Slashdot

The FCC has officially opened proceedings investigating Comcast's use of Sandvine to send RST packets and "throttle" P2P connections by disconnecting them. The petitioner, Vuze, Inc. is asking the FCC to rule that Comcast's measures do not constitute "reasonable network management" per the FCC rules and asks the FCC to forbid Comcast from unreasonably discriminating against lawful Internet applications, content, and technologies. If any Slashdotters want to weigh in on these proceedings, they can use the Electronic Comment Filing System to comment on WC Docket no. 07-52 any time before Februrary 13th.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080114-fcc-officially-opens-proceeding-on-comcasts-p2p-throttling.html

Nefarious420 writes "Bush commutes Libby sentence, no jail time served. So much for holding his administration accountable for anything. I guess on the plus side of things his approval ratings can't get much lower."
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usbush0703,0,3743893.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

dreamt writes "According to an AP story (found on TivoBlog), starting July 1, Cable Companies will be required to use CableCard in their own rental set-top boxes. This will hopefully prevent disasters such as the Vista MediaCenter issues and various issues that various people have had with their Tivo Series 3 boxes, as the cable companies will be required to use Cable Card in their own boxes as well."

nam37 writes "CBS 5 has an interesting article about a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents."

A new, controversial theory suggests that nerves don't send signals through electrical currents, but through sound waves.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/123819373/nerve_communication

jimsnail writes "J. Craig Venter and the Institute that bears his name are again moving into new territory in the field of genetics. Genetic patents, that is. They are seeking a broad patent that would give them ownership of a 'free living organism that can grow and replicate' constructed entirely from synthetic DNA. The ETC Group is challenging the claim. 'Scientists at the institute designed the bacterium to have a "minimal genome"--the smallest set of genes any organism can live on. The project, which began in the early 2000s, was partly a philosophical exercise: to help define life itself better by identifying its bare-bones requirements. But it was also fraught with commercial possibilities: if one could reliably recreate a standardized, minimal life form, other useful genes could be added in as needed for various purposes.'"

The Federal Trade Commission has made an effort to crack down on spyware purveyors, and though its intentions may be noble, it's had very little overall effect on the problem. It's said in the past that it wants to be able to put spyware distributors in jail, and while that sounds fine, stiffer penalties won't help solve the bigger underlying problems in this area, such as the lack of a clear definition of spyware. With this in mind, some members of Congress have taken on the issue over the years, and in March, an anti-spyware bill was passed by the House. Now, the House has approved a second anti-spyware bill, one that's raised the hackles of internet companies and advertisers. They say that it would put an unnecessary burden on legitimate web site owners who have nothing to do with spyware, because it's so broadly worded that it would cover cookies used by many sites for legitimate purposes. The act would require sites to use some sort of pop-up notification if they transmit personal information without the user's knowledge, surreptitiously install software, or "commit other federal crimes such as identity theft." It seems rather unlikely that identity thieves would bother to put up a message telling users they need to click "OK" to become the victim of fraud, since, after all, identity theft is already generally illegal. But perhaps the bigger problem is that if so many sites start displaying these warnings, people will just ignore them -- just as they do with the clickwrap EULAs companies like Zango already use. Given the Senate's reluctance over the years to pass any of these laws, it seems unlikely that this bill, or the one the House passed in March will go further, and while spyware may be a hot-button issue, that's probably a good thing. It's hard to see these bills having much positive effect on the problem, and could end up making things worse in many ways by giving spyware purveyors a way to make what they do "legal".
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070607/082734.shtml

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Debian have made security updates to Mozilla packages, including the world famous Iceweasel web browser. While the advisory itself is slim on details, it is likely that these bugs will only effect users with scripting enabled."

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to New Scientist, French and German researchers have built a nanoscale machine with two wheels of a diameter of 0.8 nanometers joined by an axle of only four carbon atoms long. It has been done before, but this time, the nanoscientists have been able to really watch these nano-wheels rolling and rotating over a flat surface. It has been claimed before, but it is the first time that researchers have directly seen this nanowheel rotation. And this discovery probably opens the way to future molecular machines. Read more for additional details and exclusive images of these rolling molecules with two wheels."