arbitraryaardvark writes "Reuters reports that medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel. Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s. 'Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.' It isn't known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns or not."

An anonymous reader writes "A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Microsoft said Thursday. The news comes after reports that U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. should be liable for infringing AT&T Inc. patents in Windows software sold overseas."

Edis Krad writes, "An elderly Japanese bar manager and performer has been arrested for playing copyrighted songs on his harmonica. From the article: 'Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles' songs "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Yesterday," whose copyrights are managed by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He allegedly performed the songs on the harmonica with a female pianist at the bar he operated between August and September this year.' This is for all those kids who are learning chords on their guitars — be ready to pay fees for practicing 'Smoke On The Water.' This story seems to be legit, though it reads like an Onion piece. It's only being reported in the Mainichi Daily News via MSN.

Daveydweeb writes, "The accuracy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, came into question again when a long-standing article on 'NPA personality theory' was confirmed to be a hoax. Not only had the article survived at Wikipedia for the better part of a year, but it had even been listed as a 'Good Article,' supposedly placing it in the top 0.2-0.3% of all Wikipedia articles — despite being almost entirely written by the creator of the theory himself."

eldavojohn writes "Using Hubble, researchers have noticed traffic patterns of stars within our own galaxy. From the article, 'Researchers analyzed 47 Tucanae, the second largest cluster in the Milky Way's galactic neighborhood, and determined the cluster sorts out stars according to their masses. Due to the associated gravitational pull, heavier stars slow down and sink to the cluster's core, while lighter stars pick up speed and zip out to the cluster's periphery.' There is speculation that these movements of stars — although tiny — can have significant implications and possibly result in mass segregation."

Richard Manley writes "A report on the card game trinket fiasco. When the UDE (Upper Deck Entertainment) point system finally went live, I would imagine most of the people that logged in felt the same fury I did. Blizzard knows the lengths that its fans will go to get trinkets (look at the price of Murloc cards on eBay), but their arrangement with Upper Deck simply takes advantage of the good will many fans have shown." From the article: "This means that in order to get these trinkets, one would have to purchase 9 BOXES of cards for the fireworks and 21 BOXES of cards for the ogre. What does this mean? Want a fireworks trinket? Sure, it is only going to cost you $900.00. Want an Ogre trinket? No problem, it is only going to cost you $2,100.00. Bear in mind that these items are purely for show off purposes and give no in-game advantage to players." Having been through the Magic: The Gathering addiction twice, I've decided staying away from this Collectible Card Game is a good idea.