Comment Re:Completely bypassing the cell's "firewall"? (Score 1) 45
Which is every pathogen’s wet dream.
What could possibly go wrong...?
Just imagine how they would feel if we started growing whole people on beds of nanowires!
Submission + - Obama Finds Cybersecurity Czar, Finally (bbc.co.uk)
Entropy98 writes: FTA: 'Howard Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive was appointed after others turned the post down.
"I bring to this challenge lessons learned during 40 years of experience in government, business and law enforcement," said Mr Schmidt.
"In our digital world the information technologies we depend on every day present us with great opportunity and great danger — for our national security, public safety and economic competitiveness as well as our personal privacy," added Mr Schmidt in a video broadcast posted on the White House's website.
Mr Schmidt served under President George W Bush for three years, where his tasks involved reviewing how to improve network security for government agencies, the private sector and citizens.
Some in the industry warn of the political pitfalls ahead as Mr Schmidt tries to pull together a number of government agencies and their various cybersecurity issues.
"I think it will be a very tough job. He's going to have to herd some cats," said Roger Thornton, CTO and founder of security vendor Fortify Software.'
Finally, the internet is safe, I'm going to uninstall my security software, downgrade my browser and flash, look at some porn and then do some online banking.
"I bring to this challenge lessons learned during 40 years of experience in government, business and law enforcement," said Mr Schmidt.
"In our digital world the information technologies we depend on every day present us with great opportunity and great danger — for our national security, public safety and economic competitiveness as well as our personal privacy," added Mr Schmidt in a video broadcast posted on the White House's website.
Mr Schmidt served under President George W Bush for three years, where his tasks involved reviewing how to improve network security for government agencies, the private sector and citizens.
Some in the industry warn of the political pitfalls ahead as Mr Schmidt tries to pull together a number of government agencies and their various cybersecurity issues.
"I think it will be a very tough job. He's going to have to herd some cats," said Roger Thornton, CTO and founder of security vendor Fortify Software.'
Finally, the internet is safe, I'm going to uninstall my security software, downgrade my browser and flash, look at some porn and then do some online banking.
Submission + - Girl gamers more hard core than guys (scientificamerican.com)
TheClockworkSoul writes: Scientific American reports on a study published this month in the Journal of Communication, which found that women who engage in a role-playing game online actually commit more time on average than the guy players do.
The authors surveyed 7,000 logged in to EverQuest II, and found that the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31, and that playing time tended to increase with age. Interestingly, however, the female gamers not only tended to log more time online (29 hours a week, versus 25 for the males), but were more likely to lie about how much they really play.
Submission + - Irish Supreme Court Rules on Embryo Case (supremecourt.ie)
flynny51 writes: The Supreme Court has ruled against a woman seeking to have 3 frozen embryos implanted under Article 40.3 which provides constitutional protection to the life of the unborn, against the wishes of her former partner.
Submission + - SPAM: Ignore Microsoft, Check Everything
itwbennett writes: Steven Vaughan-Nichols is blogging about a Microsoft gaffe first reported Monday by Trend Micro researcher David Sancho. 'When Microsoft published a list of what files you shouldn't bother to check for viruses, since looking in on them can really slow a PC down, they also gave a blueprint to virus-writers on where they should focus their attacks,' writes Vaughan-Nichols. 'Anti-virus software isn't any kind of sovereign remedy for malware,' says Vaughan-Nichols, 'but it's the best protection that 99% of all users have and any policy that might weaken it is a bad policy.' In a Computerworld article, Andrew Storms, nCircle Network Security's director of security operations downplayed the potential danger, saying essentially that antivirus software isn't going to catch everything anyway.
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Comment Re:Founder effect, anybody? (Score 1) 14
Allow me to clarify...
Comment Founder effect, anybody? (Score 2, Insightful) 14
As it turns out, the town was founded by only 8 families, and only minimally intermarried with anybody from outside.
Hmm... for some reason, the term "founder effect" comes to mind.
Comment Re:p16 is not new (Score 1) 118
While it's certainly true that p16 is not only known, but a major focus of cancer research, this paper isn't announcing its discovery, it's describing an impressive property of naked mole rat cellular biology (namely, its resistance to cancerous transformation), which they traced to the naked mole rat's version of the p16 protein (which is homologous to human p16).
Like a previous poster said, I would be more convinced had the researchers transfected a human cell with the mole rat p16 and showed it to be resistant to cancerous transformation, but that being said, this is likely to be a pretty big discovery. Considering the central role that p16 plays in oncogenesis, this can potentially lead to new insights about that process.
