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Space

Submission + - Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life (geoffrobinson.net)

Submitted by
geoffrobinson
geoffrobinson writes: "Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life. From the article: "But Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said on Friday the spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin." Houtkooper adds

We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see what kind of microbes these are and whether they are related to terrestrial microbes. It is a possibility that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or vice versa a long time ago.
"
Privacy

Submission + - US Government Confirms Illegal wiretapping Program (msn.com)

Submitted by uctechdude
uctechdude writes: National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell pulled the curtain back on previously classified details of government surveillance and of a secretive court whose recent rulings created new hurdles for the Bush administration as it tries to prevent terrorism.

Among the disclosures:
McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. "Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.
Space

Submission + - Life on Mars uses hydrogen peroxide as anti-freeze

Submitted by
mrraven
mrraven writes: "According to an article on CNN a new interpretation of 30 year old data by Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen of from Mars Viking lander data indicates a possibility that Martian soil may be .1 percent of biological origin:

"Houtkooper believes their presence would account for unexplained rises in oxygen and carbon dioxide when NASA's Viking landers incubated Martian soil. He bases his calculation of the biomass of Martian soil on the assumption that these gases were produced during the breakdown of organic material." Article at:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/08/23/mars.soil .life.reut/index.html?iref=mpstoryview"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun changes stock symbol to JAVA

Submitted by _damnit_
_damnit_ writes: The wounded ship that was once SUNW is now JAVA. CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on his blog that they will change their NASDAQ stock symbol to try and capitalize on the success (?) of Java. For a long time people have been waiting for Sun to monetize Java. Having JAVA as one of NASDAQ's most active doesn't really address that issue but Jonathan is thinking outside the box I guess. Now if they could just gain revenue they could stop laying off staff.
Privacy

Submission + - Comcast Caches Web Pages 1

Submitted by
not-admin
not-admin writes: "A little over five years ago, Comcast received some major consumer backlash for their policy of caching web pages that users requested, along with the IP address of the requesting user. It appears now that this policy has been reinstated, at least for personal customers. While this does make practical sense for an ISP, it is unpractical in many cases where site content is generated on-demand. In situations like that a cache can cause problems, making a site cumbersome or even useless. In the evolving "Web 2.0" world of today, is caching a practical solution for ISPs or just another hassle for the consumer?"
Privacy

Submission + - A word means whatever we want it to mean (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recent article in the New York Times (courtesy BugMeNot link) lists some of the evidence against accused I'm-not-sure-what-exactly-he's-supposed-to-have-do ne-anymore Jose Padilla, and much of the prosecution's evidence seems to hinge on innocent words being code for something else. For example, "Playing football" meant engaging in jihad, prosecutors said, "the dogs" meant the United States government, and "zucchini" meant weapons. Where does that leave the rest of us though? What will the spooks make of "pwned" or "l33t"? Is there anything you can do to protect yourself from having your facebook "I think I'll go have a coffee" turn up at your trial as "Well Your Honor, when we replace the word coffee with 'weapon of mass destruction' we see this man is clearly a terrorist!", or is the only defence total silence?

And remember, anything you say really can and will be used against you now.
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T censors pearl jam webcast

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast. When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them. During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast: — "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and — "George Bush find yourself another home." This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. More Here: http://pearljam.com/news/index.php?what=News#195
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T Practices Political Censorship (pearljam.com)

Submitted by
grcumb
grcumb writes: "Pearl Jam reports that their live webcast from Lollapalooza was censored by AT&T. The statement on the band's website outlines their concerns in the context of the ongoing Net Neutrality 'debate':

"AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

"Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of "NetNeutrality." Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.


It's refreshing to see that at least some of our media darlings have a clue about what this debate is about,"
Software

Submission + - TopCoder Community Builds Its Own UML Tool

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Today TopCoder unveiled a new UML Tool: an easy to use, consistent modeling tool for use in Design and Development competitions. The new tool was built to model sequence, class, use case, and activity diagrams. Though this project was to follow the standard TopCoder component methodology, it was unique in one important respect. Rather than TopCoder staff leading the effort, everything — including project management and architecture, from soup to nuts — was to be done by TopCoder members. Full story at http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=dev&d2 =umltool&d3=description
The Internet

Submission + - Study: Only 1-in-5 will download video again

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: It appears that the days of the local video store may not be numbered after all, with few consumers in the US satisfied with the videos they download from the Internet, according to a new study by Parks Associates. The study reveals that consumers are not impressed with the selection of videos available nor the price; just 16% said the selection of videos available online is good, and only 13% said video downloads are sold at a reasonable price. And what must really worry online movie distributors is that only one in five consumers plan to download videos again in the future.
Robotics

Submission + - DARPA Semifinalists Selected

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DARPA has selected thirty-six teams as Urban Challenge semifinalists to participate in the National Qualification Event. Both the webcast and press release can be found on the official site: here. Dr. Tony Tether reports that only 1 of the top 5 previous teams was rated in the top 5 of teams this year and 3 of the top 5 were not in the challenge finals last year.
NASA

Submission + - Blogger finds Y2K bug in NASA global warming study 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the article at http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+ NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm a blogger has discovered a Y2K bug in a NASA climate study by the same writer who accused the Bush administration of trying to censor him on the issue of global warming. The authors have acknowledged the problem and released corrected data. Now the study shows the warmest year on record as being 1934, not 1998 as previously reported in the media. In fact, the corrected study shows that half of the 10 warmest years on record occurred before World War II.
United States

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

Submitted by WerewolfOfVulcan
WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.
Announcements

Submission + - Zinc lozenges an ineffective treatment for colds 1

Submitted by ardent99
ardent99 writes: A new study (a meta-study?) shows that most of the past studies about the effectiveness of treating colds with zinc are severely flawed. The article finds that despite 20 years of research, the benefits of zinc lozenges as a therapy for the common cold have not been proven. A new study, published in the Sept. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, currently available online, reviews the 14 placebo-controlled studies from the past two decades and finds significant fault with 10 of the studies. Of the four remaining studies, three reported no therapeutic effect from zinc lozenge or nasal spray, and one study reported positive results from zinc nasal gel.

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