harajukboy writes "Businessweek.com shows us how the famous LEGO bricks are made. Among the new facts I picked up was that LEGO is the largest tire manufacturer in the world, and that the process is so air tight that only 18 of 1 million pieces are considered defective." I knew I was getting old when I first realized that these kids today with their modern legos have it too easy, what with all those crazy custom pieces. Why, when I was a kid, we had to use our imagination to build stuff.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Virginia and California have cooked a soup of fullerenes which produced an improbable buckyegg. The egg-shaped structure of their 'buckyballs' was a complete surprise for the researchers. In fact, they wanted to trap some atoms of terbium in a buckyball "to make compounds that could be both medically useful and well-tolerated in the body." And they obtained a buckyegg which both violates some chemistry laws and the FIFA soccer laws which were used until the last World Cup. Read more for additional references and a picture of this buckyegg carrying metal molecules."

Glenn Fleishman writes "Panasonic's avionics division may relaunch Connexion by Boeing by using similar technology that's better, cheaper, and lighter. The company said today that they were looking to get airlines to commit to 500 planes within 60 days, and already had 150 aircraft committed. They'd still use Ku band, but have a cheaper and smaller set of leases. Connexion had at least $120m in yearly fixed expenses, a large part of which was transponder licenses. The new service would provide 12 Mbps down and 3 Mbps (versus Connexion's 5 Mbps/1 Mbps), and be priced conceivably as low as $10 per session wholesale, with airlines choosing to not mark up rates. With that higher rate, even with latency, in-flight VoIP seems more achievable at a reasonable cost, although some airlines may choose to block VoIP services. I reported for The Economist magazine last week about mobile phones in flight (services coming in Europe in 2007). Three U.S. airlines told me that American passengers have very low interest or negative interest in allowing any voice (cell or otherwise) during flights. Europeans, with shorter flights and lower expectations of privacy perhaps, are more open to it." We covered the story back when Boeing decided to scrap Connexion.

seriv writes "The Register reports that Google plans to use PC microphones to collect statistics on a user's environment. Peter Norvig, who directs research at Google, told Technology Review that this software would start to show up in Google software 'sooner rather than later'. The software collects short sound clips and removes background noise. Google then targets its ads based on the statistics collected. With the current level of online privacy, this new level of invasion would seem to have frightening possibilities."

SirClicksalot writes "The DVD Copy Control Association has released a statement (pdf) announcing that it will make adaptations to the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to protect DVDs. The association, made up of Hollywood studios, consumer electronics and software companies, licenses CSS to the DVD industry to protect content. The changes will allow home users to legally burn purchased movie downloads to special CSS protected DVDs, compatible with existing DVD players."

GiggidyGiggidy writes "Our friends at IMDB.com are reporting that Matt Damon has been cast to play a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek Movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Is this the end of the Star Trek series we fans know and love, or the beginning of something bigger and better for the series?"

Grooves writes "Microsoft has shipped a 'Vista Industrial Design Toolkit' to PC manufacturers, meant to encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing. From the article: 'From color palettes to suggestions about how the power and reset buttons should appear, the kit basically describes Microsoft's vision of what a Vista PC should look like. The look features accelerated curves and purposeful contrast, among other qualities.' The report goes on to say that Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.' Sound familiar? It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this."

Gamespot has the news that Square has banned some 2000 accounts from FFXI, and Eurogamer reports that Blizzard has banned 59,000 accounts from World of Warcraft. The bans come as game publishers continue to attempt to crack down on Real Money Traders in their titles. From the FFXI article: "The news follows Square Enix's crackdown of 250 accounts in June over money-farming and real-money trading, which is the practice of selling in-game currency for cash in the real world. Concerns over real-money trading prompted the Japanese government--particularly worried about large-scale money-mining operations in video games--to launch its own investigation last week."

A few quick updates on some recent Slashdot stories in Slashback tonight. We have some additional information on the ever-interesting hundred-dollar laptop, the ongoing flap over the trademarking of 'Web 2.0' for conferences, and the shutdown of the Pirate Bay site. Read on for details.

xcaverx writes "Learning from failure is a hallmark of the technology business. Nick Baker, a 37-year-old system architect at Microsoft, knows that well. A British transplant at the software giant's Silicon Valley campus, he went from failed project to failed project in his career. He worked on such dogs as Apple Computer's defunct video card business, 3DO's failed game consoles, a chip startup that screwed up a deal with Nintendo, the never successful WebTV and Microsoft's canceled Ultimate TV satellite TV recorder. But Baker finally has a hot seller with the Xbox 360, Microsoft's video game console launched worldwide last holiday season."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Scientists from NASA and two U.S. universities are using a 20-G centrifuge machine that can simulate up to 20 times the terrestrial gravity to evaluate the effects of hypergravity on humans. This 58-foot diameter centrifuge has three cabins, one for humans -- limited to 12.5 G -- and two for objects and flying hardware. The goal of these experiments is to reduce the adverse effects that space travel can have on astronauts' physical heath. But by studying the health benefits of exercise on astronauts, the researchers also hope to help the rapidly growing senior population who, like astronauts, doesn't exercise much. Read more for additional details and pictures about this NASA's machine."

Dracophile asks: "The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran a front-page article about a 'smart card' to access government services and that it would double as a national identity card. The article points out that the current Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, who fiercely opposed from opposition the Australia Card idea in 1985, is now a supporter. The article goes on to say that about 100 nations have some form of ID card. Is your country one of them? What concerns were raised? How were they addressed? Have welfare fraud and other identity-related crimes decreased? Have National ID cards improved or deteriorated conditions where you live?"

ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has done a roundup of eight sideways-gusting CPU coolers under fifty bucks to see if they can keep an overclocked Athlon FX-60 from welding itself to the motherboard. In addition to temperature testing, much emphasis was placed on noise reduction, which with some coolers can be improved by adjusting fan speed or even removing the fan from the cooler."

rfunches writes "A Texas jury has awarded $133 million in damages to David Colvin, after finding Microsoft and Autodesk guilty of infringing upon Colvin's two software patents for software antipiracy protection. Colvin's company, z4 Technologies Inc., filed patents for 'passwords and codes assigned to individual software copies to prevent unauthorized copies.' Microsoft was ordered to pay $115 million, and Autodesk $18 million for infringement of the product-activation schemes. A spokesman from Microsoft contends that 'Microsoft developed its own product-activation technologies well before z4 Technologies filed for its patent.' Appeals are expected."

1up is running an interview with the Penny Arcade guys, originally done for Computer Gaming World. They talk comics, the industry, Harlan Ellison, and (of course) games. From the article: "Jerry Holkins: My favorite quote comes from this one strip where I say 'Fetch it, and gaze upon your ruined world.' I'm not sure that anybody else really pays attention to that particular comic strip, but it's called 'They Hailed From Canadon,' and it's just this...it starts out in this weird, Penny Arcade way, but it has these spacefaring dogmen that for some reason really do it for me. I don't know why."