mustrum_ridcully writes "This week some of the original creators from Acorn Computers who developed the BBC Micro home computer are coming together again at the Science Museum in London. Their purpose? To discuss the legacy of the computer known fondly known in the UK as 'the Beeb'. This news is being carried, of course, on the BBC. The BBC Micro sold some 1.5 million units and helped fund Acorn's development work on the Acorn RISC Machine processor - also known as the ARM processor used today in countless mobile and embedded devices."

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eweekhickins writes "A public interest group is saying that a consulting firm hired to help the government hand over the D-block spectrum may have acted improperly and discouraged potential bidders by suggesting that any winning bid would have to pay $50 million in annual fees, in addition to the auction price. Any wonder the D-block didn't meet the reserve price?"

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holy_calamity writes "Researchers at RPI are testing the effects of putting blue LEDs inside cars to keep drivers alert. People driving through the night are much more likely to cause accidents because our circadian rhythms just want to sleep — blue light at around 450nm wavelength can fool them into thinking its morning and keep us awake."

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Tookis writes "Most of us are happy to take 2D happy snaps with single lens digital cameras. Imagine if you had a digital camera that could more accurately perceive the distance of all objects in its field of vision than your own eyes and brain. That's exactly what a team of researchers from Stanford University are working on — and it could even be affordable for ordinary consumers."

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coondoggie writes "A group of international cyber cops is ramping up plans to fight online crime across borders. The unit, known as the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group, met this month in London and is made up of high-level online law enforcement representatives from the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. One of the main goals of the group is to fight cyber crime in a common way by sharing intelligence, swapping tools and best practices, and strengthening and synchronizing their respective laws."

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Stony Stevenson writes "Researchers in the US have developed a microchip fan with no moving parts that operates silently and generates enough wind to cool a laptop computer. The solid-state fan, developed with support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is touted as the most powerful and energy efficient fan of its size. The device produces three times the flow rate of a typical small mechanical fan and is one-fourth the size. The technology has the power to cool a 25W chip with a device smaller than one cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make self-cooling chips, according to the researchers."

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StarEmperor writes "A team of Canadian and German scientists have fabricated a room-temperature superconductor, using a highly compressed silicon-hydrogen compound. According to the article,"The researchers claim that the new material could sidestep the cooling requirement, thereby enabling superconducting wires that work at room temperature.""

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A peering dispute between Telia and Cogent is causing routing and connectivity problems for many internet users. Cogent shut down their connections to Telia over what they described as a 'contract dispute' over the size and location of their peering points. Telia attempted to route around the problem, but Cogent blocked that, too. This has caused a lot of trouble for sites which are not multi-homed. Groklaw, for example, is on a Cogent network (MCNC.demarc.cogentco.com), so any Europeans connecting via Telia can't get through."

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Stony Stevenson writes "A day after it was released for public download, Windows Vista SP1 is drawing barbs from some computer users who say the software wrecked their systems. 'I downloaded it via Windows Update, and got a bluescreen on the third part of the update,' wrote 'Iggy33' in a comment posted Wednesday on Microsoft's Vista team blog. Iggy33 was just one of dozens of posters complaining about Vista Service Pack 1's effect on their PCs. Other troubles reported by Vista SP1 users ranged from a simple inability to download the software from Microsoft's Windows Update site to sudden spikes in memory usage. To top it all off, the service pack will not install on computers that use peripheral device drivers that Microsoft has deemed incompatible."

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walterbyrd writes "Bender's Big Score is just getting set to air on Comedy Central, but already Fox has announced that the next straight-to-DVD Futurama film/series is coming in June. The title? 'The Beast with a Billion Backs.' 'In what Fox is calling the most tentacle-packed Futurama epic, space itself rips open, revealing a gateway to another universe. What lies beyond is a mix of horror and love as the Planet Express crew encounters a repulsive, planet-sized monster with romantic intentions. The second feature-length Futurama film will be followed by at least two more movies from series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The show's entire voice cast and most of its main writers have returned to help revive the series, which FOX cancelled in 2003.'"

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Mike writes "Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about an 'all you can eat' model for buying music that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices. Finally, it looks like the industry (or at least Apple) is 'getting it'. The real question is not whether the big music companies will go for it, but rather, who will be the first one to get smart and agree to offer it?"

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MozeeToby writes "The Columbus Dispatch is reporting on a criminal investigation currently being performed in Franklin County Ohio. It seems several voting machines listed a candidate as withdrawn from the race when in fact he wasn't. By the time the investigations tracked down which machines had been affected, the candidate's name was back on the ballot. Normally, we could dismiss this as confusion or a mistake on the part of the voter(s) who noticed it. In this case, the person who first noticed the discrepancy was Ohio Secretary of state Jennifer Brunner. Further compounding matters, the Franklin County Board of Elections had disabled virtually all logging on the machines to speed setup of the balot. Naturally, the county board remains sceptical of these accusations."

