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PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles Screenshot-sm 361

Posted by samzenpus from the load-photon-torpedoes dept.
darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."
United States

Submission + - White House Plans Open Access for Research

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President is launching a “Public Access Policy Forum” to determine whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented. "The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications," OSTP says in the request for information. "The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms." The OSTP will conduct an interactive, online discussion that will focus on three major questions: Should this policy be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information? What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? "It's very encouraging to see the Obama Administration focus on ensuring public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research as a key way to maximize our collective investment in science," says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition"

Submission + - House outlaws Obama's NASA intervention (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by TopSpin
TopSpin writes: NASA's Constellation Program and Ares rockets appear to have strong support in Congress. An appropriations bill passed by the House includes language that bars "any efforts by NASA to cancel or change the current Constellation program without first seeking approval of Congress." The Administration's appointed NASA leadership is being publicly hostile towards its traditional aerospace affiliations. As Charles Bolden put it to industry execs, "We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year," and "Some of you are not going to like me because we are not going to do the same kind of things we've always done."
Debian

FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux 206

Posted by Soulskill from the changing-horses dept.
dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."

Comment Re:Identity Authenticity (Score 2, Informative) 537

by westlake (#29777619) Attached to: Kaspersky CEO Wants End To Online Anonymity

there is not much you can do if that person is at the other side of the globe. Yes you can call police, but they will seldom do something.

Don't count on it:

The federal government can extradite a man to face a first-degree murder trial in the United States on charges of killing his wife, even though the evidence presented against him does not meet the test for the same charge in Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled. Top court okays U.S. extradition [Oct 16]

A Briton accused of hacking into secret military and Nasa computers has had his extradition to the US put on hold as new psychiatric evidence is considered. Hacker's extradition put on hold

This is Gary McKinnon pitching his last-ditch "Asperger's defense" to the Home Office.

The Swiss Justice Ministry rejected on Tuesday film director Roman Polanski's appeal for an immediate release from custody. Polanski was arrested September 26 upon arriving in Zürich, Switzerland, to attend a film festival and has remained in prison ever since, awaiting possible extradition to the United States. Roman Polanski denied bail in Switzerland

Comedian and talk-show host Whoopi Goldberg had on The View on September 29 tried to defend his actions.
"It wasn't rape-rape," she had said.
The next day, Debra Tate, sister of Polanski's murdered wife, Sharon, argued on the Today show that it was consensual sex even though the victim was 13.
"There's rape, and then there's rape," she said.

Shannon Gilreath, Wake Forest University Law Professor for Interdisciplinary Study and a nationally recognized scholar on issues of equality, sexual minorities, and constitutional interpretation, believes there are really two perspectives involved in the case. "One is the perspective of people who look for any reason imaginable to excuse the victimization of women and girls that is rampant: it happened long ago, she was mature for her age-she wanted it," he explained. On the other side of this are those of us who are saying that every victim matters, even those victimized by people rich enough to evade jurisdiction for many years."

But Gilreath says that statutory rape is a clear offense under the law, and at the age of 13, the girl was underage. Polanski defenders 'define' rape

Comment Re:wii is fail (Score 1) 119

i don't own a single game console. the only game i play is spring rts which is a brillant free rts.

What do you do when you have friends over and you want to play a round of video games? Or do all your friends own laptops and carry them everywhere?

3rd parties are the only way you'll get fresh air in that stale room

There are games for Wii published by third-party major labels. It's just that third parties do an absolutely fecal job of promoting them to players.
The Courts

Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling 172

Posted by samzenpus from the technology-makes-life-easier dept.
davecb writes "A California judge is likely to order a Berkeley city initiative back on the ballot because of local officials' mishandling of electronic voting machine data. A recount was not possible because the city failed to share necessary voting records, a violation of election laws. In a preliminary ruling Thursday, Judge Winifred Smith of the Alameda County Superior Court indicated she would nullify the defeat of a medical marijuana proposal in Berkeley in 2004 and order the measure put back on the ballot in a later election."
Privacy

Submission + - Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued

Submitted by
RobertB-DC
RobertB-DC writes: "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."
Businesses

eBay Bargains Soon To Be A Thing Of The Past? 488

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the capitalists-attacking-capitalism dept.
ScaredOfTheMan writes to mention that, as expected, companies are utilizing the decision in Leegin Creative Leater Products v. PSKS to force the take-down of auctions on eBay because auctions are priced too low or even stating the auction itself is an infringement of their intellectual property rights.
Media

