craigavonite - Slashdot User

Submission + - Canadian songwriters propose $10/mo Internet fee. (windsorstar.com)

Submitted by BitterOak on Saturday March 05, 2011 @05:09PM

BitterOak writes: According to this story, Canadian songwriters are proposing a $10 fee to be added to monthly ISP bills, giving users a license to download music using peer-to-peer file sharing technologies for free, without fear of reprisal. The money collected would be distributed to members of a Canadian association of songwriters (SOCAN). The story doesn't make clear whether the license would apply only to Canadian music, or how musicians in other nations would be compensated otherwise.

Comment Re:Launch from altitude vs near equator (Score 1) 81

by craigavonite on Saturday December 13, 2008 @02:40PM (#26104557) Attached to: VASIMR Plasma Thruster To Be Tested Aboard ISS

Would the biggest problem with launching off a mountain not be the environmental impact? I don't see the damage that would be caused to the mountain sitting well with the green vote.

Or the visual impact of such a thing, one of the main reasons people dislike wind farms, pretty mountain pity about the hulking great rocket strapped to it.

Looking For Earth-Like Exoplanets 73

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 11, 2008 @09:39AM from the dust-motes-orbiting-a-yottawatt-light-bulb dept.

Discover Magazine is running a story detailing the search for planets like Earth orbiting other stars. While we've been able to locate a few "super earths" so far, none of them really compare in size or the potential for habitability with our own world. Fortunately, advances in data analysis and new space-based telescopes — such as Kepler, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the already-launched CoRoT (PDF) — have some astronomers predicting we'll find such an exoplanet by 2010, and a habitable one by 2012. Earth-based telescopes are also in the hunt, though the article notes, "even if a habitable Earth-like world is found first from the ground, it will most likely take a space observatory to search for the chemical signals that tell us what we really want to know: Is anything living out there? If the planet is one that can be observed transiting, it just might be possible to provide a hint of an answer in the next few years."

Submission + - UK Government to force ID Cards on foreigners (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by craigavonite on Thursday September 25, 2008 @12:06PM

craigavonite writes: "The biometric card will be issued from November, initially to non-EU students and marriage visa holders. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the cards would allow people to "easily and securely prove their identity". Critics say the roll-out to some immigrants is a "softening up" exercise for the introduction of identity cards for everyone."

It's looking like the UK is in for biometric ID cards within the next few years, despite widespread protest from groups such as "NO2ID".

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