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Government

UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida 681

Posted by kdawson from the terrism-is-the-root-password-to-the-academy dept.
D Afifi writes "Two political researchers at the University of Nottingham, in the UK, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for downloading Al-Qaida material from a US government website. The material was to be used for research in terrorist tactics. There has been a huge public outcry, with university staff planning a march to demonstrate against the attack on academic freedom. Yet, one of the students, an Algerian, is still held in custody under immigration charges and is being fast-tracked for deportation."
Space

Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery 66

Posted by Zonk from the flash-from-above dept.
webdoodle writes "An astronomer at Columbia University thinks he has solved a 400-year-old mystery: the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface. These spots, called 'Transient Lunar Phenomenon' (TLP) by the astronomy community, have confused moon-gazers since the time of ancient scientists. Arlin Crotts now thinks that TLPs are something called 'outgassing', a process where trapped gasses escape to the lunar atmosphere. 'To arrive at his theory, Crotts correlated TLPs with known gas outbursts from the lunar surface as seen by several spacecraft, particularly NASA's Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the robotic Lunar Prospector in 1998. What he discovered was a remarkable similarity in the pattern of outgassing event locations recorded by spacecraft across the face of the moon and reported TLP sites.'"
Classic Games (Games)

Soviet Video Games from the 70s 66

Posted by Zonk from the really-really-old-skool dept.
vigmeister writes "A group of Russian kids have uncovered and rebuilt some arcade games from the Soviet era. These games apparently offered free play when someone played well, but no list of hi-scores. Roughly 32 of them have been found and although they are based on other arcade games, I hope these games were unique enough to offer playability for the present day arcade game lovers. 'Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual -- for the purposes of "entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities." Production of the games ceased with the collapse of communism, and as Nintendo consoles and PCs flooded the former Soviet states, the old arcade games were either destroyed or disappeared into warehouses and basements. It was mostly out of nostalgia that four friends at Moscow State Technical University began scouring the country to rescue these old games. '"
Portables

A "Bill of Lights" to Restrict LEDs on Gadgets? 729

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the palm-flower dept.
PetManimal writes "Mike Elgan has had it with useless lights on gadgets and computers. He singles out the Palm Treo and the Dell XPS gaming laptops as being particularly bad with the use of unnecessary lights, and also cites the plethora of LEDs on desktop PCs and peripherals. 'My PC and other computing equipment make my office look like a jet cockpit. I have two LCD monitors, each of which has two indicator lights that flash even when the PC is turned off. The attached sound control has a light on it. My keyboard has multiple lights. The power cord has lights, the printer has lights, and the power button is illuminated. My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I'm taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.' Elgan calls on manufacturers to respect his 'Gadget Bill of Lights' to restrict the use of nag lights and allow users to turn them off. He also says the industry should pay more attention to industrial design when creating new products."
Censorship

SQL-Ledger Relicensed, Community Gagged 194

Posted by kdawson from the i-can't-heear-you dept.
Ashley Gittins writes "Users of the popular accounting package SQL-Ledger were being kept in the dark about a recent license change. Two weeks ago a new version of the software was released but along with it came the silent change of license from GPLv2 to the 'SQL-Ledger Open Source License' — presumably in an effort to prevent future forks like LedgerSMB. As it turns out, the author was making deliberate attempts to prevent the community from finding out about the license change. No posts to the SQL-Ledger mailing lists asking about the license change were getting past moderation and direct questions to the author were going unanswered. Just recently the license was switched back to GPLv2. This behavior is not a first for this particular project, and is part of the reason for the original LedgerSMB fork. Does a project maintainer have an ethical obligation to notify his or her community of a license change? What about a legal obligation?"
Movies

Netflix Now Offers Instant Online Movie Streaming 247

Posted by Zonk from the goodbye-video-store-you-won't-be-missed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you're the owner of a video rental store, it may be time to start thinking about getting into a different business, according to ZDNet. Netflix, the online movie rental service, is offering a new feature that allows its subscribers to instantly view movies and TV shows on their PC. From the article: 'Following a one-time, under-60-second installation of a simple browser applet, most subscribers' movie selections will begin playing in their Web browser in as little as 10 to 15 seconds. Movies can be paused and a position bar gives viewers the ability to immediately jump to any point in the movie. In all, the instant watching feature requires only Internet connectivity with a minimum of one megabit per second of bandwidth.' These movies are in addition to the standard DVDs you can have at home, it should be pointed out. You can see a demonstration of the service at the Hacking Netflix blog." Only a small percentage of customers have it available at the moment, but they hope to roll it out to everyone within six months.

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