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Media

Submission + - MediaDefender Leaks Saga : unexpected outcomes (p2pnet.net) 4

Submitted by ShakaZ
ShakaZ writes: Following the leaks of all the internal emails and later the source code of all the anti-p2p software of MediaDefender, the boss and an employee of the company have been arrested by the LA police. They are charged for illegal uploading with intent to deceive, bandwidth theft, and grievous misrepresentation.
More handcuffs there : http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13397

Due to the released emails, ThePirateBay have proof of infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, for which they filed a complaint to the Swedish police. 10 companies of the music, movie and gaming industries are listed in the complaint.
More pirates here : http://thepiratebay.org/blog
The Courts

Submission + - New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, "when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005....." and concluded that "Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case." This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant has recently converted her RICO case into a class action"
Math

Submission + - Supercomputers solve Rubik's Cube (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
BigBadBus
BigBadBus writes: "The bane of every teenager's life in the 1980s, the Rubik's Cube was a fiendishly hard invention. Still, it kept us off the streets. Now a supercomputer has been used to determine that the Cube can be solved in no more than 26 moves. Open that toy chest and get practising — the theoretically minimum is supposed to "be in the low 20's "."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun Releasing 8-Core Niagara 2 Processor

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sun Microsystems is set to announce its eight-core Niagara 2 processor next week. Each core supports eight threads, so the chip handles 64 simultaneous threads, making it the centerpiece of Sun's "Throughput Computing" effort. Along with having more cores than the quads from Intel and AMD, the Niagara 2 have dual, on-chip 10G Ethernet ports with crytopgraphic capability. Sun doesn't get much processor press, because the chips are used only in its own CoolThreads servers, but Niagara 2 will probably be the fastest processor out there when its released, other than perhaps the also little-known 4-GHz IBM Power 6.
Security

Submission + - California Voting System Code Reviews Released (ca.gov)

Submitted by
zestyping
zestyping writes: "Today, the California Secretary of State released the reports from what is probably the most comprehensive analysis of voting system source code to date. The reports cover optical scan and touchscreen voting systems by Diebold, Hart, and Sequoia that are used in many California counties.

Whereas the "red team" reports released last Friday described specific attack scenarios, these reports offer a detailed analysis of the software architecture and source code. All three reports identify significant security weaknesses in the respective systems, including susceptibility to tampering of voting machine firmware, the possibility of viral propagation, and vulnerabilities in the central election management software.

The Secretary of State has until tomorrow, August 3, to decide whether to decertify any voting systems, because she is required to give six months' notice of decertification before the California primary election next February."
Biotech

Submission + - Chernobyl Mushrooms Feeding on Radiation

Submitted by cowtamer
cowtamer writes: According to a National Geographic Article certain fungi can use ionizing radiation to perform "radiosynthesis" using the pigment melanin (the same one in our skin that protects us from UV radiation). It is speculated that this might be useful on long space voyages where energy from the Sun is not readily available.
Biotech

Submission + - Stem Cells Shown to Protect Dying Motor Neurons

Submitted by
Penguinshit
Penguinshit writes: "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by rapid loss of muscle control and eventual paralysis due to the death of large motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Growth factors such as glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are known to protect motor neurons from damage in a range of models. Human cortical neural progenitor cells derived from fetal tissue (ie. stem cells) can be expanded in culture for long periods and survive transplantation into the central nervous system, in some cases making large numbers of GFAP positive astrocytes. They can also be genetically modified to release GDNF and thus act as long-term 'mini pumps' in specific regions of the brain. In this study a team at UW-Madison's Waisman Center genetically modified human neural stem cells to release GDNF and transplanted them into the spinal cord of rats with mutant SOD1. Following unilateral transplantation into the spinal cord of the rats there was robust cellular migration into degenerating areas, efficient delivery of GDNF and remarkable preservation of motor neurons at early and end stages of the disease within chimeric regions.

