NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A group of 10 copyright law professors has filed an amicus curiae ('friend of the court') brief on the side of the defendant in Capitol v. Thomas, agreeing with the judge's recent decision that the $222,000 verdict won by the RIAA appears to be tainted by a 'manifest error of law.' The clear and well-written 14-page brief (PDF) argues that the 'making available' jury instruction, which the RIAA had requested and the judge ultimately accepted, was in fact a 'manifest error of law,' making the point, among others, that an interpretation of a statute should begin with the words of the statute. My only criticism of the brief is that it overstates the authorities relied on by the RIAA, citing cases which never decided the 'making available' issue as cases which had decided it in the RIAA's favor." As it turns out, the MPAA, close ally to the RIAA, has come forth with a more controversial view. They suggest that proof of actual distribution shouldn't be required. From their brief (PDF): "Mandating that proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances."
David Ardia reports on the fundamental misunderstanding of the link economy of media at the Carnegie-Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism. I got the quote from Jay Rosen’s tweet; he and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:34 am
By Charles Schillinger, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa. Jun. 21--GOULDSBORO -- There should be lifeguards at state park beaches. A week after the death of 17-year-old Thomas Golden Jr., Auditor General Jack Wagner redoubled his department's call for just that. Mr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Robert Kirby, The Salt Lake Tribune Jun. 21--My great-great-grandfather Korihor Kirby trekked to Zion in 1855. He brought along my three grandmas, a regiment of children, two oxen, a dog, a sack of mustard seed and a banjo with a set of teeth marks in it. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Mike Faher, Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, Pa. Jun. 21--The drive to fix a massive -- and illegal -- sewage-overflow problem in 20 Greater Johnstown municipalities has begun in earnest. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Tom Meersman, Star Tribune, Minneapolis Jun. 21--A large dairy in northwestern Minnesota with odors severe enough to drive nearby residents from their homes last week now faces legal problems. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Morgan Day, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Jun. 21--If your sycamore or white oak trees are looking a little bare, they might be experiencing symptoms of premature balding, or anthracnose. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer Jun. 21--More than a dozen water suppliers in New Jersey likely will share at least $67 million as part of a national settlement with oil companies over drinking water contamination caused by the fuel additive MTBE. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Wade Rawlins, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Jun. 21--The fire in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina has burned more intensely and spread more widely because of changes to the land in earlier decades to promote farming. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Judy Fahys, The Salt Lake Tribune Jun. 21--The cleanup of a Gunnison convenience store gasoline leak continues -- as do the complaints from local residents whose homes and businesses are still saturated with fumes. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Jessica Ravitz, The Salt Lake Tribune Jun. 21--Members of Orem's Christ Evangelical Church are rummaging through their homes to pare down their belongings, all in the name of Jesus. "In Luke 12 he says, 'Sell your possessions and give to the poor,' " the Rev. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By South Florida Sun-Sentinel Jun. 21--ISSUE: Souring economy putting a crimp on candidates' fundraising. The economy's nose dive is having a reverberating effect on the elections process, and at first glance, it may look like democracy will suffer. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Bridget Carey, The Miami Herald Jun. 21--A crisis is looming in the search for technology workers in America's cities. A growing number of baby boomers are leaving the field or retiring, and not enough young people are enrolling in science and technology classes. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Roja Heydarpour, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa. Jun. 21--CARBONDALE -- Rose Morris, 81, sat and sipped a cup of coffee as hundreds of seniors waited outside the Carbondale Senior Center for their turn to get Farmers Market Nutrition Program vouchers. She arrived at 6:30 a.m. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Jun. 21--A 24-year-old man has been arrested on charges of statutory rape, accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Jose Campos-Aguilar of Morreene Road remained at the Durham County jail Friday. Bail is set at $1 million. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Lesley Mitchell, The Salt Lake Tribune Jun. 21--Utah has offered online auctioneer eBay an incentive worth as much as $27.3 million to convince the company to build a new data-storage center that would employ 50 people in the Salt Lake area. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Beth Reinhard, The Miami Herald Jun. 21--Don't tell my boss. I made friends with Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. Anyone who has taken an introductory journalism class knows it's a no-no for reporters to be friends with people they write about. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
Students at a rural New Mexico school made a unique pledge last winter: Right hands raised, they promised to take care of their Zunes. This past semester, nearly every one of the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 10:56 am
People have been wondering about Jerry Yang all week. He’s been quiet since the NYTimes article calling for his head was published last weekend. This isn’t an issue of him simply being out... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 10:56 am
Macworld.com - Macware on Friday announced the release of Logo Design Studio Pro 1.8, an update to their logo design software for Mac OS X users. It costs $59.99, though updates for registered users are free. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Jun 2008 | 10:30 am
Aw, shit. Cody's Books, the half-century-old Berkeley bookstore that has long been an East Bay institution -- one of the truly great west coast stores -- has closed its doors forever. After 52 years,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 9:33 am
Aw, shit. Cody's Books, the half-century-old Berkeley bookstore that has long been an East Bay institution -- one of the truly great west coast stores -- has closed its doors forever.
