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Rob Goldsmith writes to point out this interview with Dr. Paul Dear, founder of the N-Prize, and explains: "For those of you who haven yet heard of the N-Prize, the N-Prize is a £9,999.99 (sterling) cash prize which can be claimed by any individual, or group, who are able to prove that they have put into orbit a small satellite. The satellite must weigh between 9.99 and 19.99 grams, and must orbit the Earth at least 9 times. This project must be done within a budget of £999.99 (sterling)."

NOOO! There goes all my Lolicon hentai...=(

No seriously though, this is really, discrimination against thought crime. Just because someone gets turned on by that kinda stuff doesn't mean they're going to go out there and do it. That's like saying "We should ban all TV's that contain themes such as murder". There's a HUGE difference between seeing Saddam Hussein's execution and watching the latest action flick at the movies. Likewise, if you have animated porn featuring controversial themes - underaged girls, rape, etc - how is that the same as videos which actually have real girls?

I'm sure there are heaps of guys out there who watch hentai or other animated pornography which feature underaged girls, rape and whatnot. And I'm sure these same people are sickened when they hear about pedophiles going out there and doing shit to little kids - I'm sure all of them are just as likely to want to beat the crap out of rapists and Michael Jackson, and so on.

The whole point is its a fantasy - a fantasy one could enjoy without their conscience coming and biting them. It's not like watching an animated 15 year old being raped in a high school is gonna make them more likely to go to a high school and do it...unless they're already messed up in the head.

Honestly, what's next? Banning of violent video games...? Oh wait...

~Jarik

Smivs writes "European scientists say that growing plants on the moon should be possible. Scientists in the Netherlands believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions. It would also aid in understanding the challenges that might be faced by manned bases. 'The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth. A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface. In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.'"

An anonymous reader writes "British TV host Jeremy Clarkson recently wrote a newspaper editorial ridiculing the uproar that had occurred after the British government admitted to losing two compact discs containing the personal information on 25 million people. To support his claim about the overhyped risks of identity theft, he published his bank account information in the article. Proving that some identity thieves have a sense of humor, a week later, he found out that someone had set up an automatic bank transfer for $1000 to a diabetes charity from his account. This comes less than a year after the CEO of LifeLock, an identity theft protection company which publishes the CEO's social security number on its website, himself was a victim of financial fraud. Back in July of 2007, a man in Texas was able to secure a $500 loan from a payday loan company using the CEO's widely publicized SSN. Will this latest incident finally prove that identity theft is real, and that publishing your own financial info is an invitation for fraud?"

rcastro0 writes "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?"

mlimber writes "Do you ever find yourself in a traffic jam, thinking, 'Man, there must be a bad accident up ahead,' but as you plod along you see no evidence of any crash? Some mathematicians have solved the mystery by developing a mathematical model that shows how one driver hitting the brakes a little too hard can cascade into a backup miles behind. The mathematicians' future research will investigate how automatic braking systems may alleviate the problem."

Hugh Pickens writes "A report from Science Daily says that scientists have proven that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences by influencing and gradually synchronizing viewer emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant's evaluation of the overall experience — the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie. In a series of experiments, researchers found that people watching a film together appeared to evaluate the film within the same broad mood and another study found that synchrony of evaluations can be traced to glances at the other person during the film and adoption of the observed expressions. 'By mimicking expressions, people catch each other's moods leading to a shared emotional experience. That feels good to people and they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie,' said one researcher."

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow, founder of Boing Boing, says he doesn't have a problem in principle with the automated network defense systems that guard the Internet against malware, spamigation bots, and other network nasties. However, in his article 'The Future of Internet Immune Systems,' he bemoans the problems caused by 'Internet autoimmune disorder' — where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are automated and instantaneous, but the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive."

vuo writes "A story on the BBC website reports that Dutch police have arrested a teenager for robbery of virtual furniture worth roughly $5900. The crime took place in the virtual world/social network Habbo Hotel, a website run by Sulake Corporation. Sulake has 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries. ' Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash. "It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people's usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture. We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen."'"

An anonymous reader writes "The Telegraph newspaper reports that over-50s are invading sites like Facebook and MySpace in massive numbers. A recent study showed that nearly one third of Facebook users are aged between 35 and 54, and that this group also made up 41 percent of MySpace users. "Because the mind of an over-50 is likely superior to that of a drink-addled undergrad, at first there was uncertainty about whether older users would find the Facebook-led social-networking phenomena attractive." Looks like dad just turned up to the party."

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." I'm sure the discussion and tags on this story will be completely G Rated ;)

coondoggie sends us to a Network World story, as is his wont, about network problems at Duke University in Durham, N.C. that seem to be related to the iPhone. "The Wi-Fi connection on Apple's recently released iPhone seems to be the source of a big headache for network administrators at Duke. The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the school's wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help-desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown. 'Because of the time of year for us, it's not a severe problem,' says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke's Office of Information Technology. 'But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is how many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It's a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20-30 access points signaling they're down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating.'" So far, the communication with Apple has been "one-way."

CommunistHamster writes "

Organizers said the rocket and the individual capsules containing the ashes were in good condition and would be mounted on plaques and returned to the families.

Reuters story here. Does this bode well for future missions of its type? Would you choose a suborbital memorial after this incident?"

thefickler writes "According to Reuters, Sony has announced that it will launch a video-sharing site in Japan as part of its 'quiet software revolution'. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that the new site will be 'an opportunity to transmit user-generated video anywhere you want to, anytime to anybody, in a protected environment.' The new site, which will be called eyeVio, will be first launched in Japan, although Sony hopes to also launch it overseas should the Japanese version prove a success. It will be free to users, and the idea is that Sony will eventually generate revenue through advertising."