Online flamewars certainly can get nasty at times, often boiling over into quite a bit of rage -- but it's still pretty rare (and amazing) to see that anger then boil over into the real world. Last year, we wrote about a case in the UK where someone drove 70 miles to attack the guy he was sparring with online. The press referred to it as "web rage," though, rage doesn't tend to last that long. Or, perhaps it does. Here in the US we do things in bigger ways, apparently. A guy in Virginia who got into a flamewar online decided to make it a bit more literal, and drove 1,300 miles to Waco, Texas to burn down the home of one of this online enemies from a (no, this isn't a joke) picture sharing community. Not only that, but the attacker took photos of each "Welcome to State X" signs and shared them online as he made his way across the country -- to let others in the community know he was serious about going after the other guy. What did the one guy do to piss the other guy off? Apparently he had different political views and posted a silly photo claiming the other guy was a nerd. Nerd or not, he's now a convicted arsonist. He's been sentenced to 7 years in prison for burning down the other guy's home -- but it doesn't sound like the intervening time or pending jail time cooled this guy down. As the sentencing was happening, the arsonist used his cameraphone to take snapshots of the guy whose home he tried to burn down, apparently to post online as well (though, the court ordered the photos destroyed). So, while the typical admonition to those engaging in flame wars is to remember that it's a real person on the other side, we'd also like to add "who may be so crazy that they'll come burn down your house."

A researcher has created the first experimental observation of molecular chaos, providing evidence that a widely accepted, yet unproven, assumption is indeed accurate. Molecular chaos is an assumption that the velocities of colliding particles are uncorrelated and independent of position. An example of molecular chaos is the air in any room. While the nitrogen and oxygen atoms are flying around with some average square speed because of the temperature in the room, they are not related, so the air does not spontaneously fly off in one direction of the room without some sort of external pressure change, like a window opening.

Studies in mice suggest that a red blood cell substitute based on human hemoglobin could be a promising new treatment for sickle cell disease in humans. Researchers report on experiments in mice genetically engineered to produce a condition similar to human sickle cell disease--an inherited disorder in which the red blood cells have an abnormal sickled or crescent-moon shape. Especially during attacks called "sickle cell crises," the sickle cells obstruct small blood vessels, blocking blood flow to organs and other parts of the body and thereby depriving the body's tissues of oxygen.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

We haven't had a chance to play with BBC's nifty new iPlayer online video service yet, but we're hearing that FairUse4WM strips the files of their DRM -- anyone try it out yet? Let us know in comments!

[Thanks, Chris]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

For some time, scientists have been tracking down the sequence of biochemical steps required to attract and assemble at the head end of a gene the molecular machinery needed to transcribe that gene to put to work the information it encodes. Now, a new study suggests that the gene-transcription machinery, once in place, can remain poised for action but held in check until a triggering signal sends it on its way down the linear DNA molecule.