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mikesd81 writes "Information Week writes about a licensing change intended to 'beat Apple at their own game'. They're going to use a combination of branding and DRM, and replace the "PlaysForSure" logo with a "Certified for Windows Vista" tag.'The certification is used to guarantee compatibility with Microsoft's copyright-protection software and is the same logo used for the company's Zune player. The problem, however, is that music and video bought from the online Zune Marketplace won't play in their native format on other devices, including those that will carry the new logo.'"

mikesd81 notes an ABC News report that astronauts aboard the ISS have opened the new station room. Commander Peggy Whitson and astronaut Paolo Nespoli delayed their lunch so the event could happen before the station's orbit temporarily blocked the ability to send a video downlink to Mission Control. From the article: "Nespoli... joined Discovery's crew to personally deliver the Italian-made pressurized chamber... Astronauts added the school bus-sized room called Harmony during a 6.5-hour spacewalk Friday, using a robotic arm to lift it from the shuttle's cargo bay and install it on the station. The compartment will serve as the docking port and nerve center for European and Japanese laboratories that will be delivered on the next three shuttle flights. It also will be a power and thermal distribution center, providing air, electricity, water and other systems for the space station. Racks of computer and electronic equipment are already inside the cylinder, which will double as a living space for the crew... The astronauts will have to undo more than 700 bolts [which held down the equipment during flight] to free up the equipment."

mikesd81 writes "Slate has up an article on why both new DVD formats are effectively dead on arrival. Article author Sean Cooper cites internet movie and cable on demand services, the price of new hardware, and the inexpensive cost of newer hard drives as the reasons behind his argument. The article goes on to say buying movies online isn't there yet. Titles in standard-def are few, in hi-def fewer still. With five times the visual information of a standard-def flick, an HD download of The Matrix, were it even available, could take all day over the average broadband connection. But consumers are demanding change, and change will happen fast." From the article: "On iTunes an album costs about 10 bucks--as much as $8 less than some CD retailers charge, partially because of the reduced cost of getting music to buyers online. Look for the same savings when it comes to downloading movies. And then there's the fact that hard-disk storage capacities are pushing ever upward while size and price drop. In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven." Phil Harrison is already saying the PlayStation 4 won't use discs.

mikesd81 writes "The Associated Press is reporting on the rapid aging of MySpace. More than half of MySpace's users are now 35 or older. From the article: 'Just a year ago, teens under 18 made up about 25 percent of MySpace, the popular online hangout run by News Corp. That's now down to 12 percent in the comScore analysis released Thursday. By contrast, the 35-54 group at MySpace grew to 41 percent in August, from 32 percent a year earlier ... The study was based on comScore's regular panels for measuring Internet audiences, rather than MySpace's registration information, where users often lie about their age.'"

mikesd81 writes, "The AP has an article on PhishTank, OpenDNS's service for fighting e-mail fraud. The free service seeks to tap the wisdom of the Internet community in identifying phishing emails and sites." From the article: "Users simply submit to PhishTank.com the messages they believe are scams. Others then examine the message and the site to which it links and decide whether it is or isn't a scam. When an item gets enough votes and the margin is wide enough, it is either dropped or classified as a phishing message. To prevent scammers from trying to game the system, votes are weighed based on how long, how often, and how accurate one has rated other messages." Update: 10/05 18:24 GMT by kd : David Ulevitch wrote to mention: "PhishTank, unlike any other anti-phishing service, provides a full API and open access to the data for any developer to use to secure their applications. Before PhishTank, someone from the SpamAssassin project or maybe the Squid Cache would have to fork over a lot of money for phishing data to groups like the Anti Phishing Working Group or Symantec. It's now available for free, and I believe in a far more accurate and usable form."

mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."

mikesd81 asks: "Why have movies and shows been so bad lately? I find myself looking on my Video on Demand service from my cable company or flipping channels and just nothing seems to have any depth any more. But on the other hand, I happened to watch Stargate Atlantis and there was an incredible scene that just caught the emotion and emergency. So is it the directing? The writing? The acting? It seems more and more movies just aren't worth anything. Let alone paying $20 to go to a movie." Let's not forget the recent number of Hollywood remakes and the amount of "reality TV" being pumped out by the networks.