After 52 years, Cody's Books will shut its doors effective June 20, 2008. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world. Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody's has been a Berkeley institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody's was a landmark of the Free Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable authors, poets and readers.
The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.
According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment…in the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."
It was an incredible honor to stop at Cody's for a signing on my book tour last month -- I'm really glad I got a chance to connect with the wonderful staff and patrons there while the store was still around.
Link
(Thanks, Spincycle)
So, now that we’ve cleared up the iPhone 3G price confusion (we think), we are curious what you guys will be picking up once the device is unleashed. Apple has moved away from the aluminum-looking... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 9:24 am
oncehour writes "I'm looking to broaden my horizons in terms of news, industry information, and generally good-to-know stuff. I've found a lot of great blogs and websites over the years, but I'm wondering what Slashdotters read regularly? What's in your RSS feeds?" We discussed this back in 2004, but the list of quality feeds has grown quite a bit in the past four years. Try to include at least a minimal description, so we know if we'll be looking at NASA news or up-to-the-minute cowboy boot fashion trends.
Chris sez, "This is a video of me doing one-handed origami, making a flapping bird in each hand at the same time, one with my left hand and one with my right. I put just a single one-handed video up... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
Chris sez, "This is a video of me doing one-handed origami, making a flapping bird in each hand at the same time, one with my left hand and one with my right.
I put just a single one-handed video up on YouTube last year and there was like a stream of folk complaining it was fake, so I figured out how to debunk it".
Link
(Thanks, Chris!)
In this Disney podcast, Chief Imagineer Marty Sklar enumerates Mickey's 10 Commandments of Theme Park Design. MP3 Link (Thanks, Avi!) Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:58 am
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has spotted this Japanese piggy-bank that includes an RPG that gives you rewards for saving: This new Tomy piggy bank gives forward-thinking youngsters a reason... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:52 am
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John has spotted this Japanese piggy-bank that includes an RPG that gives you rewards for saving:
This new Tomy piggy bank gives forward-thinking youngsters a reason to save their quarters: it features a miniature RPG game on the front, and every coin you pump into the bank is translated into gold, which can be used to buy weapons, items and armor for your character. Ultima meets Tamagotchi, basically. Although I'd hasten to add that a savings account is a better return on investment than putting your money into a wardrobe for an imaginary elf.
In an amicus brief filed in the Jammie Thomas trial, lawyers for the MPAA argued that it was unreasonable to ask copyright holders to prove that infringement had taken place before awarding them damages... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:50 am
In an amicus brief filed in the Jammie Thomas trial, lawyers for the MPAA argued that it was unreasonable to ask copyright holders to prove that infringement had taken place before awarding them damages of up to $150,000 per file.
"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.
"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.
Jim sez, "Rutgers has an interesting collection of historic maps online, including what appears to be a 1955 tourist map ... of prisons."
