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Submission + - FreeBSD Running On PS3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One week after Sony's PlayStation 3 private cryptography key was obtained, FreeBSD is up and running on the PS3. There are still a few problems and rough edges, but they should be ironed out when FreeBSD 9.0 is released:

      Nathan Whitehorn writes:
          "Yesterday, I imported support for the Sony Playstation 3 into our 64-bit PowerPC port, expanding our game console support into the current generation.
            There are still a few rough edges due to missing hardware support, but the machine boots and runs FreeBSD stably. These rough edges should be
            smoothed out in time for the 9.0 release."

Mailing List Announce- http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=559737+0+archive/2011/freebsd-current/20110109.freebsd-current
Science

Submission + - Gulf Bacteria Quickly Digested Spilled Methane (aaas.org)

Submitted by masterwit
masterwit writes: From an AAAS news release: "Bacteria made quick work of the methane released by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, digesting most of the gas within the four months after its release, according to a new study published online at ScienceExpress." This study however did not deal with other chemicals (oil) from the disaster's fallout. A glimpse of good news from the disaster's fallout...
Space

Submission + - black holes may mature early in galaxy evolution (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by masterwit
masterwit writes: From Scientific American: "An accidental find in a star-forming dwarf galaxy shows that black holes may mature early in galaxy evolution" also "if giant black holes in star-forming dwarf galaxies prove to be common—that is, if Henize 2-10 is not an outlier but a representative of a larger population—they may have much to tell about the formation of primordial black holes and galaxies in the early universe" I personally do not come from a large point of knowledge here, but I found this read very interesting and thought someone else would share my sentiment.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft helps Russia pursue opposition (nytimes.com)

Submitted by asaz989
asaz989 writes: The New York Times reports that Russia selectively pursues software piracy complaints from Microsoft in order to suppress the opposition — confiscating computers for evidence, searching offices, and the like. Microsoft lawyers usually back the authorities in such cases, even when cases such as that of the environmentalist group Baikal Waves, which went out of its way to buy licenses to prevent police harassment and nevertheless had its offices raided, and its computers confiscated. Microsoft participated in this legal process. Published alongside this story, under the same byline, is a related piece on the collusion of Microsoft lawyers with corrupt Russian police in extorting money from the targets of software piracy investigations. In a responding press release, the company states, 'Microsoft antipiracy efforts are designed to honor both [antipiracy concerns and human rights], but we are open to feedback on what we can do to improve in that regard.'
Idle

Submission + - Archbishop Bans Pop Music at Funerals (nytimes.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: The NY Times reports that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has announced a ban on the playing of pop music at funerals, which, he said, are not to be described as “a celebration of the life of” the deceased. According to new guidelines published on Archbishop Denis Hart’s Web site: "Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs." According to a cemetery contacted by Melbourne's Herald Sun, a list of more unusual songs played at Australian funerals includes: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Monty Python, “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, “Highway to Hell,” by AC/DC and “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” from “The Wizard of Oz.”
Hardware Hacking

The Chipophone — an 8-Bit Chiptune Organ 84

Posted by Soulskill from the tones-of-childhood dept.
adunk writes "Linus Åkesson has built an 8-bit synthesizer inside an old electric organ case. 'All the original tone-generating parts have been disconnected, and the keys, pedals, knobs and switches rerouted to a microcontroller which transforms them into MIDI signals. Those are then parsed by a second microcontroller, which acts as a synthesizer.' The Chipophone is perfect for playing classics such as the Super Mario Bros in-game music or Rob Hubbard's Spellbound. A description of the build process, with photos, is available."

Submission + - German Publishers Want Monopoly on Sentences (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: You think copyright can't get any more Draconian? Think again: in Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for "a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolise speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder. According to the drafts circulating in the internet, permission shall be obtainable exclusively by closing an agreement with a new collecting society which will be founded after the drafts have matured into law. Depending on the particulars, new levies might come up for each and every user of a PC, at least if the computer is used in a company for commercial purposes." Think that will never work because someone will always break the news cartel? Don't worry, they've got that covered too: they want to "to amend cartel law in order to enable a global 'pooling' of all exclusive rights of all newspaper publishers in Germany in order to block any attempt to defect from the paywall cartell by single competitor." And rest assured, if anything like this passes in Germany, publishers everywhere will be using the copyright ratchet to obtain "parity".

Submission + - Why are digital hearing aids so expensive? 4

Submitted by sglines
sglines writes: Over the last couple of years I've been slowly getting deaf. Too much loud rock and roll I suppose. After flubbing a couple of job interviews because I couldn't understand my inquisitors I had a hearing test which confirmed what I already knew, I'm deaf. So I tried on a set of behind the ear hearing aids, wow, my keyboard makes clacks as I type and my wife doesn't mumble to herself. Then I asked how much: $3700 for the pair. Hey I'm unemployed. The cheapest digital hearing aids thy had were $1200 each. WYF? If you look at the specs they are not very impressive. A digital hearing aid has a low power A to D converter. Output consists of D to A conversion with volume passing through an equalizer that inversely matches your hearing loss. Most hearing loss, mine included, is frequency dependent so an equalizer does wonders. The "cheap" hearing aids had only 4 channels while the high end one had 12. My 1970 amplifier had more than that. I suppose they have some kind of noise reduction circuitry too but that's pretty much it. So my question is this — when I can get a very good netbook computer for under $400 why do I need to pay $1200 per ear for a hearing aid? Alternatives would be welcome.
Enlightenment

A Review of the $200 Wal-Mart Linux PC 235

Posted by kdawson from the green-around-the-edges dept.
bcrowell writes "Wal-Mart's new $200 Linux PC has generated a lot of buzz in geek circles. Although they're sold out of stores, I bought one for my daughter via mail order, and have written up a review of the system. The hardware seems fine for anyone but a hardcore gamer, but the pre-installed gOS flavor of Ubuntu has a lot of rough edges."
The Internet

Submission + - Survey: more women blogging than men

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: The blogosphere has hit the mainstream, according to a new survey, which reveals that 80% of Americans know what a blog is, 50% regularly visit blogs, and 8% publish their own blog. The survey also reveals that more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14% of men.

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