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The Courts

Submission + - GPL click-through licenses?

Submitted by Kuciwalker
Kuciwalker writes: It seems that every other open-source program I download includes the GPL as a click-through license during the install. What's the point of this? If the GPL is a distribution, not use license then I don't do anything by agreeing to it during installation. Are we just so acclimated to clicking "yes" to an EULA, or are there valid legal reasons it's put there?
Biotech

Submission + - Search for New Autism Genes

Submitted by
iuvasago
iuvasago writes: "The largest search for autism genes to date, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has implicated components of the brain's glutamate chemical messenger system and a previously overlooked site on chromosome 11. Based on 1,168 families with at least two affected members, the genome scan adds to evidence that tiny, rare variations in genes may heighten risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). [Read More] from Physorg.com"
Toys

Tech Toys Dominate Toy Fair 2007 48

Posted by Zonk from the take-me-to-your-elmo dept.
Edis Krad writes "An CNN Money article previews the Hot Toys for 2007 from this past week's Toy Fair. The article is a great place to start looking through the hundreds of new products that were on display at the annual industry event. Among those featured in the article, I was particularly impressed with the Video Journal (blogging for kids?), the virtual bicycle (apparently, riding a real bicycle isn't cool enough anymore), and last but not least, the robotic parrot, that oddly reminds me of the replicant owl in Blade Runner. For more details on tech toys at the event, IEEE Spectrum has a rundown on the nerdier toys available. Artificial snow and a pre-assembled Mentos/Coke kit were two of that journalist's favorites. For different perspectives Forbes has a look at the toy business as it stands since last week, and Wired's Luddite column crabs that kids have too many techie toys nowadays. Dagnabit."
Businesses

Submission + - New bill that will curb outrageous cell phone tax

Submitted by
ziggz
ziggz writes: "If you have a cell phone, then you are probably aware that you are paying much more each month than the calling plan you signed up for. Why? Greedy Uncle Sam is hitting you up with double digit taxes. Everyone is required to pay a 6.05% federal tax plus all kinds of various trumped up state taxes. Baltimore, for example, simply decided to add a $3.50 additional tax to their residents' bills in 2005. A USA today article breaks down the total taxes you are paying by state, most averaging 15% or more. States have gotten so ridiculous in hiding taxes on your cell phone bill that Congress has finally stepped up by introducing the Cell Phone Tax Freedom Act of 2007. You can also have emails sent to your congressmen."
Programming

Submission + - "Happy 2nd Birthday, AJAX!" Say Pre-AJAX P

Submitted by jg21
jg21 writes: AJAXWorld Magazine celebrates the second birthday of the coining of AJAX by going behind the scenes and asking the early pioneers of rich applications delivered into web browsers how it was for them from February 18, 2005, when suddenly a single, easy-to-comprehend term arrived to help them propagate their new-web goals.
Mozilla

Submission + - EverQuest II embeds Mozilla browser

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: EverQuest II's next release will include an embedding of the Mozilla browser. It's currently live on the test server and has a few issues that will hopefully be resolved before release.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?st art=15&topic_id=347230

Some interesting uses of the browser such as automatically searching for quest hints are being discussed on the interface board:

http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/showthread.php? t=7846
Data Storage

Submission + - Google paper on disk reliability

Submitted by oski4410
oski4410 writes: The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract:

"Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported."
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Wants Patent on Indentation

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Throw some text in a worksheet, make the columns small, and color the cells to denote a hierarchy. Like this. That, my friend, may constitute patent infringement for the next twenty years if the USPTO grants Microsoft the patent it's seeking for Minimizing Indenting (actual patent image). Just one more example of how Microsoft's lawyers are making the world a better place through more joyful and inclusive design."
Security

Submission + - Researchers highlight a router route to pharming

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Symantec, along with Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson of the Indiana University School of Informatics, have uncovered an almost trivial means of hijacking web browsing. The attack involves little more on the victim's part than simply visiting a web page. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/105032/researchers-hig hlight-a-router-route-to-pharming.html
Role Playing (Games)

Journal Journal: So I Bought the Core Rule Books 3.5 Edition... 1

Journal by cyranoVR

Last month I discovered Order of the Stick. After reading the whole series and buying Neverwinter Nights Diamond I decided to buy the Core Rulebook set.

What's interesting, is that a lot of the content is the same as first edition, but revised. So the Monster Manual has a lot of the same monsters as the original, such as devils and demons, unlike the Second Edition.
Google

Submission + - Google Search Screws Over SomethingAwful.com

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: You may have heard of the humour website SomethingAwful.com. Apparently, for all of their long history they've been having a problem where their website is listed far down Google's results (often last) for searches related to the site (such as the names of features and articles on the site). For example, when I google for "Photoshop Phriday", the site isn't in the first ten pages of results, despite the fact that Google has indexed the relevent page. In fact, the first result is a noproxy.us proxied version of the relevant page, and the rest of the results are blog and forum entries referring to Something Awful. (Results are apparently better on many non-English versions of Google, however.)

It's far from clear what's causing this; the site's PageRank is apparently fine. Attempts to contact Google have fallen on deaf ears and dumb autoresponders. The site was even recently redesigned in the hope of fixing the problem, with no luck so far. Is the world's most popular search engine really this broken, and how much money are people bringing in from knowing the black magic to work around it?
Space

Submission + - Hayabusa to begin long journey back to Earth

Submitted by
Sparky
Sparky writes: "Japan is planning to set the Hayabusa spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth next month after a delay of more than a year, but it's far from certain that it will get back safely. It was supposed to retrieve asteroid debris, but it's thought that a computer error meant that this didn't happen. A fuel leak means that it's chemical thrusters are out of action, and the craft is relying on it's weaker ion engines. The journey back will take 3 years, and the capsule will be on Earth in June 2010 — even if it is empty."
Movies

Submission + - BulRay, HD-DVD encrytion defeated

Submitted by Linuxploitation
Linuxploitation writes: As reported at The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/14/aacs_hack/ A lone hacker has unlocked the master key preventing the copying of high-definition DVDs in a development that is sure to get the entertainment industry's knickers wrapped tighter than a magnet's coil. What's more, the individual was able to defeat the technology with no cracking tools or reverse engineering, despite the millions of dollars and many years engineers put into developing the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for locking down high-definition video.
Education

Submission + - Big Brother Disapproves of Weekend Boozing

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: "Staff at Pequannock Township High School in New Jersey are going to start using a sneaky new test that can detect if students have been drinking in the last week. The test measures urine concentrations of an ethanol breakdown product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). I find it bizarre that in the US you can't drink until 21; at 21 I had spent already three years completing my undergraduate degree and drinking copious amounts of Guinness."

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