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Image

Best Man Rigs Newlyweds' Bed To Tweet During Sex Screenshot-sm 272

When an UK man was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding he agreed that he would not pull any pranks before or during the ceremony. Now the groom wishes he had extended the agreement to after the blessed occasion as well. The best man snuck into the newlyweds' house while they were away on their honeymoon and placed a pressure-sensitive device under their mattress. The device now automatically tweets when the couple have sex. The updates include the length of activity and how vigorous the act was on a scale of 1-10.
Perl

Submission + - Perl Monk passwords have been hacked (perlhacks.com)

jestill writes: It seems that the Perl Monks database has been compromised through some kind of security hole on the server that hosts it. That would, of course, be bad enough. But it seems that the user passwords in that database were stored in plain text. So whoever got the database, got access to the passwords of every user. Some of those passwords (those belonging to the saints and the janitors) have been shared publically. And changing your password might not help as the original vulnerability hasn't been plugged yet so the same people could grab any password that you change it to.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft boldy patenting the study of evolution (freshpatents.com)

jestill writes: It appears that US patent application #20090030925 'Clustering phylogenetic variation patterns' from Microsoft is an attempt to patent the study of evolutionary biology. The broadly written application attempts to patent the process that nearly every evolutionary biologist uses to reconstruct the tree of life. The prior art for phylogeny reconstruction is immense and is extremely well documented in the scientific literature. The applications of clustering and classification algorithms to the study of evolutionary relationships is certainly not new, and many open source programs that molecular biologist depend on make use of these approaches. Everything in biology ranging from the next wave of cancer and AIDs research to the study of relationships in Cichlid Fishes depends on these algorithms. Patenting such a core concept of basic biology could do great harm to a broad range of disciplines.
Image

Gamer Plays Over 30 Warcraft Characters Screenshot-sm 189

If your significant other complains that you play too much World of Warcraft, just show them this article about a user named "Prepared." He plays an amazing 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers at the same time. He is his own raid group. "It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule," he writes. "Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."
Mars

Mars Lander Instrument Waving In the Martian Wind 46

Matt_dk writes "This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars. On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be 'out-of-phase' with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence."
Music

Install Copyright Filters on PCs, Says RIAA Boss 391

Don't squeeze the Sherman writes "At a conference last week, RIAA president Cary Sherman said he didn't support mandatory filtering by ISPs, but in a video clip posted by Public Knowledge, Sherman offers a far more troubling 'solution': installing filters on users' PCs. From Ars Technica's coverage: 'The issue of encryption "would have to be faced," Sherman admitted after talking about the wonders of filtering. "One could have a filter on the end user's computer that would actually eliminate any benefit from encryption because if you want to hear [the music], you would need to decrypt it, and at that point the filter would work."'"
Media

Sony BMG Says Ripping CDs is Stealing 767

LKM writes "Sony seems to think we should not be allowed to rip CDs we own to our iPods. In fact, doing so is stealing, and we should all re-buy songs, preferably one copy for each device. Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.' I guess somebody should tell Sony about all the devices Sony produces that allow this stealing to occur!"
Science

Creationism Museum Opening in Kentucky 1166

Noel Linback writes "A new creationism-espousing museum is opening in the state of Kentucky. According to a New York Times article the museum depicts humans and dinosaurs living together in traditional 'diorama' style exhibit. 'Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh, who, like the entire museum staff, declares adherence to the ministry's views; he evidently also knows the lure of secular sensations, since he designed the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal Studios in Florida. For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection. '"
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Journal Journal: I hate documenting ...

.. so that is why I am reading slashdot at 2 AM instead of getting it done.

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