pickens writes "Erik Hayden writes in the Atlantic that children will see endearing portraits of Chewbacca rendered in the style of "Winnie-the-Pooh" in the book of drawings "Wookie the Chew," a tribute to the combined genius of George Lucas, A.A.Milne and E.H.Sheppard, by artist James Hance released on September 1st. Samples from the book are available at Hance's web site. Hance bases his right to parody Winnie-the-Pooh on Fair Use as parody under which certain uses of copyrighted works, which would otherwise be considered infringing, are permissible. Interestingly enough, the rights to the original Winnie-the-Pooh were the subject of an 18-year feud in which Walt Disney corporation fought off a challenge to its ownership of the rights ending in 2009 when a judge in Los Angeles struck out a claim against Disney lodged by the family of Stephen Slesinger, a comic book pioneer who bought the copyright to Pooh in 1930 from the bear's British creator, A.A. Milne. Stories of Pooh's adventures were originally created by Milne in the 1920s, based on a toy bear owned by the author's son, Christopher Robin."

If you spent a good portion of your childhood reading the classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, you'll be glad to know that you can soon waste countless hours at work turning to random pages on your iPhone. Edward Packard, one of the original authors of the series, has helped create an app called U-Ventures which uses special effects to create a story in the traditional Choose Your Own Adventure format. From the article: "The first U-Venture is a sort of a sequel to a classic title, The Cave of Time. In 'Return to the Cave of Time,' the U-Venture, 'you go back in the cave — you don't have a choice on that,' Packard tells NPR's Neal Conan. But from that point on, the reader chooses her own course."

An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"

rifles only writes "A German techie has found a remarkably simple way to discern some of the content of encrypted volumes containing images. The encrypted images don't reveal themselves totally, but in many cases do let an attacker see the outline of a high-contrast image. The attack works regardless of the encryption algorithm used (the widely-used AES for instance), and affects all utilities that use single symmetric keys. More significant to police around the world struggling with criminal and terrorist use of encryption, the attack also breaks the ability of users to 'hide' separate encrypted volumes inside already encrypted volumes, whose existence can now for the first time be revealed." The discoverer of this attack works for a company making full-disk encryption software; their product, TurboCrypt, has already been enhanced to defeat the attack. Other on-the-fly encryption products will probably be similarly enhanced, as the discoverer asserts: "To our knowledge is the described method free of patents and the author can confirm that he hasn't applied for protection."

Khemisty writes "Formation of an ocean is a rare event, one no scientist has ever witnessed. Yet this geophysical nativity is unfolding today in one of the hottest and most inhospitable corners of the globe. Africa is splitting apart at the seams. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, the continent is coming unstitched along a zone called the East African Rift." This stretching of the earth's crust has been going on for 20 million years, and within another 10 million the Red Sea will have broken through to create a new sea.

A few days ago, NASA and the US Chess Federation teamed up to host a space vs. Earth chess game. Astronaut Greg Chamitoff is playing one side, while the other side's moves will be determined by a public vote. Four potential moves will be selected each weekday by a chess club comprised of students from kindergarten through third grade. Once the selections are made, visitors to the USCF's site can vote for the move they like best. The USCF is maintaining a blog to update the moves and board position, and to provide commentary.

Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].

MazzThePianoman writes "Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Flight Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design, but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks many industries have been hit hard but none as hard as the dubious container industry. Many family owned providers of heavily taped and strangely leaning packages are facing a dire financial future.

Brielle Bruns writes "Yesterday, Judge James B. Zagel dismissed claims against Comcast by e360. In the decision, the judge says: 'Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit." e360 is the spammer that got a default judgement against Spamhaus, as we have discussed on numerous occasions.

Smivs writes "NASA has released some detailed new images of Mars's moon Phobos. The photos are dominated by Stickney Crater, a 9-km (5.5-mi.) depression that is the largest feature on Phobos. The images were captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Some researchers claim that the unique, fist-sized Kaidun meteorite, which fell to Earth at a Russian military base in Yemen in 1980, is a piece of Phobos." Here's a link to all the new images.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In Universal Music Group v. Augusto, UMG is attacking the first sale doctrine. The issue concerns some promotional CDs that were mailed out, and later found their way to eBay. According to UMG, the stickers on the discs claiming that they still own the CD give them a legal right to control what the recipients do with them, and thus, UMG should be able to dictate terms. The EFF has filed an amicus brief countering that claim, saying that because they were sent by US mail, unrequested by the recipient, they are in fact gifts, no matter what the sticker claims. If UMG somehow wins this, I plan to send them CD of copyrighted expletives with a sticker informing them of the contractually required storage location. We discussed a similar issue with e-books a couple weeks ago."

christo writes "In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills. Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab's high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster's campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we expect more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill."