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Submission + - Techie's Revenge Lands Her in Jail 2

Submitted by aesoteric
aesoteric writes: A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking — and then locking — her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff.
NASA

Submission + - NASA's "arsenic microbe" science under fire

Submitted by radioweather
radioweather writes: The cryptic press release NASA made last week that set the blogosphere afire with conjecture, which announced: "NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." may be a case of "go fever" science pushed too quickly by press release. A scathing article in Slate.com lists some very prominent microbiologists who say the NASA backed study is seriously flawed and that the finding may be based on something a simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination. One of the scientists, Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado said “This paper should not have been published,” while another, John Roth of UC-Davis says: "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up.
Censorship

Racy Danish Tabloid May Sue Apple For App Rejection 319

Posted by timothy from the bikinis-verboten dept.
the_arrow writes "In Denmark the tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet usually have scantily clad ladies on page 9. When making an iPad application, Apple of course rejected it because of that. However, Ekstra Bladet is not happy with that, and many sites report that Ekstra Bladet is thinking about taking Apple to European court for 'unfair censorship and anti-competitive behaviour.'"
Sci-Fi

Journal Journal: Could Doctor Who's Sonic Screwdriver Become A Reality?

Journal by Zaphod_85

While it may not have all the abilities of the tool wielded by Doctor Who, engineers at the University of Bristol have developed a device that allows them to manipulate physical objects using only ultrasonic sound waves. Now if they could only make some progress in creating a TARDIS!
The Military

Submission + - South Korea's autonomous robot gun turrets (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: If there's one place you don't want to be caught wandering around right now, it's the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Especially since South Korean military hardware manufacturer DoDAMM used the recent Korea Robot World 2010 expo to display its new Super aEgis 2, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto human targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower.
Businesses

Submission + - Malicious Online Retailer Ordered Held Without Bai

Submitted by Zaphod_85
Zaphod_85 writes: You may remember the New York Times story from a couple of weeks ago regarding Vitaly Borker, an online retailer intentionally harassing customers in order to gain linking points in Google's PageRank algorithm. Now, not only has Google altered their algorithm in order to prevent this tactic from being effective (Though according to Katherine Noyes at PCWorld, this tactic may never actually have been benefiting the website in the first place), Now Mr. Borker has the Feds to deal with. He is being charged with cyberstalking, wire fraud, mail fraud, and making interstate threats, and faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted on all counts. Given his disturbing behavior that brought about the charges, a federal judge has ordered he be held without bail while he awaits trial.
Space

NASA Records Solar Blast of Epic Proportions 123

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-burnt-my-fingers dept.
Arvisp writes "As predicted, the a 'mega-filament' of solar magnetism erupted on Dec. 6th, producing a blast of epic proportions. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action as the 700,000-km long structure lifted off the stellar surface and--snap!!--hurled itself into space. The eruption produced a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by the STEREO-A spacecraft: video. Earth was not in the line of fire; the cloud should sail wide of our planet. Earth-effects might be limited to pretty pictures."

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