This work is especially important to me, as I have been living with ALS for almost three years."
AMD

Submission + - AMD 690 Chipset Updated, Performance Boost (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Earlier this year, AMD launched its 690 series motherboard chipset and it was relatively well accepted for its affordability, power efficiency, and performance versus competitive chipsets. AMD has since taken the 690 series chipset and optimized it further through BIOS and software level enhancements that result in marked performance gains in a number of situations and also introduces new features. This article showcases a motherboard from Gigabyte that features the latest updates and compares its performance to the unaltered board from when the chipset was first introduced, to see just how much the platform's performance has matured. The majority of the performance enhancements were targeted toward better HD DVD and Blu-ray playback at 1080p."
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 1

Submitted by
mernil
mernil writes: "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications."
Editorial

Submission + - But Mom! The other 61-year-olds get an allowance! (reuters.com)

Submitted by
deweycheetham
deweycheetham writes: "ROME (Reuters) — A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son's house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idU SL0288587220070802 The article goes on to say "Most Italian men still live at home late into their 30s, enjoying their "mamma's" cooking, washing and ironing.". Well Pack my bags, I am moving to Italy."
Privacy

Submission + - Do Not Call Registry gets wake-up call (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "If you signed up for the federal or your state's Do Not Call Registry a few years ago, you might want to thing about refreshing it. Pennsylvanians this week got a wake up call, so to speak from the state's Attorney General Tom Corbett who kicked off a public awareness campaign designed to remind people what many have forgotten or never knew — that the 2002 law set registrations to expire after five years. That is of course unless you want to start hearing from those telemarketers as you sit down to dinner. Corbett said about 2 million people signed up in the immediate aftermath of the law taking effect and those who do not act by Sept. 15 will have their numbers dropped from the registry on Nov. 1. The Pennsylvania action is a reminder that the National Do Not Call Registry has a five year life span as well. The Federal Trade Commission is set to being a nation campaign in Spring 2008 to remind all US citizens to refresh their federal Do Not Call Registry standing. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18066"
Privacy

Submission + - UCLA Probe Finds Taser Incident Out Of Policy (ucla.edu)

Submitted by Bandor Mia
Bandor Mia writes: Last November, it was reported that UCLA cops Tasered a student, who forgot to bring his ID, at the UCLA library. While an internal probe by UCLAPD cleared the officers of any wrongdoing, an outside probe by Police Assessment Resource Center has found that the police actions on Mostafa Tabatabainejad were indeed out of UCLA policy. The probe was conducted at the behest of acting UCLA Chancellor Norman Abrams.

From the report:
"In light of UCLAPD's general use of force policy and its specific policies on pain compliance techniques, Officer 2's three applications of the Taser, taken together, were out of policy. Officer 2 did not take advantage of other options and opportunities reasonably available to de-escalate the situation without the use of the Taser. Reasonable campus police officers, upon assessing the circumstances, likely would have embraced different choices and options that appear likely to have been more consistent both with UCLAPD policy and general best law enforcement practices."
Biotech

Submission + - HIV vaccine ready for clinical trials (pressesc.com)

Submitted by
amigoro
amigoro writes: "A vaccine that is capable of delivering a double whammy against AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus by both providing immunity against the infection while at the same time destroying cells infected by the virus is ready for clinical trials, a group of Russian researchers announced today."
Programming

Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.23 to have stable userspace drive

Submitted by
liquidat
liquidat writes: "Linus Torvalds included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now the last patches where uploaded and the API was included in Linus tree. The idea of the API is to make life easier for driver developers:

This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.
(more...)"
Power

Submission + - Oil (or Not) in Your Future (connectlive.com) 1

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Over at The Oil Drum there is an interesting discussion going on about a report released (in draft form) by the National Petroleum Council. The report is a response to questions from Secretary of Energy Bodman about the ability of oil companies to meet projected demand for oil (at a reasonable price). The report seems to say that this cannot be done and recommends that the government 1) force conservation through efficiency regulations, 2) shift to other energy sources, 3) reduce regulation on drilling in the US, 4) use US power to force open markets in oil, 5) pay for the education of engineers in the oil field, allow retiring workers to consult without tax penalties and raise H1-B quotas and 6) pay the oil industry to accept carbon dioxide from coal use for sequestration.

The discusion at The Oil Drum is finding that the report is fudging on the peak oil issue while at the same time predicting a greatly increased oil supply mainly from the Middle East using new technologies and discoveries. My own acerbic take on the report findings can be found here."

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