Submission + - BBC bans all phone in competitions

Submitted by kooky45
kooky45 writes: The BBC has been caught cheating viewers out of thousands of pounds by faking phone-in competitions across a wide variety of its programs, including flagship charity events like Children in Need. In response they have banned all phone in competitions on their TV and radio channels, and will be pulling competitions from online services very soon. This latest embarrassment follows last week when the BBC was fined £50,000 for faking another phone-in on Blue Peter, their most popular children's show. This is just the most public revelation in a scandal that is going to get bigger in TV media.
The Courts

Submission + - Revote likey because Diebold recount impossible

Submitted by Aidtopia
Aidtopia writes: A judge in Berkeley, California, has ordered a re-vote in a 2004 medical marijuana measure which had lost by fewer than 200 votes. A group supporting the measure requested a recount, which was meaningless since the Diebold electronic voting machines didn't produce physical ballots. The group petitioned for audit logs and other supporting documentation. The Registrar initially gave them the run-around, and, with a lawsuit pending, shipped the machines back to the manufacturer where 96% of the stored votes were erased. The ruling is tentative. The revote, if it happens, will be in the 2008 general election, using different electronic voting machines that produce a paper trail.
Software

Submission + - Open Standards Threatened in Europe (lwn.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From Open Standards: 'On June 29 2007, the European Commission agency IDABC published a document revising the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the Architecture Guidelines (AG). This second version wants to 'update' the previous version of the EIF but, contrary to the first version, it threatens explictely the good process of more open standards that had been a long time push of IDABC. "EIF v2.0 should facilitate the most profitable business model(s) of cost versus public value, under proper recognition of intellectual property rights, if any. The support for multiple standards allows a migration towards open standards when appropriate in the long run." There are unacceptable drawbacks from the previous "EIF 2004" that promoted the use of open standards as defined in this European definition, the use of free and open source softwares as well as XML.'

Who also reads 'Microsoft and OOXML out again to find some weak spot' between the lines? Help signing the campaign and sending complaining emails in the request for comments.
The Courts

Submission + - Army Sergeant in Tennessee Sues RIAA

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A 33-year old Army Sergeant stationed at Fort Campbell, in Tennessee, has counterclaimed against the record company palintiffs, in Warner v. Paternoster. His counterclaim seeks forfeiture of the plaintiffs' copyrights, and other relief, against Warner, BMG, Arista, Virgin,, and UMG, based on his claim (pdf) that they had colluded together in violation of the antitrust laws, had deliberately padded their court filing with embarrassing material in order to "shame" the defendant into paying a settlement for actions he did not commit, and "conspired together on other activities ...including: (1) bringing, without investigation sufficient to establish that the allegations ... have evidentiary support, lawsuits against persons who are not specifically known to have infringed copyrights, including persons who are deceased, disabled or who lack knowledge of how to use computers or download files from the internet; (2) making false and unsupported allegations ... by making the unwarranted and technologically erroneous assumption that an Internet Protocol address is a unique identifier of a computer or an individual; (3) using a corporation as their agent to make extortionate threats to take criminal action and to defame defendants' names and credit, in order to force defendants to pay sums which have no relation to plaintiffs' actual damages, if any, and by delivering releases to settling defendants (few of whom are represented by counsel) which are fraudulent in that they do not constitute true releases of all claims by putative plaintiffs, thereby misleading settling defendants into erroneously believing that they cannot be sued again; (4) jointly agreeing upon exorbitant settlement amounts which are nonnegotiable and are arbitrarily increased at set intervals thereby depriving the defendants in these actions of any reasonable opportunity to negotiate a settlement; (5) commencing ex parte "John Doe" lawsuits which they have no intention of pursuing, but by means of which they are able to communicate with District Judges, Magistrate Judges, and other judicial officials on a daily basis, without providing defendants with notice or opportunity to be heard, in violation of attorneys' ethical obligations as officers of the Courts; (6) invading the privacy of these "John Doe" defendants by then serving subpoenas on Internet Service Providers without notice to the putative defendants; (7)withdrawing such actions upon being challenged and thereby preventing defendants from obtaining relief for having to defend them; and (8) engaging in other unconscionable conduct.....[They] have commenced tens of thousands of actions in the District Courts of the United States in the past five years, the overwhelming majority of which have resulted either in default judgments or extortionate settlements far in excess of any actual damages incurred by Counter-Defendants... Such actions represent an attempt by Counter-Defendants to secure for themselves rights far exceeding those provided by copyright laws....""
Google

Submission + - Google Should NOT Protect Copyright Thieves 3

Submitted by DKC
DKC writes: Plagiarism and copyright infringement have always been a problem for writers all over the world. The Internet only made it easier, and more profitable. Unfortunately, Blogspot and Google are not only aware of this problem, they seem to be throwing obstacles in the path of those who seek justice. Why can't they think about protecting the real authors, instead of their bloggers? Where's the corporate responsibility and leadership we have come to expect from Google? Are we supposed to sit still and watch these thieves take credit and payment for our hard work?

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