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Space

Kepler May Uncover Numerous Ring Worlds 75

Posted by timothy from the from-which-monkeys-might-hypothetically-fly dept.
astroengine writes "According to a new publication, NASA's Kepler exoplanet-hunting space telescope may soon start discovering Saturn-like ringed alien worlds. So far, none have been positively identified, as Kepler has only detected exoplanets orbiting close to their parent stars; if these exoplanets have rings, they are most likely to have rings facing edge-on to their orbits, making them nearly impossible to detect. As more distant-orbiting exoplanets are detected, there's more likelihood ringed worlds will be tilted, allowing Kepler to see them."
Android

Submission + - B&N Responds to Microsoft's Android Suit (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "You're probably familiar with Microsoft's long running assault on Android but, as noticed by Groklaw, Barnes and Noble has fired back saying, 'Microsoft has asserted patents that extend only to arbitrary, outmoded, or non-essential design features, but uses these patents to demand that every manufacturer of an Android-based mobile device take a license from Microsoft and pay exorbitant licensing fees or face protracted and expensive patent infringement litigation.' Barnes and Noble goes on to assert that Microsoft violates 'antitrust laws, threatens competition for mobile device operating systems and is further evidence of Microsoft’s efforts to dominate and control Android and other open source operating systems.' The PDF of the filing from two days ago is rife with accusations including, 'Microsoft intends to utilize its patents to control the activities of and extract fees from the designers, developers, and manufacturers of devices, including tablets, eReaders, and other mobile devices, that employ the Android Operating System.' and 'Microsoft has falsely and without justification asserted that its patents somehow provide it with the right to prohibit device manufacturers from employing new versions of the Android Operating System, or third party software.' Barnes and Noble does not mince words when explaining Microsoft's FUD campaign to both the public and developers in its attempts to suppress Android. It's good to see PJ still digging through massive court briefs to bring us the details on IP court battles."
The Courts

RIAA Litigation May Be Unconstitutional 281

Posted by timothy from the what-about-ritchie-chaz-and-margot? dept.
dtjohnson writes "A Harvard law school professor has submitted arguments on behalf of Joel Tenenbaum in RIAA v. Tenenbaum in which Professor Charles Nesson claims that the underlying law that the RIAA uses is actually a criminal, rather than civil, statute and is therefore unconstitutional. According to this article, 'Nesson charges that the federal law is essentially a criminal statute in that it seeks to punish violators with minimum statutory penalties far in excess of actual damages. The market value of a song is 99 cents on iTunes; of seven songs, $6.93. Yet the statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per song, escalating to as much as $150,000 per song for infringement "committed willfully."' If the law is a criminal statute, Neeson then claims that it violates the 5th and 8th amendments and is therefore unconstitutional. Litigation will take a while but this may be the end for RIAA litigation, at least until they can persuade Congress to pass a new law."

Feed Engadget: Jonathan Ive being groomed to take over for Jobs one fateful day? (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You've probably heard of Jonathan Ive: darling of the technology and industrial design worlds, and El Jobso's handsome long-time mountain of a right hand man in product design since the CEO's second coming at Apple. You might also know him as the dude that birthed the iMac, titanium Power Book and MacBook (Pro), iPod, iPhone, and just about every decent-looking Apple product in the last decade. Well, he's also apparently the guy the most people seem to be pontificating -- whether officially or not -- as Jobs's successor, according to the Times. Of course, there's another obvious, prominent theory about why the ever tight-lipped Apple hasn't done as most publicly traded companies and made a formal contingency plan for succession of the CEO gig: Jobs is immortal. As if you didn't already know that. There can be only one!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
The Internet

Submission + - Senators call for universal internet filtering (pressesc.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited. Senators call for universal Internet filtering Senators call for universal Internet filtering"

Feed Engadget: Medison Celebrity, $150 of Linux laptop for the people (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Laptops

