An anonymous reader writes "The library of congress approved many copyright exemptions today. Among the exemptions were new rules about cell phones, DVDs, and electronic books." From the article: "Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday. Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books. All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years. In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs."

Clubs in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere are requiring patrons to give up their drivers licenses for a swipe through a card reader. Some bars do this too. The card reader displays their birth date and the establishments let it be assumed that the only purpose of the swipe is to check the customer's age. They rarely if ever disclose that the personal data stored on the license — the customer's name, address, license number, perhaps even height, weight, and eye color — go into a database and are retained, perhaps indefinitely. While a federal law forbids selling or sharing data from drivers licenses, there is no prohibition against collecting it. A few states have enacted such prohibitions — New Hampshire, Texas, and Nebraska. Privacy advocates warn that such personal data, once in a database, is bound to be misused. From the article: "'I don't see no problem,' said [a club-goer], 22. 'That happens every day on the Internet. Any hacker can get the information anyway.' [A Web media executive] said such reactions aren't surprising from a generation accustomed to sharing personal information on Web sites such as Facebook.com and Myspace.com. 'The kids don't care,' [he] said, 'because only old people like you and me suffer from the illusion of privacy these days.'"

digihome writes, "An exploding laptop can really ruin your weekend, so here's a review of six laptops that are unlikely to blow up." From the article: "We evaluated everything from battery and air vent temperatures, AC power draw and battery life to performance and price... What we found is that there's a real difference among those notebooks that know how to take the heat without sacrificing performance."

David Shiga writes, "NASA's silent Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft is likely lost forever. The space agency attempted to take a picture of the 10-year-old spacecraft using the newer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but did not detect it, either because its orbit has shifted since last contact, or because it isn't reflecting enough sunlight to be visible. NASA has now ordered its Opportunity rover to listen from the planet's surface for MGS's radio beacon. If that fails, the agency may call on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft to join the search. But MGS may already have run out of power and NASA officials are not optimistic about recovering it."

brian0918 writes "Nature reports that researchers at Dresden University believe that sabres from Damascus dating back to 900 AD were formed with help from carbon nanotubes. From the article: 'Sabres from Damascus are made from a type of steel called wootz. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.' At high temperatures, impurities in the metal 'could have catalyzed the growth of nanotubes from carbon in the burning wood and leaves used to make the wootz, Paufler suggests. These tubes could then have filled with cementite to produce the wires in the patterned blades, he says.'"

angrykeyboarder writes, "Many Ubuntu users expressed surprise, dismay, and disappointment when Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) nixed the popular community-developed artwork during the beta phase of Ubuntu 6.10 ('The Edgy Eft'). Some Ubuntu community members were downright shocked, and many were ultimately dissatisfied with the final product. What exactly happened? Short answer: the Art Team was less disturbed than some other community members were. Linux.com has the scoop." Slashdot and Linux.com are both part of OSTG.

Joe Dickerson writes, "Aberrant Dreams, an Atlanta-based online magazine, has posted an exclusive interview with science fiction great Greg Bear. The interview covers topics from what it was like being the son-in-law of Poul Anderson, to his newest book (Quantico), to plans for upcoming books. While you're there, check out their other exclusive interviews with the likes of Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, and Gerald W. Page."

Albert Sandberg writes, "KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has created the first logo that is visible from space. The construction was made by 65,000 1x1-foot tiles and covers about 2 acres. The logo was built and assembled over about a month and is located in the Nevada desert near Area 51. The article also has a short video showing the construction in time-lapse. Now the aliens know where to get their slimy food :-)"

Doc Ruby writes, "As reported at GigaOM, 'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver,' bridging 100-Gbps ethernet over 10 10-Gbps optical WAN links. Infinera's press release is here. Further from GigaOM: 'The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at [UC] Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.' We're all going to want our share of these 100Gbps networks. The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes, though they're now bringing fiber to the premises to some rich/lucky customers. Are they laying fiber that will bring them to Tbps, or will that stuff clog the way to getting these speeds ourselves?" Rumors say that what runs over Verizon's FiOS is ATM, to support their aspirations for triple-play.

An anonymous reader writes, "Scientists have developed a virtual world like Second Life where real-life amputees have their limbs restored. The experience can cure patients of the perception of pain in their missing limbs. From the article: 'The machine is designed to combat phantom limb pain (PLP) — a sensation of pain experienced by an amputee that appears to originate in the missing limb. Intriguingly, researchers have discovered that if a person's brain can be tricked into believing they can see and move a "phantom limb," this motion reduces the perception of pain in PLP.' The graphics used by the computer look very crude, almost comically so, but apparently the system works."

1up has a piece looking at the Wii vs. the PS3, running down the particulars on graphical power, online capabilities, launch titles, and control scheme. For the most part, they're siding with the PS3: "Traditionally, Nintendo's never been much for online gaming (the GameCube had two online games&ever), but Wii appears poised to finally bring Mario and Co. into the multiplayer arena. Wii will use a modified version of the DS' Wi-Fi Connection software to facilitate online matchmaking. (Most likely, you'll only be able to play against players who give you 'friend codes' first, just like with the DS.) Like the PS3, the Wii will offer online gaming free of charge."

cameronk writes, "Apple announced partnership agreements with Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM, and United that will let you display video from your iPod on the screen of the seat in front of you. Plus, the connectors charge iPods throughout the flight. This will be great for inter-continental flights where even my iPod Nano runs out of juice. I wonder how the airlines are going to keep inappropriate video (i.e. porn or even just movies like "Snakes on a Plane" or "Alive") from appearing on the seat-back displays."

An anonymous reader writes, "According to a CNet article, two companies called Mobience and Nuance have created viable and possibly better alternatives to the standard cell phone keypad. 'Mobience, which is based in South Korea, has redesigned the ABC and Qwerty key layout, and come up with MobileQwerty. It's essentially the same three-letters-per-key system as the standard mobile keypad layout, but the letters have been rearranged in a Qwertyesque way to increase efficiency.' The other system developed by Nuance is a mobile speech platform that turns speech into text and replaces the keypad altogether. I was skeptical at first but the video of Nuance's software vs. Ben Cook, the ex world texting champion, is undeniably impressive."

Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review Online article about Intel's official launch of the Kentsfield chipset. Their Quad Core offering, Intel is claiming, is up to 80% faster than the dual-core Conroe released this past July. From the article: "Kentsfield, a 2.66GHz chip with a 1066MHz front-side bus, is more for computational-heavy usage, including digital content creation, engineering analysis, such as CAD, and actuarial and other financial applications. Steve Smith, director of operations for Intel digital enterprise group, claimed rendering is 58% faster for users building digital content creation systems, for video, photo editing or digital audio. In other words, Kentsfield is for high-end desktops or workstations only. For the average office worker who uses their PC for general productivity apps, such as communications and garden-variety computing, Smith recommended the Core 2 Duo from 'a price point and performance perspective.'"

tuxd00d writes "The question goes something like this: How many toilet flushes does it take to power a light bulb? There's really no answer, but Salt Lake City is exploring a pilot project that would convert sewer waste into energy to run a heating and cooling system in a downtown building, city water department official Jeff Niermeyer said."