Anders writes "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the largest animal rights organization in the world, endorse a new FLOSS license. From the article: 'The Harm-Less Permissive License (HPL) is a permissive, non copyleft, software license. It is based on the FreeBSD license but with one additional restriction; the "harm-less" clause. It prevents software, licensed under the HPL, to be used for harming humans or animals.'" I guess this leaves the bunny-fueled power plant in Stockholm out in the cold.

Some native New Yorkers' dream came true on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk between East 22nd and 23rd streets yesterday. An unknown person had divided the sidewalk with a white line: one side for tourists and the other marked "New Yorkers." Receptionist Bianca Smith said she liked the idea. "New York tourists are annoying. They stop, look around, take pictures, and hold me up. I don't know if the lanes could be enforced, but it would be nice. For now, I'll just keep walking around them," she said.

kevin7kal writes "The Apple iPad is the ideal automotive communications and entertainment device. It is sized perfectly to mount using the iPad Steering Wheel Mount without obscuring the driver's view. 'I don't think that I am exaggerating when I say that the iPad Steering Wheel Mount probably has saved my life...'"

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but there is a finite number of social networking or selling websites that the world needs. Here is a collection of the eight kinds of websites that absolutely don't need to be made anymore. I'd add dating sites and anybody who uses pop-up ads myself, but I think that would eliminate half the Web.

You can't say Austrian highway authorities haven't tried everything to make travel safer. It has been revealed that they have had a team of druids on the payroll for the past two years working to drain "negative energy" from areas prone to accidents. Chief engineer Harald Dirnbacher from Austria's motorway authority says, "We were really skeptical at first and certainly didn't want people to know what we were doing, so we kept it secret." Apparently results so far have been so impressive that officials are hiring the druids nationwide. One area's fatal accident rate went from an average of six per year to zero after the druids worked their magic. I assume a few well-placed creeping doom spells can keep the motorway free of road-kill as well.

A group of Ridgefield Park high schoolers got a surprise field trip to Six Flags Great Adventure thanks to a mixup with their bus driver. The driver ignored students who told her they weren't supposed to go on a trip and should be in class. Some even called their parents, worried that they were being abducted. From the article: "When the driver got on the turnpike, the students tried to tell her that she was going the wrong way, said Little Ferry Superintendent Frank Scarafile. One of the kids said, 'Where are you going?' Scarafile recounted. The bus driver said, 'We're going to Great Adventure,' an amusement park in Jackson. The students pulled out their cellphones and started calling their parents and the school. They asked the bus driver to speak with school administrators, but the driver refused because she is not permitted to talk on the phone while driving, Scarafile said."

A group of assailants got a little more than they bargained for when an entire ninja school came to their victim's rescue. A 27-year-old German exchange student was being mugged in an alley near Ninja Senshi Ryu, when a ninja student noticed the commotion. The sensei along with the rest of the students rushed out to help. "You should have seen their faces when they saw us in ninja gear coming towards them," the school's sensei, Kaylan Soto, told the Herald. It's good to see ninjas working on their brand. When I was a kid they were mostly shurikens, smoke, and attitude.

bennyboy64 writes "Two prominent women in the Australian IT industry are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the trademark 'geekgirl.' A woman attempting to use 'geekgirl' on Twitter told ZDNet that women had been advised by the trademark owner to stop doing so since she owned the trademark for the word. 'She noted her trademark and asked me to stop calling myself a "geekgirl" in general conversation and to cease using the hashtag "#geekgirl" on Twitter,' IT consultant Kate Carruthers said."

RedmondChris writes "A team of scientists from Joseph Fourier University in France have successfully implanted biofuel cells into rats, generating 6.5 microwatts by harnessing the power of glucose. From the article: 'The device uses enzymes to harvest energy from glucose and oxygen found naturally in the body. Past attempts at using such a device in animals have failed because the enzymes have required acidic conditions or were inhibited by charged particles in the fluid surrounding cells. But Philippe Cinquin and his team from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, overcame these obstacles by confining selected enzymes inside graphite discs that were placed into dialysis bags. Glucose and oxygen flowed into the device, but enzymes stayed in place and catalyzed the oxidation of glucose to generate electrical energy.'"

