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Submission + - Longer Than Normal Period Of Inactivity For Sun (montana.edu)

Submitted by esocid
esocid writes: The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. The sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, with the next cycle just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why. In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. The Hinode, a Japanese satellite mission with the US and UK as partners has three telescopes that together show how changes on the sun's surface spread through the solar atmosphere. It orbits 431 miles (694 km) above the Earth, crossing both poles and making one lap every 95 minutes, giving Hinode an uninterrupted view of the sun for several months out of the year. Scientists are not extremely worried, but have added extra ground stations in case of interference from extra solar activity, and are ready for the Sun to resume it's activity.
Music

Submission + - Inside the RIAA and MediaSentry

Submitted by bsdewhurst
bsdewhurst writes: An interesting article about how MediaSentry and the RIAA identify file sharers. The important facts 28,000 lawsuits have resulted in the percentage of American internet users using P2P for downloading music to drop from 20% to 19%. The takedown list is about 700 currently popular songs that are updated based on the charts, so not liking the top 40 could save you.
United States

Submission + - US Government Wants Your Fingerprints, Again (openmarket.org) 2

Submitted by
tjstork
tjstork writes: "Never put it past the government to use any crisis to try and get more power. Just like the previously conjured crises of the Red Scare, Civil Rights Protests, the War on Drugs, the Environment, the War on Terror, the first signs are coming that the US Mortgage crisis is being used as another way to smash the rights of the people of the people be secure in their freedom. The US Senate has just passed through committee a provision which would require everyone connected with the housing industry to be fingerprinted.

Read the article here

Spare your political thunder — this is a bipartisan move. The introduced law passed nearly unanimously. America has to be safe from evil people in the housing market, at any price, and your friends in the government are going to protect you from everyone, just as much as it will protect everyone from you!"
The Internet

Submission + - FBI Targets Archive.org with Patriot Act, Loses (wired.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Although we don't know what they were after due to the settlement, a gag order was just released that kept Internet Archive member Brewster Kahle quiet. The FBI had issued a national security letter to them under the Patriot Act. Kahle fought it. Hard. The EFF came to the aid of his lawyers and what resulted was one of the only three times an NSL has been challenged ... ALL THREE have been rescinded. The FBI agreed to open some of the court files now for it to be public. The ACLU added, "That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven't been challenged." The Scientologists may have gotten criticism off of the library of the internet but at least not the feds."
The Courts

Submission + - ISP sued by Irish RIAA (www.rte.ie)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in p2p file sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Not everyone agrees."
Education

Submission + - German WIkipedia to be published as a book (monstersandcritics.com)

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia, in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. 20 euros a copy, 1 euro from each copy to go to Wikimedia. They're taking the intro section from 25-50,000 articles for the 1000-page book, to be released in September. Who says open source writing can't work?"
Power

Submission + - $1/Gallon 'Green Gasoline' Is Earth Day's Big News (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. From the article: "We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years," Huber says. "And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go."
Censorship

Submission + - Domains blocked by US Treasury "blacklist" (nytimes.com)

Submitted by yuna49
yuna49 writes: Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports today about the plight of a Spanish tour operator whose domain names have been embargoed by eNom after they discovered the tour operator's name on a US Treasury blacklist. It turns out he packages tours to Cuba largely for European tourists who can legally travel there, unlike Americans. The article cites "a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall's company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was 'a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people.' It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do."

The only part of the operator's business in the United States is his domain name registration; all other aspects of his business lie outside the United States.
Social Networks

Submission + - Aboriginal archive uses new DRM (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by ianare
ianare writes: A new method of digital rights management which relies on a user's profile has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians for a multimedia archive. The need to create profiles based on a user's name, age, sex and standing within their community come from traditions over what can and cannot be seen. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Meanwhile images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families. This threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people and where they were situated.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - The video game industry goes political (cnet.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The video game industry is finally forming a PAC by the end of March to get some political clout.

"A story in The New York Times yesterday reports that the video game industry has finally woken up and realized that in order to stay strong going forward, it can't rely on 13-year-old pimple-faced kids to promote its agenda."

"We will be writing checks to campaigns by the end of this quarter," Mr. Gallagher said. "This is an important step in the political maturation process of the industry that we are ready to take now. This is about identifying and supporting champions for the game industry on Capitol Hill so that they support us."
Security

Submission + - Man hacks 911 system, sends SWAT on bogus raid. 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Orange County Register reports that a 19 year old from Washington state broke into the Orange County California 911 emergency system. He randomly selected the name and address of a Lake Forest, California couple and electronically transferred false information into the 911 system. The Orange County California Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics Team was immediately sent to the couple's home. The armed officers surrounded the home.Inside the home lived a couple with two toddlers who were asleep and unsuspecting of what was going outside the home. The SWAT team handcuffed the husband and wife before deciding it was a prank.

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