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Windows

Submission + - Don't Blame Vista

Submitted by Chris Speed
Chris Speed writes: There's been a significant amount of "buzz" circulating on the internet over an article written by a well respected computer scientist and cryptologist named Peter Gutmann, whose article, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" has gained considerable notoriety since its initial publication in late 2006. His article mainly portrays Windows Vista as the cause for DRM and paints an overall bad picture of the new OS. But is this article really an analysis of Vista? FastSilicon.com takes a second look at Dr. Gutmann's article and finds many minor flaws and flat out errors.
Space

Speed Found to be Key to Galaxy Formation 61

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-just-a-good-idea dept.
QuantumCrypto writes "The All-wavelength Extended Groth strip International Survey (AEGIS), a collaborative effort involving nearly 100 scientists in half a dozen countries, revealed a new principle in the formation of all galaxies, from disk-like spirals, cloud-like ellipticals, and just irregulars. In essence the morphology of the galaxies depends on total mass involved and the internal speed it generates. 'By defining a new speed indicator, their analysis has managed to make sense out of very chaotic-looking objects,' said Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Balancing One-Wheeled Scooter

Submitted by
Keyboard Hacking Guy
Keyboard Hacking Guy writes: "Via HackaDay: Want to make a cheap Segway yourself? Here is a selfmade one-wheeled balancing scooter / skateboard. Using it is very similar to a snowboard to ride, requiring no user input other than the movement of your body mass. Leaning forwards and backwards controls the velocity and moving your weight from heal to toe controls the turn radius. It's easy and very intuitive to ride. See video on YouTube."
Space

Submission + - Black Holes Discovered as Source of Gamma Rays

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A very recent paper has been published that gives a very sound explanation for the source of gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. Objects like the Milky Way's central supermassive object (Sagittarius A*) are now suspected to be the culprit but since these are widely believed to be a black holes, little is known and skepticism is high that even gamma radiation could escape them. All that has been observed is gamma rays seem to coming from black holes. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model and found that intense gravity near the event horizon caused protons to fling outward at near light speeds where some would randomly make it beyond 10 light years of the black hole after thousands of years. Once they are sufficiently far away, these super high-energy protons would collide with low-energy protons to form pions which decay into gamma radiation emanating in all directions from the collision. If their simulation holds to be accurate and survives the skepticism of the community, the source of some gamma rays that were believed to all be remnants of the big bang could instead be signals from just outside black holes. Not only does a rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet star collapsing into a black hole cause narrow streams of gamma radiation but apparently they continue to emit them long after their formation."
Music

Submission + - HowTo: Save Internet Radio!

Submitted by erktrek
erktrek writes: One of the internet radio sites I listen to had this link to an online petition . In addition if you are feeling particularly perky you can write your Representative directly and tell him or her how you feel about this clusterf___. You must be a US citizen of course..

Here is the text from the petition:

To: Internet Radio Listeners

To my Congressional representatives, and to Congress as a whole,

As a fan of Internet radio, I was alarmed to learn that music royalty rates were recently determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which, if enacted, would certainly silence most or all of my favorite online listening services. For most webcasters, this royalty rate represents more than 100% of their total revenues!

The shuttering of the webcasting industry would be a loss for not only independent business owners, but also for musical artists, for copyright owners, and for listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices available via Internet radio.

I respectfully request that Congress look into this matter and initiate action to prevent it. As the CRB rate decision is retroactive to January 1, 2006, please understand that time is of the essence — as the immediate impact of this decision could silence many free Internet radio stations forever.

Sincerely, The Undersigned
The Internet

Submission + - France Bans Amateur Videos of Violent Acts

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "On the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King beating, which was filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday, the French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules."
Spam

Submission + - Scots sherrif gets medieval on spammers

Submitted by
David Off
David Off writes: "A spammer has been ordered to pay £750 compensation and £616.66 in costs to the recipient of unsolicited commercial email. It is a landmark ruling as it is the first time a UK court has set a level of compensation for junk email. The private prosecution was brought by Gordon Dick under under European Union wide antispam law which makes it illegal to send junk electronic mail. Mr Dick told Edinburgh Sheriff Court that his email address had been "harvested" from a group where he was a member in contravention of the Data Protection Act and EU electronic privacy legislation. The spam mail had been sent to 72,000 recipients. Mr Dick is himself electronic marketing specialist has set up his own website ScotchSpam to highlight and help others with the problem of spam email."
The Courts

