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Submission + - Carl Sagan on Marijuana (boingboing.net) 1

eldavojohn writes: "BoingBoing is reporting that allegedly Carl Sagan wrote a piece for "Marihuana Reconsidered" under the pseudonym Mr. X that appears to look fondly upon the science of trippin' balls. Puff the Magic Sagan's full piece can be found here. It opens with 'It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life — a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences.' Too bad old Mr. Cosmos couldn't enjoy his latest vocals."
Biotech

Scientists Deliver Bee Toxin To Tumors Via "Nanobees" 98

ScienceDaily is reporting that Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found a way to deliver bee toxin to tumors using nano-spheres they call "nanobees." The results in mice showed a cessation of growth or even shrinkage of tumors while the surrounding tissue was protected from the toxin. "The core of the nanobees is composed of perfluorocarbon, an inert compound used in artificial blood. The research group developed perfluorocarbon nanoparticles several years ago and have been studying their use in various medical applications, including diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis and cancer. About six millionths of an inch in diameter, the nanoparticles are large enough to carry thousands of active compounds, yet small enough to pass readily through the bloodstream and to attach to cell membranes."
Games

Aion Open Beta Starts September 6th 147

NCSoft announced today that the open beta for upcoming fantasy MMO Aion will begin on September 6th, extending through to the 13th. The client is available now. The game launches on September 22nd in the US, with a two-day head-start given to players who pre-order. NCSoft has also said they'll be showing off Aion in more detail at the Penny Arcade Expo, expanding on the information they provided at Gamescom (video).
Software

Red Hat Spins Off JBoss 2.x As HornetQ 50

Several sources are reporting that Red Hat has spun off the 2.x release of the JBoss messaging protocol as HornetQ. The 1.x version of JBoss is still being supported in maintenance mode and will continue to be known by its original name. "HornetQ is an open source project to build a multi-protocol, embeddable, high performance, clustered, asynchronous messaging system. HornetQ is an example of Message Oriented Middleware. [...] HornetQ is designed with flexibility in mind: It's elegant POJO based design has minimal third party dependencies: Run HornetQ as a stand-alone messaging broker, run it in integrated in your favorite JEE application server, or run it embedded inside your own application. It's up to you."

Comment Re:Getting Firefox? (Score 2, Insightful) 578

They don't have to use any standard protocol or client. They can probably ad an icon somewhere that says "Install IE" and get whatever is needed from the network with no further user interaction. I dont think they are expecting naive users to open a client, connect somewhere and getting a file using a FTP client or something to that effect.
The Media

Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology 665

El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"
Operating Systems

Phoenix BIOSOS? 394

jhfry writes "In an interesting development by an unexpected source, Phoenix Technologies is releasing a Linux-based, virtualization-enabled, BIOS-based OS for computers. They implemented a full Linux distro right on the BIOS chips, and by using integrated virtualization technology, it 'allows PCs and laptops to hot-switch between the main operating system, such as Windows, and the HyperSpace environment.' So, essentially, they are 'trying to create a new market using the ideas of a fast-booting, safe platform that people can work in, but remain outside of Windows.'"
Mozilla

Adblock Plus Maker Proposes Change To Help Sites 615

Dotnaught writes "Wladimir Palant, maker of the Firefox extension Adblock Plus, on Monday proposed a change in his software that would allow publishers, with the consent of Adblock Plus users, to prevent their ads from being blocked. Palant suggested altering his software to recognize a specific meta tag as a signal to bring up an in-line dialog box noting the site publisher's desire to prevent ad blocking. The user would then have to choose to respect that wish or not."
Medicine

Submission + - Paging Doctor Google

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, at least three-quarters of all Internet users look for health information online; 1 in 9 of those with a high-speed connection do health research on a typical day; and and 75 percent of online patients with a chronic problem told researchers that "their last health search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition." But just adding a word makes all the difference. Searching for the name of a certain cancer will bring up the Wikipedia entry and several information sites from major hospitals, drug companies and other providers but add the word "community" to that search and "it's like falling into an alternate universe," filled with sites that connect patients says Susannah Fox, the associate director at Pew. As a result "patients aren't learning from Web sites — they're learning from each other," says Dr. Ted Eytan. But can online information be trusted? In a study earlier this year, a report in the journal Cancer looked at 343 Web pages about breast cancer that came up in online searches and found an error rate of 5.2 percent."
Music

MySpace Digital Music Service Is DRM-Free 93

Anti-Globalism sends word that MySpace flipped the switch on its online, ad-supported, DRM-free music service that will "... give its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the world's largest recording labels. Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied. MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece, a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm."
Security

Emergency Workaround For Oracle 0-Day 152

Almost Live writes "Oracle has released an out-of-cycle alert to offer mitigation for a zero-day exploit that's been posted on the Internet. The emergency workaround addresses an unpatched remote buffer overflow that's remotely exploitable without the need for a username and password, and can result in compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the targeted system." Whoever published the vulnerability and matching exploit code did not contact Oracle first.

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