mikesd81 writes "Apparently street gangs have gotten Web-savvy. Web Bangers are posting potentially incriminating photos and taunts on their websites. Police departments suddenly faced with gangs are looking for help on the gangs' own easy-to-find Web sites. The director of the National Gang Crime Research Center has stated "In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida, witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language.' Knox said it's important for police to learn how to read between the lines on gang Web sites and blogs. Just as time on the streets has given gang investigators the ability to read the hieroglyphics of wall graffiti, time on the Web helps them understand arcane Web clues. Gang identifiers, such as tattoos, graffiti tags, colors and clothing often are embedded in each site."

mikesd81 writes "AOL may give away more services including its AOL.com accounts reserved for paying customers. They have a proposal under consideration which calls for Time Warner's online unit to stop charging subscription fees to users who have high-speed Internet access or even dial-up service from a rival provider. Under the plan the company would continue to charge the fees for those needing dial-up access through AOL. The AOL software also would allow subscribers to continue using instant messaging, Web journals and other services without having to download separate software or figure out Web-based options. That would ease the transition and encourage them to keep using AOL services, the person familiar with the matter said."

drphil writes " Dr. Tuck Wah Ng, a member of the Faculty of Engineering at the National University of Singapore uses an optical mouse as a cheap non-contact motion sensor in his research. If a resolution of a little less than 60 microns is sufficient, you really can't beat the price. Dr. Ng has studied the viscoelastic deformation of plastics using a hacked optical mouse - published in J. Chem. Ed. vol 81, p 1628, 2004. You'd need to be a subscriber of the journal to see anything but the abstract, but any university science/chemistry library would have a copy of this issue of the Journal of Chemical Education. (Viscoelastic deformation, in plain English, is the degree to which a plastic stretches when you pull on it)"

Chadduss asks: "I don't know about all of you but I've been looking for a good calendar application for quite sometime. I have used the Mozilla calendar extension for Thunderbird but I had problems with it several times. Enter Mozilla Sunbird. That's right, another bird! It's still only version 0.1.1 but I for one hope to see it come out on top."

Maleko writes "PenTeleData, once an innovator in broadband internet service, (was one of, if not the first cable internet providers in the USA) has decided that their customers need to disable P2P uploads or face possible filtering to stop uploads. DSLReports has the story." While an interesting solution on the part of the ISP, it will definitely increase the number of "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

Bolie writes: "Trying to make high temperature super conductors yielded an unexpected result. The pure carbon bucky ball material was put under pressure to make sheets. That worked. Picture microscopic bubble pack. But the result was a sheet that was magnetic at room temperature. It has not escaped the attention of the discoverer, Tatiana Makarova, that this might be useful for a non-metallic computer memory. The material is also lighter than metals, flexible and transparent. Lasers anyone?"

PsionV writes "The second annual ICFP Programming Contest begins September 2nd. For those of you who didn't participate in this last year, this is a contest where competitors enter programs written in any language which then compete tournament style against each other in a processing intensive task to possibly win money, books, bragging rights, and more. "

Squeezer sent us the April Edition of ext2 and Jim sent us the April Edition of FreeBSDZine . For the obsessive, Evan Vetere sent us a link to the Amazon preorder form for novelizations of the prequels. Its a 4 book set: 4 different covers, but 4 copies of the same book. Doommaker sent us linkage to info about that other cool movie coming out: Southpark is also gracing the big screen. bjb sent us a link to a applet that will Shred Any Web Page. Particular cheering after a long unsuccessful day. DaMan Penguin Pez Well, its the season for Peeps, and Italica sent us a url to a page of fun things to do to your leftover marshmellow bunnies. Not enough candy torture? frohike writes sent us another one. What did those bunnies do to deserve this? An anonymous reader alerted us to www.fishdot.org. Wierdos. Finally, an another anonymous reader sent us the most Hilarious Attorney Page Ever. Its for Leonard Crabs, Attorney At Law. "If your legal case is not won within 24 days, we''ll buy you a free combo meal at Taco Bell." Go now. Its funny.