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Submission + - SCO files for bankruptcy

Submitted by hotdiggitydawg
hotdiggitydawg writes: Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you have all been waiting for has finally arrived. Although this is being branded a "reorganisation", have we now finally seen the back of this whole sordid affair?
Businesses

Submission + - Lackner's Air Capture of CO2 Demonstrated

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that an Arizona company, Global Research Technologies has announce the building of Klaus Lackner's carbon capture tower. The sorbent is apparently not lye but a proprietary process. DOE has been looking at CO2 capture from flu gas but this is capture directly from the atmosphere. Direct capture is putting the genie back in the bottle if it can be done more efficiently than plants do it. At 3 meters tall and pulling 18 kg of CO2 a year, this does not sound like a replacement for the good old tree yet but perhaps they'll improve."
Space

Submission + - Failed brown dwarf emits peroidic radio beams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dr Hallinan said: "It looks like brown dwarfs are the missing step between the radio emissions we see generated at Jupiter and those we observe from pulsars". From the article: "A class of "failed" star called a brown dwarf emits beams of radiation that are thousands of times brighter than any released by the Sun. The brown dwarfs are behaving like an altogether different and exotic cosmic object called a pulsar." Brown dwarfs are stellar also-rans which lack the necessary mass to kick-start nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. Greg Hallinan from the National University of Ireland in Galway and his colleagues used the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico to observe a very cool, rapidly rotating brown dwarf called TVLM 513-46546." A bright flash from the brown dwarf was observed roughly every two hours, and are very similar to those observed from pulsars. But this whole system is on a much slower and smaller scale, so it is easier for astronomers to decipher what is going on. For some time, scientists have wondered if there were similarities between this type of emission and the periodic radio beams from pulsars. Observations of TVLM 513-46546 could provide the first direct evidence for such a link.
Announcements

Submission + - An Open road for Open source-Tux and The Indy 500

Submitted by SawyerLX
SawyerLX writes: Tux gets ready to be placed on the nose of an Indy 500 car. The sponsorship is being done by some community donations at Tux500.com If all goes well, within the next month, the mascot will be placed on the sides of the cars with a big "LINUX". Could be worth it to see a TEAM LINUX car going around and around and around while shouting "GO LINUX!! GO!" on raceday. Either way, It would be nice to see a sponsor on a racing car that isn't commonly being shoved down ones throat.
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Ordered to Pay P2P Defendent's Legal Fees

Submitted by
inetsee
inetsee writes: "The RIAA has been ordered to pay legal fees to a defendant who won a lawsuit brought against her by the RIAA. Debbie Foster was sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement. She refused to settle, the case went to trial and the case was dismissed last summer. Now Judge Lee R. West of the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has ordered the RIAA to pay "reasonable attorney fees in this action under paragraph 505 of the Copyright Act". The legal fees are expected to total $50,000 or more."
Microsoft

Submission + - The Battle Heats Up Over Microsoft's OOXML

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "With Microsoft's OOXML formats at last under review by Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) of global standards bodies ISO and IEC, things are heating up dramatically in the battle between ODF and OOXML. This week saw two major developments: the first is the receipt by JTC 1 of responses from a total of 19 national bodies prior to the close of the one month Contradictions Phase of the six month ISO/IEC Fast Track adoption process, with most or all of those responses including formal "contradictions" under applicable rules. That represents an unprecedented number of early objections, given that many ISO/IEC standards are finally adopted with fewer national bodies voting at all. In contrast, INCITS, the standards organization reviewing OOXML on behalf of the United States, went along with Microsoft's conservative view of what constitutes a contradiction (e.g., a conflict so severe that two programs could not operate on the same system), and offered no objections. The second development was the filing of a bill in Texas that would require not only state executive agencies, but also Texas state universities, colleges, courts, and attorneys of the State Bar to create and save documents using only "open document formats." As defined in the bill, that would mean ODF compliant software — but not Microsoft Office. Further details on JTC1 are here, and on the Texas bill here."
Biotech

