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Domain: ukgeeks.co.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ukgeeks.co.uk.
Stories · 8
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mod_perl 2.0.0 Released
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New IFPI Boss Vows to Extend Recording Copyrights
JamesD_UK writes "John Kennedy, President and COO of Universal Music is to succeed Jay Berman as Chairman of the IFPI, the worldwide equivalent to the RIAA. Andrew Orlowski of The Register has written an article covering John Kennedy's views on copyright infringement and the public domain. Although Kennedy's thoughts on the former are predictable, he has vowed to fight hard to extend European recording copyrights past the current fifty year term. An extension of the European term to match the US would be particularly damaging to the public domain and efforts such as the Internet Archive as well as increasing the control that the recording industry holds over performers. For those interested, I run a small blog of articles regarding copyright recordings." -
Ingenious Tours of Science Museum Stores
JamesD_UK writes "The Science Museum in London has now opened up its storerooms in west London to visitors. A number of guided tours, available on a first-come, first-served basis, have been arranged throughout 2004 and 2005 on topics ranging from mechanical engineering to cosmetics. The stores contain some 170,000 objects, compared with the museum's display of 15,000 objects." -
Super Ant Colony in Australia
JamesD_UK writes "Elissa Suhr of the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University has discovered a 100km long colony of Argentine Ants in Melbourne. With a reduced genetic pool compared to ants native to south America, the Melbourne ants have put aside their differences and formed a super colony. The Argentine Ant poses a threat to native ants who are unable to compete, affecting animals further up the food chain (such as the coast horned lizard in South California). With the average size of an Argentine Ant at 3mm, you could fit 30 million insect overlords along the length of this colony!" -
Surfing on a Surfboard
JamesD_UK writes "The BBC is running an article about a surfboard developed by Intel with an embedded, solar powered, wifi capable, laptop with web cam attached. It features a 1.7GHz processor and a 80GB hard drive. The camera is able to create videos and transmit them through an access point located on the beach. Jools Matthews of Gulfstream surfboards designed the board itself and pro surfer Duncan Scot helped with the design of the board to make sure that the board still performed well with the extra weight. The board debuts at the Gold Coast Ocean Festival 2004 from 18 to 20 June at Croyde beach in North Devon." -
Linux Scores An Ace At Wimbledon
JamesD_UK writes "IBM has a short article with some details of their Linux systems at the Wimbledon tennis championships. Aparantly IBM has been using DB2 on a Linux platform to provide statistics and information on the competition since 1999. VIPs will be offered a chance to use O2's XDA to view match details over wi-fi. Time to apt-get install champagne strawberries kismet?" There's also a BBC article about the system. -
Verisign to run National RFID Directory
JamesD_UK writes "Verisign has been given the contract to develop a national RFID directory by EPCGlobal. Under the directory scheme each company will maintain an Object Name Service analogous to DNS with Verisign running the root server. Verisign has already setup the infrastructure at six different global sites." -
Discovering Galaxies Near and Far
Anonymous Coward writes "Researchers using Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii have discovered a galaxy 12.9 billion light-years from Earth -- the most distant found to date. The latest finding extends the distance of the known farthest galaxies from Earth by about 3 million light-years." Toward the other end of the scale, JamesD_UK writes "Astronomers at the 2Mass project appear to have found the closest galaxy to the milky way yet, overtaking the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The galaxy is only 25,000 light years away and is being torn appart in a collision with the milky way. More information on the The Two Micron All Sky Survey is available here."
