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Government

French Senate Passes Anti-Piracy Internet Cut-Off Law 225

Posted by Soulskill from the trois-coups dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The French Senate has approved a three strikes law for Internet users who download copyrighted entertainment media without paying for it. If, after two warnings, a person continues to download pirated music and movies, the internet service providers would cut off access for a year. Quoting: 'The legislation passed with a massive cross-party majority of 297 votes to 15. Only a handful of conservatives, centrists and socialists voted against, while the Communists abstained. In passing the bill, the senators rejected an amendment proposed by senator Bruno Retailleau of the right-wing MPF party replacing internet cut-off with a fine. ... The bill sets up a tussle between France and Brussels. In September, the European Parliament approved by a large majority an amendment outlawing internet cut-off." We discussed the introduction of this legislation several months ago.
Censorship

Australia's ISPs Speak Out Against Filtering 262

Posted by Soulskill from the is-it-possible-to-import-an-isp dept.
daria42 writes "The leaders of three of Australia's largest internet service providers — Telstra Media's Justin Milne, iiNet's Michael Malone and Internode's Simon Hackett — have, in video interviews with ZDNet.com.au over the past few months, detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won't work. Critics of the policy also say that users will have no way to know what's being filtered."
Space

On Fourth Launch Attempt, SpaceX Falcon 1 Reaches Orbit 518

Posted by timothy from the pure-congratulations dept.
xp65 writes with the just-announced success of Elon Musk's SpaceX's long efforts to reach orbit with a privately-developed launching craft: "T+0:08:21 Falcon 1 reached orbital velocity, 5200 m/s Nominal Second stage cut off (SECO) — Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!" dbullard adds "This was a completely new vehicle — it's not using any previously developed hardware. All developed from scratch. No government supplied hardware, Russian engines, or old ICBM motors. My hat's off to the employees of Space X — all 550 of them. (Note — no 'cast of thousands,' just 550). They've got video of the entire launch."

Comment Re:Not the end of the world... (Score 5, Informative) 293

by Laguerre (#25065631) Attached to: LHC Shut Down By Transformer Malfunction
Can one of you physicists tell me how 4.5 Kelvin is different from 2 Kelvin, operationally?

The magnets they use to shape and steer the beam require about 12,000 amps, so they use superconductors. Between 2K and 4.5K, the superconductor undergoes a phase change and becomes non-superconducting, and the resistance goes from zero to not zero all of a sudden. The 12,000 amps suddenly produces an incredible amount of heat (P=I^2R) which drastically increases the pressure from the liquid He. That much pressure means the He needs to escape (violently), causing all sorts of trouble. It's called a 'quench.'
Media

Submission + - Book Publishers Abandoning DRM

Submitted by tmalone
tmalone writes: The New York Times is reporting that book publishers are beginning to phase out DRM protected audio books. This month the world's largest publisher, Random House, started offering DRM-free mp3s; Penguin has announced that it will follow suit. It seems that *gasp* DRM doesn't work:

"Publishers, like the music labels and movie studios, stuck to D.R.M. out of fear that pirated copies would diminish revenue. Random House tested the justification for this fear when it introduced the D.R.M.-less concept with eMusic last fall. It encoded those audio books with a digital watermark and monitored online file sharing networks, only to find that pirated copies of its audio books had been made from physical CDs or D.R.M.-encoded digital downloads whose anticopying protections were overridden."
Maybe now I'll be able to put audio books from my library's website on my iPod, or listen to them on my Mac or my Linux box.

Feed The Register: Japanese whalers lash protesters to mast (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
Alleged assault during boarding

Two campaigners from anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd are "in custody" aboard Japanese whaling vessel the Yushin Maru 2 after boarding the ship in the Antarctic, the BBC reports. The pair were allegedly assaulted and tied to a radar mast during the action, Sea Shepherd claims.

Feed The Register: US.gov sets Real ID rules in stone (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
Privacy advocates, security mavens, states' rights renew assault

Critics have renewed their offensive on a federal law mandating changes to state-issued drivers licenses after the US Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued final rules implementing the controversial measure.

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