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Biotech

Submission + - Scientists Expose Weak DNA in HIV

Ace905 writes: "The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced Thursday that they had discovered a very promising, "weak spot" in the HIV Virus. The HIV virus, a progenitor to full blown "Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome" or AIDS has eluded all attempts at a vaccine since it was discovered sometime in the 1970's. The major problem with developing a vaccine initially was isolating the virus. Conventional viruses are often defeated with existing drugs, or after being tested against new compounds. HIV has been unique, and staggering in it's ability to resist all attempts at treatment by mutating its' own genetic code. HIV is able to resist, with great effectiveness, any drug or combination drug-therapy that is used against it.

So far, our best efforts have been slowing down progression of the disease — but the number of people infected every year is rising and victims are estimated at 1.4 Million in North American alone, last year. Discovering a chain of vulnerable DNA on the HIV virus gives researchers a very exact target that can not resist damage."
The Courts

Submission + - Blizzard officially files against WoW Glider

Marcus Eikenberry writes: "Blizzard and Vivendi ( www.blizzard.com ) today filed against MDY Industries ( www.wowglider.com ) and Michael Donnelly in the state of Arizona USA. Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages. Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property. They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game. Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections. Blizzard officially files against WoW Glider (Previous Story):WoW Glider vs. World of Warcraft in United States District Court"
Microsoft

Submission + - Cuba Adopts Open Source

petro6 writes: "The AP wire released a story (you can find it on The Washington Post's website) stating, "Cuba's communist government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire — Microsoft Corp...by converting its computers to open-source software." Sources say it is difficult to say how long the transition will take. Cuba cites cost and security as a main motivator, but Bill Gate's description of open source developers as "some new modern-day sort of communists" perhaps speaks to an idealogical impetus. They are joining Venezuela which announced a similar move last year, and other countries such as China, Brazil and Norway in a move away from proprietary software."
Quickies

Submission + - TGV breaks speed record

zeux writes: While testing the new Paris — Strasbourg line, the TGV broke a 17 years old speed record (babelfish translation), travelling at 553 km/h (343 mph). The last record, of 515 km/h (320 mph), was set on May, 18th 1990. According to the French National Railroad Company (SNCF) the testing campaign will continue and speeds up to 570 km/h (354 mph) could be atteigned by June of this year.
Security

Submission + - College claims BitTorrent is a security breach

nevesis writes: The University of Iowa's Daily Iowan reports on an increase of "web pirating profilerating." But the obnoxious headline isn't the worst of it. The article then claims, "When you register with a bit torrent, it can publicize personal data, allowing hackers and viruses to collect information such as medical and financial records." Is this just poor reporting or intentional FUD spread by the RIAA?
Music

Submission + - Yahoo Music, chiefs urge labels to 'ditch DRM'

waired writes: "It seem that a trend has begun in the musics industry after Steve Jobs essay. Now a senior Yahoo chief has spoken out in favor of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' call for major labels to abandon digital rights technology (DRM). It points out that consumers are getting confused and that the Microsoft DRM "doesn't work half the time". http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsI D=17184"
Programming

Submission + - Deputy: Type and Memory Safety for C Programs

An anonymous reader writes: Deputy is a C compiler built by researchers at UC Berkeley that uses simple programmer-supplied annotations to catch type and memory errors such as buffer overflows and misuse of union types. For example, if you write a function that takes a buffer and its length as arguments, you can annotate the buffer's type to indicate that its length is stored in the second argument. Using these annotations, Deputy will either verify accesses to this buffer at compile time or insert the required run-time checks. Deputy has already been used on several Linux device drivers and has a corresponding recovery system for Linux called SafeDrive.
Announcements

