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+ - DSLR Cinematography->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "Zacuto just released a lot of "DSLR cinematography" gear, links, and video for the Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D90. With full mounting kits in the $5,000 price range (camera not included), it appears that Canon and Nikon (with the help of Zacuto, among others) may have created a new niche with this large-sensor "video" cameras and Zacuto has taken a stab at fulfilling the demand, whatever it may be at the moment, by enabling film makers to take a relatively inexpensive capture device and turn it into something so much more."
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The Almighty Buck

+ - Batman (City) Sues Batman (Hero) Over Name->

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The mayor of Batman, a city in southeastern Turkey, is suing Warner Brothers over the name of the superhero Batman. They believe that WB is using the name without permission, and they want a cut of the royalties from 'The Dark Knight', which collected over a billion dollars in royalties. They have not given any explanation of why they've waited this long to complain given that Batman has been around since 1939, but they have managed to blame the success of the Batman movies for a number of unsolved murders and a high suicide rate among women. It's not clear how they justify that, unless they think Ras al Guhl is somehow involved. They should have taken a cue from that city in Fukui prefecture that's much smarter about how it profits from its name, rather than filing silly lawsuits."
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Biotech

+ - Jacking into the brain->

Submitted by Gat0r30y
Gat0r30y writes "Sci-am has a sweet article looking at the present state, and the future of brain / machine interfaces. Their analysis indicates that we aren't going to see Kurzweil's singularity any time soon, but advances are being made in the field. Gary Stix acknowledges that at present, there is no method for putting information into the brain from a machine, but we have gotten pretty good at using signals already in the brain to control machines. On monkeys controlling prosthetic arms Duke University's Miguel A. L. Nicoleli had this to say: "There's some physiological evidence that during the experiment they feel more connected to the robots than to their own bodies". Stix seems to believe that the problem of sending information back the other way is intractable. I don't know if I buy this analysis though — there is no mention of how plastic the human brain can be. Even if it is an extremely complicated problem, and I'm sure it will be, I would posit that if a proper interface to the brain could be developed the brain would figure out what to do with the incoming information in the most appropriate way — sending .pngs to the visual cortex, and letting me download the instruction manual for my new jetpack straight to my brain.... I hope anyway. In any case, it is an entertaining article — so RTFA."
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Patents

+ - DSLR Movie Mode->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "http://www.photographybay.com/2008/02/17/dslr-movie-mode-patent/

A japanese inventor has filed a patent application with the USPTO that appears to defeat many of the obstacles that have previously stood in the way of making a "movie mode" in DSLRs a reality. Some of the innovations include a mirror that simultaneously transmits and reflects light, two AF functions (fast for still images and slow for movie mode), and a crop function to steady the field of view."
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Patents

+ - Canon DSLR Iris Registration - Biological Metadata->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "Canon is using iris (as in the iris of your eye) watermarking to take photographer's copyright protection to the next level. You set up the camera to capture an image of your eye through the viewfinder. Once captured, this biological reference is embedded into every photo you take as metadata. Canon claims this will help with copyright infringement of photos online.

http://www.photographybay.com/2008/02/09/canon-iris-registration-watermark/"
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It's funny. Laugh.

+ - Police arrest teen for "virtual furniture"->

Submitted by
ekes
ekes writes "According to the German Press Agency (DPA) Dutch police have arrested a teenager and are questioning four more about the "theft" of "virtual furniture" from the online Habbo Hotel http://www.habbo.com/hotel
A police spokesman said the suspects will be charged on two accounts: hacking and burglary.

English report on Expatica http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=45939"
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Patents

Northeastern University Sues Google Over Patent 159

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the who-isn't-suing-google-these-days dept.
kihbord writes to mention that Boston's Northeastern University and Waltham, Mass. based company Jarg have brought suit against Google for apparently infringing on a distributed database system developed by Kenneth Baclawski. "The patent describes a distributed database system that breaks search queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster results. The patent was assigned to Northeastern University, which licensed it exclusively to Jarg, according to the lawsuit, filed last Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas."
Businesses

+ - Obese Air Passengers Could Face Higher Prices->

Submitted by
s31523
s31523 writes "It has happened to all of us. You walk down the narrow airplane to your seat only to find someone sitting next to you that is extremely overweight. An Australian nutritionist is urging airlines to charge obese people more for their tickets. Even here in the states, Southwest Airlines already has a similar policy, which states "Many Americans are "overweight" or "clinically obese." . . . If a Customer cannot lower the armrest (and is unable to comfortably travel with it in the down position), he/she is required to pay for the additional seat occupied""
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Media

+ - Patenting the Photoshop Process->

Submitted by hawridger
hawridger writes "Scott Kelby's 7 Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 is due to release on October 19th and sounds really promising. So promising, in fact, that he's applied for a patent on this "7 Point System." If a patent issues, will readers be forbidden from discussing the techniques on forums, blogging about it, posting youtube videos of the "system" in action? Is there a license to "use" the patent included with the purchase of the book? This seems like a big dang deal for photographers and anyone else that uses Photoshop (or any other image-editing software for that matter). This could open a huge can of worms in the photography/digital illustration industry."
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Networking

+ - Will Your Home Network Survive After You're Gone?

Submitted by glhturbo
glhturbo writes "I have a small home network that includes a wireless access point, wired and wireless network clients, a shared NAS, and Linux (mine) and Windows (wife and two kids) computers. I also have a Linux-based firewall PC in the mix. I'm a bit concerned that if I get hit by a bus, my non-technically-inclined-wife will have to try to figure this stuff out, especially the NAS, which has ALL of our data on it (pictures, music, etc), but has EXT3 formatted drives. Short of trying to keep some kind of living document for all of this, does anybody have suggestions for "survival plans" and/or "rescue plans" for their data and network in case of incapacitation or death?"
XBox (Games)

+ - Halo evolution->

Submitted by
Jynx
Jynx writes "Gamespot is running a great feature with comparisons between all 3 Halo games. Weapon, environment and vehicles models are all compared side by side and it really highlights how far the franchise has come since its original release on the Xbox. FTA — "The original Halo map designs made for confusing gameplay because many of the levels had rooms that looked, for all practical purposes, identical. Halo 2 helped alleviate the endless corridor problem by adding more room variation. But Halo 3 has solved the problem altogether by making every room, hallway, and outdoor area unique. You'll rarely get confused as to which way you're supposed to go. Indoor areas have better lighting and textures, while outdoor environments have much more foliage. Water, whether in a river or an ocean, looks vastly better.""
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Security

+ - Picture theft through hole in Google's Picasa->

Submitted by
devkhadka
devkhadka writes "The finders of the URI holes in Firefox and Windows are now targeting Google. In their blog, Billy Rios and Nate McFeters have described how attackers may steal all pictures organised using Google's picture gallery software Picasa from users' hard disks: It seems that they were able to load pictures from a PC onto a manipulated web server by combining various attack methods, such as cross-application scripting, cross-site scripting, URI tricks and a flash with ActionScript."
Link to Original Source
Hardware Hacking

+ - First quantum chips made

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes "The first quantum computer chips have been made by two US groups, New Scientist reports. Both NIST and Yale demonstrated chips where information was transferred between two superconducting qubits using a 'quantum bus'. The bus is made from a cavity that traps a single microwave photon as a standing wave — the NIST group also managed to use the bus to store data from one qubit for a short time."

System going down in 5 minutes.

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