Glyn writes "The Register is reporting that the US government is holding a public meeting at the end of July over what should happen to ICANN when its contract is renewed in September. In the meantime, it has opened a public comment board where you are able to email comments for the US government and the rest of the world to see. The board is open now but comments need to be sent by this Friday, 7 July. The email postal address is DNSTransition@ntia.doc.gov."

ozmanjusri writes to mention a Tokyo Institute of Technology project to record scents for later playback. The New Scientist article suggests this technology could be used in commercials and medical applications. From the article: "Simply point the gadget at a freshly baked cookie, for example, and it will analyse its odour and reproduce it for you using a host of non-toxic chemicals. The device could be used to improve online shopping by allowing you to sniff foods or fragrances before you buy, to add an extra dimension to virtual reality environments and even to assist military doctors treating soldiers remotely by recreating bile, blood or urine odours that might help a diagnosis."

mkosmo writes "NASA has yet again delayed Space Shuttle Discovery from launching due to growing weather conditions. Next launch attempt is the afternoon of the 4th of July." From the article: "Windows of opportunity are determined by the path of the orbiting international space station, the shuttle's destination. With each passing day, the time for a launch gets earlier by 22-1/2 minutes. That could be good news for NASA because summer thunderstorms are less likely to be a problem earlier in the day."

haroldag writes "Freedb, the free music database used by tons of CD ripping software, has been shut down due to a disagreement among its developers. One of its developers used a data dump from the original freedb.org and is providing the service at freedb2.org, though, and will be adding features and posting them at his site as they become available. Unfortunately, a database dump or source code for freedb2.org is yet nowhere to be found."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers have discovered that ordinary cellulose is a piezoelectric and smart material that can flap when exposed to an electric field. ScienceNOW reports that electricity can give life to cellophane. When you put a very thin layer of gold on each side of cellophane, and that you apply electric current to the gold layers, one positive, one negative, the cellophane curved toward the positive side. If you switch the voltage fast enough, the cellophane starts to act as a wing. So it should be possible to use it to build lightweight flying robots carrying cameras, microphones or sensors for surveillance missions. Read more for additional references and pictures about this electroactive paper (EAPap)."

An anonymous reader writes to mention an AP story about research discussing the relatively recent origins of every human on earth. Despite the age of our species, every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC). From the article: "It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors -- who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence. But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived."

scriptedfun writes "The BBC features the growing role of computer graphics in movies, but points out that it is still the human actors behind the CG characters which make them alive. From the article: 'It seems that the performance artist can still bring something to a performance, which [ a CG ] artist cannot.'"

SirClicksalot writes "CNN is reporting that Vic Gundotra, a 15-year veteran general manager at Microsoft, has left the company to join Google. Gundotra worked at Microsoft as general manager for platform evangelism to get software developers to use Microsoft's software and online offerings. The function he will perform at Google is not yet known, but he will need to wait one year before starting his new job because of a non-compete clause in his contract."

WindozeSux writes "Microsoft has denied that WGA will kill pirated copies of Windows. According to Waggener Edstrom,"Microsoft anti-piracy technologies cannot and will not turn off your computer." Microsoft also says that WGA is a necessary part of its campaign to catch those illegally using Windows XP which leads one to think what WGA really does then."

MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."

Old Man Kensey writes "According to the UK Daily Mail, VW has produced a prototype Golf (code-named "53 plus 1" in a reference to Herbie the Love Bug) that successfully steers and accelerates itself at speeds up to 150 MPH on tracks designed on the spot without pre-programming. It sounds almost too good to be true given some of the problems CMU's prototype has had over the years, but perhaps VW has learned from and extended CMU's research (and within-an-inch GPS positioning probably helps too)."

basotl writes "Newsforge is reporting that Corel attributes part of its financial comeback to dropping Corel Linux and its Linux office suite. Though they are not currently offering products for Linux, they are interested in prospect in the future." From the article: "Looking back, Brown describes the decision to drop Corel Linux as 'a successful strategy for Corel and an early step toward the refocusing of our business. At the time we knew that Corel's core focus was moving away from the operating system to concentrate more on our application offerings, and this would almost certainly have an impact on the level of service we could afford to customers and users of Corel Linux.' Nor, as a company struggling to regain profitability, was Corel inclined to try to develop the GNU/Linux market by continuing to support WordPerfect for Linux."

plaastik writes "The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by U.S. Soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. From the article: 'Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands.'"

SubliminalVortex wonders: "Many times in the past, I have been asked on 'how long' it would take to implement a certain features/fixes in a product. What's interesting is that many times, certain 'fixes' is adjusting the wording/placement of the items in question; in other cases, users want the product to do everything they ever imagined, since it already started by following their line of thought. From there, the problem continues. From the user interface, people 'imagine' and think that 'oh, it would be easy if...' and scenarios occur, not only internally from the company using the product, but the clients themselves. Usually, several good ideas are there, but estimating times is a pain in the arse if you have a platform you're writing code for which has no documentation. How do coders estimate times to their bosses? If I know the answer outright, I'll give it, but in some cases, I don't how much time I'll take from other developers *because of the lack of documentation*. I'm going to have to bring in my D&D dice next week just to start."

fizzix writes "Weather has delayed the launch of Discovery to tomorrow (Sunday the 2nd), but not everyone thinks it is ready to go. CNN reports both the chief engineer and the chief safety officer gave it a 'no go' for launch. Despite their reservations, barring inclement weather the shuttle is planned to liftoff at 3:26 ET." Update: 07/02 05:00 GMT by Z : I said launch not lauch. Fixed headline.