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Biotech

Submission + - Nicotine is the new wonder drug. (wired.com)

Submitted by Fantastic Lad
Fantastic Lad writes: Smoking may be bad for you, but Researchers and biotech companies are quietly developing pharmaceuticals that are decidedly good for brains, bowels, blood vessels and even immune systems — and they're inspired by tobacco's active ingredient: nicotine. Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety. Smoking will kill you, but also keep you in good health? Another story about nicotine warding off Parkison's disease here seems to agree. -Who knew?

Feed US Air Force Aims High With Bluespam (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
It seems that more and more brands and companies are trying to market themselves via Bluespamming -- sending out unsolicited messages and requests for connections to nearby mobile phones via Bluetooth. Marketers that use the practice, of course, don't call it Bluespam, and see it as a wonderful mechanism to use, even though the vast majority of people that receive the messages aren't interested in them. Now, it's the US Air Force that's turning to Bluespamming, as it plans to use the method to harass mobile phone users at a NASCAR race this weekend. A rep says Bluespamming will help prove the Air Force's high-tech chops to impressionable kids, while somebody from its ad agency says that it will help attract "tech savvy" recruits. Would they say the same things about email spam? Probably not. It's hard to see how annoying just about anybody with a Bluetooth phone in a particular area is a good way to market yourself, and never mind the horrific user experience of delivering content via mobile marketing. Needless to say, it's great to see the US government getting into the spamming business.
Windows

Submission + - Survey: few intend to upgrade to Vista

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: A recent Harris Poll has found that while most online computers users are aware of Microsoft's Windows Vista, few are intending to switch over to the new operating system anytime soon.

The Harris Poll of 2223 US online adults in early March found that 87% were aware of Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 12% of Vista-aware respondents were intending to upgrade to Vista in the next 12 months.

The poll revealed that 39% of those intending to move over to Vista planned to upgrade their existing computer so it would meet Vista requirements, 35% planned to buy a new computer with Vista preinstalled, 17% planned to purchase a new "Vista-ready" computer, and 8% said that they would install Vista on their existing computer without any upgrade.
Space

Submission + - Massive star burps, then explodes

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "Tens of millions of years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a massive star suffered a nasty double whammy ( http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/0 4/04_supernova.shtml ). Signs of the first shock reached Earth on Oct. 20, 2004, when the star was observed letting loose an outburst so enormous and bright that Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki initially mistook it for a supernova. The star survived for nearly two years, however, until on Oct. 11, 2006, professional and amateur astronomers witnessed it blowing itself to smithereens as Supernova (SN) 2006jc. All the observations suggest that the supernova's blast wave took only a few weeks to reach the shell of material ejected two years earlier, which did not have time to drift very far from the star. As the wave smashed into the ejecta, it heated the gas to millions of degrees, hot enough to emit copious X-rays. The Swift satellite saw the supernova continue to brighten in X-rays for 100 days, something that has never been seen before in a supernova. All supernovae previously observed in X-rays have started off bright and then quickly faded to invisibility."
Security

Submission + - Fortune 1000 Companies Sending Spam, Phishing

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TheRegister takes a look at spam touting everything from Viagra to phishing sites being blasted out of Fortune 1000 networks. Oracle was found to have a machine pushing out a PayPal phishing scam, and BestBuy had a system sending thousands of spams a month. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog also is tracking this story, finding stock spam being pumped from ExxonMobile and from American Electric Power, among others. Another machine at IndyMac Bank was the source of spam touting generic prescription drugs. From the story: "...an IT engineer with American Electric Power, said the stock spam came from a bot-infected computer belonging to a contractor at one of its power generator plants."
Space

Submission + - Spaceport America Takes Off

Submitted by
SeaDour
SeaDour writes: "Spaceport America, being built north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is finally becoming a reality and is set to become the world's first commercial spaceport. Governor Bill Richardson recently secured 33 million dollars from the state legislature for the final design, and a proposed 0.25% sales tax increase in Dona Ana County, where the facility is to be constructed, is expected to bring an additional 6.5 million dollars per year (if approved by voters next week). Richard Branson, the head of upstart Virgin Galactic, on Monday agreed to lease the facility for 27.5 million dollars over twenty years. If all continues to go as planned, SpaceShipTwo will make its first suborbital joy ride in two to three years."
Role Playing (Games)

Rethinking the MMOG 163

Posted by Zonk from the do-it-better-and-make-it-funner dept.
Gamasutra is running a piece right now called Rethinking the MMO. Game designer Neil Sorens takes issue with some of the consistent blights on the traditional Massive gaming experience, like the phenomenon of the 'ordinary' hero, and the extremely large time investment required to 'get anywhere'. Though he doesn't offer a lot in the way of concrete solutions to these issues, his appraisal of the genre is sure to spark a few conversations: "As long as developers and publishers do nothing but copy what is successful, they--and gamers--will continue to miss out on these games' staggeringly awesome potential. And as long as [MMOGs] are designed by and for stat geeks (whom I know and love and sometimes am) with little regard for traditional game design fundamentals, they will continue to waste that potential."
Censorship

Submission + - NFL Caught Abusing the DMCA

Submitted by
Implied Oral Consent
Implied Oral Consent writes: "You know how the NFL puts up those notices before every game saying "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited"? Well, Ars Technica is reporting that Wendy Seltzer thought that that was over-reaching and posted a video of the notice on YouTube. Predictably, the NFL filed a DMCA Take Down notice on the clip. But Ms. Seltzer knows her rights, so she filed a DMCA Counter Notice. This is when the NFL violated the DMCA, by filing another Take Down notice instead of taking the issue to court — their only legitimate option, according to the DMCA. Unfortunately for the NFL, Ms. Seltzer is a law professor, an EFF lawyer, and the founder of Chilling Effects. Oops!"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

Submitted by dispatch
dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...
Space

Submission + - New universes will be born from ours

Submitted by
David Shiga
David Shiga writes: "What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now, physicists have combined these two ideas to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces, with each shard growing into a whole new universe. The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia

Submitted by
Unpaid Schill
Unpaid Schill writes: "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article the article (and I am not making this up), it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not "enable death squads with their UUIDs" and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization. In an unrelated note, does anyone happen to know what the going rates are? I think I'm being underpaid."

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