Topic: SCIENCE - on April 17, 2008 at 3:42:00 PM CEST
Wie die Wissensgesellschaft betrogen wird
Das Wissen der Welt wächst explosiv. Doch aus Profitgier und Angst wird der Zugang zu neuen Erkenntnissen immer stärker beschränkt. Physik-Nobelpreisträger Robert B. Laughlin warnt in einem Essay für SPIEGEL ONLINE vor einem neuen dunklen Zeitalter der Desinformation und Ignoranz.
Wir stehen am Beginn des Informationszeitalters, in dem der Zugang zu Wissen in vielerlei Hinsicht wichtiger ist als der Zugang zu materiellen Ressourcen. Tatsächlich wird aber in dieser sogenannten Wissensgesellschaft der Zugang zu Informationen versperrt, und frei erworbene Erkenntnisse werden aus wirtschaftlichen, politischen oder militärischen Gründen als illegal erklärt. Die zunehmenden Bemühungen von Staaten, Unternehmen und Individuen, Konkurrenten um jeden Preis davon abzuhalten, bestimmte Dinge in Erfahrung zu bringen, die sie selbst wissen, hat zu einer erstaunlichen Ausweitung des Schutzes geistigen Eigentums im Urheberrecht und zu einer beträchtlichen Ausweitung staatlicher Geheimhaltungsmöglichkeiten geführt.
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Topic: FUN - on April 17, 2008 at 12:20:00 PM CEST
Jimi Hendrix gets shuffled
Now, David Alvarez of Leavenworth, Washington, has unveiled an even bigger, even more original creation. Using more than 8,500 Bicycle playing cards, he recently constructed a portrait of guitarist legend Jimi Hendrix.
While others have used Post-it Notes for mosaics like this, as far as Alvarez can tell from Internet searches, he is the first to experiment with playing cards as the medium for a portrait mosaic.
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Topic: DRUGS - on April 17, 2008 at 12:14:00 PM CEST
Drug dealer vintage tax stamp
This "Special Tax Stamp," issued by the IRS in 1951 to a "retail dealer in opium, coca leaves, etc.," is up for auction on eBay.
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Topic: DRUGS - on April 17, 2008 at 12:11:00 PM CEST
Drug boat haul enough for one spliff per person in UK
A boat which docked in the UK last week was carrying cannabis with a street value of more than £40m, enough to make a joint for every single person in the country, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) said today.
Customs and law enforcement officers seized the Abbira, a 30-metre ocean-going tug, when it arrived at Southampton a week ago. It was moved to Portsmouth where a search recovered 14.5 tonnes of cannabis resin in 419 blocks.
"With a wholesale price of £875 per kg, this cannabis was worth around £2.5m to the importer, and offered a potential profit of around £1m through onward wholesale distribution," a spokesman said.
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Topic: POLICE REPORT - on April 17, 2008 at 12:06:00 PM CEST
Gravenreuth rechtskräftig zu elf Monaten auf Bewährung verurteilt
Die Rechtskunst und die Mathematik gehen manchmal verschiedene Wege: So kam es, dass bei dem bekannten Anwalt Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth heute zwei wegen Untreue ausgesprochene Bewährungsstrafen von sechs und sieben Monaten zu elf Monaten zusammengefasst wurden (Az. 26 Ns 241 Js 203139/05).
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Topic: COMPUTER - on April 17, 2008 at 11:58:00 AM CEST
Women love chocolate more than password security
Women are four times more likely than men to give out "passwords" in exchange for chocolate bars.
A survey by of 576 office workers in central London found that women are far more likely to give away their computer passwords to total strangers than their male counterparts, with 45 per cent of women versus ten per cent of men prepared to give away their login credentials to strangers masquerading as market researchers.
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Topic: WEB - on April 17, 2008 at 11:56:00 AM CEST
Pirate Bay to sue music industry
The Pirate Bay is threatening to seek damages from music industry lobby group The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for blocking access to its website.
In February the IFPI went to court to get Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to the website accusing it of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
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Topic: WEB - on April 17, 2008 at 11:56:00 AM CEST
Top P2P Applications: 1.6 Million PCs Rank Them
"We have a powder keg of data here" I told Digital Music News publisher Paul Resnikoff as I completed this quarter's Digital Media Desktop Report. The report, a coordinated effort between Big Champagne, PC Pitstop and Digital Music News, tracks the global installation base for leading digital music applications including P2P clients, ecommerce clients, and jukebox applications. More than 100,000 unique PCs are polled for this data each month and more than 1.5 million unique PCs are polled over a given year. Over the past 12 months we analyzed data from 1,661,688 machines
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Topic: WEB - on April 17, 2008 at 11:54:00 AM CEST
The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service
In their ever continuing battle to free the Internet, The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want, without being afraid to get shut down by their blog host.
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