The hand-drawn map has normal touristy captions notations like:
- High Point State Park [Highest Point in NJ]
- Lake Hopatcong (largest in NJ) Popular Summer Resort
- Newark's Airport is world's busiest
But the map is dominated by prisons:
- Here maximum and limited security for industrial type prisoner under 30 (Ref't'y Rahway)
- Here minimum custody for older men of common labor type and men nearing time of discharge (Prison Farm Bordentown)
- Here minimum security for men 18-30 trainable in vocational and agricultural work (Annandale Farms)
Jim sez, "Rutgers has an interesting collection of historic maps online, including what appears to be a 1955 tourist map ... of prisons." The hand-drawn map has normal touristy captions notations like:... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:47 am
Remember how awesome and cool it was to hear Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' classic anthem "Gone Daddy Gone?" Two great summer debut albums, separated by decades, featuring the same song, done two different ways.
This summer, the Violent Femmes have released their own smoky, slow cover of Gnarls Barkley's high energy falsetto anthem "Crazy" and it's exactly as great, in reverse.
Link
(via Salon)
Remember how awesome and cool it was to hear Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' classic anthem "Gone Daddy Gone?" Two great summer debut albums, separated by decades, featuring the same song,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:43 am
Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's Travelers series features limited edition prints of grisly, Charles-Addams-esque scenes in snowglobes and on landscapes.
Link
(via Gizmodo)
By Autumn Grooms, La Crosse Tribune, Wis. Jun. 21--ONALASKA, Wis. -- Kassie Praska got the attention of her classmates Thursday with a loud shriek. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Beccy Tanner, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Jun. 21--WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS At Tanganyika Wildlife Park, visitors can stroll past Bengal tigers, Indian rhinos and kookaburras, just as they could at a zoo. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Jun. 21--Child pornography charges against a former Erie County teacher have been dismissed a second time. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Yano, Candace EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES : EDITED BY CANDACE YANO What do electronics and automotive industries have in common? Within product creation, dense challenges in design and manufacturing, for sure. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Malone, Alanna Media lawyers hope the initial injunction to disable an entire Web site serves as an example of what not to do with online speech. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
These ultrasuede scarves from MicroFactory are laser-cut with either upper-case, lower-case, or numeric characters in a close pattern.
Link
(via Make!)
sciencehabit notes that the US House of Representatives has allotted an additional $337.5 million in budget increases divided amongst four science agencies. NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science will each receive an additional $62.5 million, and the National Institutes of Health will receive $150 million. The money will help to offset the decision to reduce budget increases earlier this year. Early plans for the money include the training of new math and science teachers, and another reprieve for FermiLab's financial troubles.
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
Joe Barr writes "Mayank Sharma has two recent stories on Linux.com; one evaluating the performance of Firefox 3, and the second comparing it to Opera 9.5. Which is better? For most people, it's probably more a matter of familiarity or personal preference, but these stories provide hard performance data to consider as well. Sharma notes, 'In terms of rendering JavaScript, Firefox 3 had the edge over Opera 9.5 in the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which has an error range between +/-0.8% to +/-11.3% depending on the type of test. In the JavScript Engine speed test, Opera 9.5 scores over its peers when it comes to error handling, DOM, and AJAX.'" Slashdot shares a corporate overlord with Linux.com.
BERKELEY, California -- For most people, photographing something that isn't there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen.
His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit -- despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don't exist. The Other Night Sky, on display at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum through September 14, is only a small selection from the 1,500 astrophotographs Paglen has taken thus far.
In taking these photos, Paglen is trying to draw a metaphorical connection between modern government secrecy and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in Galileo's time.
"What would it mean to find these secret moons in orbit around the earth in the same way that Galileo found these moons that shouldn't exist in orbit around Jupiter?" Paglen says.
Satellites are just the latest in Paglen's photography of supposedly nonexistent subjects. To date, he's snapped haunting images of various military sites in the Nevada deserts, "torture taxis" (private planes that whisk people off to secret prisons without judicial oversight) and uniform patches from various top-secret military programs.
The nearly vertical streak in this image shows a satellite called Keyhole 12-3 crossing the sky near the constellation of Scorpio.
