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Communications

Mississippi Makes Caller ID Spoofing Illegal 258

Posted by timothy
from the so-be-sure-to-stop-in-late-june dept.
marklyon writes "HB 872, recently signed into law by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, makes Caller ID spoofing illegal. The law covers alterations to the caller's name, telephone number, or name and telephone number that is shown to a recipient of a call or otherwise presented to the network. The law applies to PSTN, wireless and VoIP calls. Penalties for each violation can be up to $1,000 and one year in jail. Blocking of caller identification information is still permitted."
Medicine

CDC Adopts Near Real-Time Flu Tracking System 102

Posted by kdawson
from the you've-got-the-flu-swine dept.
CWmike writes "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an effort this week to better and more easily track for H1N1 and other seasonal influenza activity throughout the US. The CDC said it is now tracking data on 14 million patients from physician practices and hospitals stored on a database hosted by GE Healthcare. The data is submitted daily from physicians' offices and hospitals that use GE's electronic medical record system. The data is then uploaded to GE Healthcare's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium, a database repository designed with HIPAA-compliance parameters of patient anonymity and best practices, where it can be the subject of medical data queries. The CDC can perform queries to look for flu-like symptoms being reported by physicians, and then disseminate the data for health care providers and local government officials throughout the country, who can alert businesses and others about flu outbreak hot spots. The CDC also hopes its analysis of the data helps it better understand the characteristics of H1N1 outbreaks and to determine who is most at risk for developing complications from the virus. Prior to implementing the new system, the CDC relied heavily on tracking insurance claims data, which could take days or weeks to make its way to the agency's medical staff for analysis. The medical data is normalized so that, for example, reports of hypertension, HTN, and high blood pressure all mean the same thing when a researcher enters a query against the data."
The Media

The Pirate Bay is sold, and on its way to legality-> 1

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes "A Swedish software firm is buying The Pirate Bay and turning it into a legal business. Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has also bought peer-to-peer research firm Peerialism. The two purchases are expected to form the basis of a new, legal download service. It's a bold move, especially as it comes in the same week that the four founders of The Pirate Bay had their application for a retrial rejected by a Swedish court."
Link to Original Source
Idle

Indian military to use hot chili pepper grenades-> 1

Submitted by
Dr_Ken
Dr_Ken writes "According to this news story in Ananova The Indian Defence Ministry is looking into a cheaper and simpler form of tear gas agent for riot dispersal and crowd control.

Defence researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them, reports the BBC.The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.

Probably much cheaper to fabricate than conventional CN or CS gases and way less toxic too."
Link to Original Source

Software

Google Chrome 2 benchmarked, beats everyone->

Submitted by
CNETNate
CNETNate writes "Google's latest version of its Chrome browser has wiped the floor with all other browsers in terms of rendering speed, including itself. Benchmarks have shown it could be the fastest browser in the world by a significant margin, beating Safari 4 and the most recent build of Mozilla's Minefield, which previously held spots one and two on in the speed charts."
Link to Original Source
The Courts

Judge examining Pirate Bay bias removed for bias.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Fudzilla article the Judge appointed to investigate whether or not the Judge in the recent Pirate Bay case was biased has been removed...for being biased. "Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt was assigned to investigate whether the four should be granted a retrial based on revelations that the original trial judge is a member of industry copyright-protection groups. However the Swedish Press looked into Ihrfelt and found out that she was a member of the same groups as the trial judge. What is amazing is that who ever appointed her to the job seemed to think that they would get away with it." Having now been removed, a court representative thinks that the question of bias will now be resolved within a few weeks. Assuming no more revelations of bias, that is."
Google

Google Releases Chrome v2.0-> 1

Submitted by RadiusK
RadiusK writes "Google has released the second major version of the Chrome browser. This version features more speed improvements thanks to a newer version of V8 JavaScript engine and WebKit. JavaScript-heavy web pages will now run about 30% faster. Other new features include form autofill, fullscreen mode, and improved New Tab page. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated with these new features soon. If you haven't downloaded Google Chrome, you can get the latest version at google.com/chrome."
Link to Original Source
NASA

SPAM: Politicians question NASA's manned space plans

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "Republican members of a key technology committee today expressed concern over the future plan for NASA's manned space flights. Specifically the politicians expressed concerns over insufficient funding to develop the next generation manned launch vehicle in a timely manner after the Space Shuttle retires. Such doubts are not situated on the Republican side of the aisle however as similar concerns were expressed by a number Democrats at a hearing last week. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Earth

Electric Vehicles and Wind Power->

Submitted by
Greg Huang
Greg Huang writes "A San Diego company called Fallbrook Technologies, which developed the "nuVinci" variable transmission to make light electric vehicles such as scooters and carts drive more smoothly and efficiently, thinks the same idea will work for wind power generation. It's created a spinoff called Viryd that plans to adapt its gearless transmission technology for wind turbines, where they could help maintain consistent power output (and sync with the electrical grid more easily) despite variable wind speeds. This week Viryd obtained $2.2 million in private funding."
Link to Original Source

if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) { printf("Don't Panic!\n"); exit(42); } (Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS)