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The Courts

Submission + - Written approval is required to link to a website (uefa.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: First we had freedom of speech, then we had all the legal acts that try to restrict it. Now we have a new kind on the block. UEFA terms and conditions says:
"7.2 In the event that you wish to establish a link to the Website, you expressly agree:
        to ask prior written approval of UEFA to establish a link to the Website;"

Source:
http://www.uefa.com/uefa/termsconditions.html
I think I just broke their terms and conditions.

What is next? How about handing a UEFA certificate — for all websites that do not link to their website?
On the other hand do you need a prior written approval to provide directions to Tower of London?
Upgrades

Submission + - PC Fans With Noise Cancellation Coming

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Noise reduction specialist RotoSub and renowned quiet cooling fan manufacturer Noctua announced Tuesday a strategic partnership agreement for the development and commercialisation of PC fans with integrated active noise cancellation. Lars Strömbäck and Mårten Oretorp from RotoSub have invented a system that allows a fan to emit the sound signal that cancels out the original sound of the fan and thereby greatly reduces the overall noise emission. 'There is still a lot of fine-tuning to be done, both in structural design and as far as the algorithms that compute the anti-noise signal are concerned, but we're working hard to achieve this goal within the next 12 to 18 months', says Oretorp. Building on the original NF-F12, a first prototype of a Noctua fan with integrated RotoSub ANC technology will be shown at Computex Taipei next week.
Space

Submission + - The nearest supernova candidate to Earth - IK Peg (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "What's the nearest star to Earth that can explode as a supernova? Spica, at 260 light years away, is the nearest massive star that can explode, but IK Pegasi — a Sirius-like binary composed of a normal star and a white dwarf — will also one day blow. At a distance of 150 light years it's truly the closest supernova candidate. Happily, that's too far away to damage the Earth when it goes off — and it won't explode for millions of years at least, by which time it'll be even farther away. Either way, we're safe... for now."
Privacy

Submission + - Twitter Implements Do Not Track (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Twitter has implemented the Do Not Track header on its site, giving users the option of telling the site that they do not want to be tracked across other sites on the Web. The implementation is being done through the DNT technology in the Firefox browser.

Firefox, like other major browsers, allows users to enable the DNT option, which uses an HTTP header to inform sites that they don't want sites to set cookies that enable persistent tracking across the Web. Sites need to choose to respect that particular header in order to make Do Not Track work on their pages, and that's the change that Twitter has made.

"When you turn on DNT in your browser, we stop collecting the information that allows us to tailor Twitter based on your recent visits to websites that have integrated our buttons or widgets. Specifically, we remove from your browser the unique cookie that links your browser to visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. We then cannot provide tailored suggestions for you," Twitter said.
Space

Submission + - Astronomers see the glow of a boiling planet

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "For the first time, astronomers have detected the light from a "super-Earth" exoplanet. The planet 55 Cancri e (with twice the radius and 8 times the mass of Earth) circles its host star every 18 hours, and is so hot it glows in the infrared. By observing in that wavelength, the astronomers measured the dip in light as the planet's glow was blocked by the star itself. This is the reverse of the usual method of detecting a planet as it blocks the light of its host star."
Space

Submission + - Astronomers find most distant protocluster of galaxies

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Using the monster 8.2 meter Subaru telescope, astronomers have identified the most distant cluster of galaxies ever found: a collection of galaxies at a staggering distance of 12.7 billion light years. This is the most distant cluster ever seen that has been confirmed spectroscopically (PDF). Technically, it's a protocluster, since it's so young — seen only a billion years after the Big Bang itself — the cluster must still be in the process of formation."
Science

Submission + - X-ray Microscope Delivers Unparalleled Nanoscale Images in 3D (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: A new X-ray microscope at Brookhaven National Laboratory is being used to create unparalleled high-resolution 3D images of the inner structure of materials. Using techniques similar to taking a very small-scale medical CAT (computer-assisted tomography) scan, the full field transmission x-ray microscope (TXM) enables scientists to directly observe structures spanning 25 nanometers — three thousand times smaller than a red blood cell — by splicing together thousands of images into a single 3D X-ray image with "greater speed and precision than ever before." This capability is expected to power rapid advances in many fields, including energy research, environmental sciences, biology, and national defense.
Space

