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Submission + - Feds sue 6 websites for offering free comic books (physorg.com)

Submitted by dumuzi
dumuzi writes: Federal officials are sueing six websites run by Gregory Hart in order to shut them down and take control of their domains for hosting copyright material. "ComicBooksFree.com, HTMLcomics.com, and PlayboyMonthly.com were among the domain names run by Gregory Steven Hart...The FBI began investigating Hart in 2009. The site HTMLcomics.com provided a large number of copyrighted comic books and Hart was operating the site without the permission of either the publishers or authors who own the copyrights to those materials, the lawsuit says....
The publishers sent Hart letters demanding that he cease and desist distribution of copyrighted material, but Hart refused. By June 2009, HTMLcomics.com claimed to host over 100,000 issues....Among the comic books available on the sites were: Astonishing X-Men, The Simpsons, Dilbert, Peanuts, Batman, Superman, Watchmen and Mad Magazine...Maxim and Playboy" The websites appear to be offline now. Also, ATTFA, Hart did not own the comics but rather received image files from people who scanned them.

Comment Re:Pfft. (Score 2, Interesting) 308

by dumuzi (#32356346) Attached to: Video Gamers Have Power Over Their Dreams
In my lucid dreams I can't feel water in my mouth while drinking. Now I have a drink every time I get out of bed, if I don't feel the water in my mouth I know I am dreaming and I can take over my dream from there. Unfortunately, so far, I don't seem to be able to allow myself to break the laws of physics in my dreams, I can't fly or any other cool superhuman stuff that I want to do in my dreams. They tend to be terribly life like (boring). I also have difficulty breaking my own moral compass in my dreams, when I get close to doing so I wake up, this can be a particularly frustrating limitation.
Science

Submission + - Researchers Build Evolving Brain Computer? (hplusmagazine.com) 2

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: "We have mimicked how neurons behave in the brain," announces an international research team from Japan and Michigan Tech. They've built an "evolutionary circuit" in a molecular computer that evolves to solve complex problems, and the molecular computer also exhibits brain-like massive parallel processing. "The neat part is, approximately 300 molecules talk with each other at a time during information processing," says physicist Ranjit Pati of Michigan Tech. When viewed with a scanning tunneling microscope, the evolving patterns bear an uncanny resemblance to the human brain as seen by a Functional MRI. Using the electrically-charged tip of a tunneling microscope, they've individually set molecules to a desired state, essentially writing data to the system. And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states — 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing.
Space

Submission + - ISS to get Man Cave, Complete With Robot Butler (universetoday.com)

Submitted by Nancy_A
Nancy_A writes: There might be a new favorite hang-out for astronauts aboard the International Space Station later this year. The Leonardo Multi Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) will become a permanent module on the station, and will be brought up on the STS-133 mission, scheduled for September 2010. And if might provide a haven for astronauts to get away from it all. "The thought is, the PMM might become sort of a 'man cave'," said Mike Kinslow, the Boeing payload manager out at Kennedy Space Center. "It won't have all the background noise of fans, computers and other equipment running like in the laboratories, so it will be a quieter atmosphere that might appeal to the astronauts during their off-duty hours." Plus, NASA's Robonaut 2, or R2 will be brought up on the same flight. Any chance R2 could be programmed to serve drinks or bring food into the man cave?
Media

Submission + - Let's Get Video on Wikipedia (openvideoalliance.org)

Submitted by joshlevy
joshlevy writes: Today the Open Video Alliance is launching an important project: a mass campaign to bring video to Wikipedia. Moving images can communicate ideas in ways that text can't. We think this is the next step in Wikipedia's evolution. Let's Get Video on Wikipedia is part of our effort to support both individuals and institutions who wish to contribute to this vision. For individual contributors, we are offering the best and easiest tutorial anywhere on How to Post a Video to Wikipedia, along with a number of community-based projects to support collaborative work. We're also making it easier to convert videos to Theora, the open format used by Wikipedia. Participatory Culture Foundation, makers of Miro, are unveiling a free conversion app for Mac and Windows. Watch the PCF blog for an official announcement. There's lots happening elsewhere, as OVA members coordinate efforts around software improvements and content partnerships. If you're interested in contributing to the development of open video tech, you can download and install the Kaltura HTML5 media library here. Video is going to enhance Wikipedia and make it an even better educational resource. Not only is open video good for Wikipedia; it's also good for the web. Wikipedia is the biggest site yet to implement fully open video, and its success will lend momentum to the movement for a 100% open and royalty-free video distribution system. See the PCF blog for more thoughts on the campaign.
NASA

