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Piracy

Submission + - Major Australian ISPs Propose Piracy Education Not (commsalliance.com.au)

Submitted by xav_jones
xav_jones writes: The ABC is reporting that "Australia's five major ISPs have revealed their plans to crack down on online piracy by sending warning notices to suspected illegal downloaders while assisting rights holders to pursue serial offenders through the courts." The idea is that "[d]uring an 18-month trial, rights holders would send copyright infringement notices, including evidence of copyright infringement and the IP address involved, to ISPs who would then send "educational notices" to the internet users concerned." Further action would entail that "[u]sers who are suspected of further copyright breaches would then receive up to three warning notices before rights holders are able to pursue court action."

This seems a gentler approach than other countries. Will it prove more effective and/or cost efficient?

Comment Re:Hrmmm.. (Score 1) 336

by tanmanX (#29112735) Attached to: Fatal Explosion At Russian Hydroelectric Dam

If they were really stupid or just unsafe and working with a live transformer, it could have shorted out with a dropped tool or something. Might have had an arc flash over in the transformer which could have vaporized the oil. I don't work on transformers, but I do work on electric motors, which are transformers with rotating secondary's.

Of course, if none of that is true, then i have no idea.

Comment Practicality Aside, Maybe This Way (Score 1) 115

by tanmanX (#28101801) Attached to: Chemical "Infofuses" Communicate Without Electricity

After glancing at the article, this idea came to mind: For field use, a sort of Vertical Typewriter in three pieces. The "writer" itself would be a vertical tube with little pushers filled with an amount of powder. Attaching to this tube at the bottom would be the message holder, where the bits of powder would rest. The third piece would be a tamper to tighten the whole thing up so it doesn't spill out. The message holders would have to be strong enough to hold the compressed power, but be "inconsequential" enough to burn with little to no light output of interest, or just have the reader calibrated to subtract what it itself puts out. Powder amount Vs letter frequencies and numbers aside, it seems like it would work.
IBM

IBM Files Patent For Bullet-Dodging Bionic Armor 379

Posted by Soulskill from the let-the-matrix-jokes-commence dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that IBM has filed a patent for "Bionic body armor" that would protect a wearer from long-range gunfire by detecting the incoming bullets and administering small shocks to the appropriate muscles required for moving out of the way. Quoting the patent: "When a marksman (such as a sniper) is attempting to fire a projectile from a firearm, the marksman typically prefers to be as far away from the target as possible, thus giving him or her a head start for the escape after the firing. As an example, the longest reported sniper hit was from a distance of about 2500 meters, resulting in a time of flight of about 4 seconds for the projectile/bullet. Had the target been aware of the inbound projectile, avoiding it by simply walking away would have been possible." After detecting the projectile, the armor would calculate the trajectory and "stimulate the target to move in a predefined manner ... sufficient to avoid any contact with the approaching projectile."
The Military

Oldest Weapons-grade Plutonium Found In Dump 552

Posted by samzenpus from the radioactive-home-coming dept.
Urchin writes "Researchers have just identified the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made. The batch was produced as part of the Manhattan Project, but predates Trinity — the first nuclear weapon test — by seven months. It was unearthed in a waste pit at Hanford, Washington, inside a beaten up old safe."
Microsoft

Microsoft Donates Code To Apache's "Stonehenge" Project 184

Posted by timothy from the but-one-dimensional-villains-are-easier-to-comprehend dept.
dp619 writes "Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations."Reader Da Massive adds a link to coverage at Computer World.
Power

Fujitsu To Show Off "Zero-Watt" PC At CeBIT 222

Posted by timothy from the car's-mpg-is-infinite-while-engine's-stopped dept.
mobile writes "In August of last year Fujitsu announced new 'zero-watt' displays. This means the screens use absolutely no power when put into standby mode, unlike most other screens that use less than 1 watt, but still require some power. Now Fujitsu has announced they will be showing a zero-watt PC later this year at the CeBIT show. The PC is called the Esprimo Green and marks a first, in that it's able to use no power while in standby mode — but this is a feature that will be required from 2010 for new PCs released across Europe."
Hardware Hacking

Most Hackable Coupon-Eligible DTV Converter? 479

Posted by timothy from the least-locked-down dept.
An anonymous reader writes "So I've finally gotten my DTV coupons, now I have to choose a converter before the analog signals go dark. I'd like to get one that is hackable, but haven't had much luck finding information about the internals of the units available. My question is: What chipsets do the different coupon eligible converters use, and which one is the most hackable? It'd be great to be able to send my own MPEG stream and have it displayed, or to grab the raw stream out of the device."
Power

Cape Wind Ready To Bring First Offshore Wind Farm 147

Posted by timothy from the confident-predictions-led-to-the-big-dig-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Cape Wind Project, a wind farm of 130 turbines to be built in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod, can finally move forward as they have been given a green light by the US Minerals Management service. Leaders from labor, civic, and environmental groups across Massachusetts and the country hailed the release of the report, as it is the final federal environmental report needed for the long delayed and much scrutinized project to finally move forward. When completed, Cape Wind will be capable of supplying up to 420 megawatts of electricity, potentially offsetting as much as a million tons of carbon emissions and saving more than 100 million gallons of oil every year. But the environment wont be the sole beneficiary of Cape Wind. It will likely be a boon to out of work Massachusetts residents, as well, given that as many as 1,000 green jobs could be brought to the Bay State in addition to a significant supply of clean, renewable energy."

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