Apparently you don't need to be a non-profit crazy, or nab few million pre-orders, to sell a laptop for $150. Medison, a Swedish consulting company, has just unveiled its Medison Celebrity laptop, which sports standard hardware, a 14-inch WXGA screen, an optimized Fedora Linux install, and a downright criminal $150 pricetag. Sure, you're not going to be launching Crysis on this thing anytime soon, with a 1.5GHz Celeron processor, 256MB of RAM, and VIA PN800 integrated graphics, but the casual user should find plenty to keep them occupied, and there's room for Windows XP if you want to pony up for a license -- which at retail costs more than the laptop itself. There's 40GB of storage, a CD / DVD combo drive, 802.11g WiFi, and even what looks to be a built-in webcam in the pictures. These'll be shipping in the US and Europe in 4-6 weeks. Oh, and in case it hasn't sunk in yet: $150.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Privacy

Submission + - Potentially huge legal boost for EU file-shareres (businessweek.com)

Submitted by Mishtara2001
Mishtara2001 writes: BusinessWeek reports that: "An EU high court adviser says Internet service providers are not required to disclose data on people suspected of music piracy". If this is adopted across the EU then it can potentially spell doom for the IFPI's (the global RIAA) efforts to litigate against European P2P users.

More here: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2 007/gb20070720_372166.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+in dex+page_top+stories
http://torrentfreak.com/major-victory-within-reach -for-european-file-sharers/
X

Submission + - New Linux desktop environment built on Firefox (pyrodesktop.org)

Submitted by
IL-CSIXTY4
IL-CSIXTY4 writes: "
Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.
This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Sees Stronger XP Sales in FY08 (pcworld.com) 1

Submitted by Rude Awakening
Rude Awakening writes: Microsoft Corp. Thursday said that it expects Windows XP, the operating system supposedly made moot by Windows Vista, to make up a significantly larger part of sales in the coming year.

I thought this was a misprint and they really meant Vista sales would be stronger in '08 instead of XP, but it is no misprint. Is Vista bad enough to breathe new life into XP sales, or is this part of an insidious plot by Microsoft to sell two OS licenses for each new PC shipped?

Feed Techdirt: Potter Publisher Says Selling Legally Obtained Copy Is Illegal (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
The hysteria over tonight's launch of the latest Harry Potter book has been covered to death in many places, but it still amazes us how ridiculous JK Rowling and her entourage are about the way they view intellectual property surrounding the books. Rowling has said she's against putting out an eBook because it would be pirated, even though that makes almost no sense. The book gets scanned and put online anyway, meaning anyone who finds it more convenient to read an electronic copy has to get an unauthorized copy rather than paying for a legitimate copy. And, of course, even booksellers are pointing out that they're unlikely to lose a single sale over scanned versions that are found online.

However, the Potter crew is still going nuts over the secrecy of the book, claiming intellectual property rights that they don't actually have. It's no secret that there's an extensive process that the publisher makes booksellers go through to avoid an "early" leak of the books, but what happens if a legitimate copy of the book actually does get out? That's what happened when an engineer received a copy of the book earlier this week when an online bookstore accidentally shipped it out early. He quickly (and smartly) put it up on eBay where the price shot up to $250... and then, JK Rowling's lawyer demanded eBay take the auction down as infringing on its rights. What rights? That's not clear. The book is legitimate. The sale to the guy was legitimate. The bookseller may have violated an embargo from the publisher, but that's between the bookseller and the publisher -- not the guy who ended up with the book. Once the book has gone out to the guy he has every right to sell it, and JK Rowling's lawyer was wrong for demanding it be taken down and eBay was wrong in agreeing to take it down. This is simply a case where they seem to be claiming copyright privileges that simply don't exist.
AMD

Submission + - Study: AMD beats Intel in power-efficiency study (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
Ted Samson
Ted Samson writes: "AMD Opteron servers proved up to 15.2 percent more energy-efficient than those running Intel Xeon in server-power-efficiency test performed by Neal Nelson and Associates, InfoWorld reports. The translates to annual electricity savings between $20.29 per server and $36.04 per server, depending on the workload, the study concluded. The benchmark tests were conducted on similarly configured 3GHz systems running Novell SUSE Linux, Apache2, and MySQL."

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