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Space

Cosmic Rays and Global Warming 548

Posted by kdawson from the yet-another-theory dept.
Overly Critical Guy writes "The former editor of New Scientist has written an article in the TimesOnline suggesting that cosmic rays may affect global climate. The author criticizes the UN's recent global warming report, noting several underreported trends it doesn't account for, such as increasing sea-ice in the Southern Ocean. He describes an experiment by Henrik Svensmark showing a relation between atmospheric cloudiness and atomic particles coming in from exploded stars. In the basement of the Danish National Space Center in 2005, Svensmark's team showed that electrons from cosmic rays caused cloud condensation. Svensmark's scenario apparently predicts several unexplained temperature trends from the warmer trend of the 20th century to the temporary drop in the 1970s, attributed to changes in the sun's magnetic field affecting the amount of cosmic rays entering the atmosphere."
Politics

FAA To Free Aircraft Hobbled By IP Laws 106

Posted by kdawson from the maintain-it-but-we-won't-tell-you-how dept.
smellsofbikes writes "The FAA is attempting to develop a legal process that will allow them to release data about vintage aircraft designs that have obviously been abandoned. Existing laws restrict the FAA's ability to release this data because it is deemed to be intellectual property even though the owner of record has long since ceased to exist. This is fundamentally the same problem that copyright laws impose on people looking for out-of-print books. But in the case of vintage aircraft, the owners are legally required to maintain them to manufacturer specifications that the owners cannot legally obtain: an expensive and potentially lethal dilemma. If the FAA, notoriously hidebound and conservative, is willing to find a solution to this IP Catch-22, maybe the idea will catch on in other places."
Media

Submission + - Refuting the misinformation about Matt Bandy

Submitted by
Rachel Alexander
Rachel Alexander writes: "Defense In Child Porn Case Distorts the Truth

There was a long discussion here a couple of weeks ago about child pornography and the prosecution of Matthew Bandy by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. In response to the misinformation that has been spread by the media, the Bandy family and their crisis management firm, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has released a lengthy report, including numerous exhibits regarding the technical aspects of the case. This case was not about adult pornography, nor was it about a computer virus surreptitiously downloading child pornography to your computer — as the media, family and defense counsel have portrayed it. The prosecution of then 16-year old Matt Bandy was about an investigation that yielded overwhelming evidence of the defendant viewing, downloading, uploading and sharing pornographic images of children being sexually abused, and burning them to a CD. Fox News posted a rebuttal from our office here, and the full report can be found here."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - DVD jon on Job's "give up DRM if I could"

Submitted by
Whiney Mac Fanboy
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes: ""Dvd" Jon Johansen has posted several sceptical blog entries reacting to Steve Job's blog posting about DRM. One post questions Job's misuse of statistics that attempts to prove consumers aren't tied to iPods through ITMS.

Many iPod owners have never bought anything from the iTunes Store. Some have bought hundreds of songs. Some have bought thousands. At the 2004 Macworld Expo, Steve revealed that one customer had bought $29,500 worth of music.
The other question's the DRM-free in a heartbeat claim. There are apparantly, many Indie artists who would love to sell DRM-free music on iTunes, but Apple will not allow them.

It should not take Apple's iTunes team more than 2-3 days to implement a solution for not wrapping content with FairPlay when the content owner does not mandate DRM. This could be done in a completely transparent way and would not be confusing to the users.
"
Science

Material Tougher Than Diamond Developed 237

Posted by Zonk from the diamond-is-so-20th-century dept.
sporkme has handed us a link to a New Scientist article. The piece outlines the development of a new substance reported to be stiffer than diamond. A team of scientists from Washington, Wisconsin, and Germany combined the ceramic barium titanate and white-hot molten tin with an ultrasonic probe. The new material was, in some tests, almost 10x more resistant to bending than diamond. Composite materials researcher Mark Spearing of Southampton University comments on the result: "The material's stiffness results from the properties of the barium titanate pieces, Spearing says. As the material cools, its crystal structure changes, causing its volume to expand. 'Because they are held inside the tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate,' Spearing explains, 'at a particular temperature that energy is released to oppose a bending force.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists

Submitted by BendingSpoons
BendingSpoons writes: More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely annecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue yesterday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming was happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame.

The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that "there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change" — up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; "The future is bleak", said scientists.
Windows

Submission + - Vista DRM Cracked by Security Researcher

Submitted by WillRIAAHaveMeKilledForReportingThis
WillRIAAHaveMeKilledForReportingThis writes: Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called "Protected Media Path" (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft.

The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed by breaking the Driver Signing / PatchGuard protection in the new operating system.

Alex is now quite nervous about what an army of lawyers backed by draconian copyright laws could do to him if he released the details, but he claims to be currently looking into the details of safely releasing his details about this at the moment though.

PS. It's really about time for Slashdot to add a "DRM" section.
Education

Submission + - Changing to a career in science?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a 37-year-old lawyer considering a career change into scientific research (the specific field is not relevant to my questions). I got into the legal profession for all the wrong reasons, and I would prefer a career doing something that excites and challenges me, even if the money isn't great. This will require significant educational retooling, including 5-6 years in a PhD program, so I need to look before I leap.

Have other Slashdot readers made similar transitions? For those already doing scientific research as their career, what have been the high and low points of your education and career? Do you foresee any problems for an "older" PhD candidate?
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Norway Outlaws iTunes

Submitted by haddieman
haddieman writes: While many people are getting more and more annoyed at DRM, Norway actually did something about it.

FTA: "Good intentions, questionable execution. European legislators have been giving DRM considerable attention for a while, but Norway has actually gone so far as to declare that Apple's iTunes store is illegal under Norwegian law. The crux of the issue is that the Fairplay DRM that is at the heart of the iTunes/iPod universe doesn't work with anything else, meaning that if you want access to the cast iTunes library, you have to buy an iPod."
Media

Submission + - 911 Calls Reveal Dangers of Media Consolidation

Submitted by BendingSpoons
BendingSpoons writes: Five years ago, a 112-car train derailed outside of Minot, North Dakota. Over 240,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia leaked out of the car, resulting in one death and the hospitalization of hundreds. Why is this news? Because newly released 911 tapes reveal a breakdown in Minot's emergency broadcasting — a breakdown that some are attributing to media consolidation. When panicked residents called emergency dispatch, they were advised to tune into KCJB, the designated local emergency broadcaster. However, KCJB — along with Minot's five other commercial channels — was owned by Clear Channel; the music was piped in from out of state, and no one was in the station to respond to calls. 911 callers were therefore directed to radio stations that provided no emergency information. The problem of "local" news stations unable to transmit information about local emergencies is now raising concerns about both national security and media consolidation.
Businesses

Dealing w/ Relocation Package Bait and Switch? 443

Posted by Cliff from the dispicable-practices dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I got a R&D job offer with a large company in Philadelphia area last week. It includes a relocation package that they told me was standard for my position. After I accepted the offer and made plans to terminate my current job, the recruiter handed me off to their relocation department, where I was told that my relocation package is significantly less than what I was promised. The relocation manager tells me that whenever there is conflict between their relocation policy and the offer, their internal relocation policy supersedes. Is this type of switch-and-bait common practice in corporate America? If you have gone through this nightmare before, any advice on how to respond to it?"

Enso Gives Keyboard Commands to Windows Users 234

Posted by Zonk from the as-humane-as-cold-unfeeling-software-can-be dept.
illuminatedwax writes "The Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg's latest column is a writeup on a new software system called Enso. Enso is from a small software startup called Humanized, led by Aza Raskin. The software allows Windows users to do common tasks, like launching programs, spellchecking, or Googling for search terms, but what's interesting is that it allows you to do these tasks from within any program in Windows by use of the keyboard. From the article: 'There are two initial Enso products, which can be downloaded at humanized.com. One, called Enso Launcher, allows you to launch programs and switch among windows via typed commands. The other, called Enso Words, allows you to do spell-checking, even when the program you're using doesn't include that capability, and to look up the meaning of words. Both products also include a simple calculator and the ability to launch Google searches.' Humanized says that users will be able to program their own commands for Enso in future versions."
Windows

One In Five Windows Installs Is Non-Genuine 481

Posted by kdawson from the false-positives dept.
snib writes "Microsoft disclosed Monday that, according to reports collected by the notorious Windows Genuine Advantage tool on millions of users' PCs, 22% of all Windows installs do not pass its validation tests and have therefore been deemed non-genuine. Quoting: 'Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent... [T]he Business Software Alliance... reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated (22 percent in North America)...'"
Privacy

Bush Claims Mail Can Be Opened Without Warrant 714

Posted by kdawson from the gentlemen-don't-do-that dept.
don_combatant writes to note that President Bush claimed new powers to search US mail without a warrant. He made this claim in a "signing statement" at the time he signed a postal overhaul bill into law on December 20. The signing statement directly contradicts part of the bill he signed, which explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. According to the article, "A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush's move."

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