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Australia

In Australia, Even Private Facebook Photos Are Public 71

Posted by timothy from the all-nimbly-pimbly dept.
littlekorea writes "Australia's telecommunications regulator has ruled that one of the country's largest broadcasters, Channel 7, did not breach the industry code of conduct by lifting photos of deceased persons and minors from social networking site Facebook. Significantly, the regulator noted that it doesn't have the legal authority to crack down on broadcasters that lift material tagged as 'private,' looking to the Attorney General to provide some legal clarity."
Security

Rare Earth Magnets Pose Threat To Children 284

Posted by timothy from the being-alive-considered-harmful dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Many of today's toys contain rare-earth magnets which are much more powerful than the magnets of yesteryear and the magnets pose a serious threat to children when more than one is ingested because as the magnets attract one another they can cause a range of serious injuries, including holes through internal organs, blood poisoning and death (PDF). Braden Eberle, 4, swallowed two tiny magnets from his older brother's construction kit on two successive days last spring and his mother's first reaction was that the magnet would pass through her son's system without a problem. "People swallow pennies of the same size every day," said Jill Eberle. "They're smaller than an eraser." But next morning, with Braden still in pain, the family's doctor told them to go straight to the emergency room where an X-ray revealed two magnets were stuck together. "They were attracted to each other with the wall of each segment they were in stuck together," said Dr. Sanjeev Dutta, the pediatric surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital who would operate on Braden later that day. "Because they were so powerful, the wall of the intestine was getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and then it just necrosed, or kind of rotted away, and created a hole between the two." The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says at least 33 children have been injured from ingesting magnets (PDF) with a 20 month-old dying, and at least 19 other children requiring surgery."
Books

DoJ Investigates eBook Price Fixing 165

Posted by samzenpus from the pillaging-publisher dept.
dave562 writes "The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust arm said it was looking into potentially unfair pricing practices by electronic booksellers, joining European regulators and state attorneys general in a widening probe of large U.S. and international e-book publishers. A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that the probe involved the possibility of 'anti-competitive practices involving e-book sales.' Attorneys general in Connecticut and, reportedly, Texas, have also begun inquiries into the way electronic booksellers price their wares, and whether companies such as Apple and Amazon have set up pricing practices that are ultimately harmful to consumers."
Japan

Osteoporosis Drug Makes Lengthy Space Trips More Tolerable 42

Posted by timothy from the get-your-bones-to-mars dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Japanese researchers have discovered that by taking drugs normally targeted at osteoporosis sufferers they can mitigate the long term effects of weightlessness. This makes it more possible that humans could reasonably fly to Mars land there and be fully functional even after the lengthy journey." JAXA provides much more detail, including interviews with both lead investigator Toshio Matsumoto and Koichi Wakata, the first subject of the experiment.

Comment these ppl should be sent to alaska mining complex. (Score 1) 101

by Mr_Nitro (#38174736) Attached to: Airport Security: Thermal Lie-Detectors, Cloned Sniffer Dogs
I think this perfectly show the current level of society and human thinking in modern media hype driven society. Bottom low. To blow up a bunch of persons it just take a bunch of persons... no plane, no train... no anything. Wake up... 'terrorists' will just laugh at our self-inflicted useless and sick expensive 'measures' ...And rich pigs with hands into 'security' business and such bullshit will just get richer.... When too much will be too much...I hope it won't be too late as well.

Comment obvious consequence (Score 1) 433

by Mr_Nitro (#38096512) Attached to: Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe
We keep sterilizing and over-cleaning everything in hospitals (ie some UK ones where to enter sections is like entering a military biohazard zone), plus the abuse of antibiotics of course. Proper sterlization should occour just before a surgery, the rest should be treated just like any other public space ,with the exception of case specific illnesses. Not to mention that is the nasty chemicals that will give you a cancer more likely (see the overcleaning and hodgkin lymphoma connection) not a common bio treat, to which we evolved in thousands of years in resistence. Also medical community should start to think about dropping wide spectrum antibiotics in favor of phages viruses, which are a much better specific option to treat specific bacteria at a time, with a basically 100% success rate...
Patents

UN Bigwig: The Web Should Have Been Patented and Licensed 411

Posted by timothy from the surely-he's-been-hypnotized-by-the-yes-men dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has unearthed an amazing video where the head of WIPO, the UN agency responsible for 'promoting' intellectual property, suggests that Tim Berners-Lee should have patented HTML and licensed it to all users. Amazingly this is done on camera and in front of the head of CERN and the Internet Society, who look on in disbelief."
AMD

Intel and AMD May Both Delay Next-Generation CPUs 193

Posted by Soulskill from the make-it-so dept.
MojoKid writes "AMD and Intel are both preparing to launch new CPU architectures between now and the end of the year, but rumors have surfaced that suggest the two companies may delay their product introductions, albeit for different reasons. Various unnamed PC manufacturers have apparently reported that Intel may push back the introduction of its Ivy Bridge processor from the end of 2011 to late Q1/early Q2 2012. Meanwhile, on the other side of the CPU pasture, there are rumors that AMD's Bulldozer might slip once again. Apparently AMD hasn't officially confirmed that it shipped its upcoming server-class Bulldozer products for revenue during August. This is possible, but seems somewhat unlikely. The CPU's anticipated launch date is close enough that the company should already know if it can launch the product."
AT&T

AT&T Kills $10 Texting Plan, Pushes $20 Plan 348

Posted by Soulskill from the giving-thumb-customers-the-finger dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "AT&T is scrapping its 1,000-texts-for-ten-bucks plan and replacing it with a plan that offers unlimited texts for $20. Users who don't want the unlimited plan can opt to pay 20 cents per text. Current AT&T subscribers are grandfathered in, so you can stick with whatever plan you selected when you signed your contract. 'The vast majority of our messaging customers prefer unlimited plans and with text messaging growth stronger than ever, that number continues to climb among new customers,' says AT&T. The news has not been received warmly in the tech blogosphere. 'AT&T calls this "streamlining." We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam,' writes Sam Biddle in Gizmodo. 'AT&T's taken away new customers' option to spend less, whereas carriers like Verizon still offer tiered texting plans for varying budgets.'"
Image

Canadian Library to Loan Out People Screenshot-sm 98

Posted by samzenpus from the line-up-by-isbn dept.
Wouldn't it be easier to learn Chinese from a native speaker than from a book, or explore a religion from an actual practitioner rather than words on a page? A library in Surrey, B.C. thinks so and has introduced a "human library" program. Visitors will be able to "check-out" real people to learn about their experiences and specific knowledge. From the article: "...The goal is to break down stereotypes and start discussions, said deputy chief librarian Melanie Houlden. 'What we're aiming to do is bring the library to life for people. There are huge repositories of experience and knowledge in their own brains,' she said." As long as you stay out of the horror section, this sounds like a great idea.
Sci-Fi

What If Aliens Came To Save the Galaxy From Mankind? 534

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the captain-alien's-gonna-kill-humanity dept.
astroengine writes with an amusing piece in Discovery. From the article: "In a study carried out by NASA and Pennsylvania State University scientists, several intelligent extraterrestrial encounter scenarios are examined. One of the scenarios is a sci-fi favorite: what if we encounter an alien race hellbent on destroying us? However, there's a twist. This isn't mindless thuggery on behalf of the aliens, and they're not killing us to get at our natural resources; they have a cause. They want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way."

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