Wired asks an important question: if the rootkit is basically spyware, why didn’t the major computer security companies do anything about it? Read more here.
More Bird Flu
Several more cases of Bird Flu:
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed Thursday that two more people in Indonesia have died of bird flu, bringing the total fatalities in the country to seven, while China confirmed its first death.
The two Indonesian victims were a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old woman, both Jakarta residents, said Sari Setiogi, WHO spokeswoman. The girl, whose father has numerous birds as pets, died November 8 and the woman, who had visited her grandmother who raises chickens in Central Java, died Saturday, Setiogi said.
The worldwide deaths now confirmed by WHO since late 2003 – all in Asia – are 67, providing a fatality rate of more than 50 per cent out of the 130 people who have contracted the virus.
And, right on time, Bird Flu Humor from Martin Roth.
Sony’s Disastrous Stab At Copyright Protection
In skimming around the net I’ve repeatedly come across this story (and here), which seems important enough to pass on.
In a nutshell, Sony chose to protect its music products from copyright infringement by installing an undetectable piece of malware that secretly contacts Sony HQ when the user plays a Sony product, without providing an uninstall option. Sony quietly issued a buggy “patch” that opens up the user’s computer to even more security risks, and the obtaining of which appears to log the recipient onto yet another spam list. Read the links to get the full details.
Being an avid user of Sony products myself, this hits close to home. This story is making me seriously reconsider my decision to pick up one of those Sony android servants with the optional spinning blade and lasers.
***Update***
Mark Russinovitch’s blog broke this story open. Go here if you want the technical skiny on how this stupid mess came to be.
Sony’s Disastrous Stab At Copyright ProtectionPost + Comments (15)
Dobson’s Army at the FDA
Another report that is guaranteed to infuriate all but the religious reactionaries and the social cons (is that redundant?):
Top federal drug officials decided to reject an application to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill months before a government scientific review of the application was completed, according to accounts given to Congressional investigators.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report released Monday that the Food and Drug Administration’s May 2004 rejection of the morning-after pill, or emergency contraceptive, application was unusual in several respects.
Top agency officials were deeply involved in the decision, which was “very, very rare,” a top F.D.A. review official told investigators. The officials’ decision to ignore the recommendation of an independent advisory committee as well as the agency’s own scientific review staff was unprecedented, the report found. And a top official’s “novel” rationale for rejecting the application contradicted past agency practices, it concluded.
…
In April 2003, Women’s Capital applied to make Plan B available over the counter. Barr bought the rights to the drug and continued to pursue the application. An advisory committed voted 23 to 4 in December 2003 to recommend approving the switch.
Within days of the committee’s vote, however, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the F.D.A.’s acting deputy commissioner of operations, and Dr. Steven Galson, acting director of its drug center, told four top staff members that the application would be rejected, even though the agency’s scientific review of the application had yet to be completed, the staff members told Congressional investigators. That review was completed in April.
Drs. Woodcock and Galson denied to investigators that they had made such statements.
Dr. Galson told them that “although he was ’90 percent sure’ as early as January 2004” that he would reject the application, he made his final decision only after reviewing the scientific evidence.
What can I say?
“Dangerous” Words
Those on the left are not the only individuals intent on seizing control of language to achieve their political goals, and this weekend a perfect example of this phenomenon took place in my neck of the woods. Gov. Manchin attended a pro-life dinner at Lakeview Resort at Cheat Lake, WV (about 15 minutes from my house), where Bobbi Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, had the following to say:
“The medical community wants to refer to people like my sister who are disabled as vegetative because it dehumanizes them, it takes away their personhood,” Schindler said.
“PVS is a very dangerous term, one that I believe should be eliminated, and we should refer to these people as people with disabilities or people with profound brain damage, not in this very damaging, offensive persistent vegetative State that we all hear in the media,” he said.
Putting aside the fact that the autopsy verified that Terri Schiavo’s personhood had long since departed and that she was well beyond what would even be described as ‘profound brain damage,’ what is alarming is the continued effort to avoid dealing with the sad realities of the case, but instead to villify the medical community for daring to have the audacity to name a condition, to attack ‘activist judges,’ and to pretend that somehow, if only we had a different word for Terri Schiavo’s condition, the outcome might have been different. According to Mr. Schindler, had the medical community just used a different term, Terri would today still be gleefully whiling away the hours tracking balloons across her hospice room, engaging in light banter with her pro-life attorneys.
If these people were not trying to wrest away control of my end-of-life decision making rights to cede them to some other entity (the church, the courts, who knows?) all because of their personal religious beliefs, I could probably manage to find a way to tolerate them. Right now, I can not, as too much is at stake.
*** Update ***
As a side note, why is it always the case that groups with names like ‘The Society for Truth and Justice” are usually not interested in either truth or justice:
With the death of Terri Schindler, we have just passed through one of the most ethically horrifying moments in an entire generation of American history. An innocent, handicapped woman was starved to death while the entire world watched. A runaway judiciary successfully carried out her death sentence while the Florida governor, the Florida legislature, the Federal legislature, and the United States President wrung their hands in distress, while pretending that there was nothing more they could do. Simply put: we are ruled by judges; the rule of law and self government are dying.
Harnessing the Moon
Here is a pretty interesting alternative energy source I had NEVER heard before:
One renewable energy resource that’s rarely discussed here, but is already being developed, is the moon. The moon’s gravity sends an almost unimaginable quantity of water sloshing back and forth between continents. It happens a couple of times each day and it’s called the tides. As any sailor who’s tried to beat home against a tidal current can tell you, the amount of energy involved is phenomenal.
There are already several tidal generation works around the world humming, or splashing, along and providing almost free electricity. Since most of our population lives near the coast, shouldn’t we considering developing moon, I mean tidal, power.
Read the whole thing. One obvious point of contention will be the resistance thrown up by opponents who worry about the damage this will have to the organisms who live near where these proiposed sites would be placed. I know little about whether it will impact their environment negatively, but I have to assume it will have an impact (although the piece says it will not). It is also not clear if their will be any side effect regarding coastal erosion, as well as any number of other issues (including whether it is cost effective).
Interesting, though, and precisely the sort of thing that should be explored in future energy legislation (if it has already and been rejected, let me know).
Brave New Worlds
Yesterday, it was earlier detection of Down syndrome, today it is race-based medicine:
In a finding that is likely to sharpen discussion about the merits of race-based medicine, an Icelandic company says it has detected a version of a gene that raises the risk of heart attack in African-Americans by more than 250 percent.
The company, DeCode Genetics, first found the variant gene among Icelanders and then looked for it in three American populations, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Atlanta.
Among Americans of European ancestry, the variant is quite common, but it causes only a small increase in risk, about 16 percent.
The opposite is true among African-Americans. Only 6 percent of African-Americans have inherited the variant gene, but they are 3.5 times as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who carry the normal version of the gene, a team of DeCode scientists led by Dr. Anna Helgadottir reported in an article released online yesterday by Nature Genetics.
Dr. Kari Stefansson, the company’s chief executive, said he would consult with the Association of Black Cardiologists and others as to whether to test a new heart attack drug specifically in a population of African-Americans.
Interesting times we live in.