An anonymous reader tips a University of Michigan news release about the creation of what's being called an "optical battery" that could lead to the use of solar power without traditional solar cells (abstract). Quoting: "Light has electric and magnetic components. Until now, scientists thought the effects of the magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored. What Rand and his colleagues found is that at the right intensity, when light is traveling through a material that does not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects that are 100 million times stronger than previously expected. Under these circumstances, the magnetic effects develop strength equivalent to a strong electric effect. 'This could lead to a new kind of solar cell without semiconductors and without absorption to produce charge separation,' Rand said. 'In solar cells, the light goes into a material, gets absorbed and creates heat. Here, we expect to have a very low heat load. Instead of the light being absorbed, energy is stored in the magnetic moment. Intense magnetization can be induced by intense light and then it is ultimately capable of providing a capacitive power source.'"

Stoobalou writes "The only way to stop piracy is to cut prices. That's the verdict of a major new academic study that reckons copyright theft won't be halted by 'three strikes' broadband disconnections, increasing censorship or draconian new laws brought in under the anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA. The Media Piracy Project, published last week by the Social Science Research Council, reports that illegal copying of movies, music, video games and software is 'better described as a global pricing problem' — and the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares."

An anonymous reader writes "The recent European import ban against the PlayStation 3 has been lifted. Reportedly, LG had already succeeded in seizing about 300,000 PlayStations, but a court in the Dutch city of The Hague overturned the prejudgment seizure order and told LG to return all PS3s to Sony. Sony uses the Netherlands as its main entry point for all European PlayStation sales, and can now return to normal. While the temporary ban has been lifted, LG can still assert its Blu-ray patents against Sony in a regular proceeding, which will go to trial on November 18. LG asks for patent royalties of $2.50 per Blu-ray device and believes Sony already owes it $150-180 million."

An anonymous reader writes "A new study seems to confirm what a lot of the Slashdot crowd thinks, and the opposite of what the **AAs say: 'A prestigious economics think-tank of the Japanese government has published a study which concludes that online piracy of anime shows actually increases sales of DVDs. The conclusion stands in sharp contrast with the entertainment industry's claims that "illicit" downloading is leading to billions of dollars in losses worldwide. It also puts the increased anti-piracy efforts of the anime industry in doubt.' More specifically, '(1) YouTube viewing does not negatively affect DVD rentals, and it appears to help raise DVD sales; and (2) although Winny [a popular P2P program in Japan] file sharing negatively affects DVD rentals, it does not affect DVD sales.'"

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of the third major re-design in our 13.5 year history, and I don't think it looks half bad. The new theme represents a serious gutting of the underlying HTML and CSS, as well as all-new graphics. There will be many design wiggles, bug squashes, and compatibility glitches that survived testing, so bear with us for a bit. Please direct your bug reports and feedback (good and bad!) to Garrett Woodworth who is currently in charge of such things. Thanks to him, Wes, Vlad, Dean, Phil and Tim, who have each worked hard to get this out the door. Juggling the needs of users, editors, and various business functions is a hard job, and you guys did good.

Pickens writes "BBC reports that researchers have created software that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key so that once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied. Professor Michael Backes, who led development of the X-Pire system, says development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system. 'More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long,' says Backes. The X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date. Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed."

Zothecula writes "In the beginning, the language of the World Wide Web was English. Times change though, and the United States military's gift to civilization knows no national boundaries, and growing worldwide adoption of the internet has changed the audience make-up to such an extent that the dominant language of the internet is about to become Chinese. That's not to say the Chinese are all that comfortable with this either. There has just been an official decree requiring the use of Chinese translations for all English words and phrases in newspapers, magazines and web sites. While all countries have watched the unregulated global nature of the internet erode traditional cultural values and the integrity of national languages, it seems the Chinese powers-that-be have concluded that the purity of the Chinese language needs to be preserved."

Trailrunner7 writes "After a hack of systems belonging to online publishing giant Gawker Media that yielded more than one million passwords, the online media company's chief technology officer has announced new defense strategies aimed at placating their users and preventing further humiliating data breaches. Thomas Plunkett issued a company-wide memo on Friday that lays out the new security measures and suggests the company overlooked security concerns in the rush to develop new features."

kkleiner writes "A professor of international health in Sweden, Hans Rosling has a long history of exploring the facts and figures that surround our changing world. In the a segment of the BBC series, Rosling gives one of his most famous lectures with a new twist. Using 120,000+ bits of data and augmented reality, the exuberant professor takes us through the last 200 years of global history and its uneven growth of wealth and health." This is really worth watching. Seriously.

hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."

cgriffin21 writes "The Pentagon is taking matters into its own hands to prevent the occurrence of another WikiLeaks breach with removable media ban, preventing soldiers from using USB sticks, CDs or DVDs on any systems or servers. The directive prohibiting removable media followed the recent publication of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, which were leaked to whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks at the end of last month by a military insider."

wiredmikey writes "WikiLeaks has reported that its Web site is currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack. The attack comes around the time of an expected release of classified State Department documents, which the Obama administration says will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies."

adeelarshad82 writes "Apple's highly-anticipated iOS 4.2 update for iPad, iPhone, and the iPod touch finally arrived this morning, along with an update for Apple TV. The update includes Airplay, which enables wireless streaming of video, photos, and music from your iOS device to Apple TV. AirPlay is an exciting new development for iOS device owners who also have Apple TVs. As long as the devices are on the same wireless network, they automatically detect each other. AirPlay also lets users multitask while streaming video to an Apple TV. Unfortunately though, AirPlay is a one-way street. Users cannot stream something they rented on Apple TV to their iOS device. The iOS 4.2 update also included the introduction of AirPrint, which is the wireless printing solution for the iPad. (The ability to print to a printer attached to a local PC or Mac was dropped from the release, however.) Other minor changes Apple squeezed into this update were: better Word document fidelity in iWork, multi-tasking, and Game Center."