The Telegraph is reporting that for the first time an extinct animal has been brought back via cloning. The Pyrenean ibex, a type of mountain goat, was declared officially extinct in 2000, but thanks to preserved skin samples scientists were able to insert that DNA into eggs from domestic goats to clone a female Pyrenean ibex. While the goat didn't survive long due to lung defects this gives scientists hopes that it will be possible to resurrect extinct species from frozen tissue. "Using techniques similar to those used to clone Dolly the sheep, known as nuclear transfer, the researchers were able to transplant DNA from the tissue into eggs taken from domestic goats to create 439 embryos, of which 57 were implanted into surrogate females. Just seven of the embryos resulted in pregnancies and only one of the goats finally gave birth to a female bucardo, which died seven minutes later due to breathing difficulties, perhaps due to flaws in the DNA used to create the clone."

blozza2070 writes "In a recent posting from Philip Van Hoof, he suggests that GNOME split off from the GNU Project and has proposed a vote. He was informed he will need 10% of members to agree for a vote to be put forth. At the same time, David Schlesinger (on the GNOME Advisory Board) has agreed on a vote. Stormy Peters said she doesn't agree with this, but then gave everyone instructions on how to proceed with a vote. She mentioned that roughly 20 members are needed to agree." The mailing list server is timing out as of this writing, but iTWire has the Cliff's notes.

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "KDE founder Matthias Ettrich was decorated today with the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software. The Federal Cross of Merit is both the most prestigious as well as the only general decoration awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is awarded by the Federal President for outstanding achievements in the political, economic, cultural, and other fields. Matthias was awarded the medal in recognition of his work spurring innovation and spreading knowledge for the common good."

teko_teko writes "Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The flowers, derivatives of the cherry sage plant and the gardenia, were specially developed for the grounds of Toyota's Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan. The sage derivative's leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide."

jammag writes "The Linux desktop has seen major innovation of late, with KDE 4 launching new features, GNOME announcing a new desktop, and Ubuntu embarking on a redesign campaign. But Linux pundit Bruce Byfield asks, do average users really want any of these things? He points to instances of user backlash, and concludes 'Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them. The problem is, the days when users of free software were also its developers are long gone, but the habits of those days remain. The result is that developers function far too much in isolation from their user base.' Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Just when you think they've reached rock bottom, it seems the RIAA always finds room to sink a little lower. This time they've sued an innocent, 19-year-old transplant patient, hospitalized with pancreatitis and needing islet cell transplants. Although the young Pittsburgh lady claims that she did not infringe any copyrights, she failed to answer the complaint in time, and a default judgment was taken against her. A Pittsburgh area lawyer has stated that he will represent her pro bono and make a motion to open up the default."

fprintf writes "A recent NY Times article discusses links between personal music players and hearing loss. This is not anything new; personally, I have hearing loss from listening to my Sony Walkman cassette player many years ago. However, given the widespread use of the personal music players, I see people using earbuds everywhere; is there a technical solution to the potential danger?"

Enon writes "eEye Digital Security has discovered 14 vulnerabilities in the FLAC file format that affect a huge range of media players on every supported operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Unix, BSD, Solaris, and even some hardware players are vulnerable). Heise points out a number of vulnerable apps that use the open source libavcodec audio codec library, which in turn relies on the flawed libFLAC library. These vulnerabilities could allow a person of ill will to trojanize FLAC files that could compromise your computer if they are played on a vulnerable media player. eEye worked with US-CERT to notify vulnerable vendors."

ISurfTooMuch writes "With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"