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Space

Submission + - Earth's Evil Twin (esa.int)

Submitted by
Riding with Robots
Riding with Robots writes: "For the past two years, Europe's Venus Express orbiter has been studying Earth's planetary neighbor up close. Today, mission scientists have released a new collection of findings and amazing images. They include evidence of lightning and other results that flesh out a portrait of a planet that is in many ways like ours, and in many ways hellishly different, such as surface temperatures over 400C and air pressure a hundred times that on Earth."
Music

Submission + - Deutsche Grammophon offering DRM-free downloads (deutschegrammophon.com)

Submitted by C3c6e6
C3c6e6 writes: Deutsche Grammophon, one of world's leading record labels for classical music, has launched today an online-shop where people can download high-quality (320Kbps) versions of 2400 classical recordings, including 600 albums that are currently out of print. The idea is apparently to make the entire catalog of probably the oldest surviving record label (founded in 1898) available online.

It's nice to see that yet another record company is steering clear of DRM.
Software

Submission + - Asus resolves Eee GPL violation (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Jety
Jety writes: "Last week, software developer Cliff Biffle wrote a blog post pointing out certain discrepancies in the source code archive made available by Asus for the Linux-based software platform distributed on the Eee PC.
In response to criticism from Linux enthusiasts, Asus has made additional source code archives available for download with code for the asus_acpi module, BusyBox, and several other components. The code released by Asus brings the company into compliance with its obligations under the GPL and should satisfy most of the critics.
It's always nice to see companies in touch with their audience who are able to respond quickly to issues raised by the community, especially when it involves adhering to the licensing requirements for the software they are distributing."
Media

Submission + - Harper to succumb to US bullying on copyright law (canadians.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Activist
Anonymous Activist writes: "According to an entry on the Slyck.com news website, and a recent article from CanWest columnist Deirdre McMurdy, Canada is about to announce a revised Copyright Act to bring its intellectual property regime in line with stricter (and some say unreasonable) U.S. standards."
...
"This isn't just pandering to U.S. demands, it would be a bad move for Canada, said Geist in a column in the Toronto Star from this past April. "While the USTR report and its supporters seek to paint Canada as a laggard on copyright, this rhetoric ignores the fact that Canada is compliant with its international obligations and that Canadian law is consistent with the laws in most countries around the world," he wrote."

Time to make noise & object, write a letter, contact the COC to help organize the campaign against it (they're one of the main groups that helped defeat the MIA & caught the under cover cops at the SPP summit in Quebec), etc.
Robotics

Submission + - Robots Infiltrate, Influence Cockroach Groups (npr.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A study published in the 16 November, 2007 issue of Science describes and interesting study involving autonomous robots interacting with cockroaches. The original article requires subscription, but a related npr article doesn't: [URL="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16328789"]http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16328789[/URL]
Television

Submission + - Daily Show writers find Youtube; speak on Strike

Submitted by Inakizombie
Inakizombie writes: The writers from the Daily Show have turned to Youtube to give their perspective on the writers' strike in the best way they know how, humorously. From the post "What do the writers of the Daily Show think of the ongoing writers' strike? If only there were some way to find out like, I don't know... clicking on the image(Youtube) to your left. It's so crazy, it might just work!"
Education

Submission + - Pasta Monster Gets Academic Attention (excite.com)

Submitted by laughing rabbit
laughing rabbit writes: Adherents of His Noodly Appendage — the FSM — have gone to bat to have their beliefs taught along with Intelligent Design and Evolution.

From the article http://apnews.excite.com/article/20071116/D8SUOUQG1.html...



"...When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes."

I like the moxie of these folks, in some places in the United States, being this forthright about your beliefs can get you injured.
Robotics

Submission + - Robots assimilate in cockroach society (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
sufijazz
sufijazz writes: "Scientists have gotten tiny robots to not only integrate into cockroach society but also control it. This experiment in bug peer pressure combined entomology, robotics and the study of ways that complex and even intelligent patterns can arise from simple behavior. Animal behavior research shows that swarms working together can prosper where individuals might fail, and robotics researchers have been experimenting with simple robots that, together, act a little like a swarm.

