Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington post reports that the FDA is expected to approve the marketing of the new antibiotic called Cefquinome for use in cattle. This is over objections of the American medical association, the FDA advisory board and the World Health Organization. Cefquinome is from a class of highly potent 'last line of defense' antibiotics for several serious human infections. It is feared that large scale use in cattle will allow bacteria to develop a resistance to these drugs. This news follows complaints from the FDA that it is no longer getting the funds needed to do the research required for the desired level of food safety."

QuatumCrypto writes "SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the volunteers' home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project... that is until today! One of the volunteers was able to track down his wife's stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, 'I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.'"

rabblerouzer writes "Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen." Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.

Sid writes "Ars Technica reports that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO has an anti-theft daemon in the OS that can be used to remotely disable machines, much like WGA. The Project added the kill switch at the behest of a few countries concerned about laptop theft. From the report, 'OLPC has responded to such concerns by developing an anti-theft daemon that the project claims cannot be disabled, even by a user with root access. Participating countries can then provide identifying information such as a serial number to a given country's OLPC program oversight entity, which can then disable the devices in certain scenarios.'"

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a baby boy with unusually big muscles — caused by a gene mutation — is helping scientists to discover new muscular dystrophy drugs. "Myostatin was discovered in mice in 1992 in Lee's Johns Hopkins lab. In 1996 he proved its importance by showing that mice without the myostatin-producing gene got twice as big. The next year he discovered that the bulging Belgian Blue cow was a myostatin mutant, the first of eight prized cattle breeds later found to have the mutation. The company he had co-founded, MetaMorphix, is working on manipulating myostatin to beef up livestock. Wyeth picked up the rights to develop a drug for humans. Its experimental antibody drug produced bulked-up mice in 2002, and results of a trial in adults with muscular dystrophy are expected as early as March."

Socguy wrote with a link to a CBC article about the rapidly disappearing Peruvian glacier known as the Quelccaya ice cap. The world's largest tropical glacier was a hot topic this past Thursday at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, and a team of Ohio state scientists, produced the stunning news that Quelccaya and similar formations are melting at a rate of some 60 metres per year. While polar ice caps have commanded attention in the discussion of global warming to date, these tropical caps are crucial to the well-being of ecosystems relying on an influx of mountain stream fresh water.

dtienes writes "Why does IT get a free pass to insult users? Slamming customers isn't acceptable in any other profession; doctors don't call their patients "meatbags" — at least, not publicly. But IT professionals think nothing of wearing their scorn on their sleeves (or at least their chests — just check out ThinkGeek). There's more at stake here than just a few hard feelings. IT may be seriously damaging the credibility of the profession. See the essay I'm An Idiot (And Other Lessons From The IT Department) for a former IT professional turned user's take on insults, attitudes and ethics. (Full disclosure: The submitter is also the author.)"

holy_calamity writes "Hot on the heals of a UK government report that predicted robots would demand citizens rights within fifty years, an Arizona state lawyer has suggested that sub-human robots should have rights too. Harming animals far below human capabilities is thought unethical — would you ever feel bad about kicking a robot dog? And can we expect militant campaigners to target robot labs as they do animal labs today?"

eldavojohn writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is going to be giving away free web hosting from his company's site Wikia. The company announced this 'free culture' movement at the current Le Web 3 conference in Paris. They somehow received a $4 million dollar investment package from Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network and individual investors with no business model. Is this a dotcom bubble style mistake or just proof of Jimmy Wales' golden touch?" From the article: "Openserving will go further than Wikia's current services, by giving away hosting services and bandwidth, in addition to allowing site creators to keep the advertising revenue generated by the site. 'If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? Well, I don't know yet,' Penchina said. The software acquired with ArmchairGM will let Openserving customers create collaborative publishing sites, combining elements of blogs and wikis."

GodInHell writes to mention an article in the Telegraph, stating that man's impact on the environment has been 'downgraded'. A UN report has found that our species has not had as large effect on climate change as was previously thought. The average temperature is still due to rise almost 5 degrees C in the next 100 years, bringing drastic changes in weather patterns. From the article: "The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001. Climate change skeptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent. Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming."

laughingcoyote writes "The RIAA has asked the panel of federal government Copyright Royalty Judges to lower royalties paid to publishers and songwriters. They're specifically after digital recordings, and uses like cell phone ringtones. They say that the rates (which were placed in 1981) don't apply the same way to new technologies." From the article: "According to The Hollywood Reporter, the RIAA maintains that in the modern period when piracy began devastating the record industry profits to publishers from sales of ringtones and other 'innovative services' grew dramatically. Record industry executives believe this to be cause to advocate reducing the royalties paid to the artists who wrote the original music."

dheera writes "Attorneys in Washington, DC question the scope of the Second Amendment in the first case in nearly 70 years, citing that the right to bear arms only applies to 'a well regulated militia.' 'We interpret the Second Amendment in military terms,' said Todd Kim, the District's solicitor general."

Evod writes "Crowd Control Productions, maker of the MMORPG EVE Online, announced today at their annual fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland that a merger between White Wolf Publishing and themselves is a done deal. From the White Wolf Press Release: 'The merged company will enable CCP to integrate White Wolf's leading expertise in offline gaming development to enhance and create physical products for its MMOG, EVE Online. Products to be introduced in 2007 will include strategy guides, enhanced collectible card games, role-playing systems, and novels all based on EVE Online. White Wolf will leverage CCP's industry-leading technologies to bring its offline role-playing titles online. Conceptualization and early development has begun to bring White Wolf's World of Darkness, one of the world's strongest gaming properties, into the online world.' Each company will keep its own name and Hilmar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP, will step up as CEO of the merged companies." If you're a MMOG fan, or a table-top RPG fan, this is some interesting stuff right here.