A University of Pennsylvania researcher seeking ways to treat illness said studies in rats show muscle mass, strength and endurance can be increased by injections of a gene-manipulated virus that goes to muscle tissue and causes a rapid growth of cells, raising concerns that the virtually undetectable technology could be used illegally to build super athletes. None of which will bother Angle-grinder Man and his other non-powered superhero mates as they go about their daily crime fighting duties
The music industry considers Michele Scimeca a pirate. The Morris County mom has her own term for record executives: Racketeers. In what legal experts described as a novel strategy, Scimeca is citing federal racketeering laws like the one that jailed mob boss John Gotti to counter-sue record labels that accused her in December of sharing some 1,400 copyrighted songs over the Internet
What do Gandalf and Magneto have in common? Both are played by Sir Ian McKellen. Both are figures of literature, one being a novel, the other being a comic book. And both have porn written about them. Slash fiction is a genre of stories written by fans about science fiction/fantasy characters in erotic situations. We know this because McKellen brought it up.
McKellen is like your dirty old grandpa, if your dirty old grandpa was British. He’ll make totally unexpected comments about pornography and sexuality.
The Brightmail Reputation Service, monitors hundreds of thousands of e-mail sources to determine how much mail sent from these addresses is legitimate and how much is spam. The company gathers information from user reports and from its Probe Network — a collection of decoy e-mail in-boxes designed to catch spam — to determine whether a given IP address sends valid or junk messages. The service creates a profile of each e-mail source from which administrators can decide whether to block mail from these sources or allow it into the company. Brightmail also will make available a safe list
of e-mail addresses that have never sent spam to users of the Reputation Service free of charge
HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin travelled on during his famous voyage, may have been found. Marine archaeologists believe they have found the ship, which has been resting at the bottom of some Essex marshes for the last century
The Australian Communications Authority has introduced a new method of penalising telecommunications companies that breach the law, in a move designed to reduce the number of court cases
Advertising writers in Florida were planning to pitch haemorrhoid-relief products with a commercial featuring the Johnny Cash classic Ring of Fire, but Cash’s family said there’s no way they will let it happen
Librarians have warned that the free trade deal will lead to huge increases in copyright licence fees paid by Australians for use of intellectual property, including novels, poems, films and songs. And a legal expert said it was literally a Mickey Mouse
deal, as the Disney Corporation had been among its most powerful backers. The 20-year extension of copyright terms brings Australia into line with US restrictions — via Lessig Blog
Researchers were surprised to discover that M&Ms randomly dumped into a bowl pack together much more densely than spheres. Why? Asymmetric ellipsoids like M&Ms can touch eleven neighbours when dumped together while spheres only saddle up to six. Understanding how particles pack together can help scientists develop new and denser materials, like ceramics for heat shields
Telstra has announced its new budget prices for ADSL, beating out the fledgling Optus residential DSL service a day before its launch. The price cuts encompass the telecommunications heavyweight’s DSL and cable modem broadband offerings. Telstra said it would begin charging BigPond customers $29.95 a month for entry-level high-speed ADSL and cable products — the same price as some dial-up offerings — undercutting Optus’s cheapest DSL service price by $20
There’s a lengthy and detailed troll against MT blogs at Kuro5hin. Some interesting technological points are buried amongst the scathing invective!
Concerned citizens should run their MT blogs under mod_perl to avoid the DOSing described in the rant.
I’ve seen walk-throughs and screen-movies of video games that explain how to win, but this takes the cake. It’s a how to win guide for Super Mario Brothers, and the authors have invented an ingenious, ASCII-based tablature for noting the proper key presses at each moment in the game for a perfect win. It’s hard to say what’s more impressive here: the obsessive documenting of the winning strategy or the marvelous creativity in the invention of the tablature itself
Dan Geer lost his job, but gained his audience. The very idea that got the computer security expert fired has sparked serious debate in information technology. The idea, borrowed from biology, is that Microsoft has nurtured a software monoculture
that threatens global computer security. Geer and others believe Microsoft’s software is so dangerously pervasive that a virus capable of exploiting even a single flaw in its operating systems could wreak havoc
Teachers in a German school were treated in hospital after gobbling up an anonymously donated chocolate cake, unaware it was laced with hashish
Some wag has found a use for an iced up freezer, recreating scenes from Star Wars.
Strange, I only ever find peas and paddle pop sticks embedded in my freezer, which makes cleaning it out a bit like a mini archaeological dig. Maybe I should be on the lookout for small plastic men setting up camp in there in the future.
Australian Paul Cochrane mods expired Mazda rotary engines into fish tanks for a very reasonable price
Google has banned the ads of environmental group Oceana protesting Royal Caribbean’s sewage treatment methods, casting a spotlight on the editorial policies that control the popular web site’s lucrative marketing program
There is strong interest in using DSL to deliver pay TV to more Australians, as both Telstra and Optus say that there will be no further extensions to their cable networks, says Alcatel’s new local chief
US regulators have exempted from government rules the Voice over IP technology that allows phone calls to be made over the internet. The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-1 in a case involving Free World Dialup, a service that allows users to make phone calls for free over computers. Still, FCC policymakers left open the possibility that Internet calling could be regulated in the future, especially for services that charge fees to customers
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had urged the county clerk’s office this week to begin issuing marriage certificates for same-sex partners [BugMeNot], asserting that the state Constitution prohibits discrimination in such matters. The office has been inundated with happy couples wanting to tie the knot. Seth Schoen took a walk down to the San Francisco city hall and watched the hundreds of lesbian and gay couple in various states of marriage
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