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If you're not familiar with the work of Dr. Peter Watts, you really should be. His degrees in marine ecophysiology aside, he is also a sci-fi author of some talent and is best known for releasing his novels under a Creative Commons license in addition to having them published through Tor, among them Starfish and the mind-bending transhumanist novel Blindsight, which will certainly make you reconsider what you think about how you think. His work is well known by the science fiction fandom for taking hard SF in …

Well-known and little-loved spammer Robert Soloway ws arrested by US law enforcement for multiple violations of federal law, including mail, wire, and e-mail fraud, as well as money laundering. It wouldn't surprise me if they got him on violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because he was actively taking over workstations across the Net to add to his botnet of spam clients, but somehow I think the fraud charges are going to be more effective. Soloway was once near the top of Spamhaus Project's 10 Ten Most Wanted list, but a couple of lawsuits in the past few …