Archbishop Bans Pop Music At Funerals pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has announced a ban on the playing of pop music at funerals, which, he said, are not to be described as 'a celebration of the life of' the deceased. According to new guidelines published on Archbishop Denis Hart's Web site: 'Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs.' According to a cemetery contacted by Melbourne's Herald Sun, a list of more unusual songs played at Australian funerals includes: 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' by Monty Python, 'Another One Bites the Dust' by Queen, 'Highway to Hell,' by AC/DC and 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' from The Wizard of Oz."
Tap Tech Brings Touch To Dumb Phones nk497 writes "A Cambridge-based firm has come up with a way to bring touch interfaces to phones without touchscreens. According to TouchDevice, the system uses the microphone to turn any surface on a handset into a touch-sensitive input panel by analysing sound signatures. 'For example, where icons are displayed on a non-touch screen display, you could tap on there and it would activate the application,' said founder Mike Bradley. TouchDevice believes there are two markets for the technology: firstly to augment input potential in touchcreen smartphones, and secondly as a way of adding touch to 'dumb' displays. The system should be making its way into devices by early next year."
Spaceflight Formation Flying Test Bed Takes Off coondoggie writes "Getting complicated systems onboard a single spacecraft to operate as one integrated unit can be hard enough, but some space agencies are trying to address the challenges of getting multiple spacecraft to fly in formation and operate together as one unit. Such challenges are exactly what a new European Space Agency lab in the Netherlands is set to address. The test bed addresses crucial operational factors for formation flying, including mission and vehicle management, guidance navigation, dealing with faults and communicating between satellites."
Court Says First Sale Doctrine Doesn't Apply To Licensed Software An anonymous reader wrote to tell us a federal appeals court ruled today that the first sale doctrine is "unavailable to those who are only licensed to use their copies of copyrighted works." This reverses a 2008 decision from the Autodesk case, in which a man was selling used copies of AutoCAD that were not currently installed on any computers. Autodesk objected to the sales because their license agreement did not permit the transfer of ownership. Today's ruling (PDF) upholds Autodesk's claims: "We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. Applying our holding to Autodesk’s [software license agreement], we conclude that CTA was a licensee rather than an owner of copies of Release 14 and thus was not entitled to invoke the first sale doctrine or the essential step defense. "
Foxconn's Founder Opens Up About Making iPhones eldavojohn writes "Bloomberg Businessweek has an article of interest resulting from a three-hour interview with Foxconn founder Terry Gou (single page), whose company manufactures 137,000 iPhones a day. The article profiles Gou's rise to Foxconn but also offers some interesting tidbits you might not know. On why he is not opening factories in the United States, Gou frankly states, 'If I can automate in the US and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive. But I worry America has too many lawyers. I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day.' If you're interested in how a modern day Henry Ford thinks, you can read the rest about the man steering the ship of the world's largest producer of electronics components and China's largest exporter. This unprecedented transparency was part of an agreement Gou made with his customers during his delayed response to an increasing number of Foxconn suicides."
How the Web Rallied To Review the P != NP Claim An anonymous reader writes "Remember, about a month ago, when a researcher claimed he had a proof that P != NP? Well, the proof hasn't held up. But blogs and news sites helped spur a massive, open, collaborative effort on the Internet to understand the paper and to see if its ideas could be extended. This article explains what happened, how the proof was supposed to work, and why it failed."
Facebook Surpasses Google For Users' Online Time crimeandpunishment writes "When it comes to our time online, socializing beats searching. According to new data from researchers at comScore Inc., Facebook has moved ahead of Google for the first time in Web users' minutes. In August, people spent more than 41 million minutes on Facebook, compared to just under 40 million for all of Google's sites combined. Yahoo came in third, with 37.7 million minutes."
Mega-Volcanoes Might Be Detectable On Exoplanets astroengine writes "Could we detect a huge volcanic eruption on an exoplanet 30 light-years from Earth? Possibly, say scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. What's more, there may be an opportunity for us to spot the ashy pollution ejected into the exoplanetary atmosphere when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2014. According to Discovery News, this would be a huge discovery if an Earth-like world was found to have active volcanoes: 'A geologically active terrestrial planet may be more suitable for life. It recycles crust, unleashes greenhouse gasses, opens new environmental niches, and generally provides a dynamic environment for advantageous life forms.'" According to a related story at the BBC, we should soon be able to detect the presence of oceans on distant worlds as well. The JWST will be able to resolve the reflection of light off an ocean's surface from 20-30 light-years away.
