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The Military

The Military Plans To Regrow Body Parts 257

Posted by kdawson from the anything-salamanders-can-do dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Department of Defense has announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine to 'harness stem cell research and technology... to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.' The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project's first five years, and the NIH and three universities will be on the team. The military has been working on regrowing lost body parts using extracellular matrices and scientists in labs have grown blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat and are already growing a new ear for a badly burned Marine using stem cells from his own body. Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker explained that our bodies systematically generate liver cells and bone marrow and that this ability can be redirected through 'the right kind of stimulation.' The general cited animals like salamanders that can regrow lost tails or limbs. 'Why can't a mammal do the same thing?' he asked."
The Courts

U. Maine Law Students Trying To Shut RIAA Down 229

Posted by kdawson from the corrupt-enterprise dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Remember those pesky student attorneys from the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, who inspired the Magistrate Judge to suggest monetary fines against the RIAA lawyers? Well they're in the RIAA's face once again, and this time they're trying to shut down the RIAA's whole 'discovery' machine: the lawsuits it files against 'John Does' in order to find out their names and addresses. They've gone and filed a Rule 11 motion for sanctions (PDF), seeking — among other things — an injunction against all such 'John Doe' cases, arguing that the cases seek to circumvent the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act which protects student privacy rights, are brought for improper purposes of obtaining discovery, getting publicity, and intimidation, and are in flagrant violation of the joinder rules and numerous court orders. If the injunction is granted, the RIAA will have to go back to the drawing board to find another way of finding out the identities of college students, and the ruling — depending on its reasoning — might even be applicable to the non-college cases involving commercial ISPs."
The Courts

Jack Thompson Served With Order to Show Cause 299

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the a-village-somewhere-is-missing-their-idiot dept.
cli_rules! writes "DailyTech has reported that Jack Thompson has been ordered to explain himself. 'Therefore, it is ordered that you shall show cause on or before March 5, 2008, why this Court should not find that you have abused the legal system process and impose upon you a sanction for abusing the legal system, including, but not limited to directing the Clerk of this Court to reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, letters, documents, or other filings submitted to this Court by you unless signed by a member of The Florida Bar other than yourself.'"
Privacy

US Courts Consider Legality of Laptop Inspection 595

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-porn-is-all-grown-up-anyway dept.
ceide2000 writes "The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different from looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit." This story follows up on a story about laptop confiscation at the borders from a few months ago.
Communications

Submission + - Never mind the b******t, swearing at work is good (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "This is the kind of news that your HR folks don't want to hear, but researchers today said letting workers swear at will in the workplace can benefit employees and employers. The study found regular use of profanity to express and reinforce solidarity among staff, enabling them to express their feelings, such as frustration, and develop social relationships, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UES). Researchers said their aim was to challenge leadership styles and suggest ideas for best practice. "Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner. Swearing was as a social phenomenon to reflect solidarity and enhance group cohesiveness, or as a psychological phenomenon to release stress, " the study stated. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20718"
Patents

Submission + - US Patent Office decimates Amazon's 1-Click Patent (theregister.com)

Submitted by rgraham
rgraham writes: From the article, "Most of the claims in Amazon's controversial patent for shopping with a single mouse click have been rejected by the US Patent Office. It follows a campaign by a New Zealander who filed evidence of prior art with funding from readers of his blog."
Censorship

Submission + - Law firm says copyright prevents viewing HTML (typepad.com)

Submitted by
Greg Beck
Greg Beck writes: "This law firm's website contains the following terms in its "User Agreement":

"We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so."

It also prohibits linking to the site without permission, quoting anything from the site, or referring to the site owner by name."
Privacy

Submission + - How to easily get your FBI, NSA, CIA... files (getmyfbifile.com) 1

Submitted by
Phil Lapsley
Phil Lapsley writes: "A new web site, Get Your FBI File.Com, makes it easy to automatically generate the letters you need to request your FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act. While you're there you can request your CIA, NSA, DIA, DSS, etc. files, too. Couple this with UnSecureFlight.Com and we're close to one-stop shopping for all your national security file needs."
Censorship

Submission + - The Pirate Bay Torrents Deleted

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: All of the torrents on thepiratebay.com have been deleted.
Communications

Submission + - Verizon Opt-Out Plan, Just Non-Identifying Data? (prnewswire.com)

Submitted by Johnny_Law
Johnny_Law writes: As reported previously on Slashdot, Verizon is sending out notices regarding a change in its privacy policies and sharing data with it parent companies and other subsidiaries.

It would be no surpise that Verizon has released a press today to a wire news service, seemlingly to clarify the topic with the general public and media, that all data shared would be non-identifying. The press release was then picked up by most major websites including CNN and Yahoo. However, Verizon has since updated the "official" press release at the PR Newswire site removing the words "non-identifying" from the release. This version of the press release has not yet been picked up by any of the sites that had replicated the first version.
Education

Submission + - RIAA costs UW-Madison $300,000

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the last few years, the University of Wisconsin Madison has spent more than $300,000 to prevent and resolve allegations of illegal downloading and sharing of music by users of the university 's computer network. Noting that UW-Madison ranked No. 10 among all universities nationwide for its number of alleged RIAA copyright violations. Via
Privacy

Submission + - Governator Kills Data Protection Law (eweek.com)

Submitted by
eweekhickins
eweekhickins writes: "The Governator killed data protection in California, and it won't be back. Using a tried-and-true argument, that the bill would have "driven up the costs of compliance, particularly for small businesses," California Governor Arnold Schwartzenneger vetoed — and effectively killed — one of the nation's most stringent proposed e-tail data breach security laws."
Spam

Submission + - Two Spammers Given Five Years for Porn Spam (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "In an Arizona case, two porn spammers were given five years each in prison. From the article, "Over nine months in 2004, Kilbride, Schaffer and an associate transmitted more than 600,000 spam messages, according to court documents. They were paid commissions based on the number of people who accessed the websites via the spam. Kilbride and Schaffer tried to make it seem as if they were sending messages from abroad by logging in to servers in Amsterdam. But those messages originated from Phoenix, prosecutors said. They were also ordered to forfeit $1.3m." Good to have them stopped but as always the real question is whether five years imprisonment for each of them is a little harsh. The case started on June 5th."

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