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Journal SPAM: Articles of Impeachment To Be Filed On Cheney by Kucinich 3

Kucinich's office had no comment on the Congressman's "Dear Colleague" letter -- which apparently was drafted over the weekend, before the school massacre -- or on what the focus of articles of impeachment against Cheney would be.

It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Deadly cell phone virus rumors frighten Afghans

Anonymous Coward writes: "Rumors swept through Afghanistan on Monday that a deadly virus was being spread by mobile telephone calls, and government officials scrambled to reassure the public the talk was rubbish. Many worried Afghan mobile phone users called family and friends, warning them not to answer calls from strange numbers. Some people said they had heard that several people had been killed by the mystery virus in Kabul at the weekend.

"Don't answer any strange number because it contains a virus that will kill you," said Ahmad Fawad, a shop owner in Kabul. The rumors appear to have spread from neighboring Pakistan where last week a similar scare frightened countless mobile phone users. Afghan officials appeared on television and said the talk was baseless.

http://news.com.com/Deadly+cell+phone+virus+rumors +frighten+Afghans/2110-7349_3-6176870.html?tag=st_ lh"

Feed Determina experts explain how to exploit an animated-cursor flaw (com.com)

Video: Determina experts explain how to exploit an animated-cursor flaw. Security experts at Determina show how a Vista PC can be compromised by exploiting a flaw in the way the operating system handles animated-cursor files. They've determined that Firefox users are at a higher risk than IE 7 users.

Space

Submission + - Massive star burps, then explodes

gollum123 writes: "Tens of millions of years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a massive star suffered a nasty double whammy ( http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/0 4/04_supernova.shtml ). Signs of the first shock reached Earth on Oct. 20, 2004, when the star was observed letting loose an outburst so enormous and bright that Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki initially mistook it for a supernova. The star survived for nearly two years, however, until on Oct. 11, 2006, professional and amateur astronomers witnessed it blowing itself to smithereens as Supernova (SN) 2006jc. All the observations suggest that the supernova's blast wave took only a few weeks to reach the shell of material ejected two years earlier, which did not have time to drift very far from the star. As the wave smashed into the ejecta, it heated the gas to millions of degrees, hot enough to emit copious X-rays. The Swift satellite saw the supernova continue to brighten in X-rays for 100 days, something that has never been seen before in a supernova. All supernovae previously observed in X-rays have started off bright and then quickly faded to invisibility."

Feed Seagate ships hardware-encrypted notebook drives (theregister.com)

Should be popular

Analysis Seagate Technology has announced that it is now shipping its Momentus 5400 FDE.2, an encrypting 2.5-inch notebook PC hard drive for notebooks, to ASI Computer Technologies. The Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (Full Disc Encryption) hard drive offers up to 160GB of capacity, Serial ATA interface, and hardware-based AES encryption. The encrypting hard drive is also positioned as a means by which organizations can easily repurpose or retire laptops without compromising sensitive information and comply with data privacy laws.


Biotech

Submission + - Technique to turn all blood into type 0

davidwr writes: Is this the end of type-O blood shortages? In an article published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers figured out how to make bacterial enzymes turn type-A, -B, and -AB blood into type O blood, or "universal red blood cells." From the abstract:

The enzymatic conversion processes we describe hold promise for achieving the goal of producing universal RBCs, which would improve the blood supply while enhancing the safety of clinical transfusions.
Related story.
Movies

Submission + - TRON Classified "Sensitive" by Homeland Se

ewhac writes: "Apparently a Jeff Bridges film is now a credible threat to the Republic. Reports are emerging from Hollywood that the Department of Homeland Security has classified the film TRON as "sensitive" and ordered Disney studios to surrender all its copies. Concern reportedly surrounds the live action scenes shot at the Shiva nuclear fusion research facility, which apparently after 25 years are now considered to reveal sensitive details about nuclear technology."
Space

Submission + - SpaceX Celebrates Launch of Falcon 1

iamlucky13 writes: Barely under a year since a fuel leak doomed their first launch, upstart aerospace company SpaceX has cleared the ground a second time with their Falcon 1 rocket. The flight proceeded smoothly until a roll control issue caused premature engine shutdown and loss of telemetry at T plus 5:05. News is currently limited to brief mission status reports. Although the ultimate fate of the rocket and payload are unknown, the company appears pleased with preliminary performance indications. "We in the Washington, D.C. office are celebrating with champagne," said company VP Gwynne Shotwell. "We don't have any information yet from the launch control center, but the Falcon clearly got to space with a successful liftoff, stage separation, second stage ignition and fairing separation."

The flight of the $7 million rocket was to demonstrate its capabilities for DARPA and included two NASA experiments. CEO Elon Musk noted many improvements had been made since the first launch attempt, and has cited similar challenges in the development of other rocket systems. A launch attempt yesterday was scrubbed to resolve telemetry issues with just 62 seconds left. Today's countdown was kept exciting by an automated abort after engine ignition due to marginal chamber pressure. The countdown was restarted after refueling the rocket, with launch at 01:10 GMT from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
Space

Submission + - SpaceX Successfully Lanuches Falcon I

Teancum writes: "SpaceX Corporation and Elon Musk have succesfully launched the Falcon I rocket from Kwajalein Atoll today at about 6:00 PM PDT. While there were a few glitches including a launch abort at T+ 0:10 and a few other issues typical to all launches, the rocket was successful in launching and succesfully fired the second stage as well. This is in follow up to yesterday's abort that was due to a glitch moving from ground telemetry link switching over to radio links."
Data Storage

Submission + - Samsung Starts Shipping Hybrid Hard Drives

RX8 writes: "Samsung started shipping their new 2.5 inch hard drives today that feature 80, 120 and 160GB capacities with either 128 or 256 MB of onboard OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software. Samsung is claiming that these new hybrid drives will speed up boot times by as much as 50% and use up to 90% less power."
Space

Submission + - Scientists Break Speed of Light

PreacherTom writes: Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that shoots about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum, to the point where the pulse seemed to exit the chamber before even entering it. Apparently, Uncle Albert is still resting comfortably: relativity only states that an object with mass cannot travel faster than light. Still, the results are sufficient to merit publication in the prestigious journal, Nature.
The Courts

Submission + - Internet Radio Now Under RIAA Interdiction

music-in-a-box writes: "The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per performance" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

A "performance" is defined as one song being streamed to a single listener. In other words, a station with 1000 listeners is charged for 1000 performances of each song it broadcasts.

The new rates are retroactive to 2006, and increase rapidly each year. The rates per performance are as follows:

$0.0008 in 2006
$0.0011 in 2007
$0.0014 in 2008
$0.0018 in 2009

These may look like fairly small numbers, but the reality is grim for all but the richest broadcasters such as AOL and Yahoo!. As Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter points out, "That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues."

More info here: save-internet-radio.com, savenetradio.org, blog.wired.com.

Paraphrasing one poster on the Wired blog, "The irony is that web radio in the United States is going to need the same technology to broadcast that people in China use to express views contrary to the government." .

Of course, the popular alternative for the time being is to move broadcast operations to Canada."
Businesses

Submission + - Best Buy Under Investigation

quibbs0 writes: ""Best Buy is getting into some hot water because of an intrastore version of its Web site. The Connecticut Attorney General's Office has launched a probe into the chain's use of an internal version of its Web site that looks and acts virtually identical to the public Web version except that it sometimes offers higher prices, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal."

Feed Scientists Call Carmakers' Bluff (wired.com)

The UCS unveils a minivan design that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 40 percent, keep safety and performance intact, be cheaper to buy -- and it's not a hybrid. What's up automakers? In Autopia.


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