TheKnightShift - Slashdot User

China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites 174

Posted by timothy on Saturday November 08, 2008 @11:01PM from the state-is-still-not-your-friend dept.

frogger writes "China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently, however, several reports came in from China indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu."

Banjo Used In Brain Surgery 164

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 14, 2008 @04:54PM from the not-that-way-silly dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Legendary bluegrass musician Eddie Adcock has undergone brain surgery to treat a hand tremor, playing his banjo throughout to test the success of the procedure. Adcock suffers from essential tremor, a condition where there is a continuing deterioration in areas of the brain that control movement, causing a tremor that usually appears when the person tries to act or move. Deep brain stimulation can be used to treat the movement difficulties of both Parkinson's and essential tremor by sinking an electrode into the thalamus, a deep brain area that is part of the motor loop — a circuit that helps coordinate movement. Surgeons placed electrodes in Adcock's brain and fitted a pacemaker in his chest, which delivers a small current that shuts down the region of his brain causing the tremors. The most sensible thing to do was to tweak the system while Adcock was playing the banjo to optimize the effect for the thing that's most important to him."

Repairing Genetic Mutations With Lasers? 65

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 13, 2008 @05:02PM from the shed-a-little-light-on-your-genes dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "German researchers at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) think they've proved that genetic information can be controlled by light. The group studied the interaction between the four DNA bases — adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) — by using femtosecond time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. The researchers think that they've demonstrated that DNA strands differ in their light sensitivity depending on their base sequences. The team thinks that it might be possible in the future to repair gene mutations using laser radiation. One of the project leaders said that 'it might even be possible under some circumstances to make transistors from DNA that would work through the hydrogen bonds.' It's not the first time I've heard about DNA computing, but this new approach looks promising."

Biologist (Almost) Creates Artificial Life 539

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @06:59PM from the almost-doesn't-count dept.

Aditya Malik writes "Wired has an interesting story up about how a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building 'protocells' from artificial molecules which are very close to satisfying the conditions for being 'alive.' 'Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.' This obviously raises some questions about creationism, not to mention some scary bio-research-gone-wild scenarios."

China to Build a Zero-Carbon Green City 620

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:37PM from the tired-of-getting-whined-at-for-beijing dept.

gormanw writes "Just outside Shanghai, there is an island about the size of Manhattan. China is going to build its first-ever 'green city', complete with no gasoline/diesel powered vehicles, 100% renewable energy, green roofs, and recycling everything. The city is called Dongtan and it should house about 5,000 people by the end of 2010, with estimates of 500,000 by 2050. The goal is to build a livable city that is energy efficient, non-polluting, and protects the wildlife in the area."

Comment My God, this country is completely screwed (Score 4, Insightful) 375

by TheKnightShift on Thursday August 07, 2008 @05:12PM (#24516641) Attached to: McCain Campaign Offers Rewards For Turn-Key Comments

This is beyond pathetic. To think that a nation that produced the likes of John Adams, Daniel Webster and Oliver Wendell Holmes is now producing "leaders" who not only can not think and speak so articulately, but have to bribe their supporters with swag for copying and pasting soundbites... No, I'm not an Obama supporter either. I don't have a dog in this hunt.

Submission + - WarGames and the Great Hacking Scare of 1983

Submitted by

James W

on Wednesday June 04, 2008 @10:05AM

James W writes: "Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames and Christopher Knight has written a retrospective about the film and its impact on popular culture. In addition to discussing how the movie has held up over time, WarGames was responsible for what Knight calls the Great Hacking Scare of 1983. Some examples mentioned are 'one CBS Evening News report at the time that seriously questioned whether parents should allow their children to access the outside world via their personal computers at home. A magazine article suggested that computer modems be "locked up" just like firearms, to keep them out of the reach of teenagers. I even heard one pundit proclaim that there was no need for regular people to be able to log in to a remote system: that if you need to access your bank account, a friendly teller was just a short drive away. And Bill Gates once declared that the average person would never have a need for more than 640 kilobytes of memory in a personal computer, too.'"

Submission + - Viacom yields to YouTuber who DMCA counteclaimed (theregister.com)

Submitted by

Jason the Weatherman

on Thursday September 13, 2007 @02:35PM

Jason the Weatherman writes: "Two weeks ago Viacom charged Christopher Knight with copyright infringement for posting on YouTube a clip from Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 that featured Knight's zany school board commercial. Here's the Slashdot article about it. Two days ago YouTube reported to Knight that his clip was back up and that his account wouldn't be punished. What happened? Knight filed a DMCA counter-notification claim with YouTube: something that happens "all too rarely" according to Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this story at The Register. "Almost no one ever files a counter notice. That's the biggest problem we've encountered [with DMCA claims on sites like YouTube]. Most people have no idea that right exists." As a result Viacom caved and Knight has his video back. But instead of gloating about his victory, Chris Knight posted on his blog that he holds nothing against Viacom for what happened, wanting this to mean that he and Viacom get to "shake hands and move on and wishing each other well" and that he doesn't want anyone else holding this against Viacom either. What a great attitude!"

Submission + - "Viacom hit me for infringing my own copyright (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

Chris Knight

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @02:23PM

Chris Knight writes: "Long story short: I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a "Star Wars" theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show "Web Junk 2.0". Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. It was great to see the commercial was being enjoyed by a far wider audience than I'd expected. I was honored that they chose to use it and thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. This morning I got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright! Talk about chutzpah! Needless to say, I would like to fight this: not for any kind of monetary compensation, but just for the right to employ my own self-created material per Fair Use."

Slashdot Top Deals