CNN is reporting that NBC is using the 2008 Olymics in Beijing as a test-bed to understand how people are using different media platforms. “NBC has scheduled 3,600 hours of Olympics programming on its main network, along with Telemundo, USA, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC and Bravo. That’s the equivalent of eight days of programming packed into each day. In addition, the company is planning to make 2,200 hours of streaming video available on NBCOlympics.com. Consumers may also get video on demand via their computer and Olympics content through their mobile phones.”

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Recently a user, Lori Drew, was charged with a felony for the heinous crime of pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Lori was charged for signing up for MySpace using a fake name. “The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a “protected computer” was the profiles of other MySpace users. If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it’s really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That’s an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn’t a minor crime, it’s a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew’s case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions.”

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mad.frog writes to tell us that in a recent talk by Adobe’s Scott Petersen he demonstrated a new toolchain that he has been working on (and soon to be open-sourced) that allows C code to be run by the Tamarin virtual machine. “The toolchain includes lots of other details, such as a custom POSIX system call API and a C multimedia library that provides access to Flash. And there’s some things that Petersen had to add to Tamarin, such as a native byte array that maps directly to RAM, thereby allowing the VM’s “emulation” of memory to have only a minor overhead over the real thing. The end result is the ability to run a wide variety of existing C code in Flash at acceptable speeds. Petersen demonstrated a version of Quake running in a Flash app, as well as a C-based Nintendo emulator running Zelda; both were eminently playable, and included sound effects and music.”

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Michael J. Ross writes “For computer programmers who do not have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP), learning the C# programming language can be rather challenging, even if they have experience with C or C++, which at least would give them a head start over non-C programmers. Any developer in this situation may well want to begin the learning process with a book that aims to teach both OOP and C# in as gentle a manner as possible, with plenty of patient explanations and illustrative diagrams — such as those found in the book Head First C# by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene.” Read below for the rest of Michael’s review.

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Surinder Kahai writes “Last week I had the rare opportunity to see an emerging virtual world called Wonderland, the product of an open source project, Project Wonderland, sponsored by Sun Microsystems. The tour was given by Nicole Yankelovich, Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Environments Project at Sun Microsystems. Some of the key aspects of this dynamic virtual world are voice communication with distance attenuation, the ability to join a Wonderland meeting through a regular phone if a computer is not handy, and the sharing of applications such as Open Office. Wonderland is currently being used by educational facilities and can be used by other organizations for virtual collaboration. Since the project is an Open Source project, users can tweak the tools available to suit their particular purpose.”

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ScienceDaily is reporting that Japanese chemists have created the world’s first DNA molecule comprised of almost entirely artificial components. The breakthrough could lead to advances in both medicine and technology, possibly utilizing the massive storage capacity of DNA. “In the new study, Masahiko Inouye and colleagues point out that scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to extend its amazing information storage capabilities. As the genetic blueprint of all life forms, DNA uses the same set of four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code for a variety of proteins used in cell functioning and development. Until now, scientists have only been able to craft DNA molecules with one or a few artificial parts, including certain bases.”

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Corrupt writes “Just ask 11-year-old Jemella Chambers. She is one of 650 students who receive an Apple Inc laptop each day at a state-funded school in Boston. From the second row of her classroom, she taps out math assignments on animated education software that she likens to a video game.”

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Sportsqs writes “The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the ‘microwave audio effect’ to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people’s heads.”

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Corrupt writes “Microsoft on Monday released a letter that supports investor activist Carl Icahn’s efforts to unseat Yahoo’s board, as well as confirming its interest to explore a bid to buy the entire company or just its search assets with a new board.”

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CurtMonash writes “I was ego-surfing the other day, and was surprised to discover that I was listed as a member of an on-line dating service. It turns out these scamsters generate web pages for lots of (FirstName, LastName) combos, each claiming that the named individual is a member of their service. I posted about this, and discovered other people were upset, at least one had lost interest in a guy because he appeared to be a member, and so on. I’ve since followed up with lessons learned, a big one being that everybody should have a visible web presence. But frankly, the ideas I’ve come up with for fighting this kind of reputation scam seem fairly weak. Do Slashdotters have any better ideas?”

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