Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - NASA researching LENR (aka cold fusion) and they are not alone. (phys.org)

Submitted by Moabz
Moabz writes: There have been quite a few news reports about LENR lately. Unlike the drama about the Rossi e-cat, there seems to be a revival in legitimate scientific research into this area. University of Missouri is running a 5.5 million USD research project, and scientists at other institutes like Purdue, NASA, MIT, SRI, NRL are all looking into it.

A couple of days ago the Nuclear Energy Institute was talking about it on their facebook page and the American Nuclear Society posted a similar story on their "nuclear cafe". The University of Missouri will host a cold fusion conference in July this year and the topic will also be discussed in a talk at the upcoming "Nuclear & Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2013) organized by the ANS starting coming Monday.
Transportation

The Copyright Battle Over Custom-Built Batmobiles 194

Posted by samzenpus from the lost-their-wheels dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Eriq Gardner writes that Warner Brothers is suing California resident Mark Towle, a specialist in customizing replicas of automobiles featured in films and TV shows, for selling replicas of automobiles from the 1960s ABC series Batman by arguing that copyright protection extends to the overall look and feel of the Batmobile. The case hinges on what exactly is a Batmobile — an automobile or a piece of intellectual property? Warner attorney J. Andrew Coombs argues in legal papers that the Batmobile incorporates trademarks with distinctive secondary meaning and that by selling an unauthorized replica, Towle is likely to confuse consumers about whether the cars are DC products are not. Towle's attorney Larry Zerner, argues that automobiles aren't copyrightable. 'It is black letter law that useful articles, such as automobiles, do not qualify as "sculptural works" and are thus not eligible for copyright protection,' writes Zerner adding that a decision to affirm copyright elements of automotive design features could be exploited by automobile manufacturers. 'The implications of a ruling upholding this standard are easy to imagine. Ford, Toyota, Ferrari and Honda would start publishing comic books, so that they could protect what, up until now, was unprotectable.'"

Submission + - Homosexuality's Cause Isn't Genetics, but the Answer Does Lie in the Womb

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As long as natural selection has been an accepted scientific theory, homosexuality has been a riddle for scientists. If a person is attracted to people of the same gender, he or she cannot have biological children with their chosen partner. For most of history, before in vitro fertilization, that meant that homosexuality could not be carried out genetically. In addition, because homosexuality makes it more difficult to have biological children, researchers could not understand how it was possible that the trait would survive across genetics. However, scientists believe that they may have cracked the code, and the answer does lie slightly in genetics.
Input Devices

Submission + - Razer Mouse Crippled Without Online Activation

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: At Overclock.net forums, nickname channelx99 tells a story about a frustrating obstacle when he begun to use a Razer Naga mouse. A software is required to enable the full functionality of the mouse. The user was greeted by a login screen which couldn't be bypassed, and even worse, the account creation didn't work at the time. It turned out that the Razor activation server was down. As result, channelx99 was left out in the cold, and he wraps up 'Nowhere on the box does it say anything about needing an internet connection to "activate" a mouse. If the servers go down in the future, anyone who buys this mouse is out of luck.'
Businesses

Submission + - GMO documentary released online for free (geneticroulettemovie.com)

Submitted by
Zibodiz
Zibodiz writes: "Many here on Slashdot are actively in support of GMO studies, and hence probably don't want to support an anti-GMO documentary. If you want to see what 'the other side' has to say, without funding them by purchasing the DVD, the new documentary has been released online for free until Saturday, 9/22/12.
From the site:
When the US government ignored repeated warnings by its own scientists and allowed untested genetically modified (GM) crops into our environment and food supply, it was a gamble of unprecedented proportions. The health of all living things and all future generations were put at risk by an infant technology.

After two decades, physicians and scientists have uncovered a grave trend. The same serious health problems found in lab animals, livestock, and pets that have been fed GM foods are now on the rise in the US population. And when people and animals stop eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs), their health improves.

This seminal documentary provides compelling evidence to help explain the deteriorating health of Americans, especially among children, and offers a recipe for protecting ourselves and our future."

Submission + - Lack of copyright in the 19th century made Germany become the mightiest (spiegel.de)

Submitted by
alexandre_ganso
alexandre_ganso writes: "While the British Empire was at the top of the world, Germany was a agrarian country. Then something changed. Its rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century, according to a German historian, is due to an absence of copyright law, as the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might."
Emulation (Games)

Video The State of the Diablo 3 Beta (Two Videos) Screenshot-sm 237

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-awhile-and-listen dept.
It's been almost four years since Diablo 3 was announced, and its development began years earlier. Its predecessors helped define the action RPG genre, so anticipation is high among fans of the franchise. The game has undergone closed beta testing since September, and a lot has changed since then. Now that Blizzard has settled on May 15th as a release date, we thought this would be a good time to take a look at the state of the game as it currently exists. These two videos show actual gameplay of the various classes, explain the skill and rune systems, take a look at the auction house, and go over many of the other changes since the beginning of development. (Click to play the first video, and the second one will play automagically after the first one ends.)
Space

Submission + - Astronomers confirm a hot and steamy exoplanet (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "The extrasolar planet GJ 1214b was discovered in 2009 orbiting a nearby (40 light year distant) red dwarf star. The planet was quickly found to have a thick atmosphere, but it wasn't known at the time if the composition was water vapor or a hazy shroud of particulates. New Hubble observations confirm the atmosphere of the exoplanet is rich in water, comprising up to 50% of the atmosphere's mass. At 230 degrees Celsius, this means the planet is shrouded in steam."

Submission + - The internet not helping the underdogs (buttonera.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been following three new business start-ups for over a year, all of which have chosen to enter the highly competitive jewellery and accessories market. Despite flashy websites and social campaigns (not to mention the dirty Adwords word), each business has generated little e-traffic that turned to sales. Instead each business has survived using the good old fashioned face-to-face word of month to generate sales. So not being a marketeer, I have been asking myself increasingly more is, is the internet naturally biased against the underdog start-up and therefore there is no need for them to do anything until they grow on main-street?
Google

Submission + - Google 'Solve for X' Co-Opted From Project 10^100 (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Remember Google's Project 10^100 — the campaign Google launched for its 10th birthday through which it would spend $10 million on the best world-saving idea? It seems the company may be using the ideas it didn't select and passing them off as their own. One Project 10^100 submitter says his project idea for a Quantum League — which would "organize, host, and fund global-scale competitions focused on solving the largest, most complex problems facing the world today" — sounds eerily similar to Google's brand new "Solve for X" project.
Cloud

Submission + - Why Corporate Cloud Storage Doesn't Add Up (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Deep End's Paul Venezia sees few business IT situations that could make good use of full cloud storage services, outside of startups. 'As IT continues in a zigzag path of figuring out what to do with this "cloud" stuff, it seems that some companies are getting ahead of themselves. In particular, the concept of outsourcing storage to a cloud provider puzzles me. I can see some benefits in other cloud services (though I still find the trust aspect difficult to reconcile), but full-on cloud storage offerings don't make sense outside of some rare circumstances.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.

Close