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Sharks Seen Swimming Down Australian Streets 210

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-sidewalk dept.
As if the flood waters weren't bad enough for the people of Queensland, it now appears that there are sharks swimming in the streets. Two bull sharks were spotted swimming past a McDonald’s in the city of Goodna, Butcher Steve Bateman saw another making its way past his shop on Williams street. Ipswich councillor for the Goodna region Paul Tully said: "It would have swam several kilometres in from the river, across Evan Marginson Park and the motorway. It’s definitely a first for Goodna, to have a shark in the main street."

Comment Either great success or great failure (Score 1) 442

by Doctor High (#28317919) Attached to: Disney Strikes Against Net Neutrality

I would like to think that this move on the part of the content owners will be a massive failure without any intervention by government. If a typical computer user goes to a content owner's site and sees a message saying that the ISP has not purchased the "ESPN360" package and that the user will not be able to access ESPN360 videos, I expect that the user will just go download it via bittorrent or the like. Or just ignore ESPN360 and go to a competitor's site for the scores and highlights. So ESPN360 loses out on a potential sale (to the individual) either way.

I would understand if users from an ISP which did not pay for the ESPN360 access for its customers get a "give me your credit card info to see this video" page, whereas users from an ISP which did pay for access for its customers get to see the video free of charge. That might actually end up being a viable business model.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I don't know consumer behavior as well as I think I do. The foolish choices made by consumers continually impresses me.
Transportation

Driving While Distracted More Dangerous Than Supposed 418

Posted by kdawson from the it's-the-attention-stupid dept.
Science News reports on recent research indicating that any kind of multitasking while driving is dangerous. Not just the obvious distraction of juggling a cell phone, but even talking to a passenger or listening to a book on tape. The researchers used a driving simulator inside an MRI machine to measure brain activations. "Attending to what someone says galvanizes language-related brain areas while simultaneously reducing activity in spatial regions that coordinate driving behavior. This finding suggests that people who combine relatively automatic tasks, such as speech comprehension and car driving, exceed a biological limit on the amount of systematic brain activity they can accommodate at one time, the researchers propose. As a result, the less-ingrained skill — in this case, driving, which is learned long after a person grasps a native language — takes a neural hit."
Power

Submission + - New Fuel Cell 2x as Efficient as Genererators (ecogeek.org)

Submitted by
Hank Green
Hank Green writes: "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel (from hydrogen to bio-diesel) that is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology both to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (up to two times less carbon-intensive than grid power.)"
Patents

Submission + - Russia wants weapons IP

Submitted by
Daniel Dvorkin
Daniel Dvorkin writes: "In the latest example of intellectual property demands gone wild, Russia wants licensing fees for the production of AK-47's. According to first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov, the unlicensed production of Kalashnikovs (which have been around in very nearly their current form for half a century) in ex-Soviet Bloc countries is "intellectual piracy." A giant but declining power starts demanding royalties on commonly used methods and materials that are widely understood, well known, and by any reasonable standard have long been in the public domain — does this sound familiar? IP insanity is everywhere, it seems."
Music

Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure 348

Posted by kdawson from the not-another-mpaa dept.
Music publishers are stepping up their campaign to remove guitar tablature from the Net. Recently Guitartabs.com received a nastygram from lawyers for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. These organizations want to stretch the definition of their intellectual property to include by-ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature while the owner evaluates his legal options.
Space

Space Elevator Company LiftPort In Trouble 257

Posted by kdawson from the going-dwn dept.
TropicalCoder writes "The LiftPort Group, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has seemingly reached the end the line. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit. Elevator cars would be robotic 'lifters' which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now LiftPort has all but run out of funds, and the State of Washington's Securities Division has entered a Statement of Charges (PDF) against LiftPort Inc. dba LiftPort Group and founder Michael Laine."
United States

Submission + - Putin Threatens US Missile Bases in Europe (forbes.com)

Submitted by
Melugo
Melugo writes: "Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to target its weapons against Europe. "If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Putin said, according to Corriere. "It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles." It feels like the Cold War all over again. See the rest of the article at: Forbes or a comment on it at alittlebitoffreedom.blogspot.com."
The Internet

Submission + - Do We Need Online Reputation? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Symblized
Symblized writes: A new article from InformationWeek argues that not only does the Web need ways to verify identity, it also needs better ways to measure reputation. The article uses Digg, Wikipedia and eBay as examples and discusses that their models could be applied more widely. Choice quote from a source in the article: 'the idea of a transferable, semantic reputation is identity nirvana.'
Television

New Review Compares MythTV to Vista MCE 234

Posted by CmdrTaco from the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other dept.
Parkus writes "There's a nice review on AVS forum of MythTV (Ubuntu) and Windows Vista MCE. The author tried both back to back and explains the pluses and minuses of each system after using them for a month. Helpful if you're thinking about setting up your own home theater rig."
It's funny. Laugh.

Economic Analysis of Toilet Seat Position 473

Posted by kdawson from the why-is-this-so-hard? dept.
Ant writes "The Science Creative Quarterly has published an economic analysis of The Social Norm of Leaving the Toilet Down, employing game theory. This analysis is more thorough than preceding ones cited (from 2002 and 2005), as it factors in the cost of yelling. Both men and women can take some comfort in the conclusion though neither may in the end be satisfied.
Television

TiVo Says It Could Suffer Under GPLv3 710

Posted by kdawson from the no-prevention-of-hacking dept.
Preedit writes to tell us that those busy folks over at InformationWeek have been scrutinizing yet more SEC filings, and Novell and Microsoft aren't the only ones concerned about certain provisions in the final draft of GPLv3. TiVo worries too. The problem is that TiVo boxes are Linux-based. They're also designed to shut down if the software is hacked by users trying to circumvent DRM features. But GPLv3 would prohibit TiVo's no-tamper setup. "If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business," TiVo warns in a regulatory filing cited by InformationWeek."
Google

Submission + - Interview: how Google tweaks rank algorithm (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
nbauman
nbauman writes: "New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparision shopping site. If the user has signed in to Google, they can tell whether a search for "dolphins" is by a football fan or marine biologist. Examples of problems that Google identified and tweaked the algorithm to avoid: a search for "french revolution" returned too many results about the French presidential elections. A search for "teak patio palo alto" didn't return a store called the Teak Patio. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmon ey/03google.html Inside the Black Box By SAUL HANSELL, June 3, 2007"
Microsoft

Some Journals Rejecting Office 2007 Format 474

Posted by kdawson from the embrace-extend-extinguish-yourself dept.
hormiga writes "Some scholarly journals are rejecting submissions made using new Office 2007 formats. Science and Nature are among publishers unwilling to deal with incompatibilities in the new formats, and recommend using older versions of Office or converting to older formats before submission. The new equation editor is cited as a specific problem. Rob Wier recommends that those publishers consider using ODF instead."
Intel

Twenty Five Intel CPU Coolers Tested 123

Posted by CowboyNeal from the unseasonably-warm-this-year dept.
Kez writes "Over recent years coolers have grown increasingly exotic in design, striving for good cooling performance and low noise even with the most power hungry of CPUs. But sometimes that comes at a price, be it straining the motherboard's socket to its limit, or the wallets of PC enthusiasts. Investigating which coolers do their job well without snapping your motherboard in two, HEXUS.net reviews 25 LGA775 coolers."

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I've never been canoeing before, but I imagine there must be just a few simple heuristics you have to remember... Yes, don't fall out, and don't hit rocks.

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