US Representative Marty Meehan’s staff has been heavily editing his Wikipedia bio, among other things removing criticisms. In total, more than one thousand Wikipedia edits in various articles have been traced back to congressional staffers at the US House of Representatives in the past six months
Canada’s biggest record label, publisher and management company is helping out a family sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement. The privately-owned Nettwerk Music Group is intervening because the current actions of the RIAA are not in their artists’ best interests
According to a new UK survey done for the BBC, only 48 percent of Britons accept evolution. Forty-percent of the 2,000 participants think that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in schools — via Boing Boing
Google’s new China search engine not only censors many web sites that question the Chinese government, but it goes further than similar services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting teen pregnancy, homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes. In addition, contrary to Google founder Sergey Brin’s promise to inform users when their search results are censored, the company frequently filters out sites without revealing it
A court has ruled that Google’s caching and displaying of millions of web-pages is legal. Google Cache is the service that offers to show you stored versions of the web-pages that turn up in the results for your Google searches. Until recently, no court had ruled on the legality of this, and it was unclear whether this would qualify as a fair use
. If not, Google and a number of other caching services, particularly the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, would have been in deep trouble — via Boing Boing
Joshua Philip Martin was in his fourth day on the job as a rescue-squad worker in Russell County when, in a playful mood, he decided to reach into the front seat of the ambulance and zap one of his co-workers with the defibrillator paddles. Earlier in the week, a judge convicted Martin, 25, of involuntary manslaughter — via Warren Ellis
The ACLU has received complaints from six organisations and nearly two dozen people who fear they have been spied upon, photographed, videotaped or had their events infiltrated by government agents. They say none of them did anything that would justify surveillance but rather are critics of the Bush administration — via digg
The collision was inevitable. Google has vowed to provide unbiased, accurate, and free access to information
to people around the world, while touting a corporate motto of don’t be evil
. And China, which controls information with an iron grip, has blossomed into the world’s second-biggest and fastest-growing Internet market. For those wondering what would happen when the irresistible force of Google and its altruistic motives finally met up with the immovable object of China, with its lure of higher profit, the answer came when Google unveiled its first search service inside China. Its concession: Google will play by government rules and censor results of sensitive queries, such as Falun Gong
or multiparty elections
. There’s already a workaround
A rodent-eating snake and a hamster have developed an unusual bond at a zoo in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. Their relationship began in October last year, when zookeepers presented the hamster to the snake as a meal. The rat snake, however, refused to eat the rodent. The two now share a cage, and the hamster sometimes falls asleep sitting on top of his natural foe. As a joke, the zookeeper said they named the hamster Gohan — the Japanese word for meal — via Rogue Sun
A 20-year-old Californian, Jeanson James Ancheta, accused of using hundreds of thousands of hijacked computers to damage systems and send waves of spam across the internet, has pleaded guilty to US federal charges
Bioengineers at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York City are starting to engineer living heart tissues to fix these damaged hearts. Their patches for broken hearts are made of heart tissue grown in the lab. Right now, animal trials are just starting and it will take at least a decade before human trials begin
Researchers at Ohio State University may have identified a new and unusual tumour suppression gene that could effect cancers of the lung, head, and neck. The gene, known as TCF21, is silenced in tumour cells through a chemical change known as DNA methylation, a process that is potentially reversible
Russia’s federal security service, the successor to the KGB, has launched a cold-war style attack on non-governmental organisations and human rights groups, linking them with alleged espionage by British diplomats in Moscow
A group called the Metamorphosis Foundation reports that 126 nongovernmental organisations in Macedonia have signed an open letter to that country’s president and parliament demanding prompt adoption of the Law on Free Access to Information
— via Boing Boing
The complete title of the Beastie Boys‘ forthcoming concert movie is in fact, Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!
. They lent hand-held video cameras to 50 fans, told them to shoot at will and then presented the end result in in all its primitive, kaleidoscopic glory — via Boing Boing
Spiders, centipedes and scorpion-like critters are among the 27 new animal species that biologists have discovered in the dark, damp caves of two Central California national parks — via digg
Fridge magnets may one day be able to fix bad grammar and change the words to something they think is more appropriate. The idea is that each magnet is aware of the other magnets on the fridge and they transmit information between each other,
Australian digital artist Pierre Proske said. Mr Proske is working with researchers at the Future Applications Lab of the Viktoria Institute in Sweden to develop the intelligent fridge magnets
Premier Iemma has been embarrassed into cancelling government plans to put a new toll on the M4 following the public release of secret government documents obtained by the Greens. The government had planned to continue the M4 toll past
the 2010 date when it was due to become free for public use
eBay has scrapped all sellers’ transaction fees in China in an effort to compete with local outfits offering free services. The online auctioneer announced the changes on its China web site, saying transaction fees would be waived, but small fees would continue to be charged for listing products on the site’s webspace and for feature
products
Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has written about the recent spate of hijackings at LiveJournal. Hundreds of journals have now been taken over by a notorious group called Bantown
using a series of complicated cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities. It is unclear whether LiveJournal has managed to close the security holes that the hackers claim to have used. The company says it has, but the hackers insist there are still at least 16 other similar Javascript flaws on the LiveJournal site that could be used conduct the same attack. Bantown group members said they plan to turn their attention to looking for similar flaws at another large social-networking site — via Slashdot
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