Vatican vetos 'dot god' domain

The Pope has called on ICANN to keep religion out of the domain name system. The Vatican warned the internet address-making body of the “perils” of allowing new internet domains such as “.catholic, .anglican, .orthodox, .hindu, .islam, .muslim, [and] .buddhist”. ICANN, frequently accused of mission creep, could find itself having to decide who gets to represent an entire religion on the internet, His Holiness pointed out, in a letter from Monsignor Carlo Maria Polvani. Religion-themed domains could provoke “bitter disputes” that would force ICANN into “recognizing to a particular group or to a specific organization the legitimacy to represent a given religious tradition,” Polvani told outgoing ICANN chief Paul Twomey. The warning came as ICANN, meeting this week in Mexico City, kicked off the latest in its interminable series of discussions into whether and how to allow new generic top-level domains (gTLDs, in ICANN-speak) onto the internet. Figuring out how to safely create new gTLDs was the main reason for ICANN’s creation over ten years ago. But while it managed to squeeze out a handful of “test” domains, including .info, .museum, .travel and .biz, in 2001, the organisation has been hopelessly entangled in self-imposed red tape ever since.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/05/pope_domain_name/

Rotten egg gas 'could make the new Viagra'

Small quantities of hydrogen sulphide are released by nerve cells in the penis before intercourse, causing the male sex organ to become erect, Italian scientists have found. The foul-smelling gas is released in larger amounts by decaying eggs and from the exhaust pipes of cars fitted with catalytic converters, but researchers now believe it could be used to create a rival to Viagra. "We found that hydrogen sulphide is involved in human penile erection," Professor Giuseppe Cirino of the University of Naples Federico II told The Independent. "The hydrogen sulphide pathway represents a new therapeutic target for erectile dysfunction and it should be possible in future to deliver drugs that either deliver hydrogen sulphide or that control the hydrogen sulphide production." A similar discovery about the role of another chemical, nitric oxide, in causing erections eventually led to the development of Viagra, which stimulates blood supply to the penis. Around a third of men to not react to that anti-impotence drug and they could benefit from a new medication based on hydrogen sulphide, Prof Cirino told the newspaper.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4930293/Rotten-egg-gas-could-make-the-new-Viagra.html

Koobface variant worms across social networking sites

A new strain of the Koobface worm is spreading across social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The malware posts invitations to the friends of infected users inviting them to view a video. The linked website tries to trick prospective marks into believing they need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player plugin to view the clip. The software offered is, of course, loaded with Windows-specific Trojan code. This malware establishes a back-door on compromised Windows machines. The attack follows the appearance of two rogue applications - "Error Check System" and Facebook closing down - last week which used misleading messages in order to hoodwink users into activating software packages. Neither app spread malware as such but Error Check System has been linked to indirect attempts to attract surfers to sites punting rogue anti-malware (AKA scareware) packages.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/02/koobface_worm_returns/

Audio Watermarking Technique Could Locate Movie Pirates

In an attempt to deter camcorder piracy, researchers have been developing watermarking techniques that embed a secret message into a movie indicating when and where the movie was shown. Once the movie is posted on the Internet, this secret message can be extracted to reveal the movie theater and showtime, and the theater can implement additional surveillance to deter piracy. However, these watermarking techniques cannot identify the recording location in the theater. Now, a newly proposed position estimation system can use an audio watermarked signal embedded into a movie soundtrack to estimate the camcorder's location in a theater to within half a meter - basically down to a specific seat. Yuta Nakashima, Ryuki Tachibana, and Noboru Babaguchi of Osaka University have developed the new technique, and their results will be published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. As the researchers explain in their study, the position estimation system works by taking advantage of the different channels of the soundtrack, called "host signals." A watermark embedder generates a watermark signal for each host signal, generating a "watermarked host signal" (WHS). Separate loudspeakers emit each WHS, and a camcorder will record the audio as a mixture of all the WHSs as a single recorded signal. In this monaural recorded signal, the watermarked host signal from each loudspeaker is delayed in proportion to the distance from its loudspeaker (the source of origin) to the camcorder's microphone. The watermark detector can calculate these delays by determining the strengths of each watermarked host signal. Specifically, the detection strength of each watermarked signal will have a peak at a particular time dependent on the delay times. As the researchers explain, this audio watermarking method could be combined with a conventional watermarking method, which together could determine the move theater, showtime, and the seat in the theater. Then, a person identification system - such as a ticketing system or video surveillance - could identify the pirate.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news154880123.html