Watchmen Delayed, Or Worse 220

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @09:00AM from the this-isn't-gonna-be-good dept.

whisper_jeff writes "Due to some potential copyright issues, The Watchmen might be delayed, or worse. It seems that Fox claims it still owns copyrights which would prevent Warner Bros from releasing the movie. US District Court Judge Gary Feess decided that Fox had enough of a case that he's willing to hear things out. The geek in me hopes that it will be resolved quickly and the movie will hit theaters on time."

754189 story

What Is the Best Way To Disinfect Your Laptop? 545

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 03, 2008 @07:53PM from the use-a-nice-strong-antivirus dept.

akutz writes "I've had the flu since Tuesday afternoon. My wife picked me up from work with a temperature of 103.6 and it finally broke at 98.7 around 3am this morning. Yay. The problem is that I used my laptop during my periods of feverish deliriousness, contaminating my shiny 15" MacBook Pro with the icky influenza virus. I am asking my fellow Slashdotters if they have ever sought out a good way of disinfecting their lucky laptops after an illness. Do you use soap? A light acid bath? Just get the family dog to lick it until it looks clean?"

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McCain Backs Nuclear Power 1563

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:45AM from the all-it-takes-is-peak-oil dept.

bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.

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goosh, the Unofficial Google Shell 310

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 02, 2008 @07:26PM from the land-a-gooshen dept.

ohxten writes "Stefan Grothkopp has come up with a pretty neat tool called goosh. It's essentially a browser-oriented, shell-like interface that allows you to quickly search Google (and images and news) and Wikipedia and get information in a text-only format. This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've seen in a good while."

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1TB Blu-Ray Compatible Optical Disc Announced 256

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @01:12PM from the many-bytes-many-bits dept.

red_dragon writes "An article on The Register tells the news of an announcement of a new 1TB optical drive and disc that will be backwardly compatible with Blu-ray discs. The technology, developed by Call/Recall in partnership with Nichia, uses a rhodamine-type dye in a 200+-layer recording medium that gives off light when excited by a laser beam, along with a single fluid-filled lens to read multiple layers by varying the amount of fluid to change the focal length. The technology is designed to work with Nichia's blue-violet laser diodes, which are already used in Blu-ray drives."

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Microsoft Acknowledges NBC's Wish is Its Command 417

Posted by timothy on Monday May 19, 2008 @08:19AM from the it-will-be-as-you-wish-my-master dept.

theodp writes "Responding to questions about why some users of Windows Vista Media Center were prevented from recording the NBC Universal TV shows 'American Gladiator' and 'Medium,' Microsoft has acknowledged that Windows Media Centers will block users from recording TV shows at the request of a broadcaster. 'Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set forth by the (Federal Communications Commission),' wrote a Microsoft spokeswoman, apparently referring to an FCC proposal that the courts struck down in 2005. 'Microsoft has put the requirements of broadcasters above what consumers want,' said the EFF's Danny O'Brien. 'They've imposed restrictions way beyond what the law requires. Customers need to know who Microsoft is listening to and how that affects their equipment. Right now, the only way customers know what Microsoft has agreed to is when the technology they've bought suddenly stops working. Microsoft needs to come clean and tell its customers what deals it has made.'"

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Brain Study Calls Free Will Into Question 733

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 13, 2008 @09:49PM from the choose-wisely-young-jedi dept.

siddster notes an account up at Wired of research indicating that brain scanners can see your decisions before you make them. "In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them... Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will... The experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions... Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

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$5 Per Month Fee Proposed For Legal Music P2P 528

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 13, 2008 @08:58PM from the it's-nice-to-have-somebody-do-my-budget-for-me dept.

sneakyimp writes "Both Wired and Ars Technica have reports on Jim Griffin's proposal that ISPs charge each broadband customer $5 per month to subsidize the ailing music industry. The resulting fund would ostensibly 'compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels.' Although no specific version of the proposal has been referenced, a number of controversies are inherent to the plan: How is the money really divided? What happens when the MPAA, the Business Software Alliance, and various other industry groups want their own surcharge added? What about the supposed majority of broadband customers who never download illegal music? Griffin discussed the plan further at SXSW . We've previously discussed a similar proposal from the Songwriters Association of Canada.

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NIST Working On "Deathalyzer" 95

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 20, 2008 @02:36PM from the welcome-humans-i-am-ready-for-you dept.

coondoggie writes to mention that a new optical technique for sensing small amounts of molecules in a person's breath has been developed by a researcher for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The goal is to create a fast, low-cost method for detecting disease. "In this approach, NIST researchers analyze human breath with 'frequency combs,' which are generated by a laser specially designed to produce a series of very short, equally spaced pulses of light. Each pulse may be only a few million billionths of a second long. The laser generates light as a series of very narrow frequency peaks equally spaced, like the teeth of a comb, across a broad spectrum."

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NASA Building Giant Roller Coaster For Science 85

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 08, 2007 @09:15AM from the still-no-excuse-for-300ft-pinwheel dept.

Jamie found a story of NASAs Giant "Science" Roller Coaster. It will be used as an escape chute on rocket launchpads, and will be the 3rd highest drop in the world. More like the Cedar Point Demon Drop than a roller coaster, but still, I'd ride it.

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