Submission + - MIT Professor on Hunger Strike

Submitted by Lisa Leone
Lisa Leone writes: MIT Professor of Biological Engineering James Sherley began a hunger strike on Monday, February 5th (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti cle/2007/02/05/AR2007020501086.html). Dr. Sherley has stated that he is on strike because he was denied tenure at MIT because of racism. Noam Chomsky and 10 other MIT professors have circulated a letter (http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/blog/2007/0 2/chomsky_calls_f.html) stating that the grievance process that Sherley went through while appealing MIT's decision not to grant him tenure may have been flawed. They cite incidents such as "conflict of interest in tenure review," "space allocation," and "problems relating to mentorship and tenure review". It can also be noted that Dr. Sherley's research (http://web.mit.edu/be/people/sherley.htm) focuses on adult stem cells, and he considers the use of embryonic stem cells to be immoral. Predictably, the pro-life community has seized upon his tenure denial as evidence for discrimination of opposite viewpoints in the stem cell community (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jan/07010206.htm l)
Privacy

Submission + - All of your packaging are belong to USPO

Submitted by
De Clarke
De Clarke writes: "Can a vendor assert ownership in perpetuity of a physical product — not digital content, prior art, intellectual value added, but just physical product? So as to assert control over all future re-use of that product? I ask because of some recent interesting experiences with the US Post Office wrt re-use of packing materials...

I recently went to mail some CDs to a guy who bought them from me on Ebay. I always re-use packing material as I'm doing a fair amount of Ebay selling these days and I abhor the wastefulness of paper/cardboard consumption, so I have piles of boxes, bags, etc at home and re-use them regularly. The right size box was a small Priority box that some other Ebayer had shipped to me when I bought something. Didn't have any other boxes of the right size. So I turned it inside out, taped it up and packed/labelled it.

Note that it was taped all over with brown strapping tape, labelled with a hand written label, and going out Media Mail with 4 CDs in it. Just an anonymous hand-packed parcel from a private customer.

At the counter the Post Office clerk asked me suspiciously, "Is that one of our Priority boxes?" and innocently enough I said "Yup, someone sent it to me and I turned it inside out and am recycling it." Much to my surprise she then said, "I can't accept that. You aren't allowed to use Priority boxes for anything but Priority mail."

My jaw dropped. The original Post Office customer had paid for the box and sent me something Priority, so the box was now a USED box — which I explained — but the PO still wanted to control what uses could and could not be made of the box. "You can recycle it," said the clerk, "or you can use it for priority mail." I said with some surprise, "But it's about the same size and shape as any number of boxes — an Amazon box, a Powells box, any CD or book mailer. It's a used box, what difference does it make where it came from?" She shook her head and insisted "We know our own boxes." Our own boxes, you note — not the property of the customer but the property, in perpetuity it seems, of the Post Office.

I wanted to protest that it's my bloody used box. I could bury it in my compost heap, light it on fire, use it to paint a picture on, cut it into paper dollies, insulate my boots with it, or any other damn thing I please — it's now scrap cardboard! However it is a waste of time and breath arguing with a jobsworth at a postal counter, so... she would not accept the shipment except as a Priority shipment at twice or three times the fee, and I had to take it home and repackage it. Growling all the way.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions, and I think the policy might actually be in violation of some trade/commerce law or other. In the meantime there is certainly the issue of Priority vs Fixed Rate boxes — the flat ones are exactly the same size. Is the PO now going to insist that you cannot reuse a Fixed Rate box, pay extra, and ship the contents Priority (crossing out the red Fixed Rate medallion)?

When I asked what the hell the rationale was behind this crazy insistence that a priority box was a priority box in perpetuity, she said that people take the free priority boxes (i.e. steal them) and use them for other purposes, whereas the cost of the box is part of the Priority Mail fee (the box is a freebie that you get as a bonus for using Priority Mail). And that the PO can't afford to have people stealing the boxes and using them as generic free cardboard boxes. It seems to me that the fundamental problem is the PO giving away free packaging, thus encouraging people to be wasteful *and* painting themselves into this ridiculous corner of asserting perpetual ownership of the cardboard (at least in its original form factor).

