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Music

Submission + - NBC Erases SNL Sketch From Digital Archive For Fear Of Copyright Lawsuit (idigitaltimes.com)

M.Nunez writes: "The digital "Saturday Night Live" archive does not feature a recent Bruno Mars sketch because it includes impersonations of pop singers and their chart-topping hits. Bruno Mars sings several songs that are not owned by NBC, so it can be presumed that the company refrained from uploading the sketch into its digital archive to avoid any legal issues.

Convoluted music licensing laws have essentially erased the Bruno Mars sketch from the digital archives of SNL. In the short comedy sketch, Bruno Mars impersonates vocal performances by Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Louis Armstrong, and Michael Jackson. The sketch cannot be found on NBC.com or Hulu, as a short clip or in either full editions of the episode."

NASA

Does Obama Have a Problem At NASA? 479

MarkWhittington writes "Has NASA become a problem for the Obama transition? If one believes a recent story in the Orlando Sentinel, the transition team at NASA, led by former NASA Associate Administrator Lori Garver, is running into some bureaucratic obstruction." Specifically, according to this article NASA Administrator Michael Griffin made calls to aerospace industry executives asking them to stonewall if asked about benefits to be gained by canceling the current US efforts to revisit the moon; we mentioned last month that cutting Aries and Orion is apparently an idea under strong consideration by the Obama transition team.
Security

Online Billpay Provider Loses Control of Domains 232

An anonymous reader writes "Several sites are running a story about a domain hijacking at Checkfree, the largest provider of online bill payment services to numerous banks and credit unions. According to Network Solutions, someone logged in to the domain administration page using Checkfree's account, and redirected its domains to a site in the Ukraine configured to serve up malware to unsuspecting users." Things like this make me nervous about switching to otherwise-tempting online bill payment, but checks are dangerous, too.
Christmas Cheer

Holiday Art Executed In Google Documents 72

CyberKnet writes "Some enterprising folks over at Google have collaborated via Google Documents to create holiday art using cells in a spreadsheet as the pixels. A time delay video was taken and is available over at YouTube and the result is pretty spectacular. More info on how they did this is available behind the scenes. They're inviting people to share their own masterpieces or post a video response over on YouTube."
Star Wars Prequels

LucasArts, Bioware Announce Star Wars MMO 346

LucasArts and Bioware held a press conference today to confirm what has been suspected for a long time: they're working on a Star Wars MMO. It will be called Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it will be a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise. Further coverage is available at Gamespot, and IGN has some of the concept art. An official website for the game was launched as well. "According to the game's official announcement, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith. That's about 300 years after the events of KotOR, a time frame that, according to Zeschuk, 'is completely unexplored in the lore.' Players can take the role of either a Jedi, a Sith or other classic Star Wars characters -- and, as perhaps can be expected from BioWare, Muzyka says story will be a major component, underlying and driving all of the player's actions."
The Almighty Buck

The Rise of the (Financial) Machines 403

BartlebyScrivener writes "A New York Times Op-Ed quoting Freeman and George Dyson wonders if Wall Street geeks and 'quants' outsmarted themselves with computer algorithms to create the current financial debacle: 'Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that all of that imaginary wealth is locked up somewhere inside the computers, and that we humans, led by the silverback males of the financial world, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, are frantically beseeching the monolith for answers.'" The quoted essay from George Dyson is available at Edge.
Idle

Beer at the Barbershop 1

A barber in Grand Rapids Michigan who had been forced to stop offering beer after authorities told him he was breaking the law, hopes to convince lawmakers to change their minds. He feels that a beer with your haircut is simply old-fashioned service. When will the Nanny State learn that nothing goes as well with a foamy mug of beer as straight razors, scissors and loose hair.
Sci-Fi

Arthur C. Clarke Is Dead At 90 538

Many readers are sending in word that Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka. He wrote over 100 books including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous With Rama, and popularized the ideas of geosynchronous communications satellites and space elevators.

Comment Strike Commander (Score 1) 195

I'm still waiting for Strike Commander from Origin. ...Wait, what? It was released? Damn, I'm getting too old for this kindof lifestyle. /sometimes I feel like Jack T Colton from Romancing the Stone. //"Dammit man, the Doobie Brothers broke up? When did that happen? Shit."

Comment 2.5 years for WinXP Starter Edition (Score 1) 278

Several articles on this story have pointed out "In addition, the company will continue to offer Windows XP Starter Edition in emerging markets where it is currently available for the rapidly growing class of hardware-constrained ultra-low cost PCs until June 30, 2010." So it looks like third world countries will be able to buy for an additional 2 years.
Music

Threat To Free, Legal Guitar Tablature Online 223

An anonymous reader writes "Recently Hal Leonard Corporation, the world's largest songbook publisher, sent an email to the music publishing and copyright community urging them not to license guitar tablature for free, advertising-supported use online. The email includes a number of factual errors and was potentially very damaging to the potential for a free, legal, and licensed destination for guitar tab online. Musicnotes and MXTabs have posted the full letter along with their response."
Power

Submission + - Simple chemical trick to boost battery efficiency

space_mongoose writes: Hitachi reckons that a simple chemical additive could significantly improve battery life. Alkaline batteries have a positive electrode of manganese oxide and a negative electrode of finely powdered zinc, but zinc oxide forms around these grains of zinc. Hitachi's solution is to replace the zinc with a fine powder of zinc-aluminium alloy, displaces the zinc within the zinc oxide layer making it a much better conductor.

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