Almost six years ago, we talked about the story of Michel Fournier, a retired French army officer who planned to skydive from a height of 25 miles. That plan and a subsequent attempt one year later both failed due to "technical and weather-related problems." Now, at the age of 64, Fournier is set to try again. If everything goes right, his speed will approach 1,000 miles per hour during the early stages of his 15-minute descent. Quoting the NYTimes: "Fournier faces plenty of perils. Above 40,000 feet, there is not enough oxygen to breathe in the frigid air. He could experience a fatal embolism. And 12 miles up, should his protective systems fail, his blood could begin to boil because of the air pressure, said Henri Marotte, a professor of physiology at the University of Paris and a member of Fournier's team. 'If the human body were exposed at very high altitude, the loss of consciousness is very fast, in five seconds,' Marotte said. 'Brain damage, in three or four minutes.'"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The MPAA won judgments totaling $4M against two sites which merely link to infringing content. They're not arguing that it's an infringement of their distribution right, like the RIAA has with their 'making available' argument. Instead, they got the sites for 'contributory copyright infringement', just like RIAA v. LimeWire. To translate all that legalese into English, search engines which primarily index copyright-infringing material and the people who run them may not be safe in the US. That applies even if the sites in question do not host any infringing materials, participate in, or encourage the infringement done by their users. And, even honoring DMCA notices in order to take advantage of the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions hasn't prevented the **AA from suing."

Roland Piquepaille alerts us to work by US and Israeli researchers who have developed software that can identify the subject of an image characterized using only 256 to 1024 bits of data. The researchers said this "could lead to great advances in the automated identification of online images and, ultimately, provide a basis for computers to see like humans do." As an example, they've picked up about 13 million images from the Web and stored them in a searchable database of just 600 MB, making it possible to search for similar pictures through millions of images in less than a second on a typical PC. The lead researcher, MIT's Antonio Torralba, will be presenting the research next month at a conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling 'incredibly well,' he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today. 'Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,' the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on '45 percent of all of new business PCs.' Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice." Anyone know anybody who bought Vista except as bundled with hardware?

54mc writes "A small group in Santa Fe, New Mexico is claiming that the city is discriminating against them by having wireless networks in public buildings. How are these buildings discriminatory? Simple. These people are allergic to Wi-Fi. And they're suing the city." I've been trying to sue people for the streetlights that I'm allergic to as well.

oschobero writes "According an article from the Times, customers in shopping centers are having their every move tracked. Using cellphone signals, the system can tell when people enter the center, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation." The particular tracking device described by the article is made by an English company called Path Intelligence.