NewsCloud writes "Facebook has announced to developers that they are moving to a 64 bit user ID in November. At 32 bits, the current ID allows nearly 4.3 billion user accounts. Yet, despite having only 47 million users today, Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth or just trying to avoid what happened when Slashdot ran out of space for comment IDs last year. Perhaps they are planning to implement personas."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FuriousBalancing writes "MacNN is reporting that Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting - the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996. 'The surcharge would help compensate artists for piracy, according to SOCAN's reasoning. The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already applied to blank CDs in the country; the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD, SOCAN argues. The tax may have a significant impact for online stores such as iTunes and Canada-based Puretracks, which will have to factor the amount both into future and past sales.' The full text of the measure is available in PDF format."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An anonymous reader writes "The FCC is butting heads with wireless phone companies over 'wiggle room' the government organization wishes to allow consumers. Along with the move to the auction system, the government is removing restrictions on pieces of the wireless spectrum, which will allow a freedom of choice not usually seen with wireless communication devices. 'In the past, when the F.C.C. auctioned spectrum for cellular service, it allowed the winners to determine the equipment and applications that would run on their networks. That created the current status quo, in which a vast majority of American consumers buy a handset from a wireless service provider. The open-access rules, which will apply to about one-third of the spectrum being sold at the auction, represent a significant departure from past practice. They require the winners to let consumers use any tested, safe and compatible device or application on its network. Entrepreneurs could sell handsets with capabilities that are unavailable -- or unavailable at affordable prices -- from current carriers.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The University of Saskatchewan's has the first place climb in the Second Annual Space Elevator Games being held this weekend at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake City. Teams are competing for $1,000,000 in NASA prize money. Although the idea of a space elevator has been around for decades, the space technologies needed to support it have yet to be created. The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has hosted an annual competition since 2005 to build a super-strong tether, or get a robot to climb a suspended ribbon. In the robot climber competition, teams have to get their device to hurtle up a 100-metre-long ribbon, suspended from a crane, at an average speed of two metres per second. The climber must be powered from the ground: strategies include reflecting sunlight from huge mirrors on the ground to solar panels on the climber; shining lasers from the ground up to similar panels on the robot; or firing microwaves up at the climber. Qualifying rounds have been taking place all week, and although high winds and rain have caused delays, four out of eight teams have made it into the finals. There are no outdoor climbs today because of bad weather but some of the tether competitions will happen indoors later this afternoon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JM sez, "Death Cab for Cutie Guitarist Chris Walla had a hard drive containing his next album confiscated at the US-Canada border for no apparent reason by the Department of Homeland Security. Wow, for some reason that doesn't make me feel like my homeland is secure - when art is blindly confiscated by authority figures."

"It's a true story. Barsuk [Records, which is putting out the record] had hired a courier — who does international stuff all the time and who they had used before — to bring [the album] back from Canada, where I was working on it. And he got to the border and he had all his paperwork and it was all cool, only they turned him away, and they confiscated the drive and gave it to the computer-forensics division of our Homeland Security-type people," sighed Walla, who has produced nearly all Death Cab's output, as well as records by the Decemberists, Hot Hot Heat, Nada Surf, Tegan and Sara and others. "And now I couldn't even venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there. I mean, I can't just call their customer-service center and ask about my drive. There's nothing I can do. I don't know if we can hire an attorney ... is there a black-hole attorney? You can't take a black hole to court."

Link (Thanks, JM!)

Update: Looks like the DHS has been trying to return the confiscated hard drive but can't reach the courier service.

Last night I changed the way Scripting News is rendered in HTML, and while it works in Firefox on the Mac (the browser that I use) it is broken in a bunch of others. This afternoon I'm going to try to get it working everywhere.

The advice from readers, some of it quite confusing, starts here.

I've got MSIE 6 running in Parallels, so as I go I'm testing there and in Firefox/Mac.

Here are the changes I'm making, in order...

1. Apparently the <a name="xxx"> element is causing a problem, the purpose of it is to enable permalinks to work within the archive pages, Colin suggests making this the name of the <div>, so that's what I did. (This got today's elements expanding and collapsing in IE, but not older days. Very weird.)

2. In the stylesheet, added width:400px; to both .show and .hide and padding-left:15px; to .show. (That successfully widened the body of each post in MSIE.)

3. I eliminated the table I was using to indent the body text. (Now the older days expand and collapse. Hurrah!)

4. Added another 5 pixels of padding for a little bit more indenting.

5. At this point it appears to work in both MSIE 6 and Firefox/Mac. I will now download Opera and try it there. (Downloaded and installed, but I can't get it to display any web pages including scripting.com. Very very strange. If you have Opera installed, could you try clicking on the pluses and minuses on scripting.com and let me know if it works. Apparently it does.)

