] Canon (CAJ) will seek approval at its shareholders
] meeting to include "production and sales of
] pharmaceutical products" in its operational objectives,
] getting ready for the commercialization of biotechnology
] products.

Wired News: Camera Maker Becomes Lifesaver

] The number, rendered in exponential shorthand, is
] 2^(25,964,951)-1. It has 7,816,230 digits, and if printed in
] its entirety, would fill 235 newspaper pages.
]
] In addition, it falls in a rare category of primes known
] as Mersenne primes, which can be written as 2n-1 where n
] is also prime.
]
] The first few Mersenne primes are easily verifiable --
] inserting 2, 3 and 5 for n produces 3, 7 and 31, all
] prime -- but the math quickly becomes overwhelming for
] larger values.

World's largest known prime number found

] The Grokster case gets heard today in the Supreme Court.
] One of the tactics the music industry has used is to
] throw down the plight of the starving working musician.
] It plays on the emotions, personalizes the impact of
] piracy, replacing the corporate victim with reconizable
] face.
]
] Except, of course, that its all a lie. Consider this
] Congressional testimony:

Nice testimony clip. I am glad this kind of thing has been said, spelled out, in such unambiguous language in a formal (Congressional) setting. It is a pity that the Congress probably isn't influenced by it, but this is the kind of thing to point to to the non-tech people to counter the starving artist concern.

I mean, that and iTunes. It should be pretty obvious to anyone that getting a record on iTunes for cheap, with a good profit sharing, can be a very viable alternative to whatever the RIAA claims to offer.

The Big Picture: Is There an Upside to Downloading?

] The average amount of time that Americans spend listening
] to recorded music annually has dropped significantly over
] the past 7 year

The Big Picture: Americans tuning out recorded music

] I recently developed a system that uses a 100 watt CO2
] laser in combination with a CNC table to cut 1/8th inch
] thick carbon or stainless steel.

Hot! dlb, catwood and I discussed something like this; this guy actually did it.

CNC Laser Cutting

] the new psp game wipeout pure apparantly comes with a
] full featured web browser that is used to download
] updates. normally it's restricted for that purpose
] alone, but roto sent me a line this morning saying that
] it could be hacked to function as a general web browser
] with a little dns trickery.

hackaday on your playstation portable - hack a day - www.hackaday.com

] Next time you drive pass a pedestrian stepping off a curb
] and think, "100 points," you can thank Roger
] Corman's 1975 movie "Deathrace 2000" for
] your wickedness. Now, director Paul W.S. Anderson
] ("Alien vs Predator") will write and direct a
] remake of the cult classic, which starred Sylvester
] Stallone and David Carradine. "Deathrace 3000,"
] Anderson says, will be set in 2020 and feature
] "heavily-armed Escalades, Ferraris and Aston
] Martins." In other words, a typical night on the 405
] in Los Angeles.

'Deathrace 2000' Remake in the Works : Jalopnik

] OK, it is time we had a listing of all the prominent tech
] articles related to search and IR.

Collating Search and IR Technical Papers | Threadwatch.org

] There comes a time when a company gets so powerful, and
] the perceived potential to abuse that power so large,
] that public opinion begins to turn on it. True, Google
] has been one of the world's most valuable brands for
] several years, and there's no sign -- yet -- that the
] general public has cooled on it (even if Apple recently
] pushed Google to second-best brand). But we've noticed a
] growing dissatisfaction with Google in various niche
] constituencies over the past several months.

SiliconBeat: Is Opinion tide turning against Google?

] No matter how you look at it, AFP will lose this battle.
] It is inherently just an attempt to extort money out of
] Google. What AFP does not realize is how badly they have
] damaged their clients. Political Gateway is one of their
] clients and we have been devastated.
]
] Google decided to respond to the extortion and stupidity
] of the lawsuit by actually winning the battle.
] Google's response? They stopped syndicating the news
] from sites using AFP of which this site is one. Not only
] is our AFP news not syndicated, but our editorials and
] independent news feeds are also blacklisted. Any news
] posted after Tuesday morning at 3am cannot be found on
] Google anywhere. It is a matter of time before the other
] services that "grab" our news follow suit.

How AFP killed an Online News Site by Suing Google