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quitte writes:

The IBM Trackpoint was patented in 1996 (US Patents 5570111, 5521596, and 5489900). At least in Europe the maximum duration of a patent is 20 years. When I had a Thinkpad I loved the Trackpoint. In fact I've been considering buying a clicky keyboard with integrated trackpoint from Unisys. But, combined with import tax and shipping, their already steep prices become something hard to justify to pay for a keyboard.

Considering that these patents are runnning out soon -- does this mean we are going to see a wider adoption of trackpoint technology? Do people actually like their trackpads?

Personally I'd like to see Trackpoints become the default mouse replacement instead of trackpads. But I have a feeling this is not going to happen. Why not? How can we let manufacturers know that we want Trackpoints in the full range of products, when a Trackpoint right now is a premium product feature?

AnonTechie writes:

Scientists believe that Tweets can map the world's emotional response in real-time. Over-sharing on Twitter might prove to be a boon for mental health services. Grabbing 750 tweets a second, a new tool can read the emotional state of a region in real time. The idea is to figure out exactly what kinds of events affect people's moods and tailor mental health treatments accordingly. Researchers at Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, and the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, created an emotional vocabulary of about 600 words and confirmed their meaning by crowdsourcing responses from over 1200 people. They built an app that filters tweets by location and linguistically analyses their emotional content. The output is an interactive graph of the target region's mood. It shows how much each of seven emotions are being expressed in that region.

"If it works then in the future we can monitor, and eventually predict, where services can be assigned," says Cecile Paris, a computer scientist at the CSIRO. The plan is to make the app available for researchers anywhere.

c0lo writes:

University of Virginia's Quarterly Review carries quite a long but captivating story, titled "Linux for Lettuce", on the nascent Open Source Seed Initiative movement.

Man, if you think software has it tough with the patents, just think that plants don't have copyright protection and it's hard to prove "prior art" when it comes to them.

In 1966, a breeder named Jim Baggett set out to breed a broccoli with an "exserted" head, which meant that instead of nestling in the leaves the crown would protrude on a long stalk, making harvest easier. The method he used was basic plant breeding: Mate one broccoli with another, identify the best offspring, and save their seed for the next season.

Most classical plant breeders will tell you that their work is inherently collaborative the more people involved, the better... Hoping to advance its evolution by letting others work on it, he and Myers shared their germplasm (an industry term for seed) with breeders throughout the United States. One recipient was the broccoli division of Royal Sluis, a Dutch company that had a research farm in Salinas, California. Through the channels of corporate consolidation, that germplasm ended up with the world's largest vegetable-seed company, Seminis, which in 2005 was bought by the world's largest seed company, Monsanto. In 2011, Seminis was granted US Patent 8,030,549 "Broccoli adapted for ease of harvest". More than a third of the original plant material behind the invention was germplasm that Baggett had shared in 1983.

AnonTechie and mrchew1982 write:

The US may block visas for Chinese hackers attending DefCon, Black Hat. On Saturday, an unnamed "senior administration official" told Reuters that the US government is considering using visa restrictions to keep Chinese hackers from attending DefCon and Black Hat, two major hacking conferences that take place in August in Las Vegas. The move would be "part of a broad effort to curb Chinese cyber espionage," Reuters reported. The news comes after five members of the Chinese military were indicted by the US on Monday for allegedly hacking into US companies and stealing trade secrets. It was the first time ever that the US had formally accused another government of hacking.

Jeff Moss, founder of both the DefCon and Black Hat conferences, and Chris Wysopal, a member of the Black Hat board that reviews presentations, were both skeptical of the move. Wysopal noted that Black Hat talks are taped and sold after the conference, and preventing Chinese hackers from being physically there would not appreciably affect China's hacking abilities. "It seems symbolic to me," Wysopal told Reuters of the move. Several Chinese nationals are booked to speak at the Black Hat conference, although none are booked to speak at DefCon.

gizmobeast writes:

Let me share with you how you can request for cancellation of In App purchases. The following steps allows you also to contact the experts at Apple Support Team with any other queries regarding your iPhone, iPad, Mac and everything about your Apple product.

Recently, I was furious to know that my children spent over $200 when they bought some add ons in their favorite Angry Birds Go and Bad Piggies while I was away. I know it was also my fault because I did not enable the restrictions in the iPad settings. But lesson has been learned. There is a good news however. There is a way to request for cancellation of In App purchases. While it is true that the transaction is final and non-refundable, there are certain cases that Apple will allow for a refund. You can try your luck. It could be worth your try. http://gizmobeast.com/how-tos/how-to-cancel-in-app -purchases-in-ios.html

AnonTechie writes:

In what is believed to be the largest and most detailed genetic analysis of its kind, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere have concluded that 69 percent of healthy American adults are infected with one or more of 109 strains of human papillomavirus (HPV). Only four of the 103 men and women whose tissue DNA was publicly available through a government database had either of the two HPV types known to cause most cases of cervical cancer, some throat cancers, and genital warts.

