The city that never sleeps will darken the lights of the famed Manhattan skyline after midnight to help save migrating birds. New York civic leaders said the lights of buildings above the 40th floor will be turned off after midnight in the fall and spring migration seasons to save birds. Since 1997, more than 4,000 migratory birds have been killed or injured from colliding into skyscrapers
The Authors Guild has filed a class action lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit claims that Google’s scanning and digitising of library books as a part of the Google Print Project constitutes massive copyright infringement
. In addition to the lawsuit The Authors Guild has also issued a press release to explain its actions. Google has responded, pointing out that the Library Project is fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under US copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews
Copyright terms have been continually extended since they were passed into English law by the Statute of Queen Anne. As these monopoly rights have grown, so the public domain has shrunk, greatly reducing our access to creative works, condemning vast quantities of our culture to obscurity and disappearance, and limiting the opportunities for future creators to build upon the works of the past. The 14+14 campaign has a simple goal: to restore a balance long lost by returning copyright to its original term as laid down in the Statute of 14 years with the option of a 14 year renewal — via BoingBoing
Edmonton police deliberately used a restricted database to gather information on a journalist who wrote anti-camera columns. With the information, cops tried to set up a sting to arrest him for drunk driving. Except some pesky journalists happened to have police scanners and blew the lid off of the operation — via Politech
Reporters Sans Frontieres with the backing of the French government, identifies bloggers as the new heralds of free expression
and offers advice on how to set up a blog and run it anonymously. Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure,
RSF Internet Freedom Desk Julien Pain said. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents can be downloaded from the RSF web site in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Farsi
The US have put a satellite jammer in space that will allow them to disrupt enemy communication systems at will
The RIAA has been pushing the FCC to impose a copy-protection mandate on the makers of next-generation digital radio receiver/recorders. Never mind that digital audio broadcasting is not significantly greater in quality than regular, analogue radio. Never mind that its music quality is vastly less than than that of audio CDs. In spite of these inconvenient facts, the RIAA is hoping that the transition to digital audio broadcasting
will provide enough confusion and panic that they can persuade Congress or the FCC to impose some kind of copy-protection scheme or regulation on digital radio broadcast
Switchfoot’s new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologising for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex’s download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot’s fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it’s nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue — via Slashdot
Zotob.E, Tpbot-A, Rbot.CBQ and IRCbot.worm: all names given to a single worm that wreaked havoc in Windows 2000 systems last month. Among the plethora of identifiers, perhaps the most useful — CME-540 — didn’t make an impact. But that’s about to change. CME-540 was the tag attached to the worm by the Common Malware Enumeration initiative, which is just emerging from its test phase. Next month, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team plans to officially take the wraps off the effort, meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests
The Gameboy Advance has changed its form factor yet again, this time to resemble an NES controller.
The new GBA Micro has a brighter screen than the SP, and appears to have grown back the missing headphone socket. Stylish, but I think I prefer the clamshell format of the SP. Happily the new SPs also have the improved screen.
Just last month, Opera was celebrating their 10 year anniversary by giving away free registration codes; now they’ve trumped that by offering Opera for free. Quoth their site, Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous world-wide customer support, has made todays milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.
Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now has virtually no reason not to — Slashdot
The software, developed by NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, goes further than existing mobile phone camera technology by allowing entire documents to be scanned simply by sweeping the phone across the page. As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns
Technology startup U3 is expected to announce Monday the release of USB drives based on its smart computing platform, which lets applications run directly off USB drives, independent of other storage devices. Smart USB drives based on U3’s software and hardware platform will allow users to carry their entire PC in a USB drive, so that when they hook up to a PC on the road, it will have the same look and feel as their work or home PC
The Wings Go Club has a bunch of PDF Go books including a beginners guide, commented games, and some interesting guides to making the most out of handicap stones (the latter are also available in .doc format).
If you prefer physical books and are in Australia, J.W. & S. Hardy have a nice selection.
Canberra could become the first Australian city to provide its population with digital network access anywhere and anytime across its CBD and suburbs
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies now has a hard drive upgrade alternative for notebook computers that is so simple, most users will be able to increase their notebook hard disk capacity and restore their operating system, applications, and data. The upgrade includes a replacement internal hard drive, a case to convert allow the existing hard drive to be used as an external USB drive, cables, tools, and step-by-step instructions
Manilla Road is a State/RTA funded road. Do not blame Tamworth City Council.
Sign seen by the side of the road during a roadworks created hold-up
Traditionaly screws are poorly suited to many applications, because they displace the material they’re being screwed into, causing brittle substances like plastic and concrete to crack. Now, for the first time in decades, Kenneth LeVey, a stubborn engineer at Illinois Tool Works, has created a radical new design for screws that solves this problem — via BoingBoing
Google has confirmed they are rolling out their wifi network, first in the San Francisco bay area. They are also including a Secure Access programme for use in conjunction with this
The final plan for managing protected grey wolves that migrate into Oregon will prohibit ranchers from killing wolves that attack livestock and will not include compensation for losses to wolf attacks — via Tidepool
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