PayPal Withholding Indie Game Dev's €600,000 Account epee1221 writes "Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, the developer of Minecraft, posted on his development blog today that PayPal limited his account with unspecified cause on August 25th. Since then, payments for the alpha version of Minecraft have continued accumulating while Notch has been unable to withdraw them, and the account now contains over €600,000. PayPal recently told him it may take up to two more weeks for things to get sorted out and that if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money." This unfortunate news followed an announcement a few days ago that he and a friend would be starting a studio of their own to continue development on Minecraft and start working on a new project.
World's First Transcontinental Anesthesia An anonymous reader writes "Medical Daily reports: 'Video conferences may be known for putting people to sleep, but never like this. Dr. Thomas Hemmerling and his team of McGill's Department of Anesthesia achieved a world first on August 30, 2010, when they treated patients undergoing thyroid gland surgery in Italy remotely from Montreal. The approach is part of new technological advancements, known as 'Teleanesthesia', and it involves a team of engineers, researchers and anesthesiologists who will ultimately apply the drugs intravenously which are then controlled remotely through an automated system.'"
King's Dark Tower Series To Be Adapted For Film, TV Kozz writes "Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment have closed a deal to turn Stephen King's mammoth novel series The Dark Tower into a feature film trilogy and a network TV series, both of which will be creatively steered by the Oscar-winning team behind A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code. 'The plan is to start with the feature film, and then create a bridge to the second feature with a season of TV episodes. That means the feature cast — and the big star who’ll play Deschain — also has to appear in the TV series before returning to the second film. After that sequel is done, the TV series picks up again, this time focusing on Deschain as a young gunslinger.'"
Apple's Developer Tools Turnaround 'Great News' For Adobe cgriffin21 writes "Apple is being praised for loosening of some of the restrictions in its Application Developer Program license agreement that open the door for app developers to work in Flash for the Apple iPhone, iPad and other devices. And no one is happier about the change than Flash-maker Adobe itself. They wrote, 'This is great news for developers and we're hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple's restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.'" Apple also received praise from Google over their reversal, which may have been prompted by an FTC probe. Reader Stoubalou adds that Apple shed more light on the app review process by publishing a list of guidelines (PDF) the violation of which may get an app rejected from the App Store.
Arms Regulations Damaging US Space Industry athe!st writes "International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) are a major headache for companies trying to put their satellites into space, so much so that some companies are using 'ITAR-free' (aka free of US technology) as a selling point. The European Space Agency is trying to reduce its dependence on ITAR components, and the regulations are also threatening the nascent space tourism industry."
Sony Breathes New Life Into Library Books Barence writes "Sony has launched a new range of touchscreen eBook readers — and is breathing new life into the concept of public library books. The readers offer support for free eBook loans from local authority libraries. If you're lucky enough to be a member of a local library supporting the service (50 have signed up so far in the UK) you'll be able to visit its website, tap your library card number in and borrow any book in the eBook catalog, for free, for a period of 14 or 21 days. The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."
Nokia Names Microsoft's Elop As New CEO itwbennett writes "Nokia has tapped Stephen Elop, former president of Microsoft's business software group, to become its new CEO effective Sept. 21. Elop will replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who loses his board seat immediately and will step down from the CEO position on Sept. 20. Microsoft said Elop will leave immediately, but the company doesn't seem to be rushing to fill the vacancy at the top of one of its largest divisions. 'I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately,' Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a letter to employees late Thursday."
WikiLeaks Set To Release Unpublished Iraq War Docs Tootech writes with this snippet from Wired: "A massive cache of previously unpublished classified US military documents from the Iraq War is being readied for publication by WikiLeaks, a new report has confirmed. The documents constitute the 'biggest leak of military intelligence' that has ever occurred, according to Iain Overton, editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit British organization that is working with WikiLeaks on the documents. The documents are expected to be published in several weeks. Overton, who discussed the project with Newsweek, didn't say how many documents were involved or disclose their origin, but they may be among the leaks that an imprisoned Army intelligence analyst claimed to have sent to WikiLeaks earlier this year."
