27034320
submission
esocid writes:
Called the SMU 100 it costs £25,000 and sends out a three-metre "wall of light" that leaves anyone caught in it briefly unable to see. Designed by a former Royal Marine Commando, it was originally developed for use against pirates in Somalia. While tasers and CS gas work well over short distances the laser is said to be effective at up to 500 metres (1,640ft). Being targeted by the beam has been compared to staring into the sun before being forced to turn away.Paul Kerr, managing director of Clyde-based Photonic Security Systems, which came up with the design, said "If you can't look at something you can't attack it."
26990724
submission
esocid writes:
Corey Doctorow has written a Guardian column, "The pirates of YouTube," about how multinational copyright-holding companies have laid false claim to public domain videos on YouTube. The videos are posted by the nonprofit FedFlix organization, which liberates public domain government-produced videos and makes them available to the world. These videos were produced at public expense and no one can claim to own them, but multinationals from CBS to Discovery Communications have done just that, getting YouTube to place ads on the video that deliver income to their coffers. What's more, their false copyright claims could lead to the suspension of FedFlix's YouTube account under Google's rules for its copyright policing system. This system, ContentID, sets out penalties for "repeat offenders" who generate too many copyright claims — but offers no corresponding penalties for rightsholders who make too many false claims of ownership.
25457932
submission
esocid writes:
Despite having booked and paid for their booth at Gamex, Sweden'½Â(TM)s largest gaming exhibition, the Pirate Party have been excluded from the action this week. The party, who say they were nagged for 2 to 3 months to book for the event, were this week informed they were too controversial and no longer welcome. All the big names in interactive entertainment are there showing off their wares, including giants such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Nintendo. Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg says that after the sales people from the exhibition pursued the party for months to participate, they decided to book and pay for a booth. “I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.”
Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict and the party’s presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work “could be perceived as criminal.” Despite the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) being allowed to appear – even though they too support the decriminalization of non-commercial file sharing.
25327984
submission
esocid writes:
Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor of pharmacology at Oxford, apparently announced that computer games are causing dementia in children. Two months ago the same professor linked internet use with the rise in autism diagnoses (not for the first time), then pulled back when autism charities and an Oxford professor of psychology raised concerns. When [Ben Goldacre of The Guardian] raised concerns, she said I was like the epidemiologists who denied that smoking caused cancer. Other critics find themselves derided as sexist in the media.
If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening, and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can’t realistically go unnoticed. The lay public might find your case superficially appealing, but they may not be fully able to judge the merits of all your technical evidence. I think these serious scientific concerns belong, at least once, in a clear scientific paper. I don’t see how this suggestion is inappropriate, or impudent, and in all seriousness, I can’t see an argument against it.
24847410
submission
esocid writes:
In 2008, BBC's "Top Gear" aired an episode featuring the Tesla Roadster. One of the show's car reviewers, Jeremy Clarkson, gave a less-than-flattering analysis of the vehicle, sparking a legal case with the automaker that doesn't seem to be working out in Tesla's favor.
Now, it looks as though Tesla is losing this battle after a full-day hearing yesterday at the high court in London.
"In my judgment, the words complained of are wholly incapable of conveying any meaning at all to the effect that the claimant [Tesla] misled anyone," said Tugendhat. "This is because there is a contrast between the style of driving and the nature of the track as compared with the conditions on a public road [...] are so great that no reasonable person could understand that the performance on the [Top Gear] track is capable of a direct comparison with a public road."
The hearing now continues on Tesla's claim that "Top Gear" made five other false accusations about the Roadster. Tugendhat has postponed judgment on Tesla's malicious falsehood claim, and is expected to deliver a verdict in the coming weeks.
23504484
submission
esocid writes:
Apple lawyers are crying foul about Samsung, and the recent Google's acquisition of Motorola's allegedly "anticompetitive," use of patents. Apparently Apple is irate about these companies' countersuits, which rely largely on patents covering wireless communications, many of which are governed by the "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (F/RAND) principle, as they were developed as part of industry standards. Apple takes issue with the fact that Motorola in its countersuit declines to differentiate the 7 F/RAND patents in its 18 patent collection. Regardless of what Florian Mueller says, it's hard to dispute that the "rules" of F/RAND are largely community dictated and ambiguous.
Florian Meuller also states that Motorola's patents won't help Android, and thinks Samsung is still a copycat.
22125360
submission
esocid writes:
Senior officials in Spain's Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE), the country's leading collection society for songwriters and composers, face embezzlement charges in the wake of a Friday raid on the organization's offices. Investigators say JosÃe Luis Rodriguez Neri, the head of an SGAE subsidiary called the Digital Society of Spanish Authors (SDAE), made payments for non-existent services to a contractor that then paid kickbacks to Neri and his associates.
SGAE, the Spanish counterpart to American collecting societies like ASCAP and BMI, is known for its high fees and aggressive enforcement tactics. According to El País, "the society has been often accused of exceeding its remit by going as far as to infiltrate private weddings to check whether fees had been paid for the music being played at the banquet."
15710836
submission
esocid writes:
An Albemarle County Circuit Court judge has set aside a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia seeking documents related to the work of climate scientist and former university professor Michael Mann. Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occured in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud. He also set aside the subpoena without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli can rewrite it to better explain why he wants to investigate, but seemed skeptical about the underlying claim of fraud. The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.
