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Comment This will sure give apple fans a warm fuzzy (Score 1) 442

And the new repair cost should save them a JUST few hundred bucks over a new replacement Mac. I wonder is there anything that apple will do that dampen the the apple fans spirit? Seriously though, all joking aside. Why is this necessary from a consumer point of view? This seems like an unnecessary fix for a non existent problem with a large cost to the consumer. These (Features, not bugs.) just drive up the cost and reduce reliability. And lets be honest Apple has had a lousy history lately of reliable products. Just my 2 cents worth and not worth any more then that.
The Internet

Submission + - Pandora Wants Radio Stations to Pay for Music, too (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: US radio stations don't pay performers and producers for the music they play, but the recording industry hopes to change that with a new performance rights bill in Congress. Webcaster Pandora has jumped into the fray on the side of the artists and labels, asking why radio gets a free ride when Pandora does not.

The campaign to get radio stations to pay up for the music they play marches on. With revenues from recorded music sales declining, rightsholders have turned their eyes in recent years to commercial US radio, which currently pays songwriters (but not performers or record labels) for the tunes that power their business.

The record labels now have Pandora on their side. The influential webcaster just wrapped up its own music licensing negotiations with rightsholders last week as both sides at last agreed to a deal that each could live with. With its own future secure for the next few years, Pandora is now turning its attention to the public performance debate here in the US, saying that the issue is a simple matter of fairness: why should webcasters have to pay more for music than traditional radio does?

ARS Technica : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/pandora-now-pushing-radio-to-pay-for-music-too.ars
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Track your move (and friends) by Find My iPhone (livejournal.com)

Submitted by
dmolnar
dmolnar writes: "I recently helped my girlfriend move her stuff from Chicago to Oakland. The movers were scheduled to arrive at 8AM on the 5th of July, and we were stressing the day before about all the things that could go wrong with a move. We realized that if we knew where her stuff was, it'd make us feel better. This is a story about using the $99 iPhone to help us out...and about a somewhat surprising potential use of Find My iPhone to track your friends' iPhones without them noticing."
Earth

Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World 359

Posted by samzenpus from the ant-lords-demand-more-sugar dept.
Deag writes "A mega colony of one family of ants has spread all over the world. Previous mega colonies in California, Europe and Japan have been shown to be in fact one global colony. Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony. But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends."
Wii

Sega Not Giving Up On Mature Wii Games 92

Posted by Soulskill from the not-yet-anyway dept.
Sega has recently taken a few attempts at developing games for the Wii that were targeted at adults rather than kids. House of the Dead: Overkill and Madworld haven't been incredibly popular, but they've done well enough to turn a profit. In Sega's eyes, this makes mature-themed games for the Wii a successful experiment, or at least one they're willing to continue. Other companies are looking to get into the act as well. EA will be releasing M-rated Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii, and Bethesda has a project in the works too.
Image

Broke Counties Turn Failing Roads To Gravel 717

Posted by samzenpus from the let-civilization-collapse-initiative dept.
To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.
Privacy

The "Hidden" Cost Of Privacy 217

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the if-you-can't-handle-it-get-out-of-the-business dept.
Schneier points out an article from a while back in Forbes about the "hidden" cost of privacy and how expensive it can be to comply with all the various overlapping privacy laws that don't necessarily improve anyone's privacy. "What this all means is that protecting individual privacy remains an externality for many companies, and that basic market dynamics won't work to solve the problem. Because the efficient market solution won't work, we're left with inefficient regulatory solutions. So now the question becomes: how do we make regulation as efficient as possible?"
Privacy

Submission + - Firefox 3 Antiphishing sends your URLs to Google 1

Submitted by
iritant
iritant writes: "As we were discussing, Gran Paradiso or the latest version of Firefox, is nearing release. Gran Paradiso includes a form of malware protection that checks every URL against a known list of sites. It does so by sending each URL to Google. In other words, if people enable this feature, they get some malware protection, and Google gets a wealth of information about which sites are popular (or, for that matter, which sites should be checked for malware). Fair deal? Not to worry — the feature is disabled by default."
Education

Submission + - Is Scientific Journalism Doomed? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
scida
scida writes: "I have spent the better half of the past six months trying to understand one thing: how can you effectively present primary scientific literature to the general public? Is this even possible?

There are many facets of Scientific Journalism, but I am only concerned with one here. First, I am not focusing on the coverage scientific work in the development government policy, biographical coverage on individual scientists, or other "newsy" work. I am strictly concerned with the communication and education of the general public of primary scientific information (i.e. what scientists know and publish in their respective academic forums).

I recently attended an interesting seminar, titled, "The Informed Science Journalist: How Much Science Do You Need to Know?" led by UBC journalism Professor and Director of the School of Journalism, Stephen Ward. During the discussion, one theme in particular caught my attention: you don't have to have any background in science to write about science. Anyone with a keen interest for a field and sharp mind can write about anything, from philosophy to advanced string theory to climate modeling.

Is this true? Is a keen interest sufficient?

During the past few months, I have spent entire days locked up in my office, writing my first manuscript to be submitted to a peer reviewed scientific journal. While doing so, I have come to realize the following: details can change everything. There are a number of assumptions I have been forced to make while analyzing my data, many of which are critical for both my methodology and the development of few of my arguments. Why? Often, the information I require simply isn't available (the studies haven't been done, or the studies that exist are based on assumptions of their own).

