Thursday, December 6, 2007

12-6-07 Science/Tech

You know about LEDs. Now there are LECs (light-emitting capaitors). Basically, they are large, thin, flexible plastic sheets that emit light when an electric current is applied to them. The company that makes them wants to use them for signs on buses and buildings, lit panels in walls and floors, etc...

Google's Lunar X Prize race is underway. About 350 private-sector teams will compete to land a robotic rover on the moon, explore, and send results back to earth. The prizes total $30 million.

Netflix will be changing their envelopes soon or dropping their profits 70 cents per user. Apparently the soft corners on the envelopes require extra handling, and the Post Office is about to start charging for it.

Further proof that copyrights are a mess: they can't even enforce current copyrights, but Congress wants to boost penalties for infringement. I guess they thought a $220,000 fine for sharing 24 songs was actually low. Who knew?

Along similar lines, the MPAA wants ISPs to install filtering technology to prevent content theft. Even if they could get all ISPs to go along with this, I don't think anyone has managed to make a filter that can determine if a file being shared is copyrighted or not. Until they do, isn't this academic?

Scientists have used skin cells reprogrammed into stem cells to cure Sickle Cell Anemia in mice.

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