AMD has just taken the wraps off their newest Phenom processors, and we think we are impressed. The entire lineup, which ranges from a triple-core low-end, to a quad-core beast, are all 65 nanometer chips... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 10:08 pm
Say home prices have fallen 20% to date, and you expect them to fall another 10%. How much will they have fallen in total? A guest just now on CNBC just said, in passing, that would make for a 30% overall... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 5:48 pm
Transport For London's brilliant "Do the Test" cycling safety video invites you to pay close attention to a video of some basketball players, then demonstrates just how little you really saw, ending with a voice-over that explains how easy it is to miss things you're not looking for, like cyclists:
This phenomenon is known as "change blindness" - only a tiny fraction of all the information going into your brain enters your consciousness. People often fail to see a change in their surroundings because their attention is elsewhere.
Even stranger, if you are concentrating on something, you can become blind to other events that you would normally notice. This "inattention blindness" is possibly the reason why motorists collide with cyclists.
Just as it is important for road users to keep an eye out for cyclists, cyclists must also take steps to ensure they are seen by motorists.
An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"
Antonio Lupi's Biblio free-standing bathtub incorporates a generous book-case for your bathroom reading. I do much of my best reading in the littlest room -- the tub, in particular, is conducive to productive reading.
Link
Hoping to boost its name recognition with a new generation, Adobe is offering a slimmed-down version of its popular photo-editing software for free online.
The marketing gurus at Dr. Pepper think they can have their cake and eat it too! If, as anticipated, Axl Rose can not complete his opus: Chinese Democracy, 17 years after beginning work on it — they... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:45 pm
AMD has unleashed a line of desktop chips at a time when PC sales are slowing and even Intel is experiencing tighter margins (although, that’s because of memory prices). No matter how good AMD’s... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:45 pm
The longest running science fiction show in television history returns for another season and remains as popular as ever, but the future is uncertain. In Underwire.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Unsurprisingly, all of SCO's creditors have objected to the plan to reimburse York for the failed 'emergency' deal. Novells tiny seven page objection (PDF) is hilarious and very readable. They don't hold back at all, saying that 'all that happened is that the Debtors spent money needlessly on a proceeding that was, to all intents and purposes, stillborn had it not been for the stubbornness of the Debtors' management and the avarice of York,' and that it was 'another really bad deal they have chased in ceaseless pursuit of their dreams of a litigation bonanza.' They top it off by concluding with the line, 'for the reasons explained above, the Court should deny the Motion as the Debtors' worst and least supported idea yet in these cases.' One can only wonder how SCO will respond to this."
Comcast Corp., an Internet service provider under investigation for hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers, announced Thursday an about-face in its stance and said it will treat Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:39 pm
Peter sez, "The One Laptop Per Child project's sonic contributors have been hard at work. They've collected 8.5 GB of Creative Commons-licensed sounds from the likes of the Berklee College of Music and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:36 pm
Peter sez, "The One Laptop Per Child project's sonic contributors have been hard at work. They've collected 8.5 GB of Creative Commons-licensed sounds from the likes of the Berklee College of Music and electronic superstar BT. These are free for use whether or not you've got an OLPC. They've also been working on musical applications for children using the machines, building on Csound, an open-source synthesis and effects tool. The upshot: open music development on the OLPC will benefit the whole music community, not just XO laptop owners."
Link
(Thanks, Peter!)
With 3G and 4G wireless broadband becoming part of the daily mobile lexicon, who has time for pokey old EDGE networks? Nokia Siemens Networks, a wireless equipment maker, does and has come up with a new... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:35 pm
Traveling, jet lag, early meetings, not a lot of time to write. But I did draft two big piece on the plane, and hope to polish them on the way home. That said, here are the things that caught my eye as... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:34 pm
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel takes note of a Reuters story on Ben Heckendorn, a supermodder who earns his living hacking his pals' game systems: Often someone will ask me to combine five different... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:33 pm
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel takes note of a Reuters story on Ben Heckendorn, a supermodder who earns his living hacking his pals' game systems:
Often someone will ask me to combine five different video game systems in one box, which is of course ridiculous. One guy wanted me to build an Xbox 360 controller attached to his rowing machine at home so he could row and play 'Uno' with his friends online. It sounded so weird I did it.