Submission + - Astronomers see *another* star torn apart by a black hole (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A star in a galaxy 2.7 billion light years away wandered too close to a supermassive black hole and suffered the ultimate fate: it was literally torn apart by the black hole's gravity. The event was seen as a flash of ultraviolet light flaring 350 times brighter than the galaxy itself, slowly fading over time. Astronomers were able to determine that some of the star's material was eaten by the black hole, and some flung off into space. Although rare, this is the second time such a thing has been seen; the other was just last year."
Businesses

Submission + - Private company announces serious plan to mine asteroids in the next few years (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "The private company Planetary Resources has announced that it plans to mine asteroids for water, air, and even precious metals in the next few years. Your initial reaction may be to snicker a bit, but it's headed by Peter Diamandis — who established the X Prize — has several ex-NASA personnel running the engineering, and also has the backing of a half-dozen or so billionaires. So this is no joke — their plan looks solid, and may very well be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence in space."
Businesses

Submission + - American Airlines decides not to run antivaccination interview

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Over the weekend, news got out that American Airlines was going to run an interview with Meryl Dorey, the head the infamous antivaccination group Australian Vaccination Network. The interview was slated to be both printed in their in-flight magazine and an audio version run on their in-flight TVs. Twitter lit up, an online petition was organized, and within hours AA tweeted that the interview would be completely pulled. This once again shows that companies must be — and more importantly, can be — held accountable for what they do, and that the online community has substantial influence."
Patents

Submission + - Every touch-based Apple product targeted by apparent patent troll (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Apple is being sued in federal court in San Francisco over allegations that every touch-based product the company makes infringes on a patent relating to touch-based interactive museum displays. According to the complaint, Professor Slavoljub Milekic conceived a system that used a touchscreen that allowed children to move virtual objects around the screen, which he used to build interactive displays for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, in 1997, and filed for a patent on his design that same year.

The patent in the suit, US Patent #6,920,619 named "User interface for removing an object from a display," was issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2005. According to the lawsuit, Milekic formed FlatWorld Interactives in 2007 to "promote and commercialize" his invention. Curiously, FlatWorld was incorporated on January 2007, just weeks after Apple announced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo. In July 2007, just after Apple shipped the original iPhone, FlatWorld filed a reissue request for the patent, which appears to have been done in order to modify some of the patent's dependent claims.
Science

Submission + - Using shadows to measure the geysers of Enceladus (discovermagazine.com) 1

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A lot of folks are posting about the amazing new pictures of the icy moon Enceladus returned from the Cassini spacecraft. However, one of them shows the shadow of the moon across the geyser plumes. This has been seen before, but I suddenly realized how that can help determine the geysers' locations, and I thought /. readers might be interested in the general method."
ISS

Submission + - SpaceX gets greenlighted for rendezvous with the ISS (wired.com)

Submitted by
sneakyimp
sneakyimp writes: "Much weeping and gnashing of teeth has accompanied the retirement of the the space shuttle and it has been a bit sad seeing discovery take its last flight over DC. But SpaceX, brainchild of Elon Musk, appears to be supplying a silver lining this week as their Dragon capsule, riding atop a Falcon rocket has been greenlighted for a rendezvous with the ISS on April 30. Skeptical? SpaceX, a private enterprise, is the first entity that is not a sovereign government to launch a capsule into space and retrieve it on earth. While the mission to the ISS is admittedly not a sure shot, Elon Musk has a few fighting words about their ability to compete with Russia and China on a cost basis."
Education

Submission + - Anti-Education Attack Poisons 150 Afghan Schoolgirls (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The water at a high school in Afghanistan was contaminated today, which poisoned roughly 150 girls in attendance. Afghan officials say this was a deliberate attack: 'We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk inside their classes was poisoned. This is either the work of those who are against girls' education or irresponsible armed individuals.' From the article: 'Some of the 150 girls, who suffered from headaches and vomiting, were in critical condition, while others were able to go home after treatment in hospital, the officials said. They said they knew the water had been poisoned because a larger tank used to fill the affected water jugs was not contaminated. ... None of the officials blamed any particular group for the attack, fearing retribution from anyone named.'

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