"The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann's work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia," Peatross wrote. The ruling also limited Cuccinelli to asking about only one of the five grants issued, which was the only one using state funds.
4132049
submission
esocid writes:
Back in 2005, the MPAA hired Robert Anderson, a former associate of TorrentSpy's owner, to illegally obtain internal emails and trade secrets. He did so by routing the email from the internal server to his own Gmail account. He subsequently sold 34 pages of stolen information for $15,000 to the MPAA. TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel sued them for spying, but however lost the case due to a ruling that stated it was not illegal since the information was not intercepted under the Wiretap Act. The EFF called this decision a "dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws," since it implies that the unauthorized interception of anyone's personal email is legal. The appeal could have ramifications for MPAA president Dan Glickman, as the decision is expected around the time of his contract renewal.
712433
submission
esocid writes:
The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. The sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, with the next cycle just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why. In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. The Hinode, a Japanese satellite mission with the US and UK as partners has three telescopes that together show how changes on the sun's surface spread through the solar atmosphere. It orbits 431 miles (694 km) above the Earth, crossing both poles and making one lap every 95 minutes, giving Hinode an uninterrupted view of the sun for several months out of the year. Scientists are not extremely worried, but have added extra ground stations in case of interference from extra solar activity, and are ready for the Sun to resume it's activity.
692059
submission
esocid writes:
Sony and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, two industries which have been feuding for a decade about how best to deliver cable while allowing customers to buy equipment of their own choosing, have signed an agreement that will allow viewers to rid themselves of set-top boxes, yet still receive advanced "two-way" cable services, such as pay-per-view movies. A decade ago, when Congress ordered the cable industry to allow outside electronics makers to compete for the boxes, the cable industry developed the "cable card," inserted into competing boxes to unscramble the cable signal, but was the source of frequent customer complaints and never proved popular. Under the new system, customers will still need to get a cable card from their provider, but according to the agreement, technical glitches will be eliminated, "two-way" services will be available and there will be no need for the clunky boxes. The agreement is between Sony and the nation's six largest cable companies: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems and Bright House Networks, which serve more than 82 percent of cable subscribers, and is in hopes of heading off action by the Federal Communications Commission to impose a two-way standard on the industry.
689713
submission
esocid writes:
Researchers at TU Delft (Netherlands) and the FOM (Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter) have found irrefutable proof that the so-called avalanche effect by electrons occurs in specific, very small semiconducting crystals. This physical effect could pave the way for cheap, high-output solar cells. Solar cells currently have a relatively low output, typically 15%, and high manufacturing costs. One possible improvement could derive from a new type of solar cell made of semiconducting nanocrystals (crystals with dimensions in the nanometre size range) and could theoretically lead to a maximum output of 44%, with the added benefit of reducing manufacturing costs.
In conventional solar cells, one photon can release precisely one electron, however, in some semiconducting nanocrystals, one photon can release two or three electrons, hence the term avalanche effect. This effect was first measured by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2004, and since then the scientific world had raised doubts about the value of these measurements. This current research does in fact demonstrate that the avalanche effect can occur.
686120
submission
esocid writes:
Conventional electrically-powered laser diodes used in everyday consumer goods like DVD players are currently based on inorganic semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide, gallium nitride and related alloys. Despite over a decade of worldwide research, plastic laser diodes remain the only major device type not yet demonstrated because there aren't any plastics that could sustain a large enough current whilst also supporting the efficient light emission needed to produce a laser beam. The plastic studied by researchers at the Imperial College London is related to PFO (polydioctylfluorene), a blue-light emitting material, and by making subtle changes in the plastic's chemical structure they produced a material that transports charges 200 times better than before, without compromising its ability to efficiently emit light.
The most beneficial aspect of plastic laser diodes is their potential ability to cover more of the light spectrum than their counterparts, from near ultraviolet to the near infrared.
685980
submission
esocid writes:
US scientists have designed a new spray-on explosive detector sensitive enough to detect just a billionth of a gram of explosive (nitrogen-containing explosives). After treatment the explosive glows blue under UV light, making it perfect for use in the field. The silafluorene-fluorene copolymer can detect explosives at much lower levels than existing systems because it detects particles instead of explosive vapours, and is able to show the difference between nitrate esters (trinitroglycerin) and nitroaromatic explosives (TNT). The team are currently working on a similar system to detect peroxide-based explosives and say they hope to be able to investigate perchlorates and organic nitrates too.
Not sure what the hype is with this, but they specifically name CSI: Miami to be featuring it in an episode.
680660
submission
esocid writes:
Although the universe contains billions of galaxies, only a small amount of its matter is locked up in these behemoths. Most of the universe's matter that was created during and just after the Big Bang must be found elsewhere. Now, in an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles that make up ordinary matter, in the spaces between the galaxies. Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with "dark matter," a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull.
This important component of the universe is known as the "intergalactic medium," or IGM, and it extends essentially throughout all of space, from just outside our Milky Way galaxy to the most distant regions of space observed by astronomers. "We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe," Mike Shull of the University of Colorado explained. "What we are confirming in detail is that intergalactic space, which intuitively might seem to be empty, is in fact the reservoir for most of the normal, baryonic matter in the universe."
