amigoro writes with the happy news that a possible vaccine against HIV is nearing readiness for clinical trials. The compound could provide a 'double whammy' by not only inoculating the patient against future infection, but destroying an HIV infection in progress. "The vaccine is an artificial virus-like particle whose outer casing consists of the TBI (T- and B cell epitopes containing immunogen) protein constructed by the researchers combined with the polyglucin protein. This protein contains nine components stimulating different cells of the immune system: both the ones that produce antibodies and the ones that devour the newcomer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

6 writes "Technology isn't just about design and hardware; sometimes it's about psychology, politics, sociology, and economics. The website of Stanford design prof Michael Shanks is hosting a student project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu, a fascinating online course about slot machines. From the site: 'Much research has been devoted to studying gambling behavior from various points of view, including the psychological, social, economic, and political bases and implications of gambling ... [just the same,] focusing on slot machines reveals and inspires the study of many sociological issues that have come to express themselves specifically and notably on these machines. Here, we examine a number of these issues, attempting to link slot machines to them in an effort to better understand and explain them.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The nytfeed provides us with an article about the current state of internet connectivity on the African continent. Only 4 percent of Africa's population has regular access to the internet, with most of those people living in North African countries, or the country of South Africa. This might seem like a market ripe for development, but the article explains that there are numerous difficulties involved getting an infrastructure project off the ground. "Africa's only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet's backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened. Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service." The good news is that, of course, progress is being made. Just ... slowly.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xeni Jardin: A blurb just issued from NASA reads, "A severe dust storm is underway on Mars, causing an energy crisis for NASA's Mars rovers. Dust in the atmosphere over Opportunity has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight, leaving only the limited diffuse sky light to power the rover." Link to audio and video. Here's more, and still more.

Xeni Jardin:

BoingBoing reader Roy Berman says,

On this day of the release of the final Harry Potter volume, I thought other BB readers would be interested in seeing some scans from two completely fake sequel novels published in China, as well as a very slick Harry Potter fan manga published in Japan.

The two Chinese books, "Harry Potter and the Filler of Big" and "Harry Potter and Beaker and Burn," were purchased in ordinary bookshops in China about 4 years ago, shelved with the Chinese translations of the real novels.

Link

Xeni Jardin:

Relax, just kidding! I have no idea what happens, I'm not a big Potter fan and don't know how this one unfolds.

Rick Prelinger says,

I know the net is clogged with Potter pix right now, but it was wonderful in London last night -- a queue of perhaps 1000-1500 fans with at least as many spectators, all shooting off digicams with flash. Media hype lives on, but so does fantasy!

Link to a wonderful photo set.

Cory Doctorow: Someone has uploaded the entire concert video for Talking Heads' 1980 appearance in Rome. There's never been a musical group that inspired me as much as Talking Heads. Every album, every track, all the solo projects... I'd trade all the music in the world for their canon. This is amazing footage, the Heads performing with incredible verve and energy. If I had a time machine, I'd go back to this show.

Songs performed:

* Psycho Killer
* Stay Hungry
* Cities
* I Zimbra
* Drugs
* Take Me to the River
* Crosseyed and Painless
* Life During Wartime
* Houses in Motion
* Born under Punches
* The Great Curve
(via MeFi)

Dolphinzilla writes "According to Space.com, Northrop Grumman Corporation agreed on July 5 to increase its stake in Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites (designers of Space Ship One, Proteus) from 40 percent to 100 percent. They have purchased the company outright, marking a new future for the space pioneering firm. 'Scaled Composites currently is working with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture on a vehicle designated for now as SpaceShipTwo, which would carry two pilots and six paying passengers into suborbital space for a few minutes of weightlessness. The company also is building a new carrier aircraft, dubbed WhiteKnight2, that will carry SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometers before releasing it to soar to suborbital space. The two companies last year formed a joint venture called the Spaceship Company to build the new vehicles.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the background I'm learning how to configure Apache on Mac OS X. There are lots of little stumbling blocks that involve penetrating the user interface and getting down to the Unix running underneath. There's a tiny sliver of Apache showing through the GUI but not enough to do anything interesting.

The first thing I had to figure out, after learning where the document root is (still not totally clear on that but I got it working) is where the httpd.conf file is. I found it at:

Macintosh HD:private:etc:httpd:httpd.conf

You can't normally get to this location in the Finder, but there is a way, in the Terminal window, to tell the Finder to display hidden files and folders, and then you can navigate there. A tutorial at MacWorld explains how.

Even better, you can open the folder from within the OPML Editor using the file.openfolder verb. There's probably a way to do it in AppleScript as well.

So I opened the httpd.conf file and started reading it, and it seems like a standard Apache install with an added nicety: at the end it includes all files ending with .conf in the users sub-folder. So you can modify the install without having to modify the shipping conf file, which means you can get an upgrade from Apple without losing your changes. Good.

So I started writing a file that would map virtual hosts to store in my personal conf file, but when it came time to save, no luck. On further investigation I find that I don't own the files, even the one named after me! They belong to the system.

So now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how I log on with permission to edit files created by the system. There must be a way, right?

Suggestions are welcome of course.

