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Certainly theists trying to ascribe some form of theism to Einstein are mistaken. However, the atheists can be just as bad. I have already seen in Internet forums that atheists are using this newly found statement of Einstein to boost their cause, arguing along the lines of "Einstein was a genius, and he didn't believe in God, so clearly rejecting the existence of God is the smart thing to do." Einstein, though a brilliant physicist, was not trained in the philosophy of religion. It's a pity that when atheists could refer to eminent philosophers of religion like Mackie in his The Miracle of Theism (Oxford University Press, 1983) or (pre-conversion) Flew as examples of how to argue well against theism, they instead use completely inappropriate figures like Einstein.

Reading it, you'd think this would stop the theists from repeatedly dragging the man unwillingly into their camp; but since this well-known remark...

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it

...didn't do it... somehow, I doubt this new letter will, either, clear as it may be.

robipilot writes "Mac stolen, Mac comes online, owner connects using 'Back to My Mac,' owner takes picture of culprit, and voila, criminal caught. OK, it wasn't quite that simple, but here's an interesting story of using some built-in technology on the Mac to recover a stolen laptop."

Eye Log writes "The United States is a big fan of leaning on other countries to tighten IP and copyright protection, but has a tendency to ignore its own obligations when it doesn't get its way. 'Two ongoing cases illustrate the point. First, the European Union is pushing for the US to change a pair of rules that it calls "long-standing trade irritants." Despite World Trade Organization rulings against it, the US has not yet corrected either case for a period of several years... Apparently, it's easy to get hot and bothered when it's industries from your country that claim to be badly affected by rules elsewhere. When it comes to the claims of other countries, though, even claims that have been validated by the WTO, it's much easier to see the complexity of the situation, to spend years arguing those complexities before judges, and to do nothing even when compelled by rulings.'"

Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.

North American switchgrass produces more than 540% more energy than that needed to grow it and convert it to ethanol, field studies show

http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=81b6e0aa191bcff27cb1865300646621

The Thai sure do love their king; anyone who has visited on a Monday surely has noticed the sea of yellow shirts in celebration of the King's birthday, which falls on a Monday. So great is their love for him, that it is a crime to say anything bad about him or the government. So, when a message board on sameskybooks.org (not sameskybooks.com, as incorrectly reported by the AP) criticized the monarchy, Thai officials shut down the political website, first threatening to shut down its ISP, Netservice. Although the site in question was indeed a radical political website, the content for which the site was shut down came from a public message board. Should a site be held accountable for posts that they did not create? Well, this is not the first time the Thai government has banned a site in such a way -- back in April, Thailand banned all of YouTube for a supposedly offensive video. What's next? The Bangkok Post has written up the story, should it be banned as well?

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http://techdirt.com/articles/20080107/11335743.shtml

Kurtz'sKompund writes "OpenVZ and Ubuntu Linux developers on Tuesday will release pre-built Ubuntu virtual machines, designed to allow system administrators to deploy a specialised Ubuntu system in about a minute. http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=11055"
http://kurtz.vnunetblogs.com/

Novakoala writes "A report from the Financial Times reveals that the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray may be about to come to an end, with Blu-ray having the backing of almost every studio. Apparently Paramount has a clause in their agreement with the DVD Forum allowing them to leave if Time Warner were to jump ship to Blu-ray, as they did last week. From the article:

Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers' recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end. Paramount and DreamWorks Animation, which makes the Shrek films, came out in support of HD DVD last summer, joining General Electric's Universal Studios as the main backers of the Toshiba format.

"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/dc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fdc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fdaringfireball.net%2F&nclick_check=1

An anonymous reader writes "I have been surprised by the interesting interactive designs that are on display in the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. The video in the page shows a virtual book that detect page flipping and updates the content accordingly adding interactivity to the visit, a display that changes the information displayed based on whether there is a person reading it or not, and a video wall that you can interact with with some cool sliding bars.

I have never been in a museum where they have these kind of interfaces, but I think that they will start to get more popular as new HCI paradigms arise. Those are just little proofs of concept of what is to come if we have to believe what we are seeing at CES!"

l-ascorbic writes "Copying music from a CD to a PC could be made legal under new proposals from the UK government. Most people don't realise that it is currently illegal, and the law is not enforced. Intellectual property minister Lord Triesman said the law should be changed so it "keeps up with the times". Even the BPI (the British equivalent of the RIAA) has welcomed the move."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7176538.stm

spge writes "Could wireless power spell an end to tangled nests of power cables and massive collections of adapters for gadgets? This video demo shows a wireless power device being used to charge an Apple iPod and a mobile phone from another manufacturer. You can also see a laptop being powered wirelessly and, perhaps less stunningly, some coloured balls of light brighten and dim as they are brought closer and removed from the power source."
http://www.computershopper.co.uk/news/152304/video-report-the-latest-trends-from-ces-2008.html

An anonymous reader writes "In a post to the Alky project mailing list, Falling Leaf systems, the project's owners, announced the closure of the project and open sourcing (LGPL) of all existing code. The Alky project worked on providing methods to run DirectX 10 games on pre-Vista windows, OSX and Linux"
http://www.fallingleafsystems.com/

boot1973 writes "HD-DVD has "suffered another blow" according to the Financial Times. FTA:

"Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers' recent backing of Sony's Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end."
It adds that Viacom who own Paramount have a clause in its contract with the HD-DVD camp which allows it to move to Blu-ray in the event that Warner Bros switch sides."

sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "I saw at the St Louis Post Dispatch that my home town is number six in the nation as far as literacy goes. A Google search finds the list in USA Today. The ten most literate US Cities are:

1. Minneapolis
2. Seattle
3. St. Paul
4. Denver
5. Washington
6. St. Louis
7. San Francisco
8. Atlanta
9. Pittsburgh
10. Boston

"