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The Courts

Submission + - Lawsuit Against RIAA Tries to Stop Them All (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Tanya Anderson has filed an amended complaint against the RIAA. One of the more interesting provisions in it is in the 18th claim, which seeks to stop the RIAA from 'continuing to engage in criminal investigation of private American citizens', no doubt referring to the unlicensed MediaSentry investigations. If granted, that could shut down the RIAA lawsuits entirely. Naturally, the RIAA doesn't like this at all. First, they got the judge to agree that the original complaint was too light on the details, so it was amended. Now the RIAA complains that it's too long, because it's 108 pages filled with the RIAA's dirty laundry. You may remember this as the countersuit to the lawsuit where RIAA lawyers tried to grill a 10-year-old girl, only later to drop their case for lack of evidence and have the mother sue them for malicious prosecution."
Software

Women's Attractiveness Judged by Software 348

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the computers-can-now-tell-you-how-ugly-you-are dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Haaretz, an Israeli team of computer scientists has developed software that ranks facial attractiveness of women. Instead of identifying basic facial characteristics, this software has been designed to make aesthetic judgments — after training. The lead researcher said this program 'constitutes a substantial advance in the development of artificial intelligence.' It is interesting to note that the researchers focused on women only. Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade."
The Internet

World's Fastest Net Link 'Used To Dry Laundry' 135

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-gets-pretty-hot-in-there dept.
praps writes "Last summer a 75-year-old woman from central Sweden became the envy of the IT world with her scorching 40Gbps internet connection. 1,500 simultaneous HDTV channels or a whole high definition DVD downloaded in two seconds were hers for the taking. Now Sigbritt Löthberg could soon be treated to an incredible 100 Gbps link — but it may not be put to great use. According to the head of the ultra-fast fiber connection project, Sigbritt mostly used the gear 'to dry her laundry.'"
Hardware Hacking

Creative Goes After Driver Modder 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shame-on-you-creative dept.
FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers."
Earth

China to Use Silver Iodide & Dry Ice to Control the Weather 387

Posted by Zonk from the definitely-not-a-step-towards-a-weather-machine dept.
eldavojohn writes "While we made light of it before, the MIT Review is taking a serious look at China's plans to prevent rain over their open 91,000 seat arena for The Olympics. From the article: 'China's national weather-engineering program is also the world's largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers — mostly peasant farmers — who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.' They plan on demonstrating their ability to control the weather to the rest of the world, and expanding on their abilities in the future."
The Internet

Acid3 Race In Full Swing, Opera Overtakes Safari 261

Posted by Zonk from the going-for-the-gold dept.
enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%. Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.
Government

Aerial Drones To Help Cops In Miami 274

Posted by Zonk from the now-we-just-need-a-good-rigger dept.
Catoonsis writes "Reuters is reporting that 'Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.' The police force is planning to make use of a small aerial drone, capable of hovering and quick maneuvers, to monitor the Miami-Dade area and alert officers of potential problems. The device, manufactured by Honeywell, is awaiting FAA approval before it can be put into use. This decision is just the latest chapter in the developing relationship between law enforcement and robotic assistants. 'U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well. This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.'"

The Coming Digital Presidency 464

Posted by CmdrTaco from the your-vote-counts-as-much-as-they-want-it-to dept.
Ranjit Mathoda writes "Marc Andreeson, the cofounder of Netscape, met Senator Barack Obama in early 2007. Mr. Andreeson recalls, "In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more." As a social organizer and a lover of new technologies, Mr. Obama could be expected to make good use of such tools in getting elected, and he has done so. What may not be as obvious is that Mr. Obama appears to have a keen interest in using such technologies in the act of governing. And whether Mr. Obama becomes president, or Mrs. Clinton or Mr. McCain do, these new tools have the potential to transform how government operates."
Microsoft

