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Music

Submission + - Can Govt Study Says P2P Downloaders Buy More Music 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that a newly study commissioned by the Government of Canada, which includes some of the most extensive surveying to date of the Canadian population on music purchasing habits, finds what many have long suspected — there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing. The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada was conducted collaboratively by two professors from the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research, who surveyed over 2,000 Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft defeats pro-ODF legislation (computerworld.com)

Submitted by ajanp
ajanp writes: Computerworld discusses the defeat of legislation in the states of California, Florida, Texas, Oregon, and Connecticut which "would have required state agencies to use freely available and interoperable file formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications, instead of Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary Office formats," although a bill in Minnesota that would have called for the state agencies to start using an open, XML-based format was changed to instead study the issue. There was heavy lobbying being done in private on both sides with one problem being "the jargon-laden disinformation that committee members felt they were being fed by lobbyists for both IBM and Microsoft. Although lobbyists would tell the committee one thing in private, they got cold feet when asked to verify the information publicly, under oath." However, "Despite the string of defeats, Marino Marcich, executive director of the Washington-based ODF Alliance, said the legislative fight has only begun."
Quickies

Submission + - Monster squid caught in Antarctica

Submitted by
zakkie
zakkie writes: "New Zealand fisherman have caught a massive 450 kg colossal squid fishing in the Antartic waters. This is by far the biggest yet found, measuring over 10 metres in length and weighing 450 kg. It has been taken back to New Zealand to be studied."
Space

Submission + - New Software Stops Mars Rover Confusion

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: "The Mars rover Spirit used to get quite confused when it came upon a rock. Because it could only plan routes of a metre or two it couldn't understand how to navigate around large objects, and frequently used to rock back and forth for hours trying to figure it out. NASA have written new software called D* for the rover Opportunity, which should allow it to autonomously plan routes up to 50 metres long. The new software still won't be able to avoid sand-traps though."

Feed 300 Brings History to Bloody Life (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Zack Snyder talks about his ultraviolent film based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, from its amazing digital effects to its politics. Wired News interview by Jason Silverman.


Google

Submission + - Google Apps goes premium

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "Google Apps for Your Domain is going premium as custom 10 gig Gmail box, Google Calendar, GTalk instant messenger, Writely, Google Pages, Google Custom home page iGoogle and Google SpreadSheets for $50 a year per employee. CBS Marketwatch is calling it the "boldest move yet to challenge Microsoft Corp.'s flagship Office brand of business computer programs." The New York Times also provides some details on competitive pricing: "By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange, the Microsoft server software typically used for corporate e-mail systems, in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner.""
Security

Ex-judge Gets 27 Months on Evidence From Hacked PC 610

Posted by samzenpus from the lesser-of-two-evils dept.
netbsd_fan writes "A former California judge has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for possession of illegal pornography, based entirely on evidence gathered by an anonymous vigilante script kiddie in Canada. At any given time he was monitoring over 3,000 innocent people. The anonymous hacker says, "I would stay up late at night to see what I could drag out of their computers, which turned out to be more than I expected. I could read all of their e-mails without them knowing. As far as they were concerned, they didn't know their e-mails had even been opened. I could see who they were chatting with and read what they were saying as they typed."
Space

Submission + - Building the Interplanetary Internet

Submitted by
sighted
sighted writes: "Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is leading a NASA effort to create a permanent network link to Mars within the next two years. As Cerf outlined in a recent talk, the "InterPlaNet" protocol is designed to handle the delay caused by interplanetary distances. For example, it can take a signal up to 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars, depending on the distance between the two planets."
Announcements

Submission + - Fran Allen becomes first woman to win Turing award

Submitted by
shoemortgage
shoemortgage writes: "The Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received this honour."
Security

Scientists Make Quantum Encryption Breakthrough 156

Posted by samzenpus from the completely-secure-for-at-least-a-few-days dept.
Madas writes "Scientists working in Cambridge have managed to make quantum encryption completely secure (registration required) by putting decoy pulses in the key transmission stream. According to the story this paves the way for safe, encrypted high-speed data links. Could this allow completely private transmission of data away from snooping eyes and ears? Or will it mean film studios can stop movies from being copied when traveling on the internet?"
Democrats

Submission + - States Seek Laws to Curb Online Bullying

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Until this is passed, I will remain an anonymous coward "States from Oregon to Rhode Island are considering crackdowns to curb or outlaw the behavior in which kids taunt or insult peers on social Web sites like MySpace or via instant messages. Still, there is some disagreement over how effective crackdowns will be and how to do it. The Internet allows students to insult others in relative anonymity, and experts who study cyber'bullying say it can be more damaging to victims than traditional bullying like fist fights and classroom taunts." http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070221/add1-cybe rbullying.htm
Space

Submission + - Astronaut to undertake record breaking spacewalk

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: "Two residents of the International Space Station will take a spacewalk tomorrow to try to jam a stuck antenna on a docked cargo ship back into place. The spacewalk will set a US record of over 65 hours spacewalk experience. During the spacewalk, the astronauts will "use a hammer and a chisel to try to pound the antenna into place". Precision engineering at its very best I'm sure you'll agree."

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