PS: This is what I needed. Thanks!!

newsblaze writes "In the Media space, the internet has been threatening to be a highly disruptive technology for some time now. So far it has done quite a number on newspapers, who still don't understand the internet. There are a lot of people who like to have the paper in their hands, though, so newspapers are holding on. Television has no such ties to a physical medium. When Murdoch bought Myspace, I wondered how long it would be before he either found something to do with it — or gave up. Now it seems Murdoch has found a way to leverage his position, and put a massive squeeze on television. How far can he take this — and what will be the result?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mishtara2001 writes "BusinessWeek reports that a high court adviser in the EU has decided that ISPs are not required to reveal information to authorities, when users are suspected of music piracy. If this is adopted across the EU then it can potentially spell doom for the IFPI's (the global RIAA) efforts to litigate against European P2P users. From the article: 'Promusicae wanted the personal data so that it could start taking legal action against the file sharers, but Telefonica claimed that it could only turn over such information as part of a criminal prosecution or in matters of public security and national defense. A Spanish court hearing the case referred the issue to the ECJ for guidance on how to interpret EU law on the subject and Ms Kokott's legal opinion is the advice for the ECJ judges who will eventually rule on a recommendation for the Spanish court to take. The final court decision is expected later this year. Once it comes out, it could form the basis for similar decisions throughout the 27-member EU bloc.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Feedburner first came online I warned that there was danger in giving so much power to one company. They argued that they were just a little company, struggling to make a go of it, and no one should fear them. Some of them even took the predictable political tactic of trashing the personality of the person raising the question. I held my ground. I've been around this business a long time, and I was sure their strategy was to sell to a bigger company, and I don't trust big companies.

People at big companies often are underpaid, with stock options going nowhere, and feel unappreciated by their colleagues, and when they look outside their company they see lots of people who look happy and successful, making more money than they are, without the political troubles and strategy taxes, and they feel like they're doing all the work. (Of course we look at them and see much the same thing, the grass is always greener over there.)

So now someone at Google "owns" Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. Reader software might have trouble working with it. They would say "Oh but the new feeds work better with Google Reader, and that's the one most people use." And by the way, more and more that's true these days. But what about other feed suppliers? Do they have to change to work with Google Reader? They will say no, but there may turn out to be practical reasons why they must.

People at Microsoft used to say that Windows isn't ready to ship until Lotus doesn't run. That's not a typo. You'd think it would be the other way around, that a popular operating system would never hold the users of a popular spreadsheet hostage. But it could happen when they have their own spreadsheet and want you to switch. Or if they want everyone to put ads in their feeds. Who would miss a few blogs here and there, don't we all use Blogger anyway (that's one area where they haven't taken over, btw, thankfully).

I would have been concerned no matter who bought Feedburner, had it been Microsoft or Yahoo, or Fox or even Cisco, or if they hadn't sold out at all. Little companies can sometimes do desperate things when new management comes in.

These technologies work best when there's lots of competition and lots of choice, and when users are alert and don't trust companies that don't deserve their trust. But I can't say I've ever seen that happen for any sustained period, but I still have hope it could happen someday.

CNet has the news that Microsoft is currently aiming to release the next version of the Windows operating system in about three years. Previously known as Vienna, the OS is now simply known internally as '7'. After achieving a quality product, the article states, Microsoft's big goal with 7 is to recapture a regular release schedule for their operating system product. From the article: "Like Vista, Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows, but did not provide specifics or a time frame. Next up on Microsoft's agenda is Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, which is expected before year's end. The discussion of Windows' future isn't surprising, given that Microsoft has been criticized by business customers for delays related to Vista. Many business customers pay for Microsoft's software under a license agreement called Software Assurance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mernil wrote with the news that the EU Commission has given the go-ahead to provide funding for Germany's search engine project, called Theseus. Early this year we discussed Germany's withdrawal from the French project Quaero. From the outside, it looks like the EU Commission is unwilling to put all its eggs in one basket, funding the German project to the tune of 120 million euro, or $US 166 million. Dow Jones reports: "The aim is to develop new search technologies for the next generation Internet, including 'semantic technologies which try to recognize the meaning of content and place it in its proper context.' The semantic Web has been considered the next evolution of the Internet at least since Tim Berners-Lee, widely considered a creator of the current version of the Internet, published an article describing it in 2001. In theory, a semantic Web could receive a user request for information about fishing, for example, and automatically narrow the results according to the user's individual needs rather than blanket the user with pages related to numerous aspects of fishing. The Commission's funding approval Thursday immediately sparked talk of building a potential European challenger to Web search leader Google Inc."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently the EOS-1D Mark III has been the buzz of various Internet discussion forums, but not for the right reasons. Over the last few months a problem with Auto Focus has come to light which causes it to either mis-focus or slightly front or back focus, especially noticeable when tracking a moving subject in Ai Servo mode. Canon has announced that it will make a new firmware release (version 1.0.9) available for download at the end of this month (or if you prefer you can have your camera serviced right now) which is supposed to address at least part of the problem. However some detailed analysis by Rob Galbraith indicates that this firmware isn't the panacea many Mark III owners will be hoping for.

Ant writes "Popular Mechanics shares a short article on an exclusive look at 36 years' worth of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports and seating charts to determine the best way to live through a disaster in the sky. Move to the back of the Airbus."

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youthoftoday writes "The OLPC project to bring the internet to third world has worked well — too well, it seems. Yahoo reports that Nigerian Children are already using the OLPC to browse for porn." This is why as kids we couldn't look at National Geographic issues without being supervised. A rep from OLPC said, understandably, that the laptops would now be fitted with filters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.