Photo: Trevor Paglen
While all of Paglen's projects are the result of meticulous research, he's also the first to admit that his photos aren't necessarily revelatory. That's by design. Like the blurry abstractions of his super-telephoto images showing secret military installations in Nevada, the tiny blips of satellites streaking across the night sky in his new series of photos are meant more as reminders rather than as documentation.
"I think that some of the earliest ideas in the modern period were actually from astronomy," Paglen explains. "You look at Galileo: He goes up and points his telescope up at Jupiter and finds out, hey, Jupiter has these moons."
More significant than the discovery itself, Paglen says, was the idea that anyone with a telescope could verify it and see the same exact thing that Galileo saw -- an idea Paglen is trying to re-create in his own photographs.
"It really was analogous to a certain kind of promise of democracy," says Paglen, who sees a similar anti-authoritarian premise running through his own work.
Paglen says his most recent project is the culmination of close to two years of trial-and-error experimentation with astrophotography, untold hours of fieldwork and analysis, an ongoing collaboration with amateur astronomers, and many nights in his Berkeley backyard and at California's Mono Lake.
"Lacrosse/Onyx II Passing Through Draco (USA 69)" shows the transit of another surveillance satellite.
Photo: Trevor Paglen
To capture his images, the researcher and "experimental geographer" employs a motorized mount with various combinations of telescopes and digital and large-format film cameras. Paglen uses spy-satellite data compiled by Ted Molczan -- a renowned amateur astronomer profiled by Wired magazine in 2006 -- to predict where a given "black satellite" will be in the sky. Then he decides how he wants to compose the image.
"I'll find where a star will be in the compositional plane," he says. "Then I'll use one telescope, which is attached to a webcam, to focus on that star."
With the help of a computer program that controls the mount of the telescope and keeps it focused on the heavenly body, Paglen says he can get the telescope to swivel with the Earth's rotation.
He then uses another telescope attached to a high-end digital camera for his deep-sky shots, similar to the rig he used for his desert shots.
"I'll see the satellite in the sky, kind of know where it's going to be in the frame, then I'll open the shutter and take a long exposure of the satellite passing through."
Paglen's initial interest in the government's so-called "black projects" took shape while combing through U.S. Geological Survey archives of satellite prison photos in 2002. He noticed that many of the photo frames of prison sites were missing or, in some cases, heavily edited.
"I thought: What the hell is this? We still have blank spots on maps? We've mapped the whole structure of the cosmos and the human genome, so what's this all about?" Paglen said.
Eventually, those blank spots led Paglen to other covert subjects and turned a hobby into a full-time job -- one with a decidedly political stance.
"For a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge," Paglen notes. "So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it -- something that was very aggressive and dangerous -- and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence."
Ultimately, the satellite photos are an attempt to critique that attitude. While the budget for black military operations has more than doubled in the last 10 years and the government continues to espouse the virtues of secrecy, it can't prevent interested amateur astronomers from calculating the orbital paths of spy satellites.
"The National Reconnaissance Office cannot classify Kepler's laws of planetary motion," Paglen says. "They just work ... and they're unbelievably accurate."
To model how flames turn buildings into ashes, the nation's leading fire researchers don't play with matches over the sink. Instead they burn down entire homes, cubicles and warehouses.
At the National Institutes of Standards and Technologies, researchers set huge fires under a 40-foot-long by 30-foot-wide exhaust hood that is connected to an $8 million control unit.
Using measurements of oxygen consumption, the researchers can precisely determine the temperatures inside the room as well as the heat-release rates of different materials. Then, using software like Fire Dynamics Simulator and Smokeview, the researchers run virtual and real-world side-by-side comparisons of how combustion works.
By modeling the way flames and smoke travel under real conditions, the fire scientists are creating new strategies and technologies for fighting tough blazes.
In this video gallery, you'll see Christmas trees fires, dorm rooms ablaze, and cubicles melting.
