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Mars

A Third of Mars Could Have Been Underwater 167

Posted by timothy from the younger-hotter-ocean-that-is dept.
Matt_dk writes "An international team of scientists who analyzed data from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey reports new evidence for the controversial idea that oceans once covered about a third of ancient Mars. 'We compared Gamma Ray Spectrometer data on potassium, thorium and iron above and below a shoreline believed to mark an ancient ocean that covered a third of Mars' surface, and an inner shoreline believed to mark a younger, smaller ocean.'"

A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed 461

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the or-you-might-be-a-fanboi dept.
Technologizer writes "Some folks are outraged over the lack of FireWire in the new MacBook released this week. But Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't move faster than any other computer company to kill technologies that may be past their prime. And history usually validates its decisions. We've posted a decade's worth of examples that prove the point."
Media

Submission + - FTC Complaint filed re: abusive Copyright Warnings (defendfairuse.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed a formal consumer protection complaint with the FTC naming Hollywood studios, the NFL, MLB, and others for attempting to rewrite US copyright law so that Fair Use no longer exists. The amazing part is that these guys have been getting away with telling their customers they don't have any rights for so long, and this is the first time anybody has taken the matter seriously. DefendFairUse.org is asking for internet users help find more abusers to add to the complaint.

From the Ars Technica article: "According to the complaint, such warnings "materially mispresent" US law. Fair use is given short shrift, and as a result, consumers are left with the impression that any use that the rightsholders do not expressly approve is illegal."
Security

Submission + - New AACS Processing Key Discovered

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The movie studios recently released new HD-DVDs that can no longer be circumvented using the infamous 09 F9... AACS processing key that floated around the Net last month, but today a new key has surfaced. Like hundreds of other readers of Freedom-To-Tinker's "Own Your Own Integer" story, someone named BtCB posted his "randomly generated" number in the comments, asking, "What are the odds that this is the new processing key?" As it turns out, BtCB's key was not so random, and, a week after he posted it, the hackers over at doom9 realized that it really is the new processing key. With this kind of hacker "luck," it doesn't look like AACS will last for long.
The Courts

Submission + - Copyright Misuse Claim Against RIAA Upheld

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's attempt to dismiss a "copyright misuse" counterclaim against it has been rejected by Judge Charles L. Brieant, in a White Plains, New York, case, Lava v. Amurao. The counterclaim (pdf) calls for the record labels to forfeit their copyrights on the ground that they "are competitors in the business of recorded music.....[and] are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy, by litigating and settling all cases similar to this one together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in an identical manner and through common lawyers..... Such actions represent an attempt....to secure for themselves rights far exceeding those provided by copyright laws......Such acts constitute misuse of copyrights, and lead to a forfeiture of the exclusive rights.....". The judge also upheld (pdf) a counterclaim for declaratory judgment of non-infringement, and granted the motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Space

Submission + - The Uncomfortable Reality of Sex in Space

Submitted by
Smaran
Smaran writes: "WIRED is running an interesting story about how sex in space will have to be inevitably discussed by space agencies and astronauts around the world, who currently refuse to even address the issue. They are only beginning to talk about the realities of illness and death in space. Sex is still a topic for another day. WIRED's Regina Lynn writes: "... as humans begin to spend more time in space and to travel further from Earth, space agencies will need to factor sex into their equations. We cannot expect astronauts to spend three years in a spacecraft and not have sex — of some kind. Probably with each other, and likely in more than one combination.""
United States

Submission + - Web searches at US border

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From IHT: "Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a little trouble at the border.

"A guard typed Feldmar's name into an Internet search engine, which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an interdisciplinary journal. Feldmar was turned back and is no longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active professionally and where both of his children live."

"Mike Milne, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency in Seattle, said he could not discuss individual cases for reasons of privacy. But the law is clear, Milne said. People who have used drugs are not welcome here.

""If you are or have been a drug user," he said, "that's one of the many things that can make you inadmissible to the United States."

"He added that the government was constantly on the hunt for new sources of information. "Any new technology that we have available to us, we use to do searches on," Milne said."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Defends "Expert", says "everyone

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Arguing that "everyone in his field proceeds the same way that he did", and that "there is no other way to do what he did" (pdf), the RIAA opposes Ms. Lindor's motion to exclude the testimony of Dr. Doug Jacobson at trial based on Dr. Jacobson's deposition testimony in which he admitted that neither his work, nor that of MediaSentry, upon which he relied, had any of the ordinary indicia of "reliability" required of expert testimony in federal court."
Censorship

Submission + - Own Your Own 128-Bit Integer Today!

Submitted by
Byte Swapper
Byte Swapper writes: "After all the fuss over the AACS LA's trying to censor a certain 128-bit number that still has something like two million hits on Google, the Freedom to Tinker folks would like to point out that you too can own your own integer. They've set up a script that will generate a random number, encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and then deed the number back to you. You won't get a copyright on the number or the haiku, but you can turn almost any number you want into an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA, such that anyone subject to US law caught distributing it can be punished under the DMCA's anti-trafficking section, for which the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions do not apply. So F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088 is truly mine now, and you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands!"
Biotech

Submission + - Stem Cells May Fix Hearing Loss

Submitted by
webdoodle
webdoodle writes: "Loud noise can cause hearing loss in humans due to loss or faulty development of the sensory hair cells inside the ear. Lost hair cells are not replaced and people exposed to these conditions face permanent hearing loss. Identification of the stem cells from the adult cochlea would be a major step forward to fixing hearing loss."
Networking

Submission + - OpenBSD's bcw took GPL code from bcm43xx

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The inquirer has an article about a discussion going on at linux.kernel.wireless.general mailing list: it seems that the OpenBSD's driver for the Broadcom 43xx wireless chipset has some code very similar to the GPL code of the Linux driver. The developers of bcm43xx were not contacted for a re-licensing under BSD and are not even quoted in the OpenBSD sources. The discussion developed into a flame, in which Theo De Raadt is involved too. OpenBSD developers claim that the discussion prevented the development of the driver, that has now been deleted in a recent commit.
Announcements

Submission + - Forecaster Blasts Gore on Global Warming

Submitted by MoWe
MoWe writes: A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming. "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.
Music

Submission + - RIAA Backs Down After Receiving Stern Letter

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In SONY BMG v. Merchant, in California, the defendant's lawyer wrote the RIAA a rather stern letter recounting how weak the RIAA's evidence is, referring to the deposition of the RIAA's expert witness (see Slashdot commentary), and threatening a malicious prosecution lawsuit. The very same day the RIAA put its tail between its legs and dropped the case, filing a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal. About an hour earlier NYCL had termed the letter a "model letter"; maybe he was right."

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