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Submission + - Judge rules that resale of MP3s violates copyright law 1

Submitted by Pikoro
Pikoro writes: A judge has sided with Capitol Records in the lawsuit between the record company and ReDigi — ruling that MP3s can only be resold if granted permission by copyright owners.
"The Order is surprising in light of last month's United States Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons, which reaffirmed the importance and applicability of the First Sale Doctrine in the United States of America."

Submission + - Google Privacy Director Alma Whitten Leaving (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: Alma Whitten, the director of privacy at Google, is stepping down from that role and leaves behind her a complicated legacy in regards to user privacy. Whitten has been the company's top product and engineering privacy official since 2010 and was at the helm as the company navigated a number of serious privacy scandals and controversies.

Whitten has been at Google for about 10 years, and while she has been the main public face of the company's product privacy efforts in the last couple of years, she has been involved in engineering privacy initiatives for even longer. Before becoming the privacy lead for products and engineering in 2010 in the aftermath of the Google Street View WiFi controversy, Whitten had been in charge of privacy for the company's engineering teams. During that time, she was involved in the company's public effort to fight the idea that IP addresses can be considered personally identifiable information.
Piracy

Submission + - Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.
Science

Submission + - Periodic Table Welcomes Two New Elements

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Chemistry's periodic table can now welcome livermorium and flerovium, two newly named elements, which were announced Thursday (Dec. 1) by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The new names will undergo a five-month public comment period before the official paperwork gets processed and they show up on the table. Three other new elements just recently finished this process, filling in the 110, 111 and 112 spots.
Microsoft

Submission + - Spammers and HIV Virus Use Similar Methods To Avoi (threatpost.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "Security researchers often use language and metaphors from the natural world to describe problems in the virtual world. (Consider "virus," and "worm.") Now it turns out that the links may be more than just rhetoric. Microsoft Researchers say that tools they developed to detect spammers' efforts to avoid anti-spam filters were also great at spotting mutations in the HIV virus.
A report from Microsoft Research in honor of World AIDS Day yesterday described how Microsoft Researchers David Heckerman and Jonathan Carlson were called upon to help AIDS researchers analyze data about how the human immune system attacks the HIV virus. To do so, they turned to tools and algorithms developed at Microsoft to detect and block spam e-mail in the company's Hotmail, Outlook and Exchange e-mail products."
Robotics

Submission + - Robo-chefs and fashion-bots on show in Tokyo

Submitted by avishere
avishere writes: The International Robot Exhibition kicked off this week in Tokyo, unveiling the latest whirring and buzzing inventions from 192 companies and 64 organizations from at home and abroad — an bringing humanity another step closer to irrelevancy. Among the humanoid cavalcade was a prototype robo-chef, showing off its cooking and cutting skills, along with robots to play with your children, model clothes and search for disaster victims. There was also one made almost exclusively of cardboard. The exhibition — which opened with a human-like robot called Nextage cutting the ribbon — runs until Saturday.
NASA

Submission + - NASA moon-excavation robots face off (w/vids) (automationmag.com)

Submitted by avishere
avishere writes: Student teams designed and built robotic power-lifters to excavate simulated lunar soil (a.k.a. "regolith") last week, and with $750,000 up for grabs, the goal was to leave your opponents in the dust — literally. Excavating regolith, according to NASA, will be an important part of any construction projects or processing of natural resources on the Moon. Interestingly, regolith is especially difficult to dig because its dust particles want to stick together. The whole robotic system has to be sturdy enough to scoop moon dirt and powerful enough to move through the dust while still meeting the weight requirements. The winning excavator from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts lifted 1,103 pounds within the allotted time, and got a sweet $500,000 for their troubles.
Games

Submission + - 400 battle bots fight, toss enemies at games \vid (automationmag.com)

Submitted by
Andre
Andre writes: "The 6th annual RoboGames were held in San Francisco last weekend as they welcomed a horde of 400 non-sentient, metallic warriors to do violent battle—against each other, of course. This army of remote-controlled and autonomous combat robots, along with walking humanoids, soccer 'bots, sumo 'bots and even androids that do kung-fu, was put to the test. Among the big winners was Canadian-made "Ziggy"—one of the combatants in the 340-pounds super-heavyweight division (the biggest division)—who took home a gold medal for the fourth year in a row. The bionic brute proved its might against its final opponent, the "Juggernaut," by tossing it around like an empty pop can (and promptly making a mockery of its name) using its pneumatic flipper. Its newly improved weapon results (as you may expect) in unwanted (but totally cool) free-flying lessons for its opponents, and at full power, the flipper can launch an opponent to the arena ceiling."
Robotics

