TPile

For some Linux distribution projects, new releases come twice a year. That had been the plan for Gentoo Linux this year, until it canceled its current planned release — the second time it’s done so in the past 12 months. But the news doesn’t necessarily mean a setback for the project.

The anti-piracy lobby has been putting pressure on ISPs to act against customers who download copyright infringing content. Thus far, most ISPs have simply forwarded the takedown requests they receive, but Cox Communications is taking it one step further, by disconnecting alleged copyright infringers.

Ars takes a look at the question that all mobile users have asked at one point or another: what’s up with the number of “bars” of signal that we’re getting on our cell phones, and why does that number so often seem to lie?

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Ars takes a look at the question that all mobile users have asked at one point or another: what’s up with the number of “bars” of signal that we’re getting on our cell phones, and why does that number so often seem to lie?

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By taking action this week, both the House and Senate gave webcasters and music labels a few more months to work out a royalty rate everyone can live with. Without legislation, Pandora and others might soon have been forced out of business.

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I had let our series on the military’s silly, awful acronyms slip. Then Darpa awarded a contract for its "Finding Signals Hidden in Noise" (FISHIN) project.

• Non-Ionizing Radiation Vision for A New Army (NIRVANA)
• Point of Origin (POO)
  suggested by JM
• Fast-Rope Infiltration / Exfiltration System (FRIES)
• Photon-Trap Structures for Quantum Advanced Detectors (PT-SQUAD)
• Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (DISCO)
  suggested by rww

What else should we include on our list of Most Awesomely Bad Military Acronyms ("MAMAs," for short)? Send us your suggestions, or leave ‘em in the comments below.

ALSO:

• Most Awesomely Bad Military Acronyms
• Most Awesomely Bad Military Acronyms 2
• Most Awesomely Bad Military Acronyms 3

Two brothers who ran a plethora of scam sites have been outed online, resulting in the disappearance of the sites they used to run. It’s funny what the posting of a few pictures and addresses can do.

Not long ago, it seemed music videos were doomed to go the way of the radio star. Cool bands hated making them, MTV had stopped showing them, and innovative directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry had long since moved on. Then, somewhere between OK Go’s treadmill-dancing “Here It Goes Again” on YouTube (more than 37 million views) and Feist’s “1234″ choreography lesson turned iPod ad, the music video made a comeback — and launched a new generation of directors more at home with URL than TRL. Meet the next wave of filmmakers and their greatest hits — so far.

Cat Solen

Signature style: Art-school aesthetic on the cheap.

Key video: Bright Eyes, “At the Bottom of Everything.” As a jetliner plummets toward the ocean, the passengers gleefully embrace, and smiling stop-motion clouds play catch with the plane. “I want to keep making videos because they’re artistic yet appeal to a mass audience,” Solen says.

Rik Cordero

Signature style: Urban tales with a grime-noir twist.

Key video: Nas, “Be a Nigger Too.” A nine-minute epic of narrative arcs within arcs about the most loaded of words, with nearly every directorial technique thrown in. “It used to be the only outlet for non-mainstream videos were street DVDs,” Cordero says. “When YouTube came along, we just ran with it like purse snatchers.”

Matthew Cullen

Signature style: Technical chops and enough whimsy to choke a dramatic prairie dog.

Key video: Weezer, “Pork and Beans.” YouTube semi-celebs…

Wired.com

1957: Thalidomide, a drug developed to help women overcome the symptoms of morning sickness during pregnancy, is first marketed in West Germany. Forty-six countries approve its use before thalidomide’s terrible side effects become apparent.

Thalidomide is a powerful synthetic tranquilizer, originally developed by Ciba, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. Unable to make it commercially profitable, Ciba gave up on the drug. A German company, Chemie Gruenenthal, took over and eventually began marketing thalidomide as a “completely safe” method for warding off morning sickness.

Except thalidomide wasn’t “completely safe.” In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Inadequate testing procedures were to blame for what followed. Had the pharmaceutical labs done a better job of testing thalidomide, they would have discovered that the drug’s molecules were able to penetrate the placental wall, especially during the first trimester of pregnancy when the fetus is largely unformed.

This invasion of the womb resulted in a variety of profound birth defects, including deformed and missing limbs, deafness, blindness, cleft palate and a slew of internal problems.

By the early 1960s, more than 10,000 thalidomide babies had been born. Although many died in infancy (an estimated 40 percent died before their first birthday), quite a few survived into adulthood. Now in their 40s, most thalidomide survivors continue suffering from a variety of chronic health problems directly related to their…

Wired.com

: Photo: Associated Press
The history of medicine is rife with missteps. Even with today’s standards in biochemical sciences and well-funded clinical trials, bad drugs can get into consumers’ hands.

We smirk that the words mercury and curative were once lumped together. Or that heroin was part of a physician-sanctioned regimen. But who knows what problems our present ignorance will cause in the future.

In an effort to know the past in order to avoid repeating it, let’s take a look at some drug recalls from recent history and the stories that led to the drugs’ demise.

Left: Thalidomide

From the late ’50s to the early ’60s, a German manufacturer sold thalidomide under 40 different brand names in 50 countries. Designed to relieve morning sickness and let pregnant mothers rest, the popular drug soon turned into a nightmare.

Children all over Europe and Africa were born with catastrophic birth defects because of the drug. No one knows exactly how many cases were linked to thalidomide, but one estimate of birth defects put the number at more than 10,000 children.

The United States was spared, however, thanks to the Food and Drug Administration. Frances Oldham Kelsey received a request from a company to bring the drug to the United States, but she had reservations about its safety. Despite pressure from the company, and the fact that dozens of other countries had approved the drug, Kelsey persisted in asking for further studies. Her fears were soon confirmed when…

Wired.com