The Nirvana Memorial Garden columbarium is done with boring old traditional Buddhist funeral ceremonies. They offer a funeral with recorded voices and chants, machine-generated smoke, a $2 million sound and light system, a Buddha statue with pulsating LED lights, and a ray of bright white light that shines on the urn of the deceased symbolizing the ascent to heaven. "This is just 60 percent of what we can offer," said Jessie Ong, who works for Nirvana Memorial, the company that runs the columbarium. "We are still fine-tuning the laser lights."

You might not consider edible panties food, but San Antonio's Sanitarian Services Manager, Stephen Barschewski, disagrees. The Shades of Love lingerie store was recently told that it needed a food permit to sell edible novelties. The permit costs $230 a year, and makes the store subject to regular health inspections. From the article: "Rosemary Benitez thought it was a joke at first. She was told her store was going to need a food permit in order to stay in business. But Benitez doesn't own a restaurant. She owns the Shades of Love lingerie store on West Bitters road. Shades of Love sells racy lingerie, high heel shoes, adult toys, and items meant to enhance a couple's sex life. However, some of those items are edible. That's why the health department ruled the store needed a food permit."

pinkstuff writes "The Navy unveiled its terror-fighting marine mammals at a two-day homeland security and disaster preparedness exercise in California this week. From the article: 'A Navy seal — actually a sea lion — took less than a minute to find a fake mine under a pier near San Francisco's AT&T Park. A dolphin quickly located a terrorist lurking in the black water before another sea lion, using a device carried in its mouth, cuffed the pretend saboteur's ankle so authorities could reel him in.' Queue the 'frickin lasers' jokes."

NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"

Researchers have discovered that the world's oldest sex toy, found in a cave in Germany, was used to heat things up in places other than the bedroom. They say the 30,000-year-old siltstone phallus doubled as a tool to ignite fires. From the article: "The prehistoric phallus, which has marks where it was obviously used for striking against flints, also features carved rings around one polished end. Researchers say it's easy to see what it was used for. The scientists pieced together the multitasking tool from more than a dozen fragments found in a cave complex linked with the activities not of the Neanderthals, but of modern humans."

22-year-old Ashley Johnson lost her job after she complained about a poor tip on Facebook. She felt the $5 tip from a couple who had sat in her section for 3 hours was a joke, and wrote about it on the social networking site. From the article: "Brixx officials told Johnson a couple of days later that she was being fired because she violated a company policy banning workers from speaking disparagingly about customers and casting the restaurant in a bad light on a social network." Silly Ashley, as everyone who has worked in a restaurant can tell you, complaining on Facebook isn't the answer. If you want to get back at bad customers you overcharge them, or put something in their food.

Italian prosecutors believe that thousands of small, lower-end pizza shops in Naples may be using wood from coffins dug up in the local cemetery to cook their pizzas. From the article: "'A gang might have set up a market for coffins sold to hard-hearted owners of bakeries and pizzerias looking to save money on wood,' Il Giornale said. According to tradition, Neapolitan pizza should be cooked in a stone oven with an oak-wood fire."

teh31337one writes "Google is refusing to advertise CougarLife, a dating site for mature women looking for younger men. However, they continue to accept sites for mature men seeking young women. According to the New York Times, CougarLife.com had been paying Google $100,000 a month since October. The Mountain View company has now cancelled the contract, saying that the dating site is 'nonfamily safe.'"

Jack Watkins, 25, and engineers Chris Hayes, 24, and Dave Sibley, 25, have succeeded in crossing Italy's Lake Garda in a huge, inflated bouncy castle. "Great Britain has such a great tradition as a seafaring nation and we really feel we have played no role at all in adding to this," admitted intrepid waterman Hayes. "That said, it was possibly the most fun we have ever had and we really never believed this most frivolous of dreams would ever be realized."

Gabriella Nagy says the billing practices of Rogers Wireless Inc. allowed her husband to discover her extramarital affair, and she's not happy about it. She is now suing the company for $600,000, alleging invasion of privacy and breach of contract. "The husband used the previously private and confidential information that the defendant unilaterally disclosed to the husband to inquire about the people that the plaintiff was telephoning and the nature of such calls," the statement of claim says.

It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."