UniverseToday has an interesting look at geomagnetic reversal, the process in which the Earth's magnetic poles trade places. The article cites known trends and recent studies to debunk doomsday myths and unsubstantiated claims about the process. One such study is attempting to model the earth's core with a 26-ton ball of molten metal. Another recently found evidence that the Earth has a second, weaker magnetic field. "We do know that this magnetic pole flip-flop has occurred many times in the last few million years; the last occurred 780,000 years ago according to ferromagnetic sediment. A few scaremongering articles have said geomagnetic reversal occurs with 'clockwork regularity' — this is simply not true."

An Anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting 'A weathered sweat shirt, cash and a pilot license with Fossett's name were found Tuesday near Mammoth Lakes, police Chief Randy Schienle said.' The license did not have a photo. '"We're not certain that it belongs to Steve Fossett, but it certainly has his name on the ID," Schienle said.'"

Crazy Taco writes "The heavy Amazon.com protest of Spore's DRM appears to have caught the attention of executives at EA. IGN reports that DRM for the upcoming C&C: Red Alert 3 will be scaled back. Unlike previous Command and Conquer games, the CD will not be required in the drive to play. The online authentication will be done just once (rather than periodic phone calls home), and up to five installations will be allowed, as opposed to three for Spore. While I still think five installations is too few (I've probably re-installed Command and Conquer: Generals 20 times over the years for various reasons), EA says they will have staff standing by to grant more installations as necessary on a case by case basis. So, while this still isn't optimal, at least we are getting a compromise. Hopefully, if the piracy rate for the game is low, perhaps EA will get comfortable enough to ship with even less DRM in the future."

malign noted that AT&T has stated that using P2P on their 3G wireless network is grounds for disconnection. The lobbyist told congress "Use of a P2P file sharing application would constitute a material breach of contract for which the user's service could be terminated."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Harvard University and Hamamatsu Photonics have found a way to collimate lasers without lenses. In the new 'plasmonic collimator' technique, grooves are etched directly into the semiconductor laser's internal mirror. This results in surface plasmons giving rise to constructive interference, eliminating the need for the bulky optical lenses that usually focus the light from semiconductor lasers. The technique has promise for steering laser beams without moving parts and for working with polarized light."

Lt.Hawkins was one of many readers sending in word that the escaped spam king discussed yesterday was found dead in Colorado, after apparently killing his wife and 3-year-old daughter. A teenager was injured, and an infant was found alive in the car.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has unveiled a plan to retroactively extend musical copyrights by 45 years, which would make EU musical copyrights last 95 years total. Why? They're worried that musicians won't continue to collect royalties when they retire and this will give them an additional 45 years during which they won't have to produce any new music. Perhaps the only good point is that the retroactive extensions won't take effect for any works which aren't marketed in the first year after the extension. Additionally, while there are many non-musical retirees wishing they could get paid for 95 years after they finish working, McCreevy has not announced any new plans to help them."

Barence, following up on yesterday's news that Viacom is looking for videos uploaded by Google staff, links to an article at PC Pro, excerpting: "Google and Viacom have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers. Earlier this month, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom and other plaintiffs to help them prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site. Google claims it had now agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys with a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube usernames and IP addresses that could be used to identify individual video watchers."

zehnra writes "The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The House of Representatives passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly." The New York Times has a story, as does the Associated Press (carried here by Yahoo!). Reader Guppy points out the roll call for the vote.

longacre writes "Due to its limited range and slow scan times, the backbone of weather prediction in the US since the early 1990s, the NEXRAD radar system, is deeply flawed in the eyes of meteorologists. A new system being tested by researchers at the NOAA and four universities called the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) network aims to fill the holes left by NEXRAD, using radar nodes piggybacked onto existing infrastructure, such as rooftops and cell towers. From the article: 'Based on faster and more comprehensive data collection, [Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing] processing can refocus the CASA radars on a particularly interesting part of a storm (like an area that looks like it might develop a tornado) without losing track of an entire storm cell. "The system is continuously diagnosing the atmosphere and reallocating resources using wireless Internet as a backbone," says [the CASA team director].' Testing has begun in Oklahoma, Houston, and Puerto Rico, and initial installations could begin in 5 years."

peterprior writes "The UK Justice Minister is planning to outlaw computer generated images and drawings of child sex abuse. While photographs and videos of child sex abuse are already illegal, undoubtedly to protect children from being exploited by these acts, what children will be protected by this new law? If there is no actual child involved is the law merely protecting against the possibility of offenders committing future crimes against real children?"

sonchat writes with news that Nevada's "Gov. Jim Gibbons intends to bill the widow of missing multimillionaire adventurer Steve Fossett for $687,000 the state spent in searching for the famed aviator last fall, a spokesman said." Though in some places charging for the cost of a search effort is routine, apparently in Nevada it is not.

eldavojohn writes "The watch-dog group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has set its sights on the rating of GTA IV, primarily because a player can drive drunk in the game. MADD released a statement saying that 'Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.' MADD also is asking Rockstar Games to consider removing GTA IV from distribution 'out of respect for the millions of victims/survivors of drunk driving.' Rockstar replied to MADD by saying 'we have a great deal of respect for MADD's mission, but we believe the mature audience for "Grand Theft Auto IV" is more than sophisticated enough to understand the game's content.' As expected, Jack Thompson is making his usual attention-whoring remarks by comparing GTA IV to the polio virus."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees."

phpmysqldev writes "In a very random move eBay has filed a lawsuit against Craigslist to 'protect its investment and shareholders'. "In a statement, eBay claimed that in January, Craigslist executives took actions that 'unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%'." eBay is a minority shareholder of Craigslist owning 28.4%. Craigslist suspects eBay's intentions are less than honorable, speculating about a possible hostile takeover. The court case is sealed and eBay has not elaborated on its claims."