Submission + - Why Microsoft won't have Blu-ray on the Xbox (thestandard.com) 1

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Ever since Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD players, many Xbox 360 owners have been wondering when Microsoft will offer some sort of Blu-ray option for the Xbox 360. The answer: Probably never. Microsoft's product manager for the Xbox 360 has told Reuters that Microsoft is not in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association. Why not? The Industry Standard points to HDi, an obscure Microsoft technology that was part of the HD DVD interactivity layer. HDi may be dead on physical media, but it could potentially be applied to other Microsoft HD-compatible technologies such as Xbox Live Arcade and Windows Media Center, and be part of a long-term play to own a big share of the market for HD content delivered over the Internet."
The Internet

Submission + - The Day the Internet Broke (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Smordnys s'regrepsA
Smordnys s'regrepsA writes: "The news — coming off Ars Technica — reports that trolls have gained a new source of lulz, thanks largely to the FBI.

In a recent case Roderick Vosburgh, student of Temple University, "was convicted of clicking on an illegal link and possession of child porn due to two tiny thumbnails that the FBI believes depict underage females." The link in question is one of the FBI-created-probable-cause-inducing addresses we have previously covered.

The twist? Roderick had been trolled into clicking a fraudulent link. Many /.ers predicted using the FBI's new methods to troll, but this seems striking not for the FBI raid itself, but the subsequent conviction on such little evidence, and in spite of the council of many expert witnesses."
Math

Calculating the Date of Easter 336

Posted by kdawson from the computus-giganticus dept.
The God Plays Dice blog has an entertaining post on how the date of Easter is calculated. Wikipedia has all the messy details of course, but the blog makes a good introduction to the topic. "Easter is the date of the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21... [T]he cycle of Easter dates repeat themselves every 5,700,000 years. The cycle of epacts (which encode the date of the full moon) in the Julian calendar repeat every nineteen years. There are two corrections made to the epact, each of which depend[s] only on the century; one repeats (modulo 30, which is what matters) every 120 centuries, the other every 375 centuries, so the [p]air of them repeat every 300,000 years. The days of the week are on a 400-year cycle, which doesn't matter because that's a factor of 300,000. So the Easter cycle has length the least common multiple of 19 and 300,000, which is 5,700,000 [years]."
Republicans

White House Says Hard Drives Were Destroyed 411

Posted by kdawson from the just-in-case dept.
wanderindiana brings us an update on the White House missing emails mess, which we have discussed before. It seems the hard drives of many White House computers are gone beyond the possibility of recovery. Is it unusual in your experience for, say, a corporate IT department to destroy hard drives by policy? "Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed."
Government

UK Police Want DNA of 'Potential Offenders' 578

Posted by Zonk from the when-everyone-is-special-nobody-is dept.
mrogers writes "British police want to collect DNA samples from children as young as five who 'exhibit behavior indicating they may become criminals in later life'. A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers argued that since some schools already take pupils' fingerprints, the collection and permanent storage of DNA samples was the logical next step. And of course, if anyone argues that branding naughty five-year-olds as lifelong criminals will stigmatize them, the proposed solution will be to take samples from all children."
Patents

Apple Sued Over Fundamental iTunes Model 257

Posted by Zonk from the who-says-patent-reform-isn't-working dept.
tuxgeek writes "A suit was filed Wednesday against Apple over the possibility that the iTunes music store and iPod are 'illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet.' ZapMedia Services filed the suit, accusing the well-known OS and computer manufacturer of violating patents obtained just recently. 'The patents in question cover a way of sending music and other digital content from servers to multiple media players, a broad description that could also apply to a wide swath of other companies selling digital media and the devices to play it. ZapMedia said it met with Apple to discuss licensing, but Apple rebuffed the offer.'"
Communications

Nerve-tapping Neckband Allows 'Telepathic' Chat 205

Posted by samzenpus from the mouth-of-cyber-sauron dept.
ZonkerWilliam writes "Newscientist has an interesting article on tapping the nerve impulses going from the brain to the vocal chords, allowing for 'Voiceless' phone calls. "With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerized voice." It's not quite telepathy, but it's pretty close."

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