"An archiving error by NASA has meant 173 data tapes have sat in Perth for almost 40 years, holding information about lunar dust that could be vital in expanding science's understanding of the moon. But after almost four decades, a donation from a Sydney computer society looks set to breathe fresh life into a long-neglected field of lunar science. ... These were the only active measurements of moon dust made during the Apollo missions, and no-one thought it was important. ... Mr Holmes has kept the tapes in a climate-controlled room since then, and it was only when he stumbled upon a 1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum that his company had the ability to unlock the information."

enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.

In September, we discussed a class-action suit filed against Electronic Arts over the DRM in Spore. Now, two new class-action suits have been filed that target the SecuROM software included in a free trial of the Spore Creature Creator (PDF) and in The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (PDF). If this sort of legal reprisal continues to catch on, EA could be seeing quite a few class-action suits in the future. One of the suits accuses: "The inclusion of undisclosed, secretly installed DRM protection measures with a program that was freely distributed constitutes a major violation of computer owners' absolute right to control what does and what does not get loaded onto their computers, and how their computers shall be used ... [SecuROM] cannot be completely uninstalled. Once installed it becomes a permanent part of the consumer's software portfolio ... EA's EULA for Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition makes utterly no mention of any Technical Protection Measures, DRM technology, or SecuROM whatsoever."

coondoggie writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "What do you get when you mix the government, the court system, company lawyers and Joe Consumer? A serious mess that would send most people screaming into the night. But the Federal Trade Commission is no such entity. It wants to straighten Intellectual Property (IP) out and today said it will hold a series of hearings — the first in Washington, DC on Dec. 5 — it will use to examine IP law and the myriad issues surrounding it. Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players. The patent system has experienced significant change and more changes are under consideration, the FTC said." The FTC held some different, but related hearings this week which addressed topics such as copyright law and DRM interoperability. Transcripts, podcasts, and summaries of the talks are available on the FTC-hosted "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade" site.

jbpisio writes with a link to this blog-post summary that the Canadian government has commissioned a pair of unmanned subs to explore the geology of two underwater Arctic mountain ranges; the subs' mission will be to provide evidence supporting Canada's claim to huge swaths of potentially petroleum-rich seabed areas. According to the linked article, "The submersibles, scheduled to be launched in 2010, would be sent on a series of 400-kilometer missions north and west of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost land mass and the country's gateway to the open Arctic Ocean — the scene of an international power struggle over undersea territory and petroleum resources believed to be worth trillions of dollars." At least five countries (besides Canada, these are the US, Russia, Denmark and Norway) would like a slice of those trillions.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that when the RIAA decided to run away with its tail between its legs in the long running Brooklyn case against a home health aide who has never used a computer, UMG v. Lindor, it decided to take some parting shots at the defendant and NewYorkCountryLawyer, asking for 'discovery sanctions,' and blaming them for its inability to prove its case. Today NYCL gave them his response, accusing the RIAA lawyers of persistent misstatements of fact (PDF) throughout their motion papers, and of flouting the rules and misstating the law (PDF). Although the RIAA's motion papers took a number of shots at NYCL's copyright law blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People,' NYCL confined his response on that subject to a single footnote."

Lucas123 writes "Symantec's CEO John Thompson says the company is still struggling with its consolidated ERP system and that it has only thrown bodies and not technology at the post-Veritas buyout issues that created poor customer service. 'I've kind of lost track where we are timing-wise...but we threw an awful lot of head count at this wait-time problem. Wait times from their peak of well over an hour are down to now under two minutes,' he said."