Poor Bunny
In this clip, we see how quickly a dried out Scotch-pine Christmas tree can light a room on fire. Within 30 seconds, the room is engulfed in flames. According to the NIST, holiday trees account for more than 400 fires, 10 deaths and $15 million in property damage every year.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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At the end of the nerd-classic Office Space, Milton, the much-abused office loser, sets fire to the cubes of Penetrode, where the main characters work. Here, fire scientists give you an unintentional peek inside the movie's end. The video shows how quickly flames spread from ignition to a point known as flashover, when the room becomes engulfed in flame, in an open office plan.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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When you can't trust your college roommate not to accidentally drop a lit cigarette into a trash can, this video proves that you don't need to -- as long as your college has sprinklers installed.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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Following a six-fatality fire in Chicago in 2003, NIST modeled what happened on the 12th story of the Cook County Administration building. To understand how the fire got out of hand, the researchers measured the heat release rate of different components of the office building. In this video, we see four workstations with chairs in a 23-foot by 24-foot enclosure.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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Here's another video from the series of tests intended to model the Cook County Administration building fire. This time the researchers tested a single workstation that wasn't enclosed. Eventually, these tests helped NIST recommend safety changes that should prevent future fires from turning deadly in similar environments.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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Part of NIST's mission is to educate the public about how fires work. In this video, we watch as a living room goes from spark to flashover in mere minutes.
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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When firefighters lit up this Phoenix warehouse, they employed infrared cameras, lasers, sonar, vibration sensors and video to look for clues about how to predict structural collapse. They didn't find any dead giveaways, even with all that tech, but their conclusions and data can be seen here (.pdf).
Video courtesy Daniel Madrzykowski
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For firefighters, one of the worst things that can happen is the building collapsing on top of them, so figuring out how and when that's going to happen has been a focus of NIST research. In this video, dummy firefighters on top of a burning house fall through the roof before being pulled out by ropes.
Australia's former world champion Rob de Castella has warned competitors in the Beijing Olympics marathon face cruel conditions from the city's chronic pollution, reports said Saturday. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 3:01 am
Ian Lamont writes "An Intel executive has suggested in a blog post that WiMAX could lead to massive savings on broadband Internet, mobile voice, and mobile data service prices. His post lists a WiMAX-based package of services including home broadband, mobile voice and broadband, home phone service (including international) and even video phone service for $50 to $100 total. It sounds great, but unfortunately for Intel and consumers, it's unlikely to happen any time soon, thanks to factors ranging from costly WiMAX buildouts to the telcos' lucrative business models based on existing wired and 2.5G/3G infrastructures. There are also questions about WiMAX's actual range following a messy Australian rollout, although the vendor there claims the Australian service provider under-provisioned the network."
Scientists rejoiced after the Phoenix Mars lander confirmed their long-held belief that ice is hiding under the surface in the Red Planet's northern region. The lander's... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 1:33 am
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Falling levels of a hormone called leptin that helps the brain resist tempting foods may explain why people who lose weight often have a hard time keeping it off, U.S.... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 12:40 am
AP - BCE Inc. on Friday won the right to go ahead with the largest leveraged buyout in history, a US$35 billion deal that the telecommunications company's bondholders fought, saying it would reduce their holdings to junk. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Jun 2008 | 12:13 am
Avoid the same boring picture of someone waving to the camera and take a candid photo instead. Candids illuminate photos storytelling. Follow these tips to snapping on the fly and surprising your subject. We asked famed paparazzo Ron Galella for advice on making your next photo killer.
Mexico recovered more than 900 pre-Columbian artifacts seized from smugglers in the U.S. and Canada, including 800-year-old fiber sandals, spears and hunting bows looted from nomadic... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Jun 2008 | 12:09 am
MojoKid brings news from HotHardware that NVIDIA will be enabling PhysX for some of its newest graphics cards in an upcoming driver release. Support for the full GeForce 8/9 line will be added gradually. NVIDIA acquired PhysX creator AGEIA earlier this year.
