Cody Taylor

mikeljnola writes with an excerpt from NOLA.com that says state senator Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) will introduce a bill to the Louisiana legislature on April 27 to “‘make it illegal to “create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, … transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb … (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb.”‘ With budget cuts all around, our struggling state is concerned with the eminent danger of human-animal hybrids. The upside is that the odds of the Louisiana becoming the Bayous of Dr. Boudreaux are now even slimmer.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mike.rimov writes “I saw that part of the brand new Windows Live package is the Family Safety Filter, so I decided to give it a spin. Turned it on, set it to ‘basic filtering’ (their lowest level), and went to Google … oops, it blocks Google! So I logged into the settings and added Google as an exception. Google still wouldn’t come up. Just in case, I turned off the family filter: voila, Google. As we all know, ‘Don’t be evil’ is not part of Microsoft’s motto! Oh yeah — and with the filter on, Microsoft’s own search engine, live.com comes up.” Anomaly?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fantomas writes “The BBC reports that ‘US President Barack Obama has announced his “vision for high-speed rail” in the country, which would create jobs, ease congestion and save energy.” Can rail work in the land where the car is king? Would you travel on the new high speed lines?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VonGuard writes “On April 9, ECMA International produced the final draft for the first major update to JavaScript since 1999. It’s called ECMAScript 3.1, but will soon be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. You’ll know it as JavaScript, the Next Generation. Mozilla will begin implementing these features after Firefox 3.5, and Microsoft is already showing prototypes behind closed doors. The question, however, is what this will change for JavaScript coders. To get those answers, I tracked down Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s CTO and the creator of JavaScript. I transcribed the interview without any editorial since he explains, perfectly, what’s changing for programmers. Long story short: Json will be safer, getters and setters will be standard, and strict mode will make things easier to debug.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes “A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, according to newly declassified documents obtained by Wired.com. The so-called ‘computer and internet protocol address verifier,’ or CIPAV, is delivered through links to websites controlled by the FBI, and it silently reports back to a government server in Virginia. Among other cases, the FBI used it to track a Swedish hacker responsible for cracking thousands of computers at national labs and NASA’s JPL in 2005.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

myvirtualid writes “The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, ‘Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was “commercially driven” when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.’ The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. ‘Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,’ Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter.” Update: 04/17 12:16 GMT by T : Several updates, below.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.