Police in Oslo, Norway took up pursuit in cyberspace after a young Norwegian posted on the Internet video of his wild car driving.
Following an electronic trail that he left online, police caught him and slapped him with real-life fine of $1,300.
The Norwegian, identified only as a man in his early 20s, posted the video called “Driving in Norway” on Google Inc.’s popular video-sharing site YouTube. The recording showed the car’s speedometer hitting up to 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour on a public highway near Oslo.
“We’re touching 240,” a voice could be heard saying. “We know it will do it. This is a little nice.” The video was removed from the Web site after it made national news in Norway last week.
File-sharing tools beefed up: The maker of software to thwart unauthorized online file-sharing has obtained technology that can scan video files and block computer users from making copies.
Audible Magic Corp. said it plans to incorporate the technology it has licensed, dubbed Motional Media ID, into its suite of anti-piracy tools early next year.
The rise of video-sharing sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube has boosted demand for better ways to police online video. Apart from amateur video clips, often shot with video-capable digital cameras or mobile phones, YouTube and similar sites are rife with unauthorized clips from TV shows, movies and music videos.
Motional Media ID – created by a former technology executive with the Recording Industry Association of America – can scan any type of moving video image and identify its content in seconds, the company said.
To scan a video, the system looks for signature vectors – such as a unique digital fingerprint – and compares them with vectors stored in a database.
If the video turns out to be from a movie or other copyright material, the technology gives the film studio or video owner the ability to predetermine whether it can be copied.
Until now, Audible Magic has been scanning only the audio, even for video files.
“These capabilities will enable a new period of control for legitimate rights-holders in digital media,” said Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic’s chief executive.
Brits update outdated wireless act: Britain is legalizing the small wireless transmitters commonly used to play music from iPods over car radios.
Devices such as the finger-length iTrip have been banned in Britain because they are considered radio stations under the country’s 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act.
That means a user must have the right to transmit over an FM frequency and pay royalties for any tunes played on the music players, said Steve Hawkins, a managing director at A.M. Micro Distribution Ltd., which sells the iTrips.
Amendments to the Wireless Telegraphy Act, effective Dec. 8, will allow Britons to use the devices without a broadcast license.
Get your robots ready: Georgia Tech will be hosting the next RoboCup, an international contest that pits robotic creations against one another in a range of technical challenges.
The 10-day event in July will draw hundreds of robotics teams to the Atlanta school to compete in soccer games, obstacle courses and dance-offs. And it will debut a contest between robots so tiny they can only be viewed through a microscope.
The tournament’s goal is to develop a team of autonomous humanoid robots that can defeat the world’s championship soccer team by 2050. To do so, engineers must design lightweight robots that can run, cooperate, change directions, sense the location of teammates and develop strategies.
“The real objective isn’t just soccer,” said Tucker Balch, a Georgia Tech computing professor who is chairing the competition. “If we can accomplish this, we will have solved many, many problems in robotics.”
From Herald news services
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