An anonymous reader writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article about the ongoing saga of the Martian rovers. They've overcome amazing obstacles and they show no signs of shutting down any time soon. "'After more than three and a half years, Spirit and Opportunity are showing some signs of aging, but they are in good health and capable of conducting great science,' John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. Since landing, the rovers have had to surmount a host of technical issues. Just a few weeks after landing, the Spirit rover had an out-of-memory problem that almost ended its mission before it began, but scientists were able to get the rover back into operation. In April 2004, both needed software updates to correct problems and improve their performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roland Piquepaille writes "If don't like the concept of 'Frankenfoods,' I have bad news for you. U.S. researchers have developed an artificial chromosome for corn plants. The Chicago Tribune reports that researchers can now make chromosomes to order. These artificial chromosomes are accepted as natural by the plants and passed through generations. As the Monsanto Company bought rights to use this mini-chromosome stacking technology in corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola, I guess we'll soon eat food made from permanently genetically modified organisms (PGMOs?)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Japanese designer has proposed that women alone could walk in greater safety (though, in reality, Japanese crime levels are in decline, despite national anxiety to the contrary) by disguising themselves as vending machines:

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

The wearer hides behind the sheet, printed with an actual-size photo of a vending machine. Ms. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in development, but she already has several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.

Link (Thanks, MeaningOfLife!)

Hugh Pickens writes "After the Genesis mission spent 27 months in space gathering tiny samples from different types of solar wind, Hollywood stunt pilots swooped in with a helicopter to catch the falling capsule when it returned to earth. Unfortunately the spacecraft's parachute did not open, and the spacecraft ploughed a hole into the desert. Now scientists are starting to recover data from the salvageable pieces of Genesis. Nature Magazine reports that an analysis of isotopes of neon and argon shows that the elements of main interest to the researchers have the same isotopic signature in the solar wind as in the Sun itself. Because dirt contains relatively little neon and argon, the current Science study wasn't affected too much by contamination and the the team remains hopeful that they will be able to get results on oxygen and nitrogen isotopes from the mission."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the wake of yesterday's revelation that AP had discovered secret, anti-BitTorrent software running on Comcast's network, a followup story explaining the clever detective work the AP did in rooting out this little shenanigan:

An AP reporter attempted to download, using file-sharing program BitTorrent, a copy of the King James Bible from two computers in the Philadelphia and San Francisco areas, both of which were connected to the Internet through Comcast cable modems.

We picked the Bible for the test because it's not protected by copyright and the file is a convenient size.

In two out of three tries, the transfer was blocked. In the third, the transfer started only after a 10-minute delay. When we tried to upload files that were in demand by a wider number of BitTorrent users, those connections were also blocked.

Not all Comcast-connected computers appear to be affected, however. In a test with a third Comcast-connected computer in the Boston area, we were unable to test with the Bible, apparently due to an unrelated error. When we attempted to upload a more widely disseminated file, there was no evidence of blocking.

Link (via Isen)

Update: And check out thehilarious stupid lies that Comcast Interactive's president told Information Week!

In honor of today's 40th anniversary of the famed Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage, here's a sneak peek at more evidence: a t-shirt design from Gama-Go's spring/summer 2008 line. Apparently, Tim Biskup's Yeti hangs out at Bluff Creek too!
Link to Gama-Go, "Yeti Sighting" shirt not available until next year (Thanks, Chris Edmundson!)
Link to "In Celebration of Bigfoot's Patty" at Cryptomundo

Previously on BB:
• Famous Bigfoot film: 40th anniversary Link

JK Rowling has taken Albus Dumbledore -- the wizard father-figure of her Harry Potter books -- out of the (broom) closet, stating that she always thought of him as gay:

Speaking at Carnegie Hall on Friday night in her first U.S. tour in seven years, Rowling confirmed what some fans had always suspected -- that she "always thought Dumbledore was gay," reported entertainment Web site E! Online.

Rowling said Dumbledore fell in love with the charming wizard Gellert Grindelwald but when Grindelwald turned out to be more interested in the dark arts than good, Dumbledore was "terribly let down" and went on to destroy his rival.

That love, she said, was Dumbledore's "great tragedy."

"Falling in love can blind us to an extent," she said.

The audience reportedly fell silent after the admission -- then erupted into applause.

Link (via Making Light)

Update: The LOLcats are all over this one (Thanks, Xeni!)

Glyn sez,

Children are being tracked by micro-chips embedded in their uniforms in a trial at a secondary school.

The devices are used to monitor pupils' movements and register their arrival in class on the teacher's computer. Supply teachers can also be alerted if a student is likely to misbehave.

The chip connects with teachers' computers to show a photograph of the pupil, data about academic performance and whether he or she is in the correct classroom.

Link (Thanks, Glyn!)

With Guy Fawkes day looming, how about a little V for Vendetta cosplay? Brian Chan folded this origami Guy Fawkes/V for Vendetta mask out of a single, uncut sheet of paper. Link (via Neatorama)