nm writes "The Mozilla Corporation's subsidiary in China has signed a deal with Chinese search engine giant Baidu. Baidu is already included as an option in Firefox's Chinese localization, but this deal formalizes the relationship between Mozilla and and the search company. Mozilla has established several other initiatives in China to help increase Firefox adoption, particularly in universities. The article notes that Firefox has seen limited uptake in China; the browser Maxthon is the second most popular after Internet Explorer. Maxthon is thought to have as much as 30 percent of the Chinese browser market."

stemceller passed us a link to the official site for Johns Hopkins, which is reporting on some research into cognition. Generally, doctors have understood our best learning to be done at a young age, when the brain has a 'robust flexibility'. As we get older, our brain cells become 'hard-wired' along certain paths and don't move much - if at all. Or, at least, that was the understanding. Research headed by the hospital's Dr. Linden has taken advantage of 'two-photon microscopy', a new technique, to get a new picture inside a mouse's head. "They examined neurons that extend fibers (called axons) to send signals to a brain region called the cerebellum, which helps coordinate movements and sensory information. Like a growing tree, these axons have a primary trunk that runs upward and several smaller branches that sprout out to the sides. But while the main trunk was firmly connected to other target neurons in the cerebellum, stationary as adult axons are generally thought to be, 'the side branches swayed like kite tails in the wind,' says Linden. Over the course of a few hours, individual side branches would elongate, retract and morph in a highly dynamic fashion. These side branches also failed to make conventional connections, or synapses, with adjacent neurons. Furthermore, when a drug was given that produced strong electrical currents in the axons, the motion of the side branches stalled.'"

Ian Lamont writes "An Arizona State University researcher named Michael Kozicki claims that nanotechnology will replace disk drives in ten years. The article mentions three approaches: Nanowires (which replace electrons/capacitors), multiple memory layers on silicon (instead of a single layer), and a method that stores multiple pieces of information in the same space: 'Traditionally, each cell holds one bit of information. However, instead of storing simply a 0 or a 1, that cell could hold a 00 or a 01. Kozicki said the ability to double capacity that way — without increasing the number of cells — has already been proven. Now researchers are working to see how many pieces of data can be held by a single cell.'"

jcatcw writes "In an interview with Computerworld's editor in chief, Don Tennant, Frank Abagnale spoke about his life of crime and crime prevention. Abagnale is a notorious criminal, whose exploits were portrayed in the movie 'Catch Me If You Can.' Abagnale claims: 'It would be 4,000 times easier to do today, what I did 40 years ago, and I probably wouldn't go to prison for it. Technology breeds crime — it always has, it always will ... I really think the more technology there is in the world, the more you have to instill character and ethics. You can build all the security systems in the world; you can build the most sophisticated technology, and all it takes is one weak link — someone who operates that technology — to bring it all down." This would seem to echo commentary in a New York Times article about the rise of Russian hackers in recent years.

jkcity writes "In a bizarre move Aurora Technology the owners of the King of the World MMORPG has taken the unusual step of banning men who play women characters but the ban itself does not stretch to women playing men. If you want to play as a woman now in game you have to prove you are a women via web cam. This is something that people ask for in many mmorpgs I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate but how long can a policy of verification by web cam last since its so easy to get around it doesn't seem to solve much and is an insult to many."

nelsonjs writes "On November 1, the ban on taxing Internet service is set to expire. The ban was originally implemented in 1998 in order to encourage the proliferation of Net access. The Senate is considering two competing bills to extend the ban: one would extend it for four years and the other would make the ban permanent. Verizon and Google, usually to be found on opposite sides of any question of Net access, are united in lobbying for the permanent tax ban. If neither passes by November 1, prices for Internet service nationwide could jump by as much as 17 percent, according to ISPs."

Billosaur writes "In what can only be seen as the opening salvo in an attempt to control what users can do with content, the German parliament has approved a controversial copyright law which will make it illegal to make copies of CDs and DVDs, even for personal use. The Bundesrat, the upper part of the German parliament, approved the legislation over the objections of consumer protection groups. The law is set to take effect in 2008, and covers CDs, DVDs, recordings from IPTV, and TV recordings." A few folks have noted that this story is incorrect. The original link seems to be down now anyway. Sorry.

