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Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411

Posted by timothy from the erasing-the-analog-hole dept.
SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"
Space

Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the teach-them-to-foxtrot dept.
Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."
Image

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."
Media

Court Says Fair Use May Hold In Some RIAA Cases 145

Posted by timothy from the generosity-knows-no-bounds dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston RIAA case in which the defendant, represented by Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, admitted liability at his trial, the Court has entered judgment in favor of the RIAA for the monetary award of $625,000 fixed by the jury. However, the Court left open the questions of whether the amount is excessive, and whether attorneys fees and/or sanctions should be awarded, and has scheduled further briefing of those issues. The Court granted the RIAA much, but not all, of the injunctive relief it requested. In an unusual step, the Court issued a 38-page decision (PDF) explaining in some detail the Court's views of the Fair Use defense in the context of cases like this, and indicating that there are some factual scenarios — not applicable in this particular case — in which it might have concluded that the claims were barred by Fair Use. E.g. it declined to rule out the possibility that creation of mp3 files exclusively for space-shifting purposes from audio CDs a defendant had previously purchased might constitute fair use."

Comment germany? go figure... (Score 1) 472

by The_Rook (#28368675) Attached to: Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany

i'd have thought gold vending machines would've hit japan first

http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=japan+vending+machine&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=gZ05Stf8MMaGtgeApsjVDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

they sell everything in vending machines in japan.

http://www.techfresh.net/japanese-vending-machine/

Comment missing media - the syquest drive (Score 1) 160

by The_Rook (#27086677) Attached to: A History of Storage, From Punch Cards To Blu-ray

the article completely ignores the syquest drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyQuest_Technology

before e-mail and cd-r rendered them obsolete, syqyest's removable hard drives were the standard in the prepress and publishing industry. syquest 44 and 88 megabyte drives were traded around like floppies. especially since floppies couldn't hold a multi-megabyte digital image.

back in the '90s you could hardly find a graphic designer who didn't have a 5.25" syquest drive (attached to their mac) and at least a handful of discs in a drawer. the discs were expensive (about a hundred bucks, i think) and people got annoyed when one wasn't returned by the prepress or print shop. on the other hand, they were so ubiquitous that sending one out with picture files almost always prompted the return of another with a different set of files. with luck, you could always maintain an inventory of a handful of discs.
Censorship

Submission + - creationists violate copyright (blogspot.com)

Submitted by The_Rook
The_Rook writes: the discovery institute copied Harvard University's BioVisions video, "The Inner Life of the Cell", stripped out Harvard's copyright notice, credits, and narration, and inserted their own creationist friendly narration and renamed the video "The Cell as an automated city". pretty insidious, as suggesting that a cell is like a city is to suggest that it was designed rather than evolved. it should also be of interest because the discovery institute, really more of a lawyer mill than a scientific institution, engaged in a particularly egregious example of copyright infringement.
Media

Submission + - Should Copyrights Last as Long as ideas?

Submitted by The_Rook
The_Rook writes: In an opinion piece in the New York Times, "A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright?" Mark Helprin, author of "Winter's Tale," equates copyrights on written works like novels, etc. with physical assets like houses, flour mills, travel agencies, and newspapers. Apparently 70 years after his death is not enough for Mr. Helprin. He wants his descendants to own the copyright on his works forever.

On the way he laments that the Constitution says copyrights are to be granted for "limited times" and is thankful that congress can and has periodically extended the length of copyrights.

Lost on Mr. Helprin is that the entire value of an idea is it's usefulness to others and that public domain enriches more than "stockholders of various businesses."

The essay is not particularly well thought out and is perhaps beneath the attention of the Slashdot community. But it needs to be refuted on the grounds that is perpetuates the fallacy that intellectual property is the same as physical property and that authors have always had right to their intellectual property (which the nasty government has seen fit to take away) rather than the real situation where intellectual property is a fiction created by the government to encourage the creation and publication of creative works.

The article can be read here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20helpri n.html?pagewanted=1

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