Tuoqui writes "With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number, people may be ignoring a bigger weakness in the AACS armor, which emerged two weeks ago. Some hackers have figured out how to crack AACS in a way that cannot be defeated, even by revoking all the keys in circulation."

quixote9 writes "Calorie restriction while maintaining nutrient levels has long been known to dramatically increase life spans. Very different lab animals, from worms to mice, live up to 50% longer (or even more) on the restricted diets. However, so far, nobody has been able to figure out how this works. Scientists at the Salk Institute have found a specific gene in worms (there's a very similar one in people) that is directly involved in the longevity effect. That opens up the interesting possibility that doctors may someday be able to activate that gene directly and we can live long and prosper . . . without giving up chocolate."

AlHunt writes "A fire started by a homeless man knocked out service between Boston and New York on the experimental Internet2 network Tuesday night. Authorities say the fire, which also disrupted service on the Red Line subway, started around 8:20 p.m. when a homeless man tossed a lit cigarette. The cigarette landed on a mattress, which ignited and led to a two-alarm fire."

ajakk writes "The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, overturned the decades old test for determine whether a patent is obvious. The Court ruled that the Court had looked at obviousness in a "narrow, rigid manner." This should allow patents to be more easily invalidated because they are obvious."

The following was written by frequent Slashdot editorial contributor Bennett Haselton. He writes "Recently author Annalee Newitz created a bit of a stir with the revelation that she had bought her way to the front page of the story-ranking site Digg. Since Digg allows any registered user to go to a story's URL and "digg it" in order to push it upward through the story-ranking system, it was inevitable that services like User/Submitter would come along, where a Digg user can pay for other users to cast votes to push their story up to the top. User/Submitter says they are currently backlogged and not taking new orders, but they say the service will return and will soon feature services for manipulating similar sites like Digg competitor reddit. Even if the new U/S features are vaporware, it probably won't be long before other companies offer similar services. But it seems like all of these story-ranking sites could prevent the manipulation by making one simple change to their voting algorithm."

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has submitted a resolution, HR 333, to impeach VP Dick Cheney on charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The charges were submitted on 24 April 2007. Congressman Kucinich has posted his supporting documents online, including a brief summary of the impeachment procedure (PDF), a synopsis (PDF), and the full text (PDF) of the impeachment resolution.

Bob McCown asks: "I manage several websites, both internally and externally accessible. Many of them have event calendars or schedulers. We'd like the ability to have these calendars shared, with the ability to modify them by both a web interface, and at the application level (via Sunbird, an Outlook plugin, or something similar). The web side of our system uses an Enterprise Linux distribution that runs Apache. Ideally, the web side would be written in PHP to minimize time to integrate with the rest of the sites. What's out there that can do this? What have you used before?"

cyberianpan writes "According to a Times Online article, MySpace is going into the news business. They'll soon be premiering a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure. This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence. One could see where this might be the 'holy grail' of internet news. Not only will you be able to tap into the wisdom of the crowds, but ultimately your recommended stories could be influenced by the likes and dislikes of your friends/heroes."

FutureDomain sends us to a PC World report on the filing yesterday of legislation to overhaul the US patent system completely. The US has the only system worldwide that tries to ascertain who first invented a thing — everywhere else the criterion is who filed first, and the new legislation would bring the US into line. Identical bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate by, in each case, bipartisan sponsors. The corporate roster of backers includes Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and nearly everyone else. From the article: "The provisions of the Patent Reform Act would... restrict damages that patent holders can receive for infringement lawsuits, create a new procedure to challenge the validity of a patent after it has been granted, and boost resources for the US Patent and Trademark Office."

nexuspal writes "Over 20 confirmed dead at Virginia Tech. Shooter killed some at residence hall then two hours later killed others in classrooms. Worst school shooting in US history. "

An anonymous reader asks: "I was recently doing a closet-cleaning and came across literally hundreds of old software CDs that are no longer usable — both manufactured CDs and CD-Rs. Note that by 'not usable', I mean that many of them simply couldn't be read anymore, possibly due to the fact that they'd been stored rather ineptly (no, I wasn't responsible for how they were stored). It seems wrong to just throw them out, but are there other things that can be done with them that will allow their raw materials to be reused in some way?Is it possible to reclaim CDs for raw materials?"