Dr. Eggman writes "Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, has won his appeal filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. This overturns a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and allows Mr. Pistorius the chance to compete against other able-bodied athletes for a chance at a place on the South African team for the Beijing Olympics. He currently holds the 400-meter Paralympic world sprinting record, but must improve on his time by 1.01 seconds to meet the Olympic qualification standard. However, even if Pistorius fails to get the qualifying time, South African selectors could add Oscar to the Olympic 1,600-meter relay squad."

coondoggie sends us a story from NetworkWorld.com, as is his wont, this one on the FBI opening two new US Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories this week. In these laboratories examiners conduct a growing number of forensic examinations of digital media in support of the investigation and/or prosecution of a federal, state, or local crime. With the addition of the new facilities in Los Angeles and Albuquerque, the FBI will have 16 RCFLs nationwide. And they are needed: "During 2007, RCFL experts conducted 4,634 exams, processing 1,288 terabytes of information. A total of 76,581 digital devices were examined (the most popular media by far — CDs, coming in at 37,424; followed by hard disk drives at 17,378; floppy disks at 11,781; and DVDs at 4,374). The number of CDs, cell phones, and flash media devices examined doubled from the previous year."

jackieduvall writes "Medical gauze has received its first upgrade since World War I. Chemists have infused it with nanoparticles derived from kaolin clay, which somehow give it an amazing ability to stop severe bleeding. It was developed when the Navy approached a team of inorganic chemists at the University of California Santa Barbara to solve a problem with QuikClot, a zeolite-based hemostatic agent that became way too hot and caused burns when it came in contact with water or blood. While performing blood clotting tests, they realized that kaolin clay, which has been used as a control for clotting experiments since the 1950s, could also be used as a first aid product." There is a video demonstration alongside the article. It shows the gauze halting the bleeding from a pig's aorta. The blood isn't excessive, but if you're bothered by that sort of thing, you may want to skip the video.

Anonymous GiTS fan noted a Variety story informing us that DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Ghost in the Shell and has plans to produce a "3D Live Action" version of the popular anime. This happened apparently because Spielberg is a fan. He says "'Ghost in the Shell' is one of my favorite stories ... It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks." I hope they add a talking donkey.

Puskas writes "Joe Stewart is the director of malware research at SecureWorks, and presented a dire view of the current botnet landscape at the RSA conference this week. He conducted a survey of the top spamming 'nets, extrapolating their size from the volume of emails that flow across the internet. By his calculations, the top 11 networks control just over a million machines, hitting inboxes with some 100 billion messages a day. 'The botnet at the top of the chart is Srizbi. According to Stewart, this botnet — which also goes by the names "Cbeplay" and "Exchanger" — has an estimated 315,000 bots and can blast out 60 billion messages a day. While it may not have gotten the publicity that Storm has during the last year, it's built around a much more substantial collection of hijacked computers, said Stewart. In comparison, Storm's botnet counts just 85,000 machines, only 35,000 of which are set up to send spam. Storm, in fact, is No. 5 on Stewart's list.'"