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Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Government

City Laws Only Available Via $200 License 411

Posted by kdawson from the calling-doctor-malamud dept.
MrLint writes "The City of Schenectady has decided that their laws are copyrighted, and that you cannot know them without paying for an 'exclusive license' for $200. This is not a first — Oregon has claimed publishing of laws online is a copyright violation." This case is nuanced. The city has contracted with a private company to convert and encode its laws so they can be made available on the Web for free. While the company works on this project, it considers the electronic versions of the laws its property and offers a CD version, bundled with its software, for $200. The man who requested a copy of the laws plans to appeal.

Comment Re:Robot discovers Humans "unnecessary"... (Score 1) 250

by Mawbid (#27443965) Attached to: Robot Makes Scientific Discovery (Mostly) On Its Own

This is a worst case solution since it would imply that the brain is not understood yet.

That's not too bad. When we build one of those, we can afford it with a probe facility that it can use to observe and manipulate its own brain or clones thereof. It can then find out how its brain works and tell us, or code up a minimal AI if we want that.

Comment Re:I wish the US Supreme Court was that smart. (Score 3, Insightful) 708

by Mawbid (#25396985) Attached to: UK Court Rejects Encryption Key Disclosure Defense

"Something you know" isn't what counts when it comes to protecting you from self incrimination; it is whether the "something you know" is incriminating you.

This leads to an interesting idea. Claim that you passphrase is a confession. If you plan ahead, you can even make that claim true. Encrypt your plan to assassinate the president with "I plan to assassinate the president OV:}A7MC".
Music

Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support 231

Posted by Soulskill from the enjoy-your-rights dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."
Security

Submission + - Kaminsky DNS Bug Fixed by Single Character Patch?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to this thread on the bind-users mailing list ( http://marc.info/?t=121981071400003 ) there is nothing inherent in the DNS protocol that would cause the massive vulnerability discussed at length here and elsewhere.

As it turns out, it appears to be a simple off-by-one error in BIND, which favors new NS records over cached ones (even if the cached TTL is not yet expired). The patch changes this in favor of still-valid cached records, removing the attacker's ability to succesfully poison the cache outside the small window of opportunity afforded by an expiring TTL, which is the way things used to be before the Kaminsky debacle.

Source port randomization is nice, but removing the root cause of the attack's effectiveness is better...
Music

Submission + - Universal Music Classics and Jazz goes DRM-free (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With little fanfare seems Universal in the UK has made its classical and jazz catalog available DRM-free (Guardian story: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2206558,00.html actual site: http://www.classicsandjazz.co.uk/). That's 1000s of albums from what looks like a decent range of classical / jazz labels (Verve, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon etc.). Is this the beginning I hope?
Science

Causes of Death Linked To Weight 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the pick-your-poison dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that while a couple of years ago researchers found that overweight people have a lower death rate than people with a normal weight, it may be more complicated than that. "Now, investigating further, they found out which diseases are more likely to lead to death in each weight group. Linking, for the first time, causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - How do you get the best value building a PC?

Submitted by ObiWanStevobi
ObiWanStevobi writes: Although I should ask before hand, I recently ordered everything I need to build a new PC. The high points of the system are a 3.2 Pentium D, ASUS ATX SLI Ready Motherboard, SLI Ready power supply, and GeForce 8500 Graphics card. I also added a DVDRW, DVDROM/CDRW combo drive, 250 Gig Seagate HD, 2 Gigs Kingston RAM, and a Wireless NIC. All of this in an ATX Mid Tower. Grand Total of ~$600. The best part is that I don't have Vista pre-installed.

Now this is not a great machine by current standards, but it is alot more bang for the buck than you can get from a manufacturer. I used TigerDirect and NewEgg to get all the hardware. Those are the sites I typically use at work and have been pretty reliable for me. But what I wonder is what everyone else is using to build their PCs. Where are you getting the most value these days?

Anyone have any particularly great machines they put together for much less than you would expect? What are your favorite discount hardware sites, or any to stay away from?
The Courts

Submission + - "Jihadist James Bond" Sentenced for Websit (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
Nadsat
Nadsat writes: "In London, a 23 year-old man was sentenced for 10 years for posting online suicide vest guides and videos of the killings of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl. He went by the handle "irhabi007," which combines the Arabic word for terrorist and the code name for James Bond. The sentencing judge said he was a danger, even though "he came no closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard.""
Input Devices

Submission + - Determining where a ball hits a target 4

Submitted by thezaxis
thezaxis writes: I am looking for a technology or some ideas on how to go about determining (electronically) where a weighted tennis ball hits a 2 dimensional target (wall for arguments sake). The position would need to be determined within a diameter of about 50 to 100mm. This should ideally be via optical, laser or similar method rather than electromechanical sensors to eliminate wear or damage from continuous impact of the balls. The entire target area would typically be in the order of 5m x 5m.
Media

Science Videos Search Engine 51

Posted by CmdrTaco from the do-mentos-and-coke-count-as-science-yet dept.
Rami writes "ScienceHack is a search engine for science videos. What makes ScienceHack unique is that every video is screened by a scientist or an engineer to verify the video's accuracy and quality. ScienceHack focuses on many topics including physics, chemistry and biology. If you go to YouTube to search for videos, you will get spam videos and comments and many conspiracy and low quality videos. ScienceHack has none of that. ScienceHack currently supports videos from YouTube, Google videos and Metacafe."
http://sciencehack.com/
The Internet

Submission + - Dead webmasters online?

Submitted by
wikinerd
wikinerd writes: "I'm looking to create a list of still-operational websites (or other online presences) whose webmaster has died and their content is not updated anymore. Could you help me to make a list of such dormant websites? Practically, if the server fees are paid in advance and the hardware is taken care by a datacentre sysadmin, a website can probably remain online for a few months or years after the death of its webmaster with no one to take care of the content. Sites maintained by relatives or friends obviously don't fall into this category. While in the past most content was written in books, which were preserved after the death of the author, nowadays many people publish online, but apart from Internet Archive there seems to be no guarantee that their writings will be preserved for future generations after their death. I'm looking for ways to "save" worthy content present in such websites, but I'm a bit unsure how to handle issues of intellectual property. Shall I assume that the content of a dead webmaster's site is owned by their heirs? How can one locate and contact the copyright owner of a dead person?"

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