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sdedeo writes "Less known than he deserves to be among American science fiction readers is Iain M. Banks. In his native United Kingdom, Banks' work is released in hardcover at the front of bookshops; here, those seeking his science fiction work, at least, must dig down into the trade paperbacks — and often find things out of print. Those who do discover him in the States are usually pleasantly surprised to find the writing far more clever and engagingly written than the low-budget production values imply. With Orbit's release of his latest work, Matter, as well as its planned re-release of some of his earlier classics, things look to change." Read below for the rest of Simon's review.

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An anonymous reader writes "Canada's public broadcast network, CBC, is to adopt DRM free BitTorrent distribution of one of its major primetime shows, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister. The effort has already been hailed by Canadian copyright guru Michael Geist, who expects the decision to add fuel to Canada's net neutrality debate. A CBC producer behind the show told CNET that the motivation for the move was that CBC 'wanted the show to be as accessible as possible to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in.' As for DRM, she said 'I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don't realize it.' She added that 'if it's bad for the consumers, its bad for the company.'"

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "IBM's Rob Weir has done a study on how many flaws were addressed by the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting. So far, using a random sampling technique, he has yet to find a flaw that was addressed, making the upper bound a paltry 1.5%. Even so, he's found a number of new flaws, including a security vulnerability: OOXML stores passwords in database connection strings in plain text. At least there were no mistakes on five of the first twenty five random pages he reviewed."

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Josh Fink brings news of an Atlanta resident who has created a remote control robot to scare off criminals during the night. Rufus Terrill, an engineer, uses it to patrol the streets and encourage drug dealers and other shady characters to move on. Local residents call it his "Robocop." From CNN: "It's a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, and armed with an infrared camera, spotlight, loudspeaker and aluminum water cannon that shoots a stream of icy water about 20 feet. Operated by remote control, the robot spotlights trespassers on property down the street from his bar, O'Terrill's. Using a walkie-talkie, Terrill belts out through the robot's loudspeaker, 'That's private property. You guys need to get out of here.'"

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Technical Writing Geek points out an Ars Technica report on comments from Representative Howard Coble (R-NC), who sits on the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. In a recent editorial, Coble attempts to discourage P2P file sharing among young people, and praises Ohio University for its ban on P2P applications last year. Coble also suggests that identity theft is a great danger from file sharing. Public Knowledge is running a similar analysis, which argues against the main points from the editorial.

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Ian Lamont writes "Novell Vice President and GNOME architect Miguel de Icaza sounded off at a MIX 08 panel on a number of topics. First, he claimed that he was 'not happy' with Novell's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, saying that if he had his way, the company would have stayed with the open-source community. He also said that neither Windows nor Linux are relevant in the long term, thanks to Web 2.0 business models: 'They might be fantastic products ... but Google has shown itself to be a cash cow. There is a feature beyond selling corporate [software] and patents ... it's going to be owning end users.' He also tangled with Mike Schroepfer, a Mozilla engineering executive, about extending patent protection for Moonlight to third parties. However, de Icaza did say that Novell has 'done the best it could to balance open-source interests with patent indemnification.' We discussed the beginnings of the deal between Microsoft and Novell back in 2006."

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diewlasing writes "Since we are living in a world where the need is growing for privacy measures and rights to use emerging technology, it seems to me that state governments should adopt a bill of rights regarding internet privacy, use of technology and speech on the internet. For example: make it illegal to allow ISPs to release personal information to anyone who wants it. Now, obviously, that's not the only issue. If you were asked by your state government to come up with a bill of rights for internet privacy, technology use, and free speech regarding the internet and emerging technologies, what would you include? Many things are covered (here in the US) under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, but it seems to me that, these days, people with enough money can disregard this. Perhaps the states might find it a good idea to enshrine rights into law."

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PRB_Ohio takes us to Space.com for a story about NASA's plutonium shortage, and how it may affect future missions to the far reaches of the solar system. The U.S. hasn't produced plutonium since 1988, instead preferring to purchase it from Russia. We discussed the U.S. government's plans to resume production in 2005, but those plans ended up being shelved. If NASA is unable to find an additional source, it could limit missions that take spacecraft too far from the Sun. Quoting: "Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator for science, ... said he believed the United States had sufficient plutonium-238 on hand or on order to fuel next year's Mars Science Lab, an outer planets flagship mission targeted for 2017 and a Discovery-class mission slated to fly a couple years earlier to test a more efficient radioisotope power system NASA and the Energy Department have in development. To help ensure there is enough plutonium-238 for those missions, NASA notified scientists in January that its next New Frontiers solicitation, due out in June, will seek only missions that do not require a nuclear power source."

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