Researchers say that while most of the viral strains so far appear to be harmless and can remain dormant for years, their overwhelming presence suggests a delicate balancing act for HPV infection in the body, in which many viral strains keep each other in check, preventing other strains from spreading out of control. Although infection is increasingly known to happen through skin-to-skin contact, HPV remains the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. It is so common that experts estimate nearly all men and women contract some strain of it during their lives.

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

In case you haven't had your fill of Giger, here's a very cool photoset from a visit to Giger's home:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/coop666/sets/7215760 0245374175#

c0lo writes:

New York Times has an editorial asking for an end to mass incarceration:

For more than a decade, researchers across multiple disciplines have been issuing reports on the widespread societal and economic damage caused by America's now-40-year experiment in locking up vast numbers of its citizens.

Several recent reports provide some of the most comprehensive and compelling proof yet that the United States "has gone past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits," and that mass incarceration itself is "a source of injustice.". That is the central conclusion of a two-year, 444-page study prepared by the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Justice Department and others

The report highlights many well-known statistics: Since the early 1970s, the nation's prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million, making it the world's biggest. That is five to 10 times the incarceration rate in other democracies.
On closer inspection the numbers only get worse. More than half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes, and one of every nine, or about 159,000 people, are serving life sentences -- nearly a third of them without the possibility of parole.

All of this has come at an astounding economic cost, as tallied by a report from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project $80 billion a year in direct corrections expenses alone, and more than a quarter-trillion dollars when factoring in police, judicial and legal services.

The editorial argues, and makes a convincing case, that all of this seems to stem from the unwillingness of the politicians to appear "soft on crime". Which, by nature, I think is a stance no different from the "war on terror" and the "airport security theatre". If I'm right, I wonder just how much the US citizens are actually willing to pay for their everyday dose of "feeling secure"?

AnonTechie writes with news that NASA's WISE Findings Poke Hole in Black Hole 'Doughnut' Theory":

A survey of more than 170,000 supermassive black holes, using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has astronomers reexamining a decades-old theory about the varying appearances of these interstellar objects. The unified theory of active, supermassive black holes, first developed in the late 1970s, was created to explain why black holes, though similar in nature, can look completely different. Some appear to be shrouded in dust, while others are exposed and easy to see. The unified model answers this question by proposing that every black hole is surrounded by a dusty, doughnut-shaped structure called a torus. Depending on how these "doughnuts" are oriented in space, the black holes will take on various appearances. For example, if the doughnut is positioned so that we see it edge-on, the black hole is hidden from view. If the doughnut is observed from above or below, face-on, the black hole is clearly visible.

However, the new WISE results do not corroborate this theory. The researchers found evidence that something other than a doughnut structure may, in some circumstances, determine whether a black hole is visible or hidden. The team has not yet determined what this may be, but the results suggest the unified, or doughnut, model does not have all the answers.

The referenced article has a nice infographic which explains the unified theory, the expected results, and the unexpected WISE results.

dryriver writes with a story from the BBC which asks Is bamboo the next carbon fibre?:

Poor carbon fibre. What began as a late-20th Century wonder material for military aircraft was then nobly adopted by the motorsport world for strength, low weight and energy dissipation. Yet now, well into its career as a mission-critical material, it has also become window dressing in the aftermarket. Faux carbon fibre key fobs, shift knobs and dash appliques for '60s muscle cars are all generating real sales and real revenue.

Real carbon fibre, mind, is still just as wondrous as it was in the last century, even if a bit more commonplace in road cars. But it's still very expensive to make in large pieces and quantities, it requires copious energy to manufacture, can be very brittle if made poorly, is not recyclable and can impose a detrimental impact of the environment when being produced. In other words, it is ripe for disruption. Technology stands still for no one. But could nature provide carbon fibre's replacement?

So argues Gary Young, a renowned manufacturer of surfboards who has spent his life pioneering alternative materials use for that industry. "With the right approach, bamboo can be used in many applications in the automotive world where its performance qualities can better carbon fibre's" Young says, "Plus, it does not have a negative effect on the environment."

AnonTechie writes:

As a reward for his extensive cooperation helping prosecutors hunt down his fellow hackers, the government is seeking time served for the long-awaited sentencing of top LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known as "Sabu." After delaying his sentencing for nearly three years, the government has asked a federal court to sentence Monsegur to time served - just seven months - calling him an "extremely valuable and productive cooperator" in a document that details for the first time his extensive cooperation [PDF] providing "unprecedented access to LulzSec."