Dr. Eggman writes "Gamasutra has the recent announcement; Intel has purchased Havok. 'As the firm noted, Havok 5 features enhancements to its core products, Havok Physics and Havok Animation, and introduces new features for Havok Behavior, a system for developing event-driven character behaviors in a game. Some of the games using Havok technology, particularly its Havok Physics solution, include BioShock, Stranglehold, Halo 2, Half Life 2, Oblivion, Crackdown, and MotorStorm - the company is also rapidly developing and marketing further tool products.' No word on what (if anything) Intel plans to do with its new acquisition."

Despite some very public, very negative criticism of Factor 5's dragon/shooter Lair, Next Generation notes that Sony remains unfazed. "Outgoing SCEA PR boss Dave Karraker told Next-Gen in a phone interview that despite poor critical reception, the flying lizard game isn't necessarily grounded. 'At the end of the day, I'll be interested in the consumers' response, because the consumer awareness for this title was so huge.'" Meanwhile, MTV's Stephen Totilo notes, with more than a touch of seriousness, that Lairs production may have been a touch cursed.

Tiger4 writes "Let's say I have a photograph, or a television script, or have finally perfected the water-to-gasoline conversion process, or some other piece of non-software but copywritable or patentable IP. I know I want it secured in my name, on this date, in a provable and verifiable way. But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I'm willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me. Any attempts at theft could, would, and must be immediately rebuffed by my offer of proof from when I first secured the IP. What, if any, tool or method is available to me in the digital world? MD5 and the like are available to show that copied files are the same as the original source, but they don't show time of authorship unambiguously. The same with Public Key crypto. I could lock it up with a time stamp, but what prevents me from faking the stamp that locks the file? Is there a way to homestead a little chunk of time with my IP's name on it?"

slyyy writes "The Universtiy of Rochester has discovered the complete genome of a bacterial parasite inside the genome of the host species. This opens the possibility of exchanging DNA between unrelated species and changing our understanding of the evolutionary process. From the article: 'Before this study, geneticists knew of examples where genes from a parasite had crossed into the host, but such an event was considered a rare anomaly except in very simple organisms. Bacterial DNA is very conspicuous in its structure, so if scientists sequencing a nematode genome, for example, come across bacterial DNA, they would likely discard it, reasonably assuming that it was merely contamination--perhaps a bit of bacteria in the gut of the animal, or on its skin. But those genes may not be contamination. They may very well be in the host's own genome. This is exactly what happened with the original sequencing of the genome of the anannassae fruitfly--the huge Wolbachia insert was discarded from the final assembly, despite the fact that it is part of the fly's genome.'"

Jamie found an interesting bit about a bank run in Second Life. The recent ban on gambling combined with a $12k theft from the 2L stock market has caused people to try to get their money back. The article mentions that this could supposedly affect 8.5M players even tho most estimates of actual hard core players in the system are in the 5 to low 6 figure range.

bohn002 writes "In order to coordinate and expand access to the state's broadband data network, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has signed an executive order establishing the Ohio Broadband Council and the Broadband Ohio Network. The order directs the Ohio Broadband Council to coordinate efforts to extend access to the Broadband Ohio Network to every county in Ohio. The order allows public and private entities to tap into the Broadband Ohio Network — all with a goal of expanding access to high-speed internet service in parts of the state that presently don't have such service."

Kraisch writes with a link to the Guardian website, which again revisits the subject of reconstructing the internet. This time the question isn't whether it should be done, but what should the goals of a redesign be? From the article: "'There's a real need to have better identity management, to declare your age and to know that when you're talking to, say, Barclays bank, that you're really doing so,' said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. At the moment we are still using very clumsy methods to approach such problems. The result: last year alone, identity theft and online fraud cost British victims an estimated £414m, while one recent report claimed 93% of all email sent from the UK was spam ... Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet. By using small meshes of many machines that share a pipeline to the net instead of relying on lots of parallel connections, experts say they can create a system that is more intelligent and less prone to attack."

The Webguy writes "Apple has released the first update for the iPhone. Updated components in the v1.0.1 update include Safari, the WebCore, and the WebKit. Quoting from the Apple Knowledge Base, the 'update is only available through iTunes, and will not appear in your computer's Software Update application, or on the Apple Support Downloads site.'" One source speculated that Apple wanted to get fixes in users' hands ahead of the Black Hat conference where details of early iPhone vulnerabilities could be revealed.