Army rations rehydrated by urine | New Scientist

An excellent idea that combines a filter with the dehydrated rations, allowing any source of water (not just urine, it can be clean or potentially contaminated with bacteria) to be filtered by osmosis before it re-hydrates the food.

European Copyright Clock Ticking on Elvis Hits

Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game

This is good, trawling Amazon for bad reviews (ie negative) of what are generally considered the best books, albums and films. I like this one of the King James Bible:

"This was the worst piece of fiction I've ever read. The characters were cliched and their actions were just unbelievable. A total piece of trash."

And, of William Gibson's Neuromancer:

"Read 2 chapters and call me in the morning. Zzzzz..."

Using Mobile Phones on Aeroplanes

New Scientist has a story on a "base station" that can be installed in a plane to relay mobile phone calls to a satellite.

I had been wondering for a while why mobile phones can't be used on planes, the usual explanation of interfering with navigation equipment seemed a bit lame (and this article refutes it).

One possibility I'd heard was that the phone could "see" too many base stations and therefore overloaded the system by communicating with 100s of them rather than the usual 3 or 4, but being out of range of the base stations seems a more likely reason.

Wired News: P2P Company Not Going Anywhere

Please take notice: EarthstationV Ltd., a Palestinian corporation, does not accept any legal process via e-mail, nor will we accept any attachments via e-mail. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine.

Software That Lasts 200 Years

This article looks at what is required (and not going to work) when we look at computers as part of our societies infrastructure, just like roads, power grids and so on. It looks like open source will be the only option, and also that software engineering may actually have to be engineering.

Wired News: Searching for The New York Times

It's not just annoying to have to sign in to view NYTimes articles, they could be shooting themselves in the foot too...

Video-conferencing that may just work...

Facetop is a video conferencing system that uses a very neat idea: It makes your screen into a semi-transparent window out of the other persons computer. You share a desktop that you can both point at and discuss, and can still see each other through it. Very nice.

Successlessness

"One day we'll be poor no more
I'm almost sure enough
Before then let's not let successlessness
Get the best of us, my love" — The Lucksmiths

The Wikipedia has everything...

Including: Crushing by elephant.