Monsegur, who has long been despised by members of LulzSec for his reported snitching, faced a possible sentence of between 259 and 317 months (21 years 7 months and 26 years 5 months) imprisonment under U.S. sentencing guidelines. But the U.S. Probation Office and prosecutors have asked for a reduced sentence "without regard to the otherwise applicable mandatory minimum sentence in this case" in a motion submitted to the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York on Friday.

lhsi writes:

Research labs in universities receive substantial funding from governments. Crowdfunding will never surpass that. But instead of thinking about crowdfunding as a replacement for government and state funding, we must look at it as an alternative source that helps the public to influence government-supported activities in higher education.

The sort of money raised via crowdfunding route is modest. Only a handful projects have got more than US$500,000. My lab alone spends about US$800,000 per year to pay for materials, salaries and travel for around ten graduate students. So it is clear that crowdfunding cannot replace conventional funding. However, an article discusses the options that might be considered for this particular avenue of funding, and crowdfunding is being looked at as a supplemental stream.

This is an alternate stream of funding that can allow scientists, especially young researchers, to do things differently. Crowdfunded projects often add to the kind of science that is already being done, rather than take away projects that could otherwise receive government funding.

Governments fund science for two main reasons: to find solutions to societal problems and to educate the next generation of engineers and scientists to keep solving such problems. But in recent years, the amount of money invested by governments in the US and the UK has been declining. The pool of ideas actually supported becomes smaller with little to no feedback from the general public.

Crowdfunding research allows the public to turn this around by enabling scientists to find support for projects not on the radar of typical funding agencies, yet enjoying sufficient public interest. This category of research is probably the most obviously deserving of crowdfunding and has already enabled many documentaries, research excursions, and books, often by providing exclusively ideological or intellectual rewards.

Fluffeh writes:

The three largest BitTorrent trackers(OpenBitTorrent, PublicBitTorrent and Istole.it) have banned the IP-ranges of several major hosting companies. The move aims to make it harder for anti-piracy outfits and other information gathering outfits to snoop on file-sharers. Unfortunately, the changes also mean that users of some VPNs, proxies and seedboxes can no longer connect.

The trackers provide a useful function for the public, but are also used by copyright holders to track down pirates. This includes the companies that are used for the various "strikes" initiatives around the world, and various copyright trolls.

To make these increasing snooping efforts more difficult, the tracker operators have decided to take a drastic measure. The three top trackers have all implemented a ban list which includes the IP-address ranges of many of the larger hosting providers, which are frequently used by anti-piracy firms. The measure is not the silver bullet that will stop all anti-piracy outfits, but it's certainly not making it any easier to monitor file-sharers. So for once, they will be the ones who have to circumvent a blockade.

Magic Oddball writes:

Last October, the FDA announced (with little media coverage) that it was investigating a problem with dog treats sickening or killing pets. It has now released an official update stating the problem seems to be with certain treats (and possibly ingredients) imported from China:

Since 2007, FDA has become aware of an increasing number of illnesses in pets associated with the consumption of jerky pet treats ... The reports involve more than 5,600 dogs, 24 cats, three people and include more than 1,000 canine deaths. About 60 percent of the reports are for gastrointestinal illness (with or without elevated liver enzymes) and about 30 percent relate to kidney or urinary signs. The remaining 10 percent of cases involve a variety of other signs, including convulsions, tremors, hives, and skin irritation.

The illnesses have been linked to many brands of jerky treats. The one common factor the cases share is consumption of a chicken or duck jerky treat or jerky-wrapped treat, mostly imported from China. [It also points out that the label won't note if the ingredients were imported from China, so this may explain the non-imported cases.]

The report goes on in interesting detail about the tests they're running with their findings thus far, and includes links to PDFs of the reports describing each case they've investigated. It also includes advice to pet owners on handling the situation, including what to do if they believe one of their pets has been affected. (Hopefully nobody here has a pet sickened by the treats, so this can serve as a warning rather than an explanation.)

Fluffeh writes:

Cinavia's anti-piracy technology relies on a unique type of watermarking that allows it to remain present in pirated movies despite re-recording, transcoding, compression, or other type of transfer. Support for the technology has been mandatory for all hardware and software Blu-ray players since 2012, which causes headaches for many pirates every day. Pirated movies protected by Cinavia work at first, but after a few minutes playback is halted and a warning notice appears on the screen instead.

However, after several years DVD-Ranger has now solved the puzzle. "We have improved DVD-Ranger for use with torrent files. Now DVD-Ranger CinEx HD can remove Cinavia from downloaded torrent video files such as avi, mkv, mp4, mov and others." DVD-Ranger's Ingo Forster explains. "In our country it is only forbidden to develop and sell software that circumvents copy protection. The law doesn't mention digital watermarks. So is it legal? Definitely." Forster notes.

In any case, DVD-Ranger's breakthrough is likely to cause concern at Verance, the company where Cinavia is developed. Perhaps it's the start of a new watermarking arms race?