The Daily Thing

Pirate Bay isn’t shut down but took a major hit today as 4 people were indicted for copyright infringement.

The Local - Four indicted in Pirate Bay case: “Hans Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundström, are suspected of organising and running The Pirate Bay, and thus “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws,” according to charges filed by senior public prosecutor Håkan Roswall.

According to the prosecutor, their work with the site has meant that they “promoted other people’s copyright breaches.”

The charge sheet includes 33 cases of alleged copyright infringement, of which twenty involve music, nine are movie-related and four refer to computer games.

The prosecutor has called for the accused to pay damages of 1.2 million kronor ($185,000) to the Swedish state. He has also asked for the suspects’ computers to be confiscated.

Evidence gathered by the prosecutor includes information provided by the suspects as well as interviews with staff at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency (APB), a non-governmental organization representing the entertainment industry.
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Here’s an article I found (age unknown) that has some pretty interesting insight into an adults IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and their employability.

Definition of IQ: “Generally, one’s mental age stops rising rapidly when one reaches the latter teens–e. g., 16. Consequently, on some IQ tests, ‘16′ was taken as the chronological-age divisor in an IQ calculation for adults. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is calibrated for all ages up to 70, with chronological-age divisors appropriate to every age 70 or below.

The average IQ is, by definition, 100. To get an idea what this means, someone with an IQ of 80 or below is considered to be marginally able to cope with the adult world. People with IQ’s of 80 or below typically work as unskilled laborers such as lawn maintenance and trash pickup. They generally need help from friends or family to manage life’s complications. About 10% of the population has an IQ of 80 or below.

People with IQ’s of 80-90 are a little on the slow side but may be found in fast-food restaurants, day-care centers, etc. They may also be found in unskilled jobs. About 16% of the population has IQ’s in this range.

People with IQ’s of 90-110 generally occupy semi-skilled positions, including typists, receptionists, assembly line workers, and checkout clerks. They are able to keep up with the world, and comprise about 46% of the public.

People with IQ’s in the 110 to 120 range fill the skilled trades and include some tool and die makers, teachers, and Ph. D.’s among their ranks. They also make up 16% of the population.

People with IQ’s of 120 and above tend to staff the professions as doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, and college professors. They fall in the upper 10% of the population.

The average IQ of all college professors is 130, which lies within the upper 3% of the general public.”

Makes you want to go out and take the test doesn’t it? I know where I land

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Britney Spears has once again been rushed to the hospital this time amidst rumors of an attempted suicide.

ABC News:: “A phalanx of motorcycles, a pair of police cruisers and two helicopters descended on her Studio City home around 1 a.m. The Los Angeles Times reported the 26-year-old was removed from her home and placed on a ‘mental health evaluation hold.’

Police and an ambulance rushed the troubled pop star away from a side entrance at her home and took her to UCLA Medical Center, according to the Times. A call from her psychiatrist prompted the scene, the Times reported.

A hospital spokesman would not confirm whether Spears was at the hospital, The Associated Press said.

Under a state mental health statute known as 5150, an individual who is considered by a medical professional to be a danger to herself or others can be involuntarily committed to a mental institution by her family or even friends. Such a confinement is called an evaluation hold.

Keith Valone, a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, Calif., who is not associated with Spears’ treatment and declined to comment specifically on her case, told ABC News earlier this week that such a hold translates into 72 hours in a locked mental institution and must be approved by trained professionals like a psychiatrist or a nurse. “

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Scientists got a little surprise this week when they began analyzing photos and data sent back by the Messenger spacecraft who made a pass of Mercury earlier this month. Turns out Mercury isn’t quite what they expected.

Messenger’s Pictures From Mercury Surprise Scientists - washingtonpost.com: “The Messenger spacecraft that sped past Mercury on Jan. 14 sent back pictures of a geological formation never seen before in the solar system: a central depression with more than 100 narrow troughs radiating out from it.

Called ‘The Spider’ by scientists analyzing the trove of images and data coming back from Messenger, the puzzling feature is the kind of surprise that researchers live for.

‘Messenger has sent back data near perfectly, and some of it confirms earlier understandings, and some of it tells us something brand-new,’ said principal investigator Sean C. Solomon. ‘The Spider is definitely in the category of something we never imagined we’d find.’

Scientists were also surprised by evidence of ancient volcanoes on many parts of the planet’s surface and how different it looks compared with the moon, which is about the same size. Unlike the moon, Mercury has huge cliffs, as well as formations snaking hundreds of miles that indicate patterns of fault activity from Mercury’s earliest days, more than 4 billion years ago.

‘It was not the planet we expected,’ said Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. ‘It’s a very dynamic planet with an awful lot going on.’

Messenger passed by Mercury after a journey of more than 2 billion miles. It will swing by the planet twice more before settling into orbit around it in 2011. “

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Following on the heels of Facebook who opened the door for developers to begin making widgets and programs to work on the Facebook platform last October, MySpace has announced their own developer platform will go live next week letting potentially thousands of developers begin writing code people will be able to use on their Myspace page.

washingtonpost.com: “Interested developers will be able to sign up on the site to receive information about the MySpace Developer Platform, announced in October. Then next Tuesday, the developer site will become fully operational and feature documentation and API tools to build and test applications for MySpace, the world’s most popular social networking service.

