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Government

Submission + - Are 3-D Printed Guns Really Legal? (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Defense Distributed, a U.S. nonprofit that aims to make plans for guns available owners of 3-D printers, recently received a federal firearms license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobocco and Firearms. That license doesn't cover semi-automatic weapons and machine guns, though — and there are questions about whether the legislation that defines that license really apply to the act of giving someone 3-D printing patterns. Experts on all sides of the issue seemd to agree that no clarification of the law would happen until a high-profile crime involving a 3-D printed weapon was committed."

Submission + - Making your own phone is easier than you might think (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
Big Hairy Ian
Big Hairy Ian writes: "Our reporter builds a handcrafted cellphone using widely available parts and online instructions

SUDDENLY, my phone rings. It chirps out a tinny version of what sounds like the Christmas carol Angels We Have Heard on High. I am giddy with amazement.

On the fifth floor of the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, David Mellis has just plugged in the mobile phone I spent all afternoon soldering together. That's right: I just built a cellphone. By hand.

Mellis is a graduate student in the High-Low Tech lab, a group of engineering evangelists trying to bring technology know-how to people who perhaps thought it was out of reach. In 2005, he helped found Arduino, a company that makes easy-to-program microprocessors and sells them on simple circuit boards. The idea is to help people make electronic products without needing a degree in computer science.

They're popular among hobbyists, hackers and the sort of people who end up working at the Media Lab but they're hardly mainstream. Mellis wondered if he could take the idea further."
Crime

Troll Complaint Dismissed; Subscriber Not Necessarily Infringer 189

Posted by timothy from the common-sense-sneaks-in dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The courts are finally starting to get it, that the subscriber to an internet access account which has been used for a copyright infringement is not necessarily the infringer. In AF Holdings v. Rogers, a case in the Southern District of California, the Chief Judge of the Court has granted a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim where the only evidence the plaintiff has against defendant is that defendant appears to have been the subscriber to the internet access account in question. In his 7-page opinion (PDF), Chief Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz noted that 'just because an IP address is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that IP address is used to commit infringing activity.'"

Submission + - Texas bill criminalizes enforcement of Obama's gun laws (examiner.com)

Submitted by Examiner News
Examiner News writes: Rep. Steve Toth, a Houston-area Republican, has introduced a new bill in the Texas Legislature that would disallow state and local police from enforcing new gun control measures passed by the federal government. House Bill No. 1076 pertains to "certain firearms, firearm accessories and firearm ammunition within the State of Texas [and provides] an exemption from federal regulation and providing penalties."
Google

Submission + - DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, 'Big Six' Publishers (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold.

The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers."
News

Submission + - Iran Centrifuge Magnet Story Technically Questionable (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Yousaf Butt, who deconstructed the AP's unsourced graph that alleged nuclear activity in Iran, has a story just posted that takes down the recently reported issue of Iran's alleged attempts to buy 100,000 magnets for its centrifuges (reported in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iranian-buying-spree-raises-concerns-about-major-expansion-of-nuclear-capacity/2013/02/13/2090805c-7537-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html).
Power

Submission + - Scientists develop a way to extract energy from coal without burning it (foxnews.mobi)

Submitted by Time_Ngler
Time_Ngler writes: Scientists have developed a new method to utilize the power from coal, by having it chemically react with iron-oxide pellets. Working over a span of 10 years with a budget of $15 million, barring any unforeseen problems, the new process should be ready to go into commercial production within the next 5 years. The reaction does not produce carbon dioxide and leaves water and coal ash as its byproducts. Furthermore, the iron used in the reaction can be recycled.

Submission + - Google versus the Amicus Briefs (groklaw.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday there were numerous amicus briefs filed all on the same day and all in support of Oracle against Google in Oracle's appeal at the Federal Circuit. None of the briefs are posted publicly yet, but they should be available soon.

Microsoft has filed one, together with EMC Corporation, and NetApp, Inc. Scott McNealy has filed one with Brian Sutphin. Can McNealy be a witness for Oracle at trial, which he was [PDF], and also file an amicus brief? Well, he has. The Picture Archive Council of America, Inc. has filed one with the Graphic Artists Guild. Also there's one from the BSA. And finally Eugene Spafford, Zhi Ding, and Lee A. Hollaar have filed an amicus in support of Oracle. Hollaar seems to file a lot of amicus briefs.

So why do these entities and individuals care about this Java API case, do you suppose?
Science

Submission + - Coal Plants Are Victims of Their Own Economics (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: During the presidential campaign last fall, a single message was repeated endlessly in Appalachian coal country: President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency, critics said, had declared a "war on coal" that was shuttering U.S. coal-fired power plants and putting coal miners out of work. Not so, according to a newly-presented analysis of coal plant finances and economics. Instead, coal is losing its battle with other power sources mostly on its merits.
Science

Submission + - Have We Been Miscounting Calories? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When it comes to weight loss, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That's been the mantra of nutritionists, dietitians, and food regulators in the United States and Europe for more than a century. But when it comes to comparing raw food with cooked food, or beans with breakfast cereals, that thinking may be incorrect. That was the consensus of a panel of researchers who listed the many ways that the math doesn't always add up correctly on food labels.

According to the panel, net caloric counts for many foods are flawed because they don't take into account the energy used to digest food; the bite that oral and gut bacteria take out of various foods; or the properties of different foods themselves that speed up or slow down their journey through the intestines, such as whether they are cooked or resistant to digestion.
Privacy

Submission + - Do Not Track ineffective and dangerous, says researcher (nadim.cc)

Submitted by Seeteufel
Seeteufel writes: Nadim Kobeissi, security researcher, describes the Do Not Track standard of the W3C as dangerous.

In fact, Google’s search engine, as well as Microsoft’s (Bing), both ignore the Do Not Track header even though both companies helped implement this feature into their web browsers. Yahoo Search also ignored Do Not Track requests. Some websites will politely inform you, however, of the fact that your Do Not Track request has been ignored, and explain that this has been done in order to preserve their advertising revenue. But not all websites, by a long shot, do this.

The revalations come as Congress and European legislators consider to tighten privacy standards amidth massive advertiser lobbying. "Do not track" received strong support from the European Commission.

Submission + - Oracle going after Google again (informationweek.com)

Submitted by bobthesungeek76036
bobthesungeek76036 writes: Oracle is not happy with Judge Alsup's May 2012 ruling in it's copyright infringment case against Google. This judge should rule over some copyright cases:

"So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API," Alsup wrote in his ruling. "It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability."

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