Submission + - Pool-cue robots reinvent billiards (w/ imgs, vid) (canadianmanufacturing.com)

Submitted by
AndreV
AndreV writes: "In another attempt to dehumanize our bar games, a Canadian engineer has turned the classic game of billiards on its head with his BilliardBots pet project, which consists of a series of remote-controlled mobile robots meant to replace the standard cue sticks normally used to pocket pool balls. While in his version the basic rules remain, unlike regular billiards, players in this version simultaneously rush to pocket their designated balls (they don't take turns), 'thus it's very competitive and fast,' the creator says. In order to keep tight reigns on the mechatronic ball handlers' movements, he adapted a pair of Playstation controllers and says that playing 'requires dexterity, like a video game,' to control their 3.5-m/sec-maximum speeds. The 'bots are designed simply but effectively, using a 3-by-3-by-3-inch metal frame with an electronic board, two motors and rechargeable battery packs. Using a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, its commands come from the wireless controller with single or double joystick selectable control (the other buttons are not used). Its other parameters are software programmable, such as maximum acceleration rate, maximum speed and maximum rotation speed."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Brief Attacks Free Software Foundation (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has requested permission to file a response to the amicus curiae brief filed by the Free Software Foundation in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston case against a Boston University grad student accused of having downloaded some song files when in his teens. In their proposed response, the RIAA lawyers personally attacked The Free Software Foundation, Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer), and NYCL's blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People'. The 9-page response (PDF) — 4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding — termed the FSF an organization 'dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs', and accused the FSF of having an 'open and virulent bias against copyrights' and 'blatant bias' against the record companies. They called 'Recording Industry vs. The People' an 'anti-recording industry web site' and stated that NYCL 'is currently subject to a pending sanctions motion for his conduct in representing a defendant' (without disclosing that plaintiffs' lawyers were 'subject to a pending motion for Rule 11 sanctions for their conduct in representing plaintiffs' in that very case)."
Networking

Submission + - Should network cables be replaced? 1

Submitted by Jyms
Jyms writes: As technology changes, so hubs routers and switches are upgraded, but does the cabling need replacing, and if so, how often? Coax gave way to CAT 5 and CAT 5e replaced that. If you are running a 100Mbit/s network on old CAT 5, can that affect performance? Do CAT 5(e) cables get old?
The Internet

Submission + - Obama Appoints Non-Tech Guy as Chief Techie (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "President Barack Obama has named his chief technology officer, and the appointee is not a Silicon Valley name like so many predicted. He is Aneesh Chopra. As the Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, his job has been to 'leverage technology in government reform, promote Virginia's innovation agenda, and foster technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.' But Chopra's not a tech guy. Before he got his secretary job in 2005, he was a managing director at the Advisory Board Company, a public-market health care think tank, as well as an angel investor."
Robotics

Submission + - Robo-arm signatures are legal, gvt buys one *w/vid (canadianmanufacturing.com)

Submitted by
AndreV
AndreV writes: "It's endlessly comforting to know a recently designed and implemented long-distance robotic signing arm can produce signatures legal in both the U.S. and Canada. (And I, for one, welcome our up-and-coming document-signing, deed-revoking robotic overloads.) The aptly named LongPen replicates the handwriting from a person writing in a remote location—with the unique speed, cadence and pressure of a human hand stroke. It started as a idea from author Margaret Atwood to help free her from grueling, multi-city, multi-country book tours, but the hard stuff was done by a bunch of Canadian haptic gurus, whose design took into consideration many factors of the human arm and how we write. How it works: From the author-end, data protocols are set up and a tablet measures the pen pressure on a special tablet; the data streams to the robot, while algorithms smooth out all the missed points. Complex math operations were used to help the mechatronic limb repeat the hand's motions without unnecessary jerking, and programmers had to 'scale time' or 'stretch time' by breaking down the movements, essentially tricking the eyes into thinking the robot is writing fast. It was recently adopted by the Ontario Government to sign official documents. It helps criminals sign books, too."

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