First up, the classic "Fight Fight," a Mortal Kombat spoof in which the director performs the role of both vanquisher and vanquished. Next, an all-new exclusive for BBtv -- "Blingee IRL," in which all is pimped out and glamtabulous.
Today on Boing Boing tv, a double shot of animation from Michael Mouris, whose work you may recall from the epic Diddy/Bjork conversational gif. First up, the classic "Fight Fight," a Mortal Kombat spoof... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:31 pm
I've just finished reading Rolling Thunder, John Varley's wonderful sequel to Red Thunder and Red Lightning, his ongoing series of tributes to the golden age of Heinlein's juvenile sf novels. The Thunder... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:27 pm
I've just finished reading Rolling Thunder, John Varley's wonderful sequel to Red Thunder and Red Lightning, his ongoing series of tributes to the golden age of Heinlein's juvenile sf novels.
The Thunder and Lightning books are fantastic, action-packed, science-packed homages to Heinlein's best work, and Rolling Thunder is no exception. In this volume -- set decades after the action concluded in Red Lightning -- a descendant of the story's original heroes named Podkayne (due to a vogue among Mars residents to name their kids after fictional Martians) finds herself embroiled in several kinds of adventures, including a musical encounter with vast, unstoppable, deadly crystalline lifeforms; a military hitch; musical stardom, and more. She is at the center of the saga of the ongoing collapse of poor old Planet Earth, laid to waste by security paranoia, religious fervor, greed, and environmental catastrophe.
Through Poddy's eyes, we watch the action unfold on an interplanetary scale, re-visiting the best characters from the previous books (the stasis fields from Rolling Thunder are an effective means of indefinite life-support, so practically everyone is still alive and chumming about, as in Heinlein's Cat Who Walked Through Walls), and the action skips seamlessly from the micro-scale (Poddy's familial and romantic entanglements) to the macro (interplanetary war!).
I can't recommend this stuff too highly. Varley is clearly bent on reviving everything that made the Heinlein juvies great, and he's doing a hell of a job with it. These books are fond without being nostalgic, reverent without being old-fashioned. Everything about them is utterly contemporary, but it's easy to believe that Heinlein would have written them (more or less!) today.
Link
Shares in Wolfson Microelectronics lost a quarter of their value on Thursday after it emerged the company had not been picked to supply audio chips to the next generation of Apple iPods. Shares in Wolfson... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:23 pm
Bryan sez, "Rockbox, the open source jukebox firmware project has been accepted as a mentoring organization to this year's Google Summer of Code. We're looking for students to come along and help us spend Google's money and move the project along for all our users. So if you're a university student with a passion for improving your iPod, or sanitising your Sansa, then please by all means get in touch, and submit an application!
One of the ideas we've put forward this year is the 'Rockbox as an application' which would allow it to run on some devices without the need to completely replace the parent firmware. This could mean Rockbox on the iPhone or the Playstation Portable!"
Link
(Thanks, Bryan!)
Scientists have found a jawbone belonging to the oldest known human inhabitants of Europe who lived in a lush, game-rich region of what is now northern Spain about 1.2 million years ago. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:05 pm
Neurons spoke to Dr. Joe Z. Tsien when he was a sophomore college student searching for some meaningful extracurricular activity.He had stopped by the lab of a brain researcher at Shanghai’s East China Normal University. The room was dark except for a light shining on the brain. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:05 pm
Ian Lamont writes "Google is in the midst of a full-court privacy effort in Washington that involves pushing consumer privacy legislation in U.S. Congress, reaching out to privacy advocates in an effort to allay concerns about its acquisition of DoubleClick, and working with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to 'fine-tune online advertising principles' that the agency proposed last year. Google has been under fire in Washington in recent years — the FTC investigated the Google/DoubleClick deal and the EFF has issued warnings over Google services in the past. Is Google being sincere about these issues, or is this effort mostly paying lip service to its 'do no evil' policy and an attempt to head off future clashes with policy makers?"
