CuteSteveJobs writes "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by London police on behalf of Swedish authorities on allegation of rape. Assange has admitted that he is exhausted by the ongoing battle against authorities. The Swiss Government has confiscated $37K in his Swiss Bank account. PayPal and Mastercard have frozen Wikileak's accounts, hampering Wikileaks from raising any more funds."

The Contrarian writes "It looks like Oracle is not suiting former Sun staff well, nor community members in the Java and OpenOffice.org communities. This weekend saw an unusually large number of rather public departures, with (among many others listed in the article) the VP running Solaris development quitting, the token academic on the JCP walking out and top community leaders at OpenOffice.org nailing their resignations to the door after having the ex-Sun people slam it in their face. The best analysis comes from an unexpected place, with the marketing director of Eclipse — usually loyal defenders of their top-dollar-paying members — turning on Oracle and telling them to get a clue."

It turns out the soy-based wire covering on cars built after 2002 is irresistible to rodents. Nobody knows this better than those unlucky enough to park at DIA's Pikes Peak lot. The rabbits surrounding the area have been using the lot as an all-you-can-eat wiring buffet. Looks like it's time to break out The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Benz145 writes "The famous Sony VAIO UX UMPC may have been cancelled a few years back by Sony, but the community at Micro PC Talk won't let it die. Modder Anh has carefully removed the relatively slow 1.33Ghz Core Solo CPU and installed a much faster Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 (a process which involves reballing the entire CPU). On top of this, he managed to install an incredibly small 4-port USB hub into the unit which allowed for the further instillation of a Huawei E172 modem for 3G data/voice/SMS, a GPS receiver, and a Pinnacle HD TV receiver. All of this was done without modifying the device's tiny external case. Great high-res pictures of the motherboard with the modded hardware can be seen through the link."

An anonymous reader writes "Almost anywhere you go these days (particularly at airports), if you check for available WiFi settings, you have a pretty good chance of seeing an ad hoc network for 'Free Public WiFi.' Of course, since it's ad hoc (computer to computer) it's not actually access to the internet. So why is this in so many places? Turns out it's due to a bug in Windows XP. Apparently, the way XP works is that if it can't find a 'favorite' WiFi hotspot, it automatically sets up the computer to broadcast itself as an ad hoc network point, using the name of the last connection the computer attempted. So... people see 'Free Public WiFi' and they try to log on. Then their own computer starts broadcasting the same thing, because it can't find a network it knows. And, like a virus, the 'Free Public WiFi' that doesn't work lives on and on and on."

Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."

gbrumfiel writes "As we discussed on Tuesday, Andre Geim won this year's Nobel prize in physics for graphene, but he never patented it. In an interview with Nature News, he explains why: 'We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote.'"

jamie tips this mind-blowing data visualization concept from (naturally) data visualization researcher Michael Ogawa, who explains that it was inspired by "this XKCD comic. It represents characters as lines that converge in time as they share scenes. Could this technique be adapted for software developers who work on the same code?"

The Seventh Circuit Court has ruled that Beverly Stayart can't sue Yahoo! because she did not like what she saw on the results page after searching for her name. Stayart claimed that her "internet presence" was damaged by Yahoo! because results for a search of her name showed listings which included pharmaceuticals and adult oriented websites. The court disagreed. From the article: "Stayart had sued under Section 43(a) of the federal Lanham Act, which prohibits false advertising, false implications of endorsement, and so on. Her problem was that a Lanham Act claim requires a showing that the plaintiff has a 'commercial interest' to protect, and Stayart did not have a commercial interest in her own name."