Oracle, NetApp Drop ZFS Patent Suit An anonymous reader writes "It seems Oracle and NetApp have kissed and made up over the ZFS patent lawsuit. Before Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, NetApp sued Sun claiming ZFS infringed on its patents. Sun later sued NetApp back. From today, all is forgotten and Oracle and NetApp are friends. NetApp CEO Tom Georgens even said the two companies have shared a 'common vision' focused on providing solutions that reduce IT cost and complexity. Both companies now want collaboration between them to continue."
Wikipedia Entry Turned Into Actual Encyclopedia Ponca City, We love you writes "If journalism is the first rough draft of history, what does that make Wikipedia? Time Magazine reports that technology writer James Bridle has created a 12-volume compendium of every edit made to the Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War between December 2004 and November 2009. 'It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes "Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.,"' writes Bridle. 'This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.' The books presumably only exist in one copy, so they are not for sale."
ARM Unveils Next-Gen Processor, Claims 5x Speedup unts writes "UK chip designer ARM [Note: check out this short history of ARM chips in mobile devices contributed by an anonymous reader] today released the first details of its latest project, codenamed 'Eagle.' It has branded the new design Cortex-A15, which ARM reckons demonstrates the jump in performance from its predecessors, the A8 and A9. ARM's new chip design can scale to 16 cores, clock up to 2.5GHz, and, the company claims, deliver a 5x performance increase over the A8: 'It's like taking a desktop and putting it in your pocket,' said [VP of processor marketing — Eric Schorn], and it was clear that he considers this new design to be a pretty major shot across the bows of Intel and AMD. In case we were in any doubt, he turned the knife further: 'The exciting place for software developer graduates to go and hunt for work is no longer the desktop.'"
EU Surveillance Studies Disclosed By Pirate Party Spliffster writes "The German Pirate Party has disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens. The so called INDECT Documents describe how a seamless surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe. The use of CCTV cameras, the internet (social networks) and even the use of UAVs are mentioned as data sources. Two of the nine documents can be downloaded from the German Pirate Party's website (PDFs in English)."
Swedish Police Shoe Database May Tread On Copyright An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish police, who have been instrumental in various raids against file-sharing sites, may have a bit of a piracy problem on their own hands. It seems they wanted to put together a database of shoe print information for matching crime scene shoe prints to particular shoe types. To do so, they used images found online, and some Swedish copyright experts have noted that this appears to violate Swedish copyright law. The police claim there's an exception for police investigations, but people (and some shoe companies) are pointing out that creating a database isn't about an investigation."
Australia's National Broadband Network To Go Ahead angry tapir writes "After weeks of a hung parliament following the Australian federal election, the incumbent Labor Party has garnered enough support among independent MPs to form a minority government. Broadband was central to clinching the independents' support. Labor's victory means the $43 billion National Broadband Network will push ahead. The policy has generally been popular among ISPs and telcos — though some rebel operators preferred a policy that emphasized wireless technologies, similar to the proposals put forward by Labor's opponents. The primarily fiber-based NBN is set to offer Australians 1Gbps broadband."
Robots Taught to Deceive An anonymous reader found a story that starts "'We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered,' said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing."
Apple Relaxes iOS Development Tool Restrictions An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year Apple caused major upset among developers by updating the iPhone developer program license with clause 3.3.1. It basically stopped the use of cross-platform compilers, meaning Adobe Flash could not be used to develop an app for the App Store. The move also put into doubt which other development platforms could be used and generally caused a lot of confusion. Apple has just significantly relaxed that policy and allowed for the use of development tools, as long as 'the resulting apps do not download any code.'"
HDR Video a Reality akaru writes "Using common DSLR cameras, some creative individuals have created an example of true HDR video. Instead of pseudo-HDR, they actually used multiple cameras and a beam splitter to record simultaneous video streams, and composited them together in post. Looks very intriguing."