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Biotech

Designer Babies 902

Posted by samzenpus from the wings-and-a-nice-prehensile-tail dept.
Singularity Hub writes "The Fertility Institutes recently stunned the fertility community by being the first company to boldly offer couples the opportunity to screen their embryos not only for diseases and gender, but also for completely benign characteristics such as eye color, hair color, and complexion. The Fertility Institutes proudly claims this is just the tip of the iceberg, and plans to offer almost any conceivable customization as science makes them available. Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life's savings for a custom baby, opponents are vilifying the company for shattering moral and ethical boundaries. Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back."
Media

MediaDefender's Parent Company Joins P2P Market 40

Posted by Soulskill from the playing-both-sides dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that ArtistDirect, the company who acquired MediaDefender, has launched another company called PiCast for the purpose of P2P video distribution. The reader says: "This is a strange twist for a company which last year set up a video-sharing site called Miivi in an attempt to entrap users uploading copyrighted content, and was caught launching a DoS attack against Revision3, which we discussed earlier this year."
The Courts

Michael Robertson Sued Over Missing Linspire Cash 65

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the transparency-whether-you-like-it-or-not dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger and ex-Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony reports that Michael Robertson has been sued by a Linspire shareholder to get to the bottom of what happened to Linspire's assets. One hundred shareholders have been left uninformed as to what happened to the company and its assets after Linspire was sold to Xandros a few months back."
The Internet

Olympic Media Village – Most Expensive Internet In the World? 389

Posted by timothy from the yuan-way-to-think-about-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Working for the Olympics as an IT contractor, I recently moved to the Media Village (where all of the reporters live) and was surprised the there was no free internet. BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games) is charging a ridiculous amount of money for ADSL service: for 512/512 it costs 7712.5 RMB (1131.20 USD); for 1M/512 it costs 9156.25 (1342.95 USD); for 2M/512 it costs a whopping 11,700 RMB (1716.05 USD). That is for only one month! For extra features like a fixed IP? That costs an additional 450 RMB (66 USD). I just can't believe that not only do I have to deal with the Great Firewall of China, but also pay through the nose to use it!"

Comment How do we defend ourselves if... (Score 3, Interesting) 440

by meisenst (#23379784) Attached to: USAF Considers Creation of Military Botnet
... the government decides to turn this botnet against the civilian population in some way?

I mean, at some point (if I recall correctly, I am not American, I am Canadian), there were laws created saying that Americans have the right to arm themselves in case their government turns against them. Does that include the case of computer warfare?

What would happen in the case of other countries that this botnet could be used against? Would that be considered an act of war?
Robotics

Examining the Ethical Implications of Robots in War 369

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the come-with-me-if-you-want-to-live dept.
Schneier points out an interesting (and long, 117-pages) paper on the ethical implications of robots in war [PDF]. "This report has provided the motivation, philosophy, formalisms, representational requirements, architectural design criteria, recommendations, and test scenarios to design and construct an autonomous robotic system architecture capable of the ethical use of lethal force. These first steps toward that goal are very preliminary and subject to major revision, but at the very least they can be viewed as the beginnings of an ethical robotic warfighter. The primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law but outperform human soldiers in their ethical capacity."

Affordable DX10 - GeForce 8600 GTS and 8600 GT 224

Posted by Zonk from the only-a-bit-more-than-nine dept.
mikemuch writes "While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card, Nvidia today already released its affordable SKUs, in descending price and performance order the GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8600 GT, and 8500 GT. The GTS costs $200-230, the GT from $150-170, and the 8500 reaching down to the $90 range. The architecture for the new GPUs is the same as for the 8800 line, but with lower clocks and fewer stream processors."
Windows

Vista Protected Processes Bypassed 221

Posted by CowboyNeal from the falling-confidence-levels dept.
Anonymous Hero writes "Security Researcher Alex Ionescu strikes again, this time with a proof of concept program that will arbitrarily enable and foremost disable the protection of so-called 'protected processes' in Windows Vista. Not only threatening Vista DRM and friends, it's also another step towards hardened and even more annoying malware. Normally, only specially signed processes made by special companies (decided by Microsoft) can be protected, but now the bad guys can protect any evil process they want, including the latest version of their own keylogger, spambot, or worm, as well as unprotect any 'good' one."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft applies to patent RSS

Submitted by
Cyvros
Cyvros writes: "Microsoft has decided that it wants to patent RSS. The full patent application can be viewed here. Wired's Monkey Bites blog has also covered it.

From the Wired article:
Public outcry quickly followed since Microsoft had little if anything to do with the development of RSS. Dave Winer, the self-described inventor of RSS, lashed out via his blog claiming, "presumably they're eventually going to charge us to use it."

As an aside, it'll be interesting to watch just how Apple and the Linux/BSD crowd will react to this, especially if the patent is granted."

Fedora's New Test Lead Plans Changes 32

Posted by timothy from the vermillion-chapeau dept.
lisah writes "According to a NewsForge article by Bruce Byfield, new Fedora test lead Will Woods has a laundry list of changes he plans on making to enhance the Fedora testing process. 'There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL),' says Woods. 'It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again.'"

EVE Online's Next Frontier 135

Posted by Zonk from the space-it's-really-big-till-you-get-to-the-end dept.
If you look at the graphs over at MMOGChart.com, most of the lines that aren't WoW seem to be heading downwards. The little engine that could, though, is personified by the Icelandic dynamo EVE Online. FiringSquad has an interview with CCP Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson. He discusses the popularity of EVE right now, and goes into some of the company's plans for making sure the game stays that way in the future. From the article: "This iterative process is based largely on our crazy future views of how EVE should be and a lot on player feedback. We then want to do some revolutionary stuff to the EVE universe and then evolution comes and bites us in the ass, reminding us that it's not cool to always throw new stuff in, the current game needs to be constantly maintained and evolved. In the end, we're never happy and I guess this is part of what is fuelling our continued passion for EVE."

1 Million 360s a Month By Year's End 118

Posted by Zonk from the cue-the-stirring-march-music dept.
GameDailyBiz reports that Microsoft plans to have one million 360's produced a month by the end of the year. From the article: "As has been previously reported Xbox 360 production and availability has already been significantly increased in recent weeks. In the period through Microsoft's fiscal year ending in June, the company expects to pump out 2 to 3 times the number of units it did previously. With Sony's PlayStation 3 launching this November across the globe, Microsoft still has a window of opportunity during which it can extend its lead in the next-gen race considerably."

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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

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