Rational Egoist writes "Scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have come up with a novel, easy way to detect life on other planets. Rather than try to measure the composition of atmospheres, they want to look at the chirality of light coming from the planet. From the article: '"If the [planet's] surface had just a collection of random chiral molecules, half would go left, half right," Germer says. "But life's self-assembly means they all would go one way. It's hard to imagine a planet's surface exhibiting handedness without the presence of self assembly, which is an essential component of life."' And they have already built a working model: 'Because chiral molecules reflect light in a way that indicates their handedness, the research team built a device to shine light on plant leaves and bacteria, and then detect the polarized reflections from the organisms' chlorophyll from a short distance away. The device detected chirality from both sources.' The article abstract is available online."

bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

coondoggie writes "Protecting defense departments networks cost taxpayers more than $100 million over the past six months, US Strategic Command officials said yesterday. The motives of those attacking the networks go from just plain vandalism to theft of money or information to espionage. Protecting the networks is a huge challenge for the command, Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton told a cyber security conference in Omaha, Neb., this week. 'Pay me now or pay me later,' Davis said. 'In the last six months, we spent more than $100 million reacting to things on our networks after the fact. It would be nice to spend that money proactively to put things in place so we'd be more active and proactive in posture rather than cleaning up after the fact.'"

mmmscience writes with this excerpt from the Examiner: "Big news in the medical world: scientists in Australia have found a way to stop the body from attacking organ transplants, greatly decreasing the possibility of organ rejection. ... When a new tissue is introduced, one's immune system kicks into overdrive, sending out cells known as killer T cells to attack and destroy the unknown tissue. ... Professor Jonathan Sprent and Dr. Kylie Webster from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research focused on a different type of T cells — known as regulatory T cells (Treg) — in this study. Tregs are capable of quieting the immune system, stopping the killer T cells from seeking out and attacking foreign objects."

phantomfive worries about a report in the Wall Street Journal ("Makes me want to move to the country and dig a well") that in recent years a number of cyber attacks against US infrastructure have been launched over the Internet: "Cyberspies have penetrated the US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia, and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the US electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war."

If the people who run Woolworth's website had ever read the famous Nabokov novel, seen one of the 2 movies based on it or listened to the police in the 80's they might have known that calling a line of beds for little girls, the Lolita line, wasn't the best Idea. "Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect. We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about." says the company. Other controversial products like the Cobain trigger lock and Ahmadinejad's big book of fictional atrocities are still on the shelves.

gihan_ripper writes "It sounds like the storyline from a cheesy film, but a human embryo has been created using the genetic material from one man and two women. A team from Newcastle University, England, developed the technique in the hope that it could be used to prevent diseases caused by faulty mitochondria. Their experiment started with two ingredients: first, a left over (and 'severely abnormal') embryo from an IVF treatment; second, a donor egg from another woman. The donor egg has all but the mitochondrial DNA removed, then a nucleus from the embryo is inserted into the egg. Effectively, this results in a mitochondria transplant. 'While any baby born through this method would have genetic elements from three people, the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg. However, the team only have permission to carry out the lab experiments and as yet this would not be allowed to be offered as a treatment.'"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The EFF is attacking more bogus patents. This time they're going after the 'method and system of playing games on a network' which covers tournament ladders, online rankings and advertisements. The patent in question has already been asserted against a number of small companies who know that licensing it is cheaper than litigating. Ars Technica's coverage mentions that Netrek looks like a good source of prior art. 'Netrek, an online multiplayer game with origins in the mid 1980s, makes use of much of the same technology described in Goldberg's patent. Much of the code for Netrek is open source, and its development is archived online; the source code was first posted to Usenet in late 1989. The EFF has also documented other instances of prior art with the assistance of students at the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.'"

destinyland writes "Time-Warner is now mulling a plan to charge a per-gigabyte fee for internet service. A leaked memo reveals they're now watching how many gigabytes customers use in a 'consumption-based' pricing experiment in Texas, which we discussed early last month. The announced plan was that they were considering a tier-based approach, as opposed to per-gigabyte fees. 'As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network,' Time-Warner complains, with plans to cap usage at 5-gigabytes, and more expensive pricing plans granting 10-, 20-, and 40-gigabyte quotas. Steven Levy at the Washington post suggests Time-Warner's real aim is to hobble iTunes, raising the cost of a movie download by $10 (or $30 for a high-definition movie). Eyeing Time-Warner's experiment, Comcast cable also says they're evaluating a pay-per-gigabyte model."

dacarr writes "SCO has filed their 10K with the SEC — and according to this, their own assessment of the company's outlook is pretty grim. As usual, PJ of Groklaw has a good synopsis of the filing highlights. In short, it boils down to one thing: unless there's a miracle, even SCO doesn't think they're going to come out of this. 'As a result of the Chapter 11 filings, realization of assets and liquidation of liabilities are subject to uncertainty. While operating as debtors-in-possession under the protection of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, the Debtors may sell or otherwise dispose of assets and liquidate or settle liabilities for amounts other than those reflected in the consolidated financial statements, in the ordinary course of business, or, if outside the ordinary course of business, subject to Bankruptcy Court approval. In addition, under the priority scheme established by the Bankruptcy Code, unless creditors agree otherwise, post-petition liabilities and prepetition liabilities must be satisfied in full before stockholders are entitled to receive any distribution or retain any property under a plan of reorganization.'"

cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"

mytrip and other readers alerted us to news that the FBI is about to announce the awarding of a $1B, 10-year contract to expand its fingerprint database to incorporate other biometrics — palm prints, iris scans, scars, tattoos, possibly facial shape — "Whatever the biometric that comes down the road, we need to be able to plug that in and play," an FBI spokesman is quoted. Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU sounded the cautionary note: "This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals. Now we're talking about large swaths of the population — workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it's going to be everybody."