Submission + - Election candidate faces EUCD charges in Finland

Submitted by
hingo
hingo writes: "The Open Life blog reports that activists in Finland have partly succeeded in challenging the EUCD's constitutionality, that is, they have succeeded in getting themselves tried in court:

Mikko Rauhala and Einar Karttunen have on February 13th, 2007 been charged with breaking [...] the EUropean Copyright Directive, our equivalent of the DMCA. The charges are that they participated in an online service organised by Mr Rauhala to provide advice on how to circumvent DRM and in addition Mr Karttunen has published online a computer program written in the Haskell programming language. The charge is especially serious because Rauhala paid Karttunen 0,05 for this program. Rauhala, Karttunen and 37 others did these supposedly criminal actions in January 2006, the first week that the new law was in force. [...]
Mikko Rauhala and the organiser of the 2005 demonstration Mikko Särelä are both running for parliament in the elections to be held on March 18th, 2007. [...] some of the momentum really might still be there [...] this week [...] they put out a website to collect pledges and within 24 hours had collected 8000 to buy a full page ad in Finlands main newspaper.
The blog also informs us that

Under current Finnish laws, the maximum penalty for filesharing is higher than for simply stealing an actual music CD from a shop
"
Media

Submission + - AnyDVD updated, now removes Blue-Ray DRM

Submitted by
mariushm
mariushm writes: "SlySoft has just updated AnyDVD HD, offering users the possibility of watching Blue-Ray media without DRM. This comes after only two weeks from the first release which was able to remove DRM from HD-DVD.

Version 6.1.3.0 has lots of features but probably the most important one is stripping the evil DRM infection from Blu-Ray and restore your fair use rights.

The free upgrade can also remove region encoding, works on Windows XP-64 and Vista-64, and fixes a ton of bugs. You can get the update or a trial copy here."
Space

Submission + - ESA to create backup satellites

Submitted by
Matthew Sparkes
Matthew Sparkes writes: "The frequencies allotted to the Galileo satellite navigation system, the European GPS, will be safeguarded with a new backup satellite. Under the rules of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an operator risks losing frequency rights if a break in service lasts longer than two years. Therefore, if their satellites malfunction, ESA could lose the frequency altogether. "From now on, there will always be a European navigation satellite in space," the ESA announcement promised. Of course, China could still blow up and replace the system."
The Internet

Submission + - Global Warming makes data centers "green"!

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Global Warming, an inconvenient truth, two oscars won!
But what does the datacenter-operators do against global warming and the oil-peak?

There are so many possibilities: Deep Lake Water Cooling like in Toronto, adsorber-cooling, flywheel/hydrogen-UPS, more efficiency of the hardware, more efficient software, no Vista, better power supplies like Google does.
The zero-energy data-center is no longer a vision, it needs only to be built.
http://www.ecologee.net/ The wiki for environmental friendly IT and Hosting with green power, has all this information and more."
Microsoft

Submission + - Thousands sign e-petition on rip-off Vista

Submitted by CoolWolf
CoolWolf writes: CustomPC News, Monday 26th February 2007
Thousands sign e-petition on rip-off Vista http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/news/106025/thousa nds-sign-epetition-on-ripoff-vista.html

Petition info and link:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to bring pressure on Microsoft to stop them overcharging the UK for its Vista Operating System.
Submitted by Paul Milne — Deadline to sign up by: 20 April 2007 — Signatures: 8,051
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/VistaOvercharge/
Movies

Submission + - 9 Laws of Physics That Don't Apply in Hollywood

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "Neatorama lists nine laws of physics that don't apply in Hollywood (movies and television/TV shows). In general, Hollywood filmmakers follow the laws of physics because they have no other choice. It's just when they cheat with special effects that people seem to forget how the world really works..."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft attacks Google on Copyright

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is attacking Google on copyright. It appears that in an attempt to differentiate itself from Google, Microsoft is portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders. Microsoft stated that Google's decision to take copies of books unless publishers tell it not to "systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create".

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