There seems to be a general trend for merchants to assert more and more authority over what the customer does with products after purchase, as if all material goods were actually "leased" from the vendor instead of bought outright. How long before it becomes an "offence" to — for example — dye a shirt a different colour from what the fashion designer intended, or in any way to repurpose or re-use any product, to put goods from one manufacturer into a container with another mfrs label on it, etc? Brand assertion is rapidly becoming the kapu system of our time, with the software and entertainment barons leading the way. I hear there have even been plans mooted to implant RFIDS in clothing which would interact with scanner-equipped laundry machines which would refuse to launder the clothing "incorrectly."

What does the future hold? RFID in every piece of cardboard from every vendor, so that you cannot re-use a UPS box for a USPO shipment, no matter how cut-down and folded? So that you cannot re-use a Priority Box for Media Mail or vice versa, even if you chop the box into little pieces and glue it back together? it is intriguing to speculate what degree of intactness is required by the PO to assert their perpetual ownership: if you cut out one square inch of a Priority box and tape it to another container, does it "contaminate" the other container and make it illegal to ship at a rate other than Priority?

How sane is it, in a resource-limited world, to put obstacles in the way of efficient re-use of materials?

And lastly... can this really be legal? Afterword: ever since this episode, this particular postal clerk — but no other at that branch — has treated me like a criminal, always questioning all my re-used packaging: "Is this one of our boxes? Is this one of our envelopes?" I begin to wonder whether it is some kind of idiosyncratic obsession. I hope she isn't armed."
Privacy

Your House Is About To Be Photographed 491

Posted by kdawson from the little-brother dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Photographers from a Canadian company are going house to house, shooting pictures of every house in America, in hopes of building a giant database that can be sold to banks, insurance companies, and appraisal firms. While this activity is legal (as long as the photographers don't trespass on private property to get their shots), there are obviously concerns about security and privacy. Considering that an individual can be detained and questioned by the FBI for photographing a bridge in this country, why should this Canadian company get a free pass? Tinfoil hat aside, something seems very, very fishy here." From the Arizona Star article about the photographing of Tucson: "'The [handout given to people who complain] made it sound like they're doing it for law enforcement, when in reality they're doing it for sales and marketing,' said [a City Council aide], who received several calls about the company."
Power

Submission + - Biogas - able to replace natural gas entirely

Submitted by
F-3582
F-3582 writes: "Frontal 21 features a (German) article which looks very promising:

Biogas can replace the natural gas which the European Union imports from Russia. This is the conclusion drawn by a new and yet unpublished study by the Institute of Energy and Environment in Leipzig. According to the study, the entire need for natural gas in the European Union can be met by Biogas.
The study infers that there is enough acreage along the gas pipelines to produce the required amount of biomass without having an impact on food production.

If the potential of biogas is utilized properly, the EU will be able to reduce its Carbon Dioxide emissions by ten percent. This alone would achieve the objectives set by the Kyoto protocol.
"
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Windows VIsta corrupts iPods! says Apple.

Submitted by
morpheus83
morpheus83 writes: "Apple Computer has just announced to customers who use the Windows version of its iTunes software to not upgrading to Windows Vista until it releases the next version of iTunes to fix a number of serious compatibility issues with iTunes 7.0.2 and earlier versions. The knows issues include iTunes Store purchases not playing, Cover Flow animations slowing down, contact and calenders sync problems and the most serious of all where iPods with "Enable Disk Use" option turned off may be unable to update or restore iPod software, and make changes to iPod settings."
Security

Submission + - How Prevalent Are XSS Vulnerabilities

Submitted by chikenshak
chikenshak writes: Last year, Michael Sutton discussed an experiment which leveraged the Google Search API to identify web sites vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Looks like he's at it again, but this time he's leveraging Google to identify sites vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting (XSS). He discusses automating a process which found 17.3% of the sites that he looked at to be vulnerable and further states that once the methodology and tool were in place that it took 'less than five minutes...to identify 47 vulnerable websites'. While he doesn't name names, he does state that the vulnerable sites included 'a major sports network and one of the largest newspapers in the US'.

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