Submission + - Nigerian "Scam Police" shut down 800 web sites\
Sooner Boomer writes: "Nigerian police in what is named Operation "Eagle Claw" have shut down 800 scam web sites, and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com, and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft, to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart "When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed "eagle claw" should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.". So maybe Microsoft does a little bit of good after all."
Submission + - Virus-Like Particles May Mean Speedier Flu Vacines (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader writes: As the world struggles to produce enough H1N1 vaccine, Technology Review reports on two human trials involving so-called virus-like particles (VLP) vaccines, which promise to be much faster to churn out. VLP vaccines use a protein shells, grown in either plants or insect cells, that look just like real viruses to the body's immune system but that contain no influenza RNA genetic material. A company called Medicago grows its VLPs in transgenic tobacco plants, while another, called Novavax, uses a "immortalized" cells taken from caterpillars. Providing they pass safety regulations both techniques should be able to produce an influenza vaccine more quickly than current methods, using just the DNA of the virus.
Submission + - Nokia sues Apple for iPhone patent infringement
YouWantFriesWithThat writes: Nokia filed suit Thursday against Apple for patents infringed by the iPhone Details from a Reuters article:
"By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation," Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President for Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia, said in a statement.
Nokia has ten patents that cover different technologies that the iPhone uses and stated that they include: "wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and affect all Apple iPhone models shipped."
The story is developing, but is confirmed by multiple sources.
Submission + - The Scientist Who Mistook Himself for a Spy
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that Stewart Nozette, who helped to discover water on the Moon and spent six years at a top-secret defense technology agency was arrested earlier this week on espionage charges, after telling an FBI agent that he was willing to sell some of America’s “most guarded secrets” to a man he believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. Nozette worked at the Department of Energy in the 1990s, where he held a special security clearance described in the criminal complaint against him as “equivalent to the Defense Department’s Top Secret and Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information clearances (PDF).” For most of the past decade Nozette “acted as a technical consultant for an aerospace company that was wholly owned by the Government of the State of Israel” and when he took on this consulting work Nozette apparently concluded that he had already effectively become a spy. "I thought I was working for you already," said Nozette to the undercover officer posing as a Mossad recruiter according to an FBI transcript. "I mean that’s what I always thought, [the foreign company] was just a front." Marc Ambinder writes in the Atlantic that Nozette's "Q" clearance from the Department of Energy, giving him access to data about nuclear weapons, might have been of interest to the Israelis. "Since Israel has nuclear weapons, its espionage efforts are probably more directed towards figuring out what the US knows about them, how the US monitors, say, Israeli launch preparation sites, and who the US shares this data with," writes Ambinder. "No doubt that Nozette would be in a good position to know how easily it is for US technologies to pierce the veil of Israel's secret nuke program.""
Comment Re:Wait a second... (Score 5, Insightful) 137
Well, just a thought, but wouldn't one such possible control be shining the laser on flies without ATP receptors?
Submission + - Texas Requires Investigator License to Repair PC's (ij.org) 2
JeremyGa writes: The state of Texas now wants computer techs to obtain a private investigator license before they access data on the computers they work on, or else risk a year in jail, a fine, and civil penalties of up to $10,000 every time they fix a computer. Since 2007, anyone who accesses non-public files to gather information about the "causes of events" and the "actions of persons" is deemed by the government to have conducted an "investigation" and must therefore have a private investigator- license. Repairing a computer almost always involves looking at the data to determine the "causes of events" what went wrong with the computer. The cause of those events will frequently be tied back to the"actions of persons". Whether a careless child downloaded a virus or an unscrupulous employee visited prohibited websites that installed malware, the essence of computer repair is figuring out what happened to a computer and reporting the cause of the problem to the computer owner. The new law makes potential criminals out of thousands of PC technicians in Texas.
Each licensed investigations company- including sole proprietorship's -must be managed by an individual who has completed either a criminal justice degree or a three-year apprenticeship under a licensed investigator. Each licensed investigator must submit his or her fingerprints to the FBI, pay a $441 licensing fee, complete a 200-question written examination, and obtain $200,000 in liability insurance.
Each licensed investigations company- including sole proprietorship's -must be managed by an individual who has completed either a criminal justice degree or a three-year apprenticeship under a licensed investigator. Each licensed investigator must submit his or her fingerprints to the FBI, pay a $441 licensing fee, complete a 200-question written examination, and obtain $200,000 in liability insurance.
