| A blog about technology from BBC News
They see themselves as passive conduits, like a road network or the postal system. The global record industry has been quick to back the government's proposal. "It is simply not acceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to the piracy on their networks which is at such a rate that there are 20 illegal music downloads for every legal track sold," said John Kennedy of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries. Digital rights activist will be outraged by this move, I'm sure. Monitoring our internet traffic will have huge privacy issues. No-one can deny that the scale of copyright theft is mammoth. A cursory glance at a website like The Pirate Bay revels thousands of films, TV programmes, albums, software programs etc being shared across the net.
City may move homeless from underpass to shelter
Mayor Ray Nagin's administration appears to be preparing to move the city's biggest homeless colony, a highly visible collection of people and bedrolls just off Canal Street, to a Central City emergency shelter. Some City Council members and leading advocates for the homeless say they are not aware of the plan, although the director of the New Orleans Mission confirmed that the city accepted his proposal on Friday. Nagin alluded to a plan for the homeless last week during an appearance on WWL-TV. He said he had recently seen a man in the encampment on Claiborne Avenue beneath Interstate 10 "drinking beer and just flipping the bird to citizens." Calling the scene "a mess," Nagin said that before the end of February, the city will begin enforcing its "habitation laws." "We've got more mental cases out there," the mayor said.
T-rays, more versatile than X-rays
Terahertz radiation was discovered in 1896. Unless theyre at a temperature of absolute zero (273.160 C), all objects, animate and inanimate, give off terahertz radiation (called T-rays), the heat from molecular vibrations. This black-body radiation is emitted at such low intensities typically less than a millionth of a watt per square centimeter that were unaware of it. Genetic defects behind common human diseases
By Steve Connor
When the human genome was fully decoded at the turn of the 21st Century, one scientist described it as the biggest discovery since the invention of the wheel. It has taken some years for medical research to live up to the initial expectations attached to the deciphering of the human genome.
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Bids by hungry contractors have Pennridge salivating
Pennridge School Board this month expects to award contracts for $4.5 million in remediation and renovation projects, and the initial cost indications have officials hopeful they've chosen the right time for the jobs.
A complicated asbestos removal project at Bedminster Elementary School as part of a larger $2.9 million renovation package for the 50-year-old building brought proposals from eight companies. Bids ranged as high as $275,000. The apparent low bid was from PDG of Drums, Luzerne County, for $75,527.
The project was expected to cost perhaps $30,000 more than that.
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Desperation Strikes
There’s a man-conquering blonde bombshell who prances around the neighborhood dressed like an exotic dancer; a nosy, blackmailing neighbor who always seems to know a little too much about other people’s business; and the hunky neighbor guy who just moved in, whose mysterious ways keep viewers wondering if he’s a sinner or a saint. The matriarchal quartet’s different styles of desperation always take center stage, even as the murder-mystery story line unfolds. And, of course, any group of women in the media’s spotlight are sure to stir up plenty of gossip and scandalous fodder for the columnists and bloggers, some true, some invented. If anything, the whiff of scandal and actress-on-actress rivalries (including a cast fight over which Housewives actress would be front-and-center for a Vanity Fair cover earlier this year) has only enhanced its popularity.
Why this show has sizzle
The last audition episode, on February 10, drew 1.6 million viewers nationally, peaking at 2.2 million. To put it in perspective, last year's star-studded Australian Idol finale at the Sydney Opera House, with thousands of screaming fans and a surprise appearance by Lionel Ritchie, had 1.4 million viewers. Last year's Big Brother finale had 2.3 million, and Seven's Dancing with the Stars had a disappointing 1.6 million viewers for its 2007 finale, the lowest in its seven-season history. The first-performance episode of SYTYCDA, on Sunday, lured 1.5 million. "We loved the show and we had hoped that it would be very successful and once we started seeing some pictures coming back from the auditions we were quietly confident that it would be OK, but you can never tell," says Ten's head of programming, Beverley McGarvey.
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