Beens' Blog

Joint raids by police in Belgium and Switzerland have shut down a popular file-sharing server. The Razorback2 server was part of the Edonkey file-sharing network and was used by a third of the system's users.   Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4743052.stm .    

A judge's ruling could require the Web giant to exclude a publisher's copyrighted photos.   Search giant Google Inc. lost a court fight Tuesday in a copyright case that highlights the challenge of building a business on the frontier of technology and the law.   Read more at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google22feb22,1,4065474.story

THE ONLINE PRIVACY ADVOCACY GROUP Electronic Frontier Foundation Thursday blasted a new feature on Google's Desktop Search product, which allows users to search their home computers from any computer. The group said that Google's caching of users' hard drives renders them vulnerable to subpoenas.   Read more at http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=39662 .

Steve Fossett, the American adventurer, completed the longest non-stop solo flight in history when he landed in Britain last night 77 hours after taking off from the United States.   Read more at http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article344940.ece .

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will re-examine the validity of the so-called JPEG patent held by Forgent Networks, an action that could deprive the company of its multimillion-dollar revenue stream.   Read more at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6034544.html .

Hitachi said it has developed the world's smallest and thinnest integrated circuit (IC) chip, which can be embedded in paper to track down parcels or prove the authenticity of a document.   The IC chip is as small as a speck of dust, being just 0.15 mm by 0.15 mm square by 7.5 micrometers thick, Hitachi said. One micrometer is one-thousandth of a millimeter.   Read more at http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2006/02/06/afx2501763.html .

Duh! It's common sense that listening to loud music, particularly with headphones, will damage your hearing. Well, if you won't listen to me, listen to Pete Townshend. (If you don't know who that is, you have no right to listen to any modern music!) http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15198 Some more links related to loud music and hearing loss: http://www.american-hearing.org/name/noise_induced.html http://www.4hearingloss.com/archives/2005/05/loud_music_can.html http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/ots_ears.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011601100.html http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/hearingloss.cfm http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/ask_the_doctor/hearinglossloudmusic.shtml http://homepages.kdsi.net/~sherman/hearingloss.htm