An Australian man spending the afternoon water-skiing with his son can't figure out what all the fuss is about. After all, he wasn't piloting the helicopter towing his son recklessly. "It's a witch-hunt," Milton Jones says. "He was home from boarding school. I only see him for a few weeks each year and we were just having a bit of fun. It was perfectly safe. I've been flying for 20 years and am very experienced. All the yahoo has gone out of me by now." Unfortunately the Civil Aviation Authority doesn't think helicopter skiing is a wholesome father-son activity and has threatened legal action.

garymortimer writes "47-year-old Henson Chua is in a bit of trouble for trying to sell a RQ-11B 'Raven' Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on eBay. From the article: 'A federal grand jury in Tampa returned an indictment charging Henson Chua, 47, of Manilla, Philippines, with violations of the Arms Export Control Act and smuggling, following an investigation by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations. If convicted on all counts, Chua faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.'" I'm kicking myself for missing this auction.

StormDriver writes "Have you ever thought about patenting a pop up note, an online poll, a leaderboard in an online game, or a system where you open apps by clicking icons? I have some bad news for you – it's impossible. Not because the claim is stupid, it's just that all of those things are already patented. And it's all fun and factoids, until one day you find yourself in the role of a software start-up."

You can imagine how upset an unnamed college senior in Colorado was when the term paper she paid good money for wasn't delivered in time. So, she did what any cheater who had just been cheated would, she made an official complaint to the Better Business Bureau. "I ordered it, and they were supposed to have it back to me within four days. I constantly emailed. Nobody replied to me. Then (Kavoosi) calls me and says under no circumstances am I going to get a refund," she said. If you can't count on a company that sells creative/educational works that you can claim as your own, who can you trust?

rhathar writes "A 12-year-old boy by the name of Jacob Barnett is a math genius. Mastering many college level astrophysics courses by the age of 8, he now works on his most ambitious project to date: his own 'expanded version of Einstein's theory of relativity.'"

In another example of why kids should stop playing video games and go outside once in a while, a 13-year-old Detroit boy was hospitalized for 7 days after doing 100 push-ups as punishment for running in the hall. From the article: "The day after the incident the teen says his arm swelled to double its normal size, so his mother took him to the emergency room. The medical papers she showed Action News says the diagnosis is Rhabdomyolysis, which is a break down of the muscles, often caused by over exertion. It can lead to kidney problems and blood in the urine and Donell's mom says he has had that."

unassimilatible writes "A Samsung ad campaign for the latest Galaxy Tab is misleading, to say the least. Actors pretending to be real people in fake interviews in a fake magazine misquoting a bad first-gen Galaxy tab review, are exposed — by the actual review writer. Netizens 'are having fun pointing out other curious things about the interviews, such as the fact that "leading New York real-estate CEO Joseph Kolinski" raves about the 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab even though the only 8.9-inch Tabs that Samsung itself had on hand at CTIA were non-working models.' Kolinski is actually an actor, not a CEO, Jim."

wiredmikey writes "You may have heard the story about the man living in a 14x60 trailer who got a $12,864 electric bill, or the Corpus Christie man who was billed $7.7 million by his water company, but this case is about a cable bill. An Ohio man's attempt to make a payment to Time Warner was rejected, and he learned that the company had calculated his past-due amount at more than $16 million."

fangmcgee writes "A new app by interactive designer Mary Huang called Continuum, lets you turn any drawing into a customized three-dimensional garment. From the article: 'Huang dubs her software “D. dress”—the “D” stands for “Delaunay triangulation,” an algorithm she uses to deconstruct each dress into a series of triangular planes. Any adjustments in necklines, skirt lengths, or sleeve types are achieved by adding or subtracting triangles. “Lo-res triangular models are more abstract,” Huang admits, “but this abstraction prompts people to imagine what the resulting dress would look like rather than expect an exact rendition of the screen image. The triangulation also insures that almost any drawing will produce an interesting form.”'"

Having lost the space race, and the cold war Russian officials know that they can ill afford falling behind in the field of yeti research. To ensure they reach an accord with the hairy giants before the next ice age, a new yeti research institute has been proposed. From the article: "...some believe Russia also holds a population of yetis, which it calls Snow Men, in remote areas of Siberia such as the mountains in the southern part of Kemerovo around Tashtagol. Kemerovo officials cited yeti researcher Igor Burtsev as saying that around 30 Russian scientists are studying yetis and could work together at the planned institute."

tekgoblin writes "From the article: 'US Air Force Combat controller Ron Walker had lost his iPhone 4 from his aircraft during flight. He works as a Jump Master, which is where he would ensure the airplane was in the correct position when he sends parachute jumpers out. The plane was moving at 150 mph and while looking out the door of the plane to find necessary ground landmarks his pocket opened and his iPhone flew out. When he noticed his phone fell, he thought all was lost. Upon landing and sharing the story with friends he installed the Find My iPhone app on one of their phones and went looking for his phone. He expected it to be battered from the fall but found the phone to be 100% un-damaged from the fall. The phone was protected by a Griffin Motif TPU iPhone case but it isn't clear whether the case protected the phone from the fall or the fact that it was cushioned by the brush that it hit.'"

The Air Force's Research Lab in Rome, NY. has one of the cheapest supercomputers