fun dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "A new flaw in the latest release of the Linux kernel gives attackers the ability to exploit NULL pointer dereferences and bypass the protections of SELinux, AppArmor and the Linux Security Module. Brad Spengler discovered the vulnerability and found a reliable way to exploit it, giving him complete control of the remote machine. This is somewhat similar to the magic that Mark Dowd performed last year to exploit Adobe Flash. Threatpost.com reports: 'The vulnerability is in the 2.6.30 release of the Linux kernel, and in a message to the Daily Dave mailing list Spengler said that he was able to exploit the flaw, which at first glance seemed unexploitable. He said that he was able to defeat the protection against exploiting NULL pointer dereferences on systems running SELinux and those running typical Linux implementations.'"
Movies

Submission + - Flight Of The Navigator: When CGI was HARD! (denofgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Kleiser brought cinema its first photo-real, reflection-mapped CGI in 1986. A full five years before James Cameron's apparently ground-breaking 'metallic' visual effects in Terminator 2, Kleiser was trying to make a silver spaceship out of pixels for Walt Disney's Flight Of The Navigator.

Kleiser tells Den Of Geek just how hard it was to render CGI back when the 'jumping lamp' seemed like a landmark:

"To render the spaceship and get it onto film (along with a matte for the optical printing department), they had their own rendering software running on a prototype supercomputer called the Foonly F-1, which had formerly been used by Information International, Inc to drive their film recorders. The Foonly had very little disk space, so we had to render on the fly and send the data directly to the film recorder as it was being computed. That meant we had no way of reshooting a scene other than re-rendering it from scratch each time..."
The Military

Submission + - SPAM: Military wants bomb to blow up only specfic things

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Ok, this one sounds a little ambitious. The US Navy today will offer a $10 million, five-year contract for researchers to build bomb technology that would let pilots in particular select a damage radius that a weapon would generate, or possibly even the type of effect the explosive would have on a specific target. In particular the Navy wants to develop and demonstrate technology that will enable a 500lb class bomb with 2 or more cockpit selectable output modes (make one little boom and make one humongous explosion I guess). The Navy said one output mode will have lethality comparable to current 500lb bombs known as BLU-111s. Then a second mode would have as small of a collateral damage radius as possible enabling pilots to target specific buildings, enemies on the ground or other targets with as much lethal potential as the first option, the Navy said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Loses Bid To Keep Revenues Secret (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's motion to keep secret the record companies' 1999-to-date revenues for the copyrighted song files at the heart of the case has been denied, in the Boston case scheduled for trial July 27th, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The Judge had previously ordered the plaintiff record companies to produce a summary of the 1999-to-date revenues for the recordings, broken down into physical and digital sales. On the day the summary was due to be produced, instead of producing it, they produced a 'protective order motion' asking the Judge to rule that the information would have to be kept secret. The Judge rejected that motion : 'the Court does not comprehend how disclosure would impair the Plaintiffs' competitive business prospects when three of the four biggest record labels in the world — Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and UMG Recording, Inc. — are participating jointly in this lawsuit and, presumably, would have joint access to this information.'"
Graphics

Submission + - Trading code for graphics 1

Submitted by
Zack Grossbart
Zack Grossbart writes: "Every application I write needs icons, logos, and other graphics. Most of these apps are free so I can't pay a graphic designer. I had the great idea of trading code for graphics. Almost every graphic artist has a website and I figure there are programming tasks they need completed. Is this a good idea? Has anyone else had luck bartering code for graphics? Where did you find the designer to trade with? What is a reasonable rate of exchange?"
Space

Submission + - New element named 'copernicium' (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Discovered 13 years ago, and officially added to the periodic table just weeks ago, element 112 finally has a name. It will be called "copernicium", with the symbol Cp, in honour of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) will officially endorse the new element's name in six month's time in order to give the scientific community "time to discuss the suggestion". Scientists from the Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, led by Professor Sigurd Hofmann, discovered copernicium in fusion experiments in 1996.
Robotics

Memristor Minds, the Future of Artificial Intelligence 184

Posted by Soulskill from the boldly-stated-claims dept.
godlessgambler writes "Within the past couple of years, memristors have morphed from obscure jargon into one of the hottest properties in physics. They've not only been made, but their unique capabilities might revolutionize consumer electronics. More than that, though, along with completing the jigsaw of electronics, they might solve the puzzle of how nature makes that most delicate and powerful of computers — the brain."

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