AP - A federal judge ordered Microsoft Corp. to pay Alcatel-Lucent $511.6 million in damages and interest, letting stand a jury's decision that the software maker infringed on two patents. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:55 pm
A federal judge ordered Microsoft Corp. to pay Alcatel-Lucent $511.6 million in damages and interest, letting stand a jury's decision that the software maker infringed on two patents. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:55 pm
Google Trends adds a feature that graphs daily unique visitors of competing websites. The feature allows the site to compete with Alexa, Compete and Comscore.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. judge upheld a jury's ruling for $368 million in damages against Microsoft Corp for violating patents held by Alcatel-Lucent . Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:20 pm
A U.S. District Court judge in San Diego ruled that Microsoft Corp. must pay Alcatel-Lucent $511.6 million for infringing on two patents, marking the latest move in a 5-year-old patent... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:17 pm
alphadogg points us to a NetworkWorld story about the search by ISPs for new ways to combat the web traffic issues caused by P2P applications. Among the typical suggestions of bandwidth caps and usage-based pricing, telecom panelists at a recent conference also discussed localized "cache servers," which would hold recent (legal) P2P content in order to keep clients from reaching halfway around the world for parts of a file. "ISPs' methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was actively interfering with P2P users' ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset. While speakers rejected that Comcast method, some said it was time to follow the lead of Comcast and begin implementing caps for individual users who are consuming disproportionately high amounts of bandwidth."
There's a direct correlation between the shortening queue of Brazilians in front of me and my rising sense of panic. I've come to the poor outer district of Retiro to meet Mae (Mother) Stella, a revered... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:05 pm
In the 1930s, US president Theodore Roosevelt's fireside chats set the political tone of the radio age. In the 1960s, John Kennedy's impassioned speeches thrilled the first television generation. Yesterday... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:04 pm
Yahoo lost another two influential executives yesterday as the company continued to lurch from crisis to crisis following the board's decision to reject Microsoft's $47bn (£24bn) takeover bid... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 20 Jun 2008 | 11:03 pm
PC World - Microsoft's latest security update has detected and removed more online game password-logging software from 2 million PCs. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 10:50 pm
TechWeb - InformationWeek - Two rack-mount products offered this week can apparently run Mac OS X Leopard Server as well as Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Ubuntu Server, and CentOS. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 10:18 pm
schliz writes to tell us that researchers at the University of California San Diego are developing new transistors based on particles called 'excitons' in an attempt to speed up the interaction between computing and communications signals. "Excitons are formed by linking a negatively-charged electron with a positively-charged 'hole'. An exciton decays when the electron and hole combine, emitting a flash of light in the process. By joining exciton-based transistors to form several types of switches, the UCSD physicists were able to achieve switching times on the order of 200 picoseconds."
TechWeb - InformationWeek - The program, in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration, is being tested at New York's LaGuardia Airport on some flights. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 9:55 pm
Sasha writes "The Australian designed robotic clarinet beat out Dutch and Finnish entries this year at the robotic orchestra competition. The researchers don't expect to replace human musicians, but are instead interested in what makes the difference between playing music well and playing music poorly. There is also a video available of the performance."
AP - A news discussion site and The Associated Press have resolved a dispute over an AP demand that the site remove some of the news agency's content. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 8:59 pm
In the wake of an arrest of two Brooklyn men caught with over $800,000 in cash, Citibank warns bank customers that their ATM PIN codes may have been leaked in a breach of a "third party" processor. The FBI says a hacked Citibank server was at fault.
shashib writes to tell us that ICANN is considering a new $0.20 per-transaction fee for large numbers of domain registrations in order to curtail domain tasting abuse. Network Solutions, previously accused of front-running, is offering their support of the new approach and promises to remove the security measures that caused such a commotion back in January. "Because of the prevalence of these practices, earlier this year Network Solutions enacted an opt-in domain protection measure for our customers that reserves available domains for four days. If ICANN adopts the anti-tasting provision, Network Solutions will feel safe in discontinuing its service since the non-refundable fee will deflate domain taster's profits and provide a substantial blow to front runners who use and sell search data for tasting purposes."
