Slashdot Mirror

Begopa sends in word that a federal judge has struck down the Child Online Protection Act. The judge said that parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit others' rights to free speech. This was the case for which the US Department of Justice subpoenaed several search companies for search records; only Google fought the order. The case has already been to the Supreme Court. Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. wrote in his decision: "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."

mamamia writes "The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died — and at such a young age — remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the Saint Louis Science Center, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy."

Good sends us to an IBTimes article on the expanding trend for more options for electronic gadgetry — telematics — in cars. Manufacturers are including more high-tech options in more models, including low-end models, as component prices drop and as the car makers attempt to sell to a demographic that has grown up surrounded by personal electronics. According to a telematics analyst, Bluetooth hands-free modules for cell phones will be available on more than a third of car models sold in the US in 2007, and auxiliary jacks for iPods in nearly half. From the article: "One of the industry's more advanced systems will be Ford's Sync, which connects digital music players to the car's voice-control communications system and reads aloud cell-phone text messages and has 20 preset text-message responses... The flash memory-based system, controlled through voice commands and buttons on the steering wheel, is based on a Microsoft Corp. operating system for cars."

aniyo~ writes with word of a collaboration of movie studios with distribution companies to come up with a system for rapid digital distribution of movie masters. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners are working on technology that will allow much more responsive film distribution based on local needs. DCIP is wholly owned by the Regal, AMC, and Cinemark theater chains, which among them run 14,000 screens in North America. The new system would be available to those and other interested theater operators. About 2,200 U.S. theater screens currently show digital films, and today these are, by and large, delivered on hard drives.

Uryugen writes "A new dinosaur species was a plant-eater with yard-long horns over its eyebrows, suggesting an evolutionary middle step between older dinosaurs with even larger horns and the small-horned creatures that followed, experts said. The dinosaur's horns, thick as a human arm, are like those of triceratops — which came 10 million years later. However, this animal belonged to a subfamily that usually had bony nubbins a few inches long above their eyes"

Sda~ writes "You learn something new everyday: There is nothing in the astronaut training manual about how to clean up flying wasabi. An inadvertent Wasabi spill this week aboard the ISS has made space agencies re-evaluate including the spicy paste in future meals. The astronauts are allowed some of their favorite foods on each trip, to alleviate homesickness. 'Williams, whose father was born in India, has several Indian dishes in her bonus container, including Punjabi kadhi with pakora - vegetable fritters topped with yogurt and curry - and mutter paneer, a curry dish. The dishes are packaged to have a long shelf life in space. Her U.S. crew mate, astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, is an even bigger foodie. Lopez-Alegria, who was born in Madrid but grew up in California, had Spanish muffins known as magdalenas, chorizo pork sausage and latte in his bonus container.'"

Oolala submitted an article that opens: "Business software maker Oracle Corp. will buy Hyperion Solutions Corp. for $3.3 billion in cash, renewing a shopping spree aimed at toppling rival SAP AG. The deal announced Thursday will give Oracle an arsenal of Hyperion products that are widely used by SAP's customers. Hyperion's tools, known as "business intelligence" software, help chief financial officers and other top corporate executives track their company's performance."

wooha points out coverage of a talk Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, gave at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas. Ozzie said that watching Google rake in advertising revenue was a wake-up call within Microsoft. He said Microsoft plans to do more than simply follow Google's lead by creating Web-based versions of desktop programs or duplicating its search and advertising model. (Despite Microsoft's massive investment in promoting and improving Web-based search, the company still has less than 10% of search engine market share, compared to Google's ~50% and growing.) Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

kog777 writes to mention that the IB Times is taking a look at where surveillance camera technology is headed. Soon researchers tell us that cameras will be available that not only record, but are able to interpret what they see. "The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before."

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that many states are considering laws to help crack down on "cyberbullying". "Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it will be difficult to draft a cyberbullying law that doesn't infringe on free-speech rights. 'The fact that two teenagers say nasty things about each other is a part of growing up,' he said. 'How much authority does a school have to monitor, regulate and punish activities occurring inside a student's home?' In Arkansas, the state Senate this month passed a bill calling on school districts to set up policies to address cyberbullying only after it was amended to settle concerns about students' free-speech rights."

Dollaz wrote with a link to the International Business Times, which questions the authenticity of D-Wave's Quantum computing. We discussed the 'Sudoku playing' computer yesterday, but scientists in the field have expressed a lot of distrust of the company's findings. The machine was not available for inspection during or after the demo, and even if the technology was working as intended there is some doubt that it can be scaled. The article points out that "notwithstanding lofty claims in the company's press release about creating the world's first commercial quantum computer, D-Wave Chief Executive Herb Martin emphasized that the machine is not a true quantum computer and is instead a kind of special-purpose machine that uses some quantum mechanics to solve problems." Good to see people in the field questioning 'breakthroughs'.

kog777 writes in with news of a Needham analyst report alerting their clients to a possible price war between AMD and Intel. Analyst Y. Edwin Mok notes that AMD has cut its prices three times in three weeks. He says that Dell has been playing off the two chipmakers against one another to drive costs down. He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now. As an aside, Mok notes that so far Vista is not causing a spike in demand for chips. This story hasn't been picked up very widely; other coverage is at Seeking Alpha.

An anonymous reader writes "IBM said it has been able to speed up the DRAM to the point where it's nearly as fast as SRAM, and that the result is a type of memory known as embedded DRAM, or eDRAM, that helps boost the performance of chips with multiple core calculating engines and is particularly suited for enabling the movement of graphics in gaming and other multimedia applications. DRAM will also continue to be used off the chip."

kog777 writes to note a story in International Business Times about "net metering," or generating your own power without disconnecting from the grid. Forty states have laws allowing individuals to do this, and many of them offer subsidies and tax breaks for people who do. From the article: "When the sun shines bright on their home in New York's Hudson Valley, John and Anna Bagnall live out a homeowner's fantasy. Their electricity meter runs backward. Solar panels on their barn roof can often provide enough for all their electricity needs. Sometimes — and this is the best part — their solar setup actually pushes power back into the system."

kog777 writes "The producer of the canned pork product Spam has lost a bid to claim the word as a trademark for unsolicited e-mails. EU trademark officials rejected Hormel Foods Corp.'s appeal, dealing the company another setback in its struggle to prevent software companies from using the word 'spam' in their products, a practice it argued was diluting its brand name. The European Office of Trade Marks and Designs, noting that the vast majority of the hits yielded by a Google search for the word made no reference to the food, said that 'the most evident meaning of the term SPAM for the consumers ... will certainly be unsolicited, usually commercial e-mail, rather than a designation for canned spicy ham.'"

kog777 writes to mention that Spamhaus has released a final warning about an increase in junk email, as they prepare to lose their domain to an Illinois court ruling. From the article: "According to Spamhaus, more than 650 million Internet users - including those at the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament - benefit from Spamhaus' 'blacklist' of spammers that helps identify which messages to block, send to a 'junk' folder or accept. Losing the domain name would make it more difficult for service providers and others to obtain the lists. 'If the domain got suspended, it would be an enormous hit for the Net,' said Steve Linford, Spamhaus' chief executive officer. 'It would create an enormous amount of damage on the Internet.'"

An anonymous reader writes "International Business Times reports that not all online social networks are the same, according to new research released this week. Internet research firm, comScore Networks, said on Thursday that significant age differences exist between the user bases of these websites. "While the top social networking sites are typically viewed as directly competing with one another, our analysis demonstrates that each site occupies a slightly different niche," commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix."