A little over a year ago, we reported on the news about US military officials playing loud rock music as "torture." Basically, they would blast loud music over and over again at folks who they thought would be annoyed by it. When we wrote about it, we were wondering if the US government actually paid royalties on the public performance of the music. Apparently, we're not the only ones questioning that. Howard Knopf discusses a musician who is
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Just last week we were talking about baby stroller companies in the UK trying to prevent retailers from selling their goods on eBay, and now Eric Goldman points us to news of a case in the US on this very issue. Here we have a "dietary supplement" seller, Standard Process, who sued an online e-commerce site, Total Health, for selling its supplements despite not being an "authorized reseller." Basically, Total Health would buy products from Stan
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The patent system is only supposed to grant patents on inventions that are new and non-obvious to those skilled in the art. As we've pointed out in the past, the "non-obvious" part of the requirement has long been (effectively) ignored by the patent office. Instead, it mostly focused on whether the invention was new -- and did so by looking at published examples of prior art. There was very little effort made to examine whether or not the conc
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TSheets, a web enabled timeclock tracker, has just introduced an iPhone web app version of its site. The web application allows users to clock in or out of work from a remote location, and also gives professionals a handy way to keep track of their billable hours. The app itself is very basic, amounting to [...]

From CrunchGear: This ?Apple hates Rogers? story is heating up! Now it looks like Apple won’t sell the iPhone 3G at its Canadian retail stores, leaving Rogers (and Fido, its partner is crime) flapping in the wind. You can feel the annoyance in Apple’s voice in this quote: We have nothing to do with the service plans. Those [...]

Which Companies Do You Trust Or Admire The Most? ( surveys) Who do you trust more, Google or Toyota? The answer might depend on where you live. In its annual corporate reputation survey of 60,000 people worldwide, the Reputation Institute finds that Google scores highest in the U.S., but [...]

JS-Kit, a provider of Javascript comments, ratings, and poll widgets for blogs, has announced their acquisition of HaloScan, one of the largest hosted comments service providers. This announcement is also coordinated with the launch of several major features. Financial terms were not disclosed. HaloScan had previously partnered with JS-Kit in January to provide the [...]

Hot on the heels of w00t! being voted "Word of the Year" comes news that "fanboy" has made it into the print version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, along with 100 other words...

The Eee Box has landed - well, nearly; the official information on it has, anyway. Yes, Asus has finally come out and stood on the steps of their HQ with their hands on their hearts and given it to us straight. So, this ladles and jellyspoons is the word on the Eee Box B202...

The TV specialist has been getting rather innovative recently, what with all its new LCD TVs, fancy discs and that pile of Blu-ray players it's bringing our way - now Pioneer's planning to launch home Blu-ray recorders as well. Pioneer's teaming up with Sharp to develop the devices, which already makes Blu-ray recorders of its own...

Fancy trusting your life to a piece of plastic no thicker than a pencil as you weave in and out of buses, taxis, alpha males in white vans, lumps of broken glass from previous cyclist-crushings and pot holes? That's supposed to be a rhetorical question, but if you just nodded "Yes" here's the solution to ending the life you're so very tired of - the Backpack Bicycle. It's designer Chang Ting Jen's entry in the International Bicycle Design competi
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Welcome to the wine elevator, sir. What level would you like? Sozzled? Hammered? Or shall I just hit the emergency stop button and we can stay inside until you've drunk the lot? Come on, tell me it doesn't look like a lift to you? For those unable to read big print, this is in fact a walk-in wine cellar...

Cat: Rocky

Cat: Princess Aurora

Barence writes "Dozens of new undersea internet cables are set to be laid over the next couple of years, providing a huge boost to worldwide capacity. The huge boom in internet video has led to doomsday scenarios of the internet running out of capacity. Although experts believe that there is abundant amounts of 'dark fibre' lying unused in oceans across the world, major telcos are pushing ahead with projects that will see at least 25 new cables l
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"The Washington Times is reporting that the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet. Plans for the device include subduing passengers remotely as well as onboard interrogation. There's even a promotional video." Perhaps Paul Ruwaldt (the official named in this story) has been watching "The Coneheads" a bit too much, or not actually flying enough. Expressing interest is not quite the same as ordering mass quantiti
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schliz writes "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."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Corrupt notes an Ars analysis of the FISA bill of which the telecom immunity provision has been getting all the attention. Timothy B. Lee enumerates the ways in which the bill loosens current protections on domestic wiretapping and opens up whole new areas to government eavesdropping. "The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between Americans citizen and foreigners located overseas and effectively legalizes dragn
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