New Media Ethics 2009 course

Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites.

Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.

In 2007, Fiola's bosses became suspicious after the Internet bill for his state-issued laptop showed that he used 4 1/2 times more data than his colleagues. A technician found child porn in the PC folder that stores images viewed online. Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, which carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, his car tires were slashed and he was shunned by friends. Fiola and his wife fought the case, spending $250,000 on legal fees. They liquidated their savings, took a second mortgage and sold their car. An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.

ACTIVISTS claimed on Tuesday to have seized control of nearly 300 Facebook community groups in a self-proclaimed effort to expose how vulnerable online reputations are to tampering.

CYI claimed its motives were pure and that the move was more of a 'take-over' than a computer hack of Facebook groups.

'Facebook Groups suffer from a major flaw,' said a message on the CYI blog. 'If an administrator of a group leaves, anyone can register as a new admin. So, in order to take control of a Facebook group, all you really have to do is a quick search on Google.' Once CYI accessed groups as administrators it had authority to change anything, including pictures, descriptions and settings.

'I just had surgery on the spine and can only run with a solid corset. I also have a new knee and a new hip made of titanium. I'm slowly falling apart and feel like a walking spare parts depot. But I had to have it all repaired because next year in October I want to climb with my Zen teacher the Himalayas. And for 8,000 metres my body has to run smoothly.'

When approaching a problem, we can choose from any of several cognitive mechanisms. Some mechanisms have great computational power, letting us solve many problems with great accuracy, but they are slow, require much concentration and can interfere with other cognitive tasks. Others are comparatively low in computational power, but they are fast, require little concentration and do not interfere with other ongoing cognition. Humans are cognitive misers because our basic tendency is to default to the processing mechanisms that require less computational effort, even if they are less accurate.

our tendency to evaluate a situation from our own perspective. We weigh evidence and make moral judgments with a my-side bias that often leads to dysrationalia that is independent of measured intelligence. The same is true for other tendencies of the cognitive miser that have been much studied, such as attribute substitution and conjunction errors; they are at best only slightly related to intelligence and are poorly captured by conventional intelligence tests.

Because, if you're a woman, and you operate without fear - fear of people calling you fat or ugly, fear of being deemed unladylike (or "out of control," or "bratty," or whatever), fear of making people angry - people will do their very best to drill it into you.

The nanotechnology industry will employ an estimated 2 million people worldwide by 2015, and with President Obama calling on colleges to ready students for the field, an Illinois-based company has introduced a program designed to teach the complex subject to undergraduates.

A man was caught with more than 500 offensive photos in his mobile phone. This happened after a woman complained against him taking a picture of her chest at a shopping centre.

"My husband and I were shocked when we were shown the data because there were more than 500 pictures of various women that this man took. All the pictures were of their chests and breasts. From the angle of the shots, I could see that the women in these pictures were not aware that they were victims."

According to the law, anyone who takes offensive photos of a woman in a public place without the lady's prior consent can be charged for outrage of modesty. If found guilty, the persons involved faces a fine, up to a year in jail or both.

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate". The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"

She said: "It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself."

LONDON - Scientific advances including techniques allowing patients to grow new joints inside their own bodies will allow the elderly to remain active well beyond their 100th birthdays, researchers claim. British scientists are working on a system which should allow the elderly to buy body parts "off the shelf" and even regenerate their own damaged joints and hearts. Their ultimate aim is to fix up the body with customised replacement parts grown to order. They have already carried out human trials on heart valves which are still working four years after they were transplanted. At the University of Leeds, Britain's biggest bioengineering unit and the world leader in artificial joint replacement research is coordinating a project that aims to give people 50 active years after the age of 50."It is the rise of the bionic pensioner," said Professor Christina Doyle, whose company is working with the university to develop the new technologies. "The idea is when something wears out, your surgeon can buy a replacement off the shelf or, more accurately, in a bag."The university is spending £50 million ($114 million) over the next five years on the new project. The main thrust of the research centres on a method of tissue and medical engineering which the university is at the forefront of developing. Led by the immunologist Professor Eileen Ingham, they are pioneering a technique of stripping the living cells from donor human and animal parts, leaving just the collagen or elastin "scaffold" of the tissue. These "biological shells", which could be for knee, ankle or hip ligaments, as well as blood vessels and heart valves, are then transplanted into the patient whose own body then invades them replacing the removed cells with their own. The technique, which could be available within five years, effectively removes the need for anti-rejection drugs. It is similar to the recently developed system of using stem cells to regrow organs outside the body, but costs about a tenth of the price.