TechWeb - InformationWeek - The original patch worked on Windows Vista, but failed to accomplish its task in Windows XP SP2 and SP3, the Microsoft Security Response Center said. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2008 | 7:53 pm
The Motion Picture Association of America says intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement. Having to prove violations, which are nearly impossible on peer-to-peer networks, would deprive copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances, the group tells a federal judge in a case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The PC industry's two largest graphics companies released new top-of-the-line models this week. The new graphics processors will bring not just better videogame performance, but will also turn ordinary desktop PCs into the equivalent of supercomputers -- if programmers can figure out how to take advantage of the chips' massively parallel architectures.
"We're talking about every man, woman and child basically having a supercomputer on their desk," says Jon Peddie, a graphics-industry veteran and president of Jon Peddie Research.
AMD, which acquired graphics maker ATI in 2006, released two new chips, the Radeon HD 4850 and the Radeon HD 4870. Nvidia, the other dominant player in the space, unveiled its new GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 280 processors.
According to both companies, the new series of chips feature performance measured in teraflops (that's a trillion floating point operations per second), billions of transistors, hundreds of cores and new architectures that, according to industry analysts, could have a staggering effect on not only Crysis frame rates, but also how and what we use our computers for.
Indeed, cheap access to such formidable computing power could mean that, over the next few years, we will see an explosion of new independent research along with profound new discoveries, analysts say. Additionally, new consumer applications will be able to draw on the graphics processing unit (GPU) for even more eye-watering special effects and even occasionally useful visual information.
"We'll start to get things like real-time mapping from Google that incorporates all manner of real world information," says Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at IDC. "All of this is going to bubble up more and more."
As Peddie observes, it was only 11 years ago that the U.S. government spent approximately $33 million to build ASCI Red, one of the first supercomputers to achieve 1 teraflop. The new graphics chips offer similar power to the 1997-era supercomputer for a fraction of the cost.
"Now we can go down to Fry's or Best Buy and buy a graphics board that has 1 teraflop of processing power for $600 or less," says Peddie.
Getting that processing power to work for the average computer user, however, remains a challenge.
With the exception of a few games, most applications still aren't made to take advantage of the GPU's power. That's because GPUs are made for parallel processing (crunching lots of bits of data at the same time, then assembling the results all at once), whereas most current software programs are written to be executed serially (operating on one piece of data at a time, then proceeding to the next step).
That is starting change, albeit slowly, thanks to new initiatives designed to spur parallel processing.
Just last week, Khronos, the industry consortium behind the OpenGL standard, announced what it calls Open Computing Language, or OpenCL. With this new heterogeneous computing initiative, the group hopes to come up with a standardized (and universal) way of programming parallel computing tasks.
In many ways, it's the Holy Grail developers have been waiting for: a hardware-agnostic standard that unleashes the power of multi-core CPUs and GPUs using a familiar language.
Apple is throwing its weight behind parallel processing too, and last week committed to using the OpenCL specification as part of its next operating system release, Snow Leopard.
Other companies, including AMD, Nvidia, ARM, Freescale, IBM, Imagination, Nokia, Motorola, Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments have joined the OpenCL working group.
If initiatives like OpenCL gain momentum, the days of researchers applying for grants and traveling across the country to use a given university or research facility's super computer may well be at an end. Similarly, distributed computing projects like Folding@Home and Seti@Home may see an huge boost in performance by using hundreds of thousand of computers equipped with these new powerful processors.
Of course, if curing cancer or looking for aliens isn't your thing, we can also be fairly certain that Crysis will really scream on any system equipped with these new GPUs.
The Samsung Instinct is released today. This iClone, offered solely by Sprint, is the first we've seen that can legitimately compete with the Jesus phone.
The Samsung Instinct is released today. This iClone, offered solely by Sprint, is the first we've seen that can legitimately compete with the Jesus phone.
AP - Avery Axel was annoyed with his cable company, Comcast, and was considering switching to Verizon's new FiOS fiber-optic TV and Internet service.
AP - Students at a rural New Mexico school made a unique pledge last winter: Right hands raised, they promised to take care of their Zunes.
Remember how awesome and cool it was to hear Gnarls Barkley's cover of the Violent Femmes' classic anthem "Gone Daddy Gone?" Two great summer debut albums, separated by decades, featuring the same song, done two different ways.
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