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Medicine

Submission + - SPAM: A new strategy to fight HIV and AIDS

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "An international team of researchers has developed a novel strategy against HIV. They added two genes to immune cells which 'transformed them into potent weapons that destroy cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.' This idea of 'genetically engineering immune cells to redirect their infection-fighting ability toward killing HIV-infected cells could lead to an entirely new approach for combating AIDS.' This research looks promising, but it's only working in labs right now. But read more and please note that this is a very different story from the one you mentioned on March 1, Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV."
Space

US To Shoot Down Dying Satellite 429

Posted by Zonk from the we-who-may-be-about-to-reenter-orbit-salute-you dept.
A user writes "US officials say that the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March. We discussed the device's decaying orbit late last month. The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere. 'A key concern ... was the debris created by Chinese satellite's destruction -- and that will also be a focus now, as the U.S. determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite. The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky. Also, there is the possibility that large pieces could remain, and either stay in orbit where they can collide with other satellites or possibly fall to Earth.'"
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA's Hubble telescope snaps gargantuan galaxy

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "NASA today said its Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image what it calls a giant cosmic fossil. The fossil is actually a galaxy, dubbed NGC 1132 which is the aftermath of an enormous multi-galactic pile-up, where the carnage of collision after collision has built up a brilliant but fuzzy giant elliptical galaxy far outshining typical galaxies. NGC 1132, together with the small dwarf galaxies surrounding it, are dubbed a 'fossil group" as they are most likely the remains of a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past, NASA said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Fake Codec is Mac OS X Trojan

Submitted by
Kenny A.
Kenny A. writes: "Multiple news organisations (ZDNet, The Register, SC Magazine) are reporting on an in-the-wild Mac OS X malware attack that uses porn lures to plant phishing Trojans on Mac machines. The attack site attempts to trick users into download a disk image (.dmg) file disguised as a codec that's required for viewing the video. If the Mac machine's browser is set to to open "Safe" files after downloading, the .dmg gets mounted and the Installer is launched. The target must click through a series of screens to become infected but once the Trojan is installed, it has full control of the machine."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PS3 makes it on Guinness Book of Records

Submitted by
Aditi.Tuteja
Aditi.Tuteja writes: "Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 3 console is a part of Guinness World Records, it has been recognized as the world’s most powerful distributed computing network. This is the outcome of Stanford University’s Folding@home project. The record was made as Folding@home surpassed one petaflop, a computing milestone that had never been reached before by a distributed computing network."
Handhelds

Submission + - NSA able to wirelessly take over your Smartphone.

Submitted by l8f57
l8f57 writes: Cryptome.org is reporting that the NSA is able to perform wireless wiretapping of MS based smart phones. From the article: "Microsoft remote administrative privileges allow "backdooring" into Microsoft operating systems via IP/TCP ports 1024 through 1030."
The Courts

Submission + - Ohio University finds key to getting RIAA to stop 7

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, has found the key to getting the RIAA to stop inundating it and its students with "settlement" letters. According to the university's student online publication, the university paid $60,000, plus $16,000 per year "maintenance", to Audible Magic, the business partner of the RIAA's all-purpose expert witness Dr. Doug Jacobson, for its "CopySense" filtering software. Once it made the payments, the letters stopped. This of course raises a lot of questions as to the 'disinterestedness' of Dr. Jacobson, whose deposition in the UMG v. Lindor case was the subject of interesting Slashdot commentary."
Spam

Submission + - Spammers Enlist the Aid of Virtual Strippers

Submitted by Tha_Big_Guy23
Tha_Big_Guy23 writes: Spammers have a new way around captchas: A virtual stripper who is paid when you fork them over. The BBC is reporting that a Windows game shows a woman in "a state of undress" when a person correctly types in a Captcha. In the game, a woman named Melissa invites victims to decipher the text. After a bunch of Captchas you get your payoff and the malicious program gets its way around the Captcha system.
Software

Submission + - Poll Suggestion

Submitted by AmIAnAi
AmIAnAi writes: How much time did you donate to free software development in the last year?

None
1 — 10 hours
10 — 100 hours
More than 100 hours
I'm Cowboy Neal's code monkey.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Hurricane predictions way off for 2nd year (fsu.edu)

Submitted by Talen317
Talen317 writes: For the second year in a row forcasters have failed to predict the hurricane activity for the season.
In fact acording to NOAA's claims, there was only a 5% chance that this year would be a below-normal season.
Florida State University COAP reports that 2007 may be one of the least active hurricane seasons in the last 30 years!

If we can't trust the predictions for the next 5 months how can we be sure about the predictions for the next 50 years?

From NOAA: (http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml)
"NOAA is predicting a very high likelihood (85% chance) of an above-normal 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, a 10% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season, according to a consensus of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Research Division, and Hydrometeorological Prediction Center."

From Florida State University, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical)
"Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (January-TODAY, Accumulated Cyclone Energy)."
Security

Submission + - Hackers target IE7 URI flaw (neowin.net)

Submitted by
Technical Writing Geek
Technical Writing Geek writes: "Microsoft is warning users to avoid suspicious websites and emails after attacks were reported on an unpatched flaw in Internet Explorer 7. The company would not provide exact figures, but said that a "limited number " of attacks had been reported. The attacks target a vulnerability in IE7's handling of the uniform resource indicator (URI) commands used by browsers to launch third-party applications.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/10/29/attackers-take-aim-at-ie7-flaw"
Media

Submission + - Controversy Swirls Around HD DVD Sales Claims

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Though Paramount made headlines last week when it announced that its HD DVD release of 'The Transformers' had become the fastest selling movie title on either high-def disc format, two independent sales tracking firms are now contradicting Paramount's numbers, and Blu-ray-supporting studio execs are accusing the newly HD DVD-exclusive studio of cooking its books. For its part, Paramount continues to stand by its original numbers, saying that they checked and double-checked their figures before issuing last week's press release, and that "everything we said is 100% accurate."
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux not covered by Microsoft's EU patent pledge (vnunet.com)

Submitted by
pete314
pete314 writes: "Linux users will not profit from the EU-mandated patent licensing program that Microsoft will offer. Microsoft will license its interoperability patents at a discounted rate, but the EU in an FAQ cautions that "some [open source] licenses are incompatible with the patent license offered by Microsoft".

The GPL is one of the licenses that won't work with Microsoft patent pledge, Mark Webbink says on vnunet.com. Webbink is a director with the Software Freedom Law Center and former deputy general counsel for Red Hat. The license is limited to the software vendor and its clients, but doesn't cover downstream users. The GPL explicitly prohibits such discriminatory licenses."

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