Now, can someone unfamiliar with a particular field, nay, a sub-discipline of that field, recognize these assumptions for what they are? I can trace the lineage and development of a number of critical assumptions through my sub-discipline's literature that have proven to be incorrect. Ultimately, the focus of the entire field was reshaped, and its direction changed forever as a result of a few "estimations" and assumptions.

Similarly, last year I was involved in organizing a student directed seminar concerned with covering the seminal work of my field over the past 30 years. Three of us canvassed resident professors, professional researchers, and professors and grad students across the world (literally) asking them for their top 20 articles.

I was blown away: more than half of these papers had become nearly obsolete (nearly obsolete, simply because their work was in of itself worthy of admiration for its brilliance). Why? You guessed it — a few key assumptions proven to be incorrect.

How do you explain to someone the relative magnitude of these assumptions? I've often caught myself saying, "Well, 10% error is nothing to be worried about. It's the real world, things aren't that simple." Surely 10% isn't much, but what about 50%? 10 fold? I've come across all of these, and justified every one to my colleagues, all whom agreed with me.

Why? There exists a certain type of intuition associated with information — when you become very familiar with a topic, some things feel more or less "right". I have a 'feeling' what is more or less likely to hold up to scrutiny, just as I can usually tell if someone is trying to pull my lab coat over my eyes.

How, then, do you effectively cover a story laden with valid assumptions, some likely to be correct, many likely to be incorrect? Let us use climate models as an example. In order to avoid long computing times, the use of super computers, or simply (and usually) because the information does not exist, modelers are forced to typically make 100's of assumptions when devising their code. Now, I'm not saying these models are not at all useful. Smart modelers have determined ways of lining up their assumptions with observations of the real world (often, modelers must predict what we already know to verify their assumptions — i.e. does it work?).

Here, the same problem exists — how do you, the science journalist, determine which of these assumptions could bring the entire model crashing down? Furthermore, if such an linchpin exists, is it an important one? How important? Is it likely to be incorrect? How likely? Unfortunately, these questions have no definitive answers, except with respect to each other, and with respect to the particular researcher.

Thus, it appears only the 'scientist' can effectively explain the scope of their work to the general public, assuming they have that ability. The socially inept individuals aside, could the front-line scientists replace science journalists, since they are the most familiar with their own assumptions (and thus the likelihood they are wrong)?

I think the answer is fairly obvious — no. Scientists are humans, and humans have emotions (not all scientists put Spock up on his fairly deserved pedestal). Therefore, this is the same as asking a politician to tell his electorate how his motivation for running for office isn't a personal one. Following that argument, competing scientists could not cover their colleagues work either, for friendships or grudges might get in the way.

Who's left? Everyone on the fringe — those in other fields with a solid understanding in your own, without any of the personal relationships (previous supervisors/bosses/friends/foes/etc) to bias their opinion (there is always bias, but the point is to minimize it).

Does such a network exist? I do not think so. However, it is the only viable solution to a problem that will only get worse as time goes on, andthe leading and developing scientific theories further creep into our everyday lives — a international group of scientists dedicated to the self promotion of their trade via the coverage of their distant colleagues work. The only question is, would anyone scientists step up to such a cause?

Ultimately, I think the majority of the public doesn't truly understand what 'scientific theory' means — either they are overly suspicious of anything scientific, or overly accepting of the 'word of the white lab coats'. In either case, scientific journalists only add to this confusion when sensationalizing recently published work, only to be discredited (the scientists, not the journalists) when something new comes along.

I'm not a professional journalist, but I am a scientist. So, whether any of this was insightful — let me know. If any of it is ludicrous, throw a comment my way. If you have suggested readings, I will give you a giant hug."
Windows

PC Makers Offering a Bridge Back To XP 523

Posted by kdawson from the bridge-too-far dept.
The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."
Space

Submission + - NASA to Release Landsat 7 Data on the Web

Submitted by UAVThumper
UAVThumper writes: On the USGS homepage there is a article about the up coming release on June 4th of select Landsat 7 Image data at glovis.usgs.gov or earthexplorer.usgs.gov. This is to be the precursor of a project called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) where the end result looks like version of "google earth" with Landsat data. More on Landsat can be found here on Wikipeda or here at the official NASA Page.
Portables

Submission + - iPod Casualties Can Offer New-in-box Bargains

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the last few years makers from Creative to Virgin have proclaimed their latest DAP to be an iPod Killer, only to watch those portables flame-out in the marketplace. This doen't mean there was anything wrong with them, in fact some were pretty decent. They just couldn't compete under all the iPod hype. It turns out this created a a huge sub-market of unsold stock, sold for pennies on the dollar to overstock vendors who then pawn them off cheap to the public. For the price of a basic iPod Shuffle you can now acquire some well-equipped units. Examples include the 40GB Toshiba Gigabeat F40 and AlienWare's CE-IV with external speaker system.
The Courts

Submission + - Storing Music for Personal Use Online is Illegal

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: In a court case of JASRAC vs. Image City, The Tokyo District Court handed down a ruling that says Image City's MYUTA service is guilty of copyright infringement. MYUTA is an online music storage service that allows users to upload music from their own CDs etc. to a central server from which they can download to their cellphones to listen to. Music uploaded to the central server is accessible only by the user who uploaded it and can only be downloaded to their cellphone. Despite the music only being stored for personal use, the ruling reasoned that the act of uploading music to a central server owned by a company is the equivalent of distributing music to that company. This has implications for other services such as Yahoo! Briefcase which could mean Yahoo! is gulity of copyright infringement if any of its users store music in their account for personal use. Google's translation can have a go at the original Japanese article.

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