The BBC also has a video story on this."
Security

Submission + - Up for Sale: 'Ravaging' ClamAV Code Execution Flaw (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
jay kunitsky
jay kunitsky writes: "The WabiSabiLabi vulnerability auction house is hyping the sale of a potentially nasty remote code execution flaw in ClamAV, the popular open-source anti-virus toolkit for UNIX. The company said the flaw can be exploited by simply sending a specially crafted e-mail to a vulnerable mail server. From the article: "The latest verified vulnerable version is ClamAV 0.91.1 but other versions could be affected as well. As you can obviously imagine, the impact of this vulnerability is ravaging.""
Censorship

Submission + - Burma Shuts Down Internet 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "MIT Technology Review reports that in the aftermath of pro-democracy protests, Burma's military rulers have physically disconnected their country from the internet:

Last week — after images of the beatings of Buddhist monks and the killing of a Japanese photographer leaked out via the Internet — Burma's military rulers took the ultimate step, apparently physically disconnecting primary telecommunications cables in two major cities, in a drastic effort to stop the flow of information from Burma to the rest of the world. It didn't completely work: some bloggers apparently used satellite links or cellular phone services to get information outside the country.
One Burmese blogger reported last week that "Myanmar main ISP has been shut down by so-called "maintenance reasons" and most of the telecommunication services have been cut off or tapped. ""
Portables

Submission + - Negroponte to announce "Give 1, get 1" OLP 1

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: Nicholas Negroponte, the visionary behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative (OLPC), has publicly expressed his disappointment at the lack of orders for his low-cost computer for poor children. The situation has become so dire that Negroponte will on Monday announce a "Give one, get one" promotion in the US and Canada, where supporters will be able to purchase two XO-1s for $399. They'll get to keep one, while the second one will be given to a disadvantaged child in the developing world. Orders will only be accepted for two weeks between November 12 and November 26. It's promised that the XO-1 will be delivered to the purchaser before Christmas.
Censorship

Submission + - DNS censored?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am a Comcast user who cannot get to a web site that is functional. I suspect censorship.

Today I read a story about a "white power" website that had published threats against people in the Jena 6 case. Being a curious person, I wanted to see that website. I saw Bill White's name, who I know to be a Nazi leader, and I have seen his website overthrow.com before. He's an idiot, please don't think I sympathize with his views, which are the opposite of mine, but this isn't the place to discuss that.

What I found at www.overthrow.com was a "Server not found." I got the same thing at the american national socialist workers party www.answp.com; another site that Google suggested www.nazisozi.com, etc. Out of curiosity, I used whois to get the IP number for overthrow.com, which was http://208.74.85.3./ Put that in the location window, clicked, and went immediately to the site, where I saw the obnoxious stuff.

I take this to mean that somebody has taken overthrow.com out of the domain name server that Comcast (my ISP) uses. The server's up, the site's alive, but the URL is disabled.

I am quite concerned that someone is able to censor my web access in this way, and wonder how many other not-found servers I've encountered have simply been cut off by somebody with control of the system between me and the site. I hope the knowledgeable people at Slashdot can give us an idea what has happened here.
Microsoft

Submission + - EU thinktank urges full Windows unbundling

Submitted by leffeman
leffeman writes: An influential Brussels think tank is urging the European Commission to ban the bundling of operating systems with desktop and laptop computers. The Globalisation Institute's submission to the Commission says that bundling 'is not in the public interest' and that the dominance of Windows has 'slowed technical improvements and prevented new alternatives entering from the marketplace.' It says the Microsoft tax is a burden on EU businesses: the price of operating systems would be lower in a competitive market. This is the first time a major free-market think tank has published in favour of taking action against Microsoft's monopoly power.

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