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Submission + - EU offers Google Chance to Settle Prior to Anti-Trust Enquiry (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "The EU has accused Google of abusing its dominant position in advertising to benefit its own advertising services at the expense of competitors. In a twist however, rather than initiating formal proceedings, the EU has given Google a chance to settle the whole matter without much fuss. They outlined four changes that Google can make that will put it firmly back in the good graces of the EU. Google has been given "a matter of weeks" to propose remedies to the four issues — which all tie in with how search results are displayed, their format and their portability to other platforms. This matter has come before the EU based on complaints by a few small companies and Microsoft."
NASA

Submission + - SpaceX launch To ISS Aborted (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by megla
megla writes: News is only just starting to come in, but according to the BBC SpaceX's milestone launch to the ISS was aborted at the last second due to a pressure abnormality in one of Falcon's nine engines.

The next launch opportunity is Tuesday.
Earth

Submission + - Scientists Unravel the Mystery of the 'Dark Day' 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that 232 years ago a strange event occurred that remains shrouded in mystery to this day. On May 19, 1780 the sky turned yellow in New England and Canada, animals ran for cover and darkness descended, causing people to light candles and start to pray. By lunchtime night had fallen. With little scientific knowledge amongst the populace, people were afraid and some lawmakers in Connecticut believed it was the day of judgment. "There are some verses in Matthew that might have led them to believe that this is the second coming of Christ," says historian Mike Dash. "At the time, natural events — even birds fighting in the sky — were a sign of God's intentions. The Dark Day would have seemed like a warning to Man." A solar eclipse can be ruled out as there is a record of when these occur — and they only last for a matter of minutes, there is no record of volcanic activity in 1780 making a huge ash cloud an unlikely explanation, and a meteorite is equally unlikely. Now scientists may have found the answer in the trees. Academics at the University of Missouri's Department of Forestry analyzed tree trunks inland from New England, where westerly prevailing winds would originate and found signs of fire-scarred rings in tree trunks dating back to that period in the area that is today occupied by Algonquin Provincial Park. Eyewitness accounts in New England support the forest fire hypothesis as soot was spotted in rivers, and one letter noted that the air had the "smell of a malt-house or a coal-kiln". Whatever the cause in 1780, geography must have exacerbated the fear, says Dash with European settlers living on the edge of a vast unknown continent. "When it goes dark for them, there's no guarantee it is ever going to get light again," says Dash. "In those days it would be quite natural to think it was the Second Coming.""
Medicine

Submission + - Indian pharmaceutical Cipla slashes cancer drug prices by 76% (yahoo.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Indian generic drug company Cipla said Friday it had slashed by up to 76 percent prices of three anti-cancer medicines in what it called a "humanitarian" move and promised to cut the costs of more products. There are 2.5 million cases of cancer diagnosed in India each year, according to the World Health Organisation, with most patients receiving inadequate treatment as drugs are priced beyond their reach. "Business is business, but it has to be linked with one's social responsibilities. This initiative of price reduction is a humanitarian approach by Cipla to support cancer patients," company chairman Y.K. Hamied said. The family-led company first hit headlines in 2001 when it offered to supply life-saving triple therapy AIDS drug cocktails at prices sharply below those of multinational firms with Hamied saying the move was for "social reasons". Cipla has been pushing the Indian government to allow widespread use of so-called "compulsory licences" for production of life-saving patented drugs to overcome barriers for people in accessing affordable medicines. Compulsory licences are allowed under the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, which governs trade and intellectual property rules. Analysts said Cipla's move could prompt a price war in the 15-billion-rupee Indian drug market — challenging multinationals which sell costly patented medicine and Indian firms whose generic range is less expensive but not as cheap as Cipla's.

Submission + - Android now on over half of US smartphones (examiner.com)

Submitted by somebodee
somebodee writes: ComScore released new data today, suggesting that Android has finally taken over half of the US smartphone market. This comes from a 3.7% market share increase from the previous quarter, ending in December, 2011. Similarly, iOS's market share grew by 1.1% to 30.7%. RIM and Microsoft's market share both dropped, with RIM having the sharpest decline. RIM's market share fell by 3.7%, placing it at 12.3% of the total US market. Microsoft's smartphone market share fell by .8% to 3.9% total, and Nokia's market share for Symbian remained steady at 1.4% of the total market.
Science

Submission + - Study Aims to Read Dogs' Thoughts (techzwn.com)

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: A new study at Emory University is trying to figure out what dogs think. The study uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the dogs’ brains while they’re shown different stimuli. Results from the first study will be published by the Public Library of Science, where the dogs were shown hand signals from their owners. ‘We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding canine cognition and inter-species communication. We want to understand the dog-human relationship, from the dog's perspective,’ said Gregory Berns, director of the Emory Center for Neuropolicy and lead researcher of the dog project.
Open Source

Submission + - The GPL and Copyrightability APIs (publicknowledge.org)

Submitted by dgharmon
dgharmon writes: "There's a dangerous meme going around that if Oracle loses its novel copyright claims against Google that suddenly the GPL will become unenforceable. This idea hinges on a misunderstanding about the difference between linking to a code library and merely using an API".
Your Rights Online

Submission + - When did it become OK to just take content? (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has a blog post asking when it became OK to take other people's content without permission, based on content "curators" such as Pinterest and Zite.

Nothing that Pinterest's response to allegations of copyright infringement was to offer webmasters a snippet of code allowing them to prevent Pinterest from taking their content, PC Pro's editor remarks: "It’s like a burglar claiming that it was perfectly legitimate to run off with your television set, because there wasn’t a sign on your front door saying you didn’t want him – specifically – to ransack your house."

Meanwhile, he claims iPad/iPhone app Zite, which scrapes photos and words off websites and presents them within its own app, "rips up the unwritten contract that exists between website owners and their visitors: that we provide you with free, high quality content in exchange for viewing (and potentially clicking on) advertisements on our site.""

Submission + - Dealing With an Overly-Restrictive Intellectual Property Policy? 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am very happy with my current job but there have always been a few ideas for things I've wanted to develop on the side. Ideally I'd keep my day job, reserving mornings, evenings and weekends to see if the side-projects could become viable. The problem is: my employer has an IP policy that states that anything I do while under their employ is theirs, even when I'm off the clock. Does anyone have suggestions about workarounds, magic loopholes, false identity for the side projects... anything?

Submission + - Hovering isn't difficult if you're top heavy (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by
SageBrian
SageBrian writes: "This is an interesting article on how top-heavy insects are more balanced in flight. However, as described in the article, their 'testing' seems to be faulty. Not having read the actual study, it's hard to know, but as written, the test seems to act as a simple weather vane. Air Flow moving in one direction pushes the mass of the object in the direction of the flow. Hopefully, there was more to the study than what is written, or NYU is not doing a good job teaching."
Open Source

Submission + - FSF Wants To Police JavaScript Use (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: The FSF (Free Software Foundation) wants us all to add tags to JavaScript that identifies the code as being open source. This would allow tools such as LibreJS to identify any non-trivial proprietary code and automatically block the web page.
Perhaps this is a step too far — is over-regulating software freedom like fighting for peace?
Data Storage

Submission + - Tech: Magnetic Storage Written By Heat? (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Scientists have demonstrated that magnetic storage can be written by thermal pulses, delivered by laser. The team, led from the University of York, showed that the polarity of a magnetic domain could be reversed by heat from a laser beam. This is unexpected. It was previously thought that could heat could only destroy magnetic polarisation, not re-align it. It could lead to hard disks that can be written hundreds of times faster, and using less energy."
IBM

Submission + - NASA unplugs last mainframe (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "It's somewhat hard to imagine that NASA doesn't need the computing power of an IBM mainframe any more but NASA CIO posted on her blog today at the end of the month, the Big Iron will be no more at the space agency. NASA CIO Linda Cureton wrote: This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA's last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe."

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