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Books

Sherlock Holmes and the Copyright Tangle 290

Posted by kdawson from the making-lawyers'-eyes-roll dept.
spagiola passes along a New York Times piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes. "At his age [123 years], Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."
Space

FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams 236

Posted by kdawson from the it's-the-law dept.
thomst passes along news out of the recent AAAS meeting of a new explanation for pulsar beams that involves faster-than-light currents. Here are Los Alamos's press release and three related papers on the arXiv. "The new model explains the beam emissions from pulsars as products of superluminal currents within the spinning neutron stars' atmospheres. According to the authors' model, the current generated is, itself, faster than light, although the particles that compose it never individually exceed the universal speed limit, thereby preventing Einsteinian post-mortem rotation. The new model is a general explanation of the phenomenon of pulsar beam emissions that explains emissions at all observed frequencies (and different pulsars emit everything from radio waves to x-rays), which no previous model has done."
Censorship

Italy Floats Official Permission Requirement for Web Video Uploads 131

Posted by timothy from the state-v.-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes with some bad news from Italy, noting that new rules proposed there would "require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web." Understandably, some say such controls represent a conflict of interest for Silvio Berlusconi, "who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset."
Technology

Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165

Posted by timothy from the you'll-need-some-big-batteries dept.
angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
Space

A Space Cannon That Might Actually Work 432

Posted by timothy from the whoooshing-sound dept.
Unequivocal writes "Chalk another one up to Jules Verne. Physicist John Hunter is proposing a space cannon with a new design idea: it's mostly submerged. 'Many engineers have toyed with the [space cannon] concept, but nobody has came up with an actual project that may work. Hunter's idea is simple: Build a cannon near the equator, submerged in the ocean, hooked to a floating rig ... A system like this will cut launch costs from $5,000 per pound to only $250 per pound. It won't launch people into space because of the excessive acceleration, but those guys at the ISS can use it to order pizza and real ice cream.' Though it won't work on people, with launch costs that low, who cares?"
Space

ESA Wants ISS Extended To 2020 88

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the buy-two-at-twice-the-price dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the European Space Agency's (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says that uncertainty is undermining the best use of the ISS and that only guaranteeing the ISS's longevity would cause more scientists to come forward to run experiments on the orbiting laboratory. 'I am convinced that stopping the station in 2015 would be a mistake because we cannot attract the best scientists if we are telling them today "you are welcome on the space station but you'd better be quick because in 2015 we close the shop,'' says Dordain. One of the biggest issues holding up an agreement on station-life extension is the human spaceflight review ordered by US President Barack Obama and the future of US participation in the ISS is intimately tied to the outcome of that review. Dordain says that no one partner in the ISS project could unilaterally call an end to the platform and that a meeting would be held in Japan later in the year where he hoped the partners could get some clarity going forward."
Communications

Using Outlook From Orbit 268

Posted by timothy from the how-rms-uses-outlook dept.
Pigskin-Referee writes with this excerpt from Office Watch: "On the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station they use Microsoft Outlook 2003, but not quite in the same way that us earthbound Earthlings do. The space shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the earth right now and the crew exchange emails with the ground a few times each day. Bandwidth is a constraint and you don't want the busy crewmembers bothered with spam or unnecessary messages so NASA has a special system in place. The crew use fairly standard laptops running Microsoft Outlook (currently Outlook 2003) with Exchange Server as the email host, but they don't link to the server using any of the standard methods."

Comment Re:Simple question...simple answer. (Score 1) 292

by whyfreakout (#30708364) Attached to: China Luring Scientists Back Home

When I was a PhD student in the US (EU citizen) it was impossible for me to get any employment. The immigration rules in the US are so hostile towards anybody wanting to stay based on the argument that you can provide value from your contribution it's ridiculous.

The rules regarding technology export control are even worse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITAR) - if you are not a "US person" any other individual is not even allowed to talk to you about many types of technology work, no matter where you are physically located (at the threat of severe punishment). While export control is not an issue in academic settings, in my industry (aerospace) it closes doors faster and harder than even the US' immigration policies do.

The US treats immigrants (legal or not, educated or not) with such disdain, why does it surprise anyone that people who have a choice no longer select to stay here? I applaud China's government for acknowledging the value of educated individuals - if the US government/culture were to value education even a fraction as much it would solve a lot of problems in this country (poverty, teacher shortage, etc.).
Privacy

Politicians Worldwide Asking Questions About ACTA 101

Posted by Soulskill from the must-have-heard-about-the-death-panels dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Legislators around the world are demanding more information on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. US Senator Ron Wyden demanded answers in a letter to the USTR (PDF) this week, ACTA arose in the UK House of Commons yesterday, and French Deputy Nicolas Dupont-Aignan raised ACTA questions in the National Assembly late last year. All of this comes on top of earlier efforts from Swedish Member of the European Parliament Jens Holm, as well as New Zealand MP Clare Curran, who has repeatedly raised concerns about ACTA, and NDP MP Charlie Angus, who posed questions about ACTA in the Canadian House of Commons late last year."
Intel

Intel Launches Wi-Di 172

Posted by samzenpus from the clear-streams dept.
Barence writes "Intel has launched a new display technology called Wi-Di at CES. Intel Wireless Display uses Wi-Fi to wirelessly transmit video from PCs running Intel's latest generation of Core processors to HD television sets. Televisions will require a special adapter made by companies such as Netgear — which will cost around $100 — to receive the wireless video signals. Intel also revealed its optical interconnect technology, Light Peak, will be in PCs 'in about a year.'"
Space

400 Years Ago, Galileo Discovered Four Jovian Moons 161

Posted by kdawson from the dwarfing-the-dwarf-planets dept.
krswan writes "OK, the moons themselves are much older, but on January 7, 1610 Galileo first observed '4 fixed stars' surrounding Jupiter. Observations of their changing positions led Galileo to postulate they were really moons orbiting Jupiter, which became further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church, etc... Jupiter will be low in the southwest (in the Northern Hemisphere) after sunset this evening — nothing else around it is as bright, so you can't miss it. Celebrate by pointing binoculars or a telescope at Jupiter and checking out the moons for yourself."
Cellphones

Google Nexus One Hands-On, Video, and Impressions 262

Posted by timothy from the there's-a-nap-for-that dept.
wkurzius writes "Engadget has gotten their hands on a Nexus One and have put their first impressions up for the world to see, including whether or not they think it's the 'be-all-end-all Android phone / iPhone eviscerator.' Their opinion? 'Not really.'"
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Comment Re:Improvization and Military use (Score 1) 150

by whyfreakout (#29627393) Attached to: Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles Become Reality

What is really scary about this IMO is not the potential for spying, but the potential for control. You know the tech will evolve, from controlling bugs, to controlling common pets, then primates, then humans? Forget spying, think of the potential of remote controlling people - granted it sounds like a long way to go, but you know its going there. Even though it's "just a bug", controlling other living things does not seem right ...

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