Submission + - Gamma Ray Mystery Reestablished by Fermi (space.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: New observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveal that our assumptions about the 'fog' of gamma rays in our universe are not entirely explained by black hole-powered jets emanating from active galaxies--as we so previously hypothesized. For now the researchers are representing the source of unaccounted gamma rays with a dragon (as in "here be") symbol. A researcher explained that they are certain about this given Fermi's observations, 'Active galaxies can explain less than 30 percent of the extragalactic gamma-ray background Fermi sees. That leaves a lot of room for scientific discovery as we puzzle out what else may be responsible.' And so we reopen the chapter on background gamma-rays in the science textbooks and hope this eventually sheds even more light on other mysteries of space--like star formation and dark matter.
Idle

Submission + - A beewolf's cluster prevents infection (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by dumuzi
dumuzi writes: It was recently reported in Nature Chemical Biology that beewolves (a type of digger wasp) have a symbiotic relationship with streptomyces bacteria. The beneficial bacteria are cultivated by the females who then transfer the bacteria to the ceilings of the brood cell. The bacteria are taken up by the larvae, who later transfer the bacteria to their cocoons. The streptomyces bacteria produces a cocktail of nine different antibiotics that defend against numerous pathogens.

If only they could defend against viruses, worms and Trojans we could incorporate such symbiots into our own beowolf cluster's and finally guarantee protection.
Spam

Submission + - New Facebook Attack Tricks Users Into Creating App

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Websense Security Labs has identified a new malicious Facebook app that takes the art to a new level. Conventional malicious apps can be taken down by Facebook as soon as they know about them. In order to get past that ability, this social engineering trick talks users through the process of building new app themselves. If you run the app and allow it to access your profile and then grant it extended permissions to post messages (because it asks you to), your friends all get spammed with the app too.

Submission + - Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linke (cnn.com)

Submitted by johncadengo
johncadengo writes: Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds. Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.
Medicine

Submission + - New Wave of Antibiotic-resistant Bugs (nytimes.com)

Submitted by reporter
reporter writes: According to a report just published by the "New York Times", although methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the most well-known antibiotic-resistant germ, it is less dangerous than a new class of gram-negative bacteria which have become resistant to all safe antibiotics. "The bacteria, classified as Gram-negative because of their reaction to the so-called Gram stain test, can cause severe pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, bloodstream and other parts of the body. Their cell structure makes them more difficult to attack with antibiotics than Gram-positive organisms like MRSA."

The only anbtibiotics — colistin and polymyxin B — that still have efficacy against gram-negative bacteria produce dangerous side effects: kidney damage and nerve damage. Patients who are infected with gram-negative bacteria must make the unsavory choice between life with kidney damage or death with intact kidneys.

Recently, some new strains of Gram-negative bacteria have shown resistance against even colistin and polymyxin B. Infection with these new strains typically means death for the patient.
Space

Submission + - DARPA Funds Research Into Suspended Animation (hplusmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DARPA is funding research into "a zombie-like form of hibernation" — including a $9.9 million Texas program seeking to induce suspended animation. They're testing chemical compounds on anesthetized pigs to keep them "as close to death as possible" — to improve emergency trauma care for soldiers on the battlefield. Also being tested is a pancreatic enzyme found in squirrels "to put humans into a state of squirrel-like hibernation." Slowed metabolisms help the body survive a lack of oxygen or bloodflow — but it also has long-term implications for exploring outer space. "A form of squirrel-like hypersleep-hibernation would help solve a great many of the problems involved in sending humans interstellar distances."
Biotech

Submission + - Natural Selection Found in Non-Living Organisms 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Lab Spaces reports that researchers have determined for the first time that bits of infectious protein devoid of DNA or RNA called prions are capable of Darwinian evolution. "On the face of it, you have exactly the same process of mutation and adaptive change in prions as you see in viruses," said Charles Weissmann, M.D., Ph.D. "This means that this pattern of Darwinian evolution appears to be universally active. In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down – to prions and protein folding – and it's clear that you do not need nucleic acid for the process of evolution." Infectious prions are associated with some 20 different diseases in humans and animals, all of them untreatable and eventually fatal including mad cow disease and a rare human form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The researchers transferred prion populations from infected brain cells to culture cells. When transplanted, cell-adapted prions developed and out-competed their brain-adapted counterparts, confirming prions' ability to adapt to new surroundings, a hallmark of Darwinian evolution. When returned to brain, brain-adapted prions again took over the population. "We know that mutation and natural selection occur in living organisms and now we know that they also occur in a non-living organism," says Weissmann. "I suppose anything that can't do that wouldn't stand much of a chance of survival.""

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