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EFF fights for the rights of 3D modellers against bogus trademark claims By Cory Doctorow on maker The Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up the case of 3D modellers, fighting for their right to produce and sell models of vehicles. Last month, Mark blogged about the ongoing wars between Lockheed Martin and 3D modeller John Macneill over the right to produce digital 3D models of the WWII B-24 bomber. Lockheed Martin claims that this is a trademark infringement. It's not. Who owns the B-24, the bomber that helped win World War II? U.S. taxpayers paid for it, Consolidated Aircraft built it, U.S. military pilots flew it, but Lockheed Martin says it owns the bomber—or at least it owns the name... It is perplexing that this mark was granted in the first place, given that the term "B-24" is nothing more than a U.S. military model number used to describe the plane itself (descriptiveness is a traditional basis for rejection; that's why you can't register a trademark on the use of the term "cyberlaw" in connection with the practice of technology law). MacNeill's situation is a perfect example of why we need that rule. If Lockheed had its way, no one could create 3-D images (or anything else that could be construed as a "model") of famous military aircraft—from the B-24 to the F-117 Nighthawk, also known as the Stealth fighter. But Lockheed should not have its way, because MacNeill's images are protected by the nominative fair use doctrine. Nominative fair use means, in a nutshell, that it is OK to use a mark to accurately identify a product if using the trademark is necessary to identify the products, services, or company you're talking about, and you don't use the mark to suggest the company endorses you. Link (Thanks, John!) See also: WWII Bomber: "Trademark Infringement"

Bloglines - Space Mountain fan-poster

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Space Mountain fan-poster By Cory Doctorow on maker Greg Maletic's added another poster to his collection of wonderful fan-made attraction art for Disneyland rides; this one's for Space Mountain. Link See also: Fan-made Disneyland attraction posters (Thanks, Greg!)

Many Scientists Using Performance Enhancing Drugs By kdawson on redefining-abuse docinthemachine is one of several readers to send word of a new poll published in Nature showing unprecedented levels of cognitive performance-enhancing drug abuse by top academic scientists. The poll, conducted among subscribers to Nature, surveyed 1,400 scientists from 60 nations (70% from the US). 20% reported using performance-enhancing drugs. Among the drug-using population, 62% used Ritalin, 44% used Provigil, and 15% used beta-blockers like Inderal. Frequency of use was evenly divided among those who used drugs daily, weekly, monthly, and once a year. All such use without a prescription is illegal. Read more of this story at Slashdot. Link

Bloglines - Smallest Planet Outside Our Solar System Found

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Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters

Smallest Planet Outside Our Solar System Found By Zonk on hard-to-spot-with-all-the-space-dust mikkl666 writes "Following the recent story about the discovery of the youngest planet outside our solar system, Spanish researchers now report that they found the smallest exoplanet observed so far. The planet, known as GJ 436c, was found by analyzing distortions in the orbit of another, larger planet, and its radius is only about 50 percent greater than the Earth's. The scientists are confident that their new method will lead to a series of further discoveries: 'I think we are very close, just a few years away, from detecting a planet like Earth.' You can also reference the the original paper online for further details." Read more of this story at Slashdot. Link

Bloglines - Adobe launches Adobe Media Player

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Adobe launches Adobe Media Player By Brad Linder on online-video Filed under: Internet, Video, Adobe Adobe has officially launched its Adobe Media Player application which has been in public beta since last year. Adobe Media Player is a desktop application built on Adobe AIR that lets users watch streaming and downloaded web videos from content partners including CBS, PBS, MTV, Revision3, and Blip.tv. The interface is slick, and it's clear that Adobe has put a lot of work into the media player since its beta days. Playback is no longer choppy and the content library is choc full of shows you might actually want to watch. Not as full as say, your cable box, but given the web video landscape, it's not bad. Users can also add any online video to their player with an RSS feed. It took us a few minutes to find the "Add RSS" option, so we'll save you some trouble: It's in the "My Favorites" section. Adobe has also launched Adobe TV, which is basically a web site filled with tutorials and other information about Adobe related products. You can either watch Adobe TV videos from the web or using Adobe Media Player. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Comments

Bloglines - Tweet Clouds let you know what it is you can't shut up about

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Tweet Clouds let you know what it is you can't shut up about By Brad Linder on twitter Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0 If you're obsessed with a TV show, musician, web site, or programming language, odds are you already know it. But wouldn't it be great if someone could follow you around all day and record every single word you speak and then plot the whole thing out in a tag cloud so you can see just how much you're annoying everyone who couldn't care less about your favorite subject? That's not exactly what Tweet Clouds does. But the site does analyze all of the messages you send over Twitter to create a tag cloud. So it's almost as good, right? It will show you a list of your most frequently used words. And the more often you use a term, the larger the font will be. If you've set up an automated system to send out a tweet every time you write a new blog post, there's a good chance you already know the words that will pop up most often. The site is pretty slow, especially if you've sent a lot of tweets in your time. You can suppress @reply messages if you want to filter your tag a bit. [via WebWare] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Comments

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