Apple said it would begin selling song downloads from all four major music companies without the anticopying measures that have been part of its iTunes store since it opened in 2003. It will also move away from its insistence on pricing songs at 99 cents.

!!!

Apple Drops Anticopying Measures in iTunes - NYTimes.com

Mr. Sheehan, a retired glazier, has held season tickets for the San Francisco 49ers since 1967. But when he and his family showed up at the stadium on a fall day in 2005, guards at the gate told him that all visitors had to go through a physical search. Though he had never objected to searches of bags, he said, the pat-down “just hit me wrong.”

When his 5-year-old grandson spread his arms for the search, he recalled, “I thought, wait a minute! We’re still living in the United States of America.”

On Tuesday the California Supreme Court will hear the case that Mr. Sheehan brought over the search policy, which was instituted in stadiums across the National Football League.

California Supreme Court to Hear Arena Search Case - NYTimes.com

A decade ago, Congress decided it was time to address what a House report called “a very specific sexual fetish.” There are people, it turns out, who take pleasure from watching videos of small animals being crushed.
...
The Supreme Court is likely to address those questions soon in the case of Robert J. Stevens, a Virginia man sentenced to 37 months in prison under the law for selling videos of dogfights.

Sidebar - Animal Cruelty Law Tests Free Speech - NYTimes.com

For more than three years, NASA chief Michael Griffin has maintained that the safest, most reliable and affordable way to return astronauts to the moon is on the Ares I, a rocket he helped design from parts of the space shuttle. Alternatives, he insisted, such as modified military rockets, were simply not capable of carrying humans to the moon and beyond.

But interviews, as well as documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, indicate that military rockets can lift astronauts safely into space -- and to the moon -- for billions less and possibly sooner than NASA's current designs.

Kill the stick!

Military rockets: Solution for NASA? -- OrlandoSentinel.com

Stratfor, a private intelligence agency based in the United States, said in a report that a Chinese antipiracy patrol would afford its navy “some very real opportunities for on-the-job training, covering everything from logistics far from home and combat against seaborne opponents to communications and joint operations with other, more experienced navies.” null

Chinese Warships Sail to Pirate-Infested Gulf of Aden - NYTimes.com

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother?

When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled.

Blind, Yet Seeing - The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense - NYTimes.com

In the race to make the lithium-ion batteries that will run the electric cars of the future, the United States is losing to Asian countries, and start-ups and big companies need to band together to build a lithium-ion battery industry in the United States, says Jim Greenberger.

Electric-Car Battery Makers Seek Federal Funds - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

The Energy Challenge - No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in Innovative ‘Passive Houses’ - Series - NYTimes.com

TEXT messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.

Digital Domain - What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting - NYTimes.com

In a stunning turn of events, the US music industry has ceased its long-time litigation strategy of suing individual P2P file-swappers. Instead, with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo acting as a broker, the RIAA has signed voluntary "graduated response" agreements with major Internet service providers. Those currently on the receiving end of an RIAA lawsuit, though, will have to see it through to the (very) bitter end.

No more lawsuits: ISPs to work with RIAA, cut off P2P users