Submission + - Merck HIV vaccine trial begins in South Africa

Neme$y$ writes: The BBC reports that "An international team of researchers, led by experts from the US, will oversee the trial of the vaccine, created by the drug company Merck.". According to CBC News : The study is a "test of concept" trial that will help researchers determine if the vaccine prevents HIV infections, results in lower HIV levels in those who become infected after vaccination or both. "South Africa is an excellent location for this trial due to the high levels of infection coupled with the good clinical infrastructure, including internationally recognized immunology laboratories, a well-established national vaccine initiative and experience in running clinical trials," said James Kublin, M.D., M.P.H., one of study's lead investigators, along with Glenda Gray, MBBCH, FCPaeds (SA), of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, based at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. A more detailed explanation here.
Upgrades

Submission + - First Commercial Quantum Computer Demonstrated

emw2012 writes: "As of February 13, D-Wave Systems Inc. of Burnaby, British Columbia has shown a proof of concept of its 16-qubit quantum system, dubbed "Orion". The system was showcased, audaciously enough, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, where D-Wave displayed Orion's power in a drug molecule matching test, followed by such worthy enterprises as solving a party seating arrangement seeking to pair like-minded guests, and deducing a Sudoku puzzle to completion. While time will tell whether Orion is remembered as merely a curious misadventure or the harbinger of revolution in the processing industry, D-Wave has assured us of the later, promising systems able to model molecular dynamics, complex NP-complete optimization problems, and simulate nanoscale behavior in fractions of second, compared to years (or simply not at all) on BlueGene/L and its digital kin.

dwavesys.com, Press Release"
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Giant Squid Species Blinds Prey With Light Bursts

ar1550 writes: The BBC reports that one species of squid, the 2 meter (7ft.) long Taningia danae, is believed to use light-emitting organs on its tentacles to confuse its prey. Scientists also raised the possibility that the display of bioluminescence is used in attracting a mate. The link includes a video, if you have Windows Media or Real installed.
Google

Submission + - Google News Found Guilty of Copyright Violation

schmiddy writes: "A court in Brussels, Belgium, has just found Google guilty of violating copyright law with its Google News aggregator. According to the ruling, Google News' links and brief summaries of news sources violates copyright law. Google will be forced to be $32,600 for each day it displayed the links of the plaintiffs. Although Google plans to appeal, this ruling could have chilling effects on fair use rights on the web in the rest of Europe as well if other countries follow suit."
Biotech

Submission + - Obesity linked to gut bacterial population

krishn_bhakt writes: "Joel Elmquist (The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA), a Physiology Faculty 1000 Member, comments "This is one of the most provocative papers to be published in the field of obesity research in some time. The evidence provided in this paper demonstrates that obese and non-obese mice have alterations in bacterial populations that apparently affect energy availability and utilization and the body weight of the host."

The nature article is available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/ab s/nature05414.html ."
Spam

Submission + - Teacher Convicted of Exposing Students to Popups

Bulldozer2003 writes: "A Connecticut teacher has been convicted and faces up to 40 years in prison after children in the classroom saw pornographic popups on a computer. Her defense, backed up by a computer consultant, says that malware from a hair-styling site brought up the popups. Possibly caused by the school's expired firewall/antivirus license. The prosecution argued she went to offending sites herself. From the article:
"Amero says that before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hair styles.
Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images started popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.
...
"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no 'physical click' is necessary."
"
The Media

Submission + - BBC decides to release content with Windows DRM

Serious Callers Only writes: Arstechnica looks at the BBC decision to use Microsoft DRM for their iPlayer software — forcing users to purchase Windows software to access BBC media. The BBC trust have expressed concerns about the plan, but for now have allowed the BBC to go ahead with their scheme. From the article :

"The BBC now has the means and the opportunity to make its vast archives available over the Internet, but it faces a major problem: rights. On the podcast, BBC workers point out that the difficulty in making the BBC's massive archive freely available is not primarily technical, but legal."


Unfortunately the use of DRM means that the primary problems users encounter in using BBC content will not be legal, but technical. The BBC podcast is available from backstage.

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