Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which it claims can store 400GB of data. The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc, and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs. Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop because crosstalk
from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible
An Australian living in East Africa has brought new meaning to the phrase keeping the bastards honest
. In the past year-and-a-half, Julian Assange and his band of online dissidents have helped swing the Kenyan presidential election, embarrassed the US Government and sparked international scandal. His site, Wikileaks, provides a safe haven for whistleblowers to anonymously upload confidential documents and, after 18 months of operation, Assange says no source has ever been exposed and no document — now more than 1.2 million and counting — has ever been censored or removed. Now the site is expanding its focus on despotic regimes and shady corporate dealings to include religion and even the cult of celebrity
A US company, Sierra Nevada Corporation, claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people’s heads. The device — dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) — exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds. The device is aimed for military or crowd-control applications, but may have other uses
Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won’t eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative. Say it on the Internet, and you’ll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed. Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that’s controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors
After a frustrating few months of searching for a solution to the audio problems he encountered while ripping on-screen video with his Dell laptop, a ripten editor discovered that others were experiencing the same issue — and that the problem was not confined to Dell laptops. Apparently, the lack of a sound card Stereo Mix recording option is to blame — and numerous forum threads have suggested that the RIAA has put pressure on laptop manufacturers like Dell, Gateway and Pac Bell to remove it — via Gizmodo
A device consisting of a giant rubber tube may hold the key to producing affordable electricity from the energy in sea waves. Invented in the UK, the Anaconda
is a totally innovative wave energy concept. Its ultra-simple design means it would be cheap to manufacture and maintain, enabling it to produce clean electricity at lower cost than other types of wave energy converter. Cost has been a key barrier to deployment of such converters to date
When it comes to politicians taking a stand against anti-piracy bills
, such as the three-strikes legislation that’s being backdoored in Europe at the moment, the mind generally goes Swedish, to Rick Falkvinge for example. The mind doesn’t tend to think of North American politicians, but there is an exception, in Canada’s Charlie Angus
A site called LegalTorrents has just launched that hosts trackers and seeds for digital media licensed under the Creative Commons license. The site even provides a way to donate money to artists you like. LegalTorrents takes 15% off the top unless you are a member, which costs $50 one-time during the beta period — via Slashdot
Bletchley Park — otherwise known as Station X to keep its location secret from the Germans — now houses many exhibits and other memorabilia reminding visitors of the outstanding work of trying to crack the Enigma code. It also houses recently rebuilt replicas of the two main codebreaking machines: the Colossus and the Bombe. But despite its obvious historical importance, the Bletchley Park Trust had been unable to win significant funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation turned down its request, while the National Lottery, now the Heritage Lottery Fund, said it was ineligible. But, following a change in funding criteria by the Heritage Lottery Fund, there is suddenly light on the horizon
One of Japan’s biggest Internet service providers will soon begin imposing daily upload limits on its customers in response to a portion of its user base who upload massive amounts of data. OCN, the carrier operated by NTT Communications, will introduce a daily upload limit of 30G bytes from 1 August. Customers that exceed the amount will first be asked to observe it, but those that repeatedly break it will have their access suspended. Downloads will continue to be unlimited
Iran’s parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the internet
UK astronomers, as a part of the Dark Energy Survey collaboration, have reached a milestone in the construction of one of the largest ever cameras to detect dark energy by completing the shipment of the glass required for the five special lenses. Each step in the process of completing this sophisticated camera brings scientists closer to detecting the invisible matter that cosmologists estimate makes up around 75% of our universe
Google’s plans to launch a mapping tool in the UK could be referred to the Information Commissioner. Street View matches photos of locations to maps, including passers-by who were captured as the photograph was taken. Privacy International, a UK rights group, believes the technology breaks data protection laws
Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled. The ruling comes as part of Google’s legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a set-back to privacy rights
Slimy anti-virus provider AVG is spamming the internet with deceptive traffic pretending to be Internet Explorer. Essentially, users of the software automatically pre-crawl search results, which is bad, but they do so with an intentionally generic user agent. This is flooding web sites with meaningless traffic; on Slashdot, they’re seeing them as 6% of their page traffic now. Best of all, they change their UA to avoid being filtered by web sites who are seeing massive increases in bandwidth from worthless robots — via Slashdot
With the push for more sustainable energy, easy DIY kits for alternative energy sources are likely to become quite popular in the coming years. We may see some big improvements in our ability to ‘green up’ if these photovoltaic curtains become widely available — via Slashdot
For Tracy Mooney, a married mother of three in Naperville, Illinois, the decision to abandon cyber-sense and invite e-mail spam into her life for a month by participating in a McAfee experiment was a bit of a lark. The idea of the Spammed Persistently All Month (SPAM) experiment — which fittingly started on April Fool’s Day — was to have 50 volunteers from around the world answer every spam message and pop-up ad they got. Mooney was game, especially since McAfee was giving a free PC to all participants — via Slashdot
Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for web browser Firefox 3.0 took place in June. Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it an extremely impressive accomplishment
The International Music Score Library Project has re-opened to the public for good after a 10-month hiatus. All the news updates in the interim can be found linked to the main page. They take great pride in re-opening as it demonstrates their willpower to make the masterpieces of history free to the world; and moreover to make manifest that they will not be bullied by publishers sporting outrageous claims of copyright in a country where they clearly are expired — via Slashdot
Virgin Media, plagued by a recent flurry of bad publicity thanks to its policy of working with the music industry to warn file-sharers, has announced today that there is absolutely no possibility
that it will disconnect its users from the Internet or hand over their details to the music industry
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