Although over the years MySpace has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, some external developers to put their widgets on the social networking site, the upcoming program potentially opens the door to any coder by providing open APIs and makes it possible for developers to generate revenue from those applications.

‘This gives developers deeper access to our community through APIs so they’ll be able to build richer applications and also gives them an opportunity to build their business directly on MySpace. It’s a natural step in the evolution of how we’ve worked with third party developers,’ said Amit Kapur, who has just been appointed chief operating officer after being in charge of business development for several years. “

Personally I think this is about as useful as a discarded pee soaked diaper. MySpace is already so full of bloat-ware and e-trash it’s less than useful and more than annoying. But that’s just my opinion.

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In one of the biggest downsizings since the dot.com bust Yahoo has announced plans to lay off about 1000 of it’s 14,300 employees.

Columbian.com: “The Sunnyvale-based company disclosed the upcoming 7 percent reduction in its 14,300-employee work force Tuesday while reviewing a 23 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit and a cautious 2008 outlook. The bad news sent Yahoo shares skidding to their lowest levels in more than four years.

In a prepared statement, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang warned of looming ‘headwinds,’ indicating that the company’s tortuous turnaround efforts aren’t likely to pay off this year.

‘I’m surprised by how slowly they seem to be moving,’ said Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown. ‘Yahoo still has quite a bit of work ahead.’

Yahoo shares dropped $2.09, or more than 10 percent, in extended trading Tuesday after finishing the regular session at $20.81, up 3 cents. The company’s market value has plunged more than 50 percent since the end of 2005, wiping out $35 billion in shareholder wealth.

Yang, Yahoo’s co-founder, took over as CEO seven months ago in an attempt to shake things up, but his overhaul hasn’t impressed Wall Street so far. The mass firings represent Yang’s most dramatic move yet.

‘This is a necessary step in our transformation,’ Yang said during the conference call.

Yahoo didn’t specify which areas of its operations will be trimmed in the company’s biggest purge since jettisoning 650 workers in the aftermath of the dot-com bust seven years ago. Management indicated some employees whose current jobs are eliminated may be offered new assignments in other parts of the company. Further details are supposed to be released by mid-February.”

I have no idea which departments they’re talking about cutting but I personally feel Yahoo! isn’t doing enough to innovate anymore and should be trying a lot harder to lead the pack.

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An out of control spy satellite that was reported as “crashing to earth” has experts assuring people that the chance you might actually be hit by the pieces of the satellite as “very slim”.

BBC: “In reality, a spy satellite heading uncontrollably towards Earth is not an uncommon event, says Dr Ruediger Jehn, a space debris analyst at the European Space Agency (Esa). He says that satellites come out of orbit and fall back to Earth harmlessly on average once a year.

Normally, when US spy satellites reach the end of their lives, they are disposed of through a controlled re-entry and dumped in the Pacific Ocean, so that no-one can learn their secrets.

But, Dr Jehn says older satellites are often more difficult to de-orbit properly.

‘When they re-enter they usually burn up in the atmosphere because a lot of heat has developed and there is a lot of friction,’ he says.

‘Only heat-resistant or very heavy objects will survive. There is a risk in this case that something will hit the ground, but given that the Earth is so big, the probability in this case that someone will be hit is really remote.’

US defence officials have released few details of the satellite because of its sensitive nature. Such spacecraft are used for reconnaissance and information gathering. No-one knows for certain how big it is but experts say it is probably a few tonnes.

White House officials told journalists on Saturday that a large US spying satellite, whose engine had failed, was falling from orbit.

Officials say they have no idea where it might land but that they are keeping other countries abreast of the situation. “

Sounds like pre-entry damage control to me. I wonder how much money your family gets if you get nailed by a piece of this? If one comes down near me I’m sticking my brother in front of it.

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A super fast moving star has proven to be an enigma to scientists but now a new theory has surfaced that the star may actually be alien in origin.

Science Daily: “A young star is speeding away from the Milky Way so fast that astronomers have been puzzled by where it came from; based on its young age it has traveled too far to have come from our galaxy. Now by analyzing its velocity, light intensity, and for the first time its tell-tale elemental composition, Carnegie astronomers Alceste Bonanos and Mercedes López-Morales, and collaborators Ian Hunter and Robert Ryans from Queen’s University Belfast have determined that it came from our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The result suggests that it was ejected from that galaxy by a yet-to-be-observed massive black hole.

The star, dubbed HE 0437-5439, is an early-type star and one of ten so-called hypervelocity stars so far found speeding away from the Milky Way. “But this one is different from the other nine,” commented López-Morales. “Their type, speed, and age make them consistent with having been ejected from the center of our galaxy, where we know there is a super-massive black hole. This star, discovered in 2005*, initially appeared to have an elemental makeup like our Sun’s, suggesting that it, too, came from the center of our galaxy. But that didn’t make sense because it would have taken 100 million years to get to its location, and HE 0437-5439 is only 35 million years old.”

To explain the enigma, or “paradox of youth,” the discoverers proposed that HE 0437-5439 was either a so-called blue straggler–a relatively young, massive star resulting from the merger of two low-mass stars from the Milky Way, or it originated from the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

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