CSMG Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: CTGI), a technology management company, announced that its Live Tissue Connect ("LTC") technology subsidiary now has in-house disposable instrumentation capability. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Stretch Inc., the pioneer and leader in software configurable processors, today announced it has raised an additional $15 million in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Worldview Technology Partners, Oak Investment Partners and Menlo Ventures. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
I initially got into computers about 13 years ago when my mom brought home a computer and I broke it and fixed it, unbeknownst to her. I got really comfortable working with the computer. From there, I realized that I had a passion for it, and that's how I got started. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (www.moore.org) today announced the election of a new Trustee to its Board, Paul Gray, Ph.D. His election to the Foundation's Board of Trustees was effective March 20, 2008. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
CallWave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CALL), a leading provider of Internet based telephony applications and services that integrate mobile phones and computing, announced today the appointment of Cisco executive Manny Rivelo to its board of directors. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Dell has entered into a partnership with Indian consumer electronics retailer Infinity Retail, a part of the Tata Group, to sell its laptops and desktops through Infinity's Croma chain stores from April 2008, reported Reuters. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., March 27, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Gateway Financial Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq:GBTS) is driving its stake further into the ground in the Virginia Beach market by establishing the holding company's permanent headquarters at The Town Center of Virginia Beach, announced D. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
By Steve Mocarsky, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Mar. 27--HAZLE TWP. -- English teacher Bill Davenport picked up a pen and printed the word "hello" on what appeared to be a dry-erase board at the front of his classroom in the Hazleton Area Career Center. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
BarterQuest.com, a Web site under development, announced that its parent company has initiated the process to establish international patents related to its proprietary trading and matching systems. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
iovation, the device reputation authority for the Internet, today announced it has successfully completed a $15 million investment round by securing growth capital from SAP Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP), and European Founders, a leading investor for emerging growth companies looking to expand into Europe. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a draft restoration plan and Environmental Action Statement detailing proposed actions to be taken at the Lakepoint Wetlands. The actions are intended to restore natural resources the U.S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
PHILO T. FARNSWORTH AWARD Wayman Stodart Logan High School Parents: De Siree and Leslie Stodart North Logan "I have always had an interest in the sciences. Science is one of the few fields that never stops changing. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Embargoed until 4 p.m. CET/ 11 a.m. EST today. Susan Lindquist Recognized for Contributing to Molecular Understanding of Parkinson's Disease Mosbach, Germany, Mar. 27, 2008 - American scientist Susan Lindquist, Ph.D., was awarded today the Otto Warburg Medal in Mosbach, Germany. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Only in recent years have scientists begun to understand the role of small, non-protein coding RNA molecules in living cells. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Warmer weather has helped, and the price of gasoline and heating oil has made people think twice about how much energy they are consuming. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
DETROIT -- Since long before the phrases "carbon footprint" and "global warming" went mainstream, many veteran gardeners have been quietly pursuing their hobby under a few guiding principles: Be thrifty. Be frugal. Don't waste resources or cash. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 2:00 pm
Hugo-award-winning science fiction artist Frank Wu writes in with the astounding news that he's adapting his short film, "GUIDOLON The Giant Space Chicken DIRECTOR'S CUT" ("The long-awaited Director's Cut of GUIDOLON THE GIANT SPACE CHICKEN, about a Giant Space Chicken making a movie about a Giant Space Chicken.") as a feature film! He's spending the next three years on it, and the mightily talented Suzanne Rachel Forbes has posted her pre-production sketches to Flickr.
Link to pre-production sketches
(Thanks, Frank!)
Zoot sez, "Following up on your post about Emru Townsend, I thought you might want to highlight two upcoming bone marrow donor drives. Erica Murray, a classmate of mine, was forced to leave grad school and return to SF when her leukemia came out of remission late last year. Her family and friends have organized a drive at the San Francisco Hall of Justice on April 4th, and her classmates have organized a drive at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on the Tufts University campus near Boston on April 2nd. Obviously, we're hoping to find Erica a donor, but the drives are intended to get as many people on to the general registry as possible."
More info, Fundraising
(Thanks, Zoot!)
Having acknowledged it hampers file-sharing to manage network traffic, Comcast Corp. said Thursday it is now in talks with the file-sharing service BitTorrent Inc. to come up with better... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 1:28 pm
eldavojohn writes "While we made light of it before, the MIT Review is taking a serious look at China's plans to prevent rain over their open 91,000 seat arena for The Olympics. From the article: 'China's national weather-engineering program is also the world's largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers — mostly peasant farmers — who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.' They plan on demonstrating their ability to control the weather to the rest of the world, and expanding on their abilities in the future."
Motorola shares are slipping in premarket trading after an analyst downgraded the stock, saying the shares may be weak before Motorola finishes its planned split into two companies. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 1:16 pm
Huron Consulting Group Inc. slashed its first-quarter guidance Thursday, sending shares of the financial and operational advisor lower in early trading. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 1:10 pm
Sybase Inc. , which provides software for mobile devices, said Thursday it expects to report first-quarter profit above its previous targets, saying its "unwired enterprise" products are selling well. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 1:04 pm
Computer Sciences Corp. said Thursday it received a contract for information technology and information management services worth up to $110 million from the Environmental Protection Agency. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 12:47 pm
recoiledsnake writes "The new Safari 3.1 for Windows has been hit with two 'highly critical'(as rated by Secunia) vulnerabilities that can result in execution of arbitrary code. The first is due to an improper handling of the buffer for long filenames of files being downloaded, and the second can result in successful spoofing of websites and phishing. This comes close on the heels of criticism of Apple for offering Safari as a update for approximately 500 million users of iTunes on Windows by default, and reports of crashes. There are currently no patches or workarounds available except the advice to stay clear of 'untrusted' sites." Further, Wormfan writes "The latest version of Safari for Windows makes a mockery of end user licensing agreements by only allowing the installation of Safari for Windows on Apple labeled hardware, thereby excluding most Windows PCs."
Remember when they gave pilots guns to increase airplane security? On Saturday, a US Airways pilot accidentally fired his gun in the cockpit while trying to stow it, blowing a hole in the plane. Security expert Peter Biddle uses this as an object lesson to explain why "trust isn't transitive."
Let’s look at this quote from the article in question, attributed to Mike Boyd: “if somebody who has the ability to fly a 747 across the Pacific wants a gun, you give it to them.” This is a horribly flawed assumption, because it assumes that trust is transitive, when clearly it isn’t.
The reason trust isn’t transitive is because trust is most often based on data regarding the past which allows us to make assumptions about specific competence, quality of performance, and behaviors in the future.
We can assume that a trained pilot, when facing piloty thingies, will act like a trained pilot. WE CANNOT ASSUME THAT A TRAINED PILOT WILL ACT LIKE A TRAINED LION-TAMER WHEN FACING A WILD LION.
Skills from one domain cannot simply be moved from that domain to another. Saliently, the pilot in question must have thousands of hours of flight time, has done the pre-flight check hundreds or even thousands of times, has been steeped in pilot-ness and thus pilot-safety, probably since he was a late teen. He’s very likely an extraordinarily safe pilot. We can assume that every experienced 747 pilot has a keen awareness of the potential lethality of full loaded 747. In the past we can assume that they at least had a deep appreciation of the potential for harm to their own passengers, and post 9/11 we can assume that they appreciate the harm their plane can be to thousands of additional people.
A Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst upgraded four semiconductor equipment makers Thursday, saying he thinks sales will improve in the second half of the year, and the stocks are at low prices. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 12:28 pm
Entrepreneurs of the new commercial space age plan to start test flights in 2010 of a practical four-engine rocket ship that will take people on Mach 2 thrill rides up to 200,000 feet and Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 12:20 pm
A Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst thinks FormFactor will get a series of new orders later this year, and upgraded the chip testing equipment maker to "Outperform" from "Underperform." Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 12:03 pm
alphadogg writes "Microsoft's U.S. general manager/chief security advisor for its National Security Team, Bret Arsenault, thinks like a true security professional. In every bit of good news, he wonders what bad news could be coming. Application security, virtualization security and the fact that over half of computer attacks seen by Microsoft come from the .edu domain are just some of the things keeping him up at night."
A Chinese movie download Web site has sued a Hollywood industry group for libel over a statement that it says implies that the company admitted to piracy as part of a legal settlement. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 11:11 am
A Chinese movie download Web site has sued a Hollywood industry group for libel over a statement that it says implies that the company admitted to piracy as part of a legal settlement. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 11:09 am
Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the Chemicals industry industry is available in its catalogue. World Bromine Market This report analyzes the US market for Bromine in Thousand Metric Tons. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 11:00 am
Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the Chemicals industry is available in its catalogue. World Metal Finishing Chemicals Market This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Metal Finishing Chemicals in Millions of US$. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Mar 2008 | 11:00 am
Shares of Clear Channel Communications Inc. may trade actively on Thursday, following news that the company and the private equity firms seeking to close a $19.5 billion buyout of the company have sued... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 10:22 am
WITH everyone hunched over laptops the other day, typing away inside their respective cones of silence, the place looked more like a Starbucks than my kitchen. At one end of the table, a fifth grader... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:36 am
PARIS, March 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- To help operators around the world meet the demand for higher bandwidth and scale, a richer service mix, reduced cost and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:35 am
SAN ANTONIO, March 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) today announced a two-year contract to provide global voice services to Corning Incorporated, a... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:30 am
NEW YORK, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- BusinessWeek.com, the market-leading business Web site, announced today that it has expanded its services to business professionals... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:27 am
NEW YORK, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Dimension Data, a $3.8 billion leading IT solutions and services provider, today announced the availability of its Unified... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:24 am
MELVILLE, N.Y., March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientists, photographers and photomicrographers have until April 30th to submit images taken through the light microscope for... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:21 am
LOS ANGELES, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The first installment of the enormous ArtistForce.com product launch campaign, was a huge success at the South by Southwest music... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Mar 2008 | 9:18 am
Inventor Ray Kurzweil wants to travel from our era to the future over a border he calls the "singularity." Artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, he says, but will not make human consciousness irrelevant. Kurzweil argues the singularity won't destroy us -- it will immortalize us.
Ant writes "United States researchers have identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands. It was a discovery they said on Tuesday that could usher in a wave of convenient, spit-based diagnostic tests that could be done without the need for a single drop of blood. As many as 20 percent of the proteins found in saliva are also found in blood, said Fred Hagen, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who worked on the study."
An anonymous reader writes "LARP fans at Bowling Green State University may have to contend with a crippled game of Humans vs. Zombies after the University banned Nerf guns on campus. In the live-action game, players are either humans or zombies. The goal of the game is to change all the humans into zombies, or for the humans to evade capture by zombies for a certain amount of time. To defend themselves against zombies, humans may use Nerf guns. Players (most likely the human ones) are petitioning the University to lift the ban. The game had troubles back in 2006, when participating students were arrested. That issue has since been cleared up."
From giving away songs to funding fan-made videos, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor get busy rewriting the rules of the music industry. But whose strategies are the most revolutionary?
KentuckyFC writes "A scrambled Rubik's cube can be solved in just 25 moves, regardless of the starting configuration. Tomas Rokicki, a Stanford-trained mathematician, has proven the new limit (down from 26 which was proved last year) using a neat piece of computer science. Rather than study individual moves, he's used the symmetry of the cube to study its transformations in sets. This allows him to separate the 'cube space' into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored. Even then, to crunch through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz. Next up, 24 moves."
Eye Log writes "The United States is a big fan of leaning on other countries to tighten IP and copyright protection, but has a tendency to ignore its own obligations when it doesn't get its way. 'Two ongoing cases illustrate the point. First, the European Union is pushing for the US to change a pair of rules that it calls "long-standing trade irritants." Despite World Trade Organization rulings against it, the US has not yet corrected either case for a period of several years... Apparently, it's easy to get hot and bothered when it's industries from your country that claim to be badly affected by rules elsewhere. When it comes to the claims of other countries, though, even claims that have been validated by the WTO, it's much easier to see the complexity of the situation, to spend years arguing those complexities before judges, and to do nothing even when compelled by rulings.'"
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and a UC Berkeley legal clinic are teaming up to assist a California man accused of devising methods for hacking e-coupons distributed online. The digital rights groups claim he did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The three majors, representing the cable, telecom and internet industries, are weighing a multi-billion-dollar plan to create a national wireless network that would link computers, TVs and cellphones.
I've just finished reading Rolling Thunder, John Varley's wonderful sequel to Red Thunder and Red Lightning, his ongoing series of tributes to the golden age of Heinlein's juvenile sf novels.
