Mouth-based music control 
Rock guitarists used to rely on some nimble footwork to add all those spine-tingling wails to their guitar solos. Soon, all they will have to do is to open their mouths. Musicians have long used "wah-wah pedals" to change the sound of notes on electric guitars. The Mouthesizer, which has been developed by Michael Lyons at the ATR Media Integration & Communication Research Labs in Kyoto, Japan, not only replaces the pedal but also produces a wealth of other effects. A pickup on the guitar converts the notes being played into MIDI, the language of electronic music that can define properties of musical notes such as their pitch and duration. Meanwhile, a miniature head-mounted digital camera monitors the shape of your mouth and sends instructions to a synthesiser, which modifies the MIDI properties of the notes.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991162
Law Could 'Infect' Americas Via Free-Trade Pact
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says controversial U.S. laws that appear to make it illegal for researchers to poke around in someone else's copyright protection technology could "infect" dozens of other countries through a far-reaching free-trade agreement. The EFF, a technology-focused civil liberties group, issued an alert Thursday, saying the current draft of the treaty behind the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) takes a stand on intellectual property rights that reads like a page from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the U.S. The motion picture industry has wielded the DMCA in civil courts to crack down on the distribution of free software that can read encrypted DVD movies. And, more recently, the DMCA was behind criminal charges against Russian software developer Dmitry Sklyarov, who was attending the Def Con 9 conference in Las Vegas to discuss his company's unraveling of security features in Adobe Systems' Acrobat eBook Reader.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169165.html
Florida Voting Systems Won't Be Kid-Tested
Officials in Broward County, Fla., are about to decide on a new voting system to replace the county's infamous punchcards, but they won't use high school kids to test the system's security. This week county commissioners, while discussing the idea of a mock election, entertained a suggestion that students try to break into the systems. But that won't happen, said Assistant County Administrator Pete Corwin. The idea made the papers, which led to a crush of news media inquiries - something Broward County officials are familiar with. The world spotlight was on the county when hanging chads and other flaws in the old punchcard system left the presidential election in limbo.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169164.html
Security Software Spies On Workers
Corporate layoffs are creating a problem for some companies: how to protect their computer networks from disgruntled workers who might use inside knowledge of company computers to get back at former employers. A Linthicum-based division of Raytheon Co., the defense and electronics giant, is selling software that lets administrators of big computer systems track and analyze the flow of information across their networks. The software also illustrates the tradeoff between computer security and employee privacy. Raytheon's product, called SilentRunner, lets companies monitor and protect against employees sending sensitive information to places it doesn't belong. It also tracks employee use of company equipment to a degree that may be disconcerting to workers.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169123.html
Web Address Holder Can't Force Ad Removal
A New York court late last month dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Internet domain name holder who wanted Register.com - the company that sold him his Web address - to remove an advertisement that it had linked to the address. Michael Zurakov, who registered the address "laborzionist.org" through Register.com, sued the domain name seller after the company placed its standard "coming soon" page on his Web address. Register.com places the coming soon message - which includes a link to Register.com's home page - on all the new addresses it registers. The message is used as a placeholder and is erased as soon as a domain name holder erects a Web site, links their address to an existing Web site or otherwise activates the address, Register.com spokesperson Shonna Keeogan said today.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169117.html
Music biz patents anti-rip encryption technology
Recording industry organisation the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has come up with yet another scheme to foil listeners who rip CDs on their PCs. Details of the method appear in a patent filed by IFPI. The patent, GB2357165, centres on encrypting the track time codes stamped onto every music disc, New Scientist reports. CD players (well, most of 'em) ignore the time codes, which detail the duration of each track, but CD-ROM drives do not. So scramble the time codes and a disc will happily play in a hi-fi (probably) but no one will be able to play or copy it using their PC.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/21092.html
Intel backed video encryption standard is 'fatally flawed'
A well-respected cryptographer claims he has discovered a way to break an Intel-backed format for encoding video transmissions - but is prevented by US law on speaking on the issue. Niels Ferguson believes he could be prosecuted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) so he has held off publishing his findings which suggest flaws with the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) system. Even though he lives in Holland, Ferguson fears that in the wake of the prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov that the DMCA threatens freedom of speech throughout the world. Intel has not threatened him in any way but he still fears that the motion picture industry or some other body might still prosecute him.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/21085.html
Old PCs cause birth defects
Research due to be released tomorrow suggests that babies born near landfill sites are more likely to suffer birth defects. The Government-funded study, carried out by the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), found that women were one per cent more likely to have a baby with a congenital defect if they lived within two km of a landfill site. SAHSU also found that 80 per cent of the UK population lives this close to one of the dumping grounds. And women living near landfill sites containing hazardous waste were seven per cent more likely to have a baby with congenital defects. "We cannot say that there is no risk from landfill sites," said Dr Pat Troop, deputy chief medical officer at the department of health.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/21084.html
Crystals could revolutionize memory 
Silicon devices can be squeezed only so small, but scientists, eager to keep Moore’s Law on track, are always searching for alternatives that may squeeze them smaller still. One of the most fascinating is a class of crystals known as perovskites, named after a 19th-century Russian mineralogist. Perovskites form three-dimensional atomic arrays made of alkaline metals, like magnesium and strontium; transition metals, like titanium and chromium; and oxygen. They somewhat resemble their more famous copper-based cousins, the high-temperature superconducting ceramics, whose discovery won Nobel Prizes in physics for IBM’s J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alexander Muller. By switching around the distribution of their elements, researchers can tailor perovskites to be insulators, magnetic materials, semiconductors or superconductors. Such flexibility means that these crystals, laid down in thin films, could actuate microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) or make for thinner gate insulators in transistors. But their quickest effect may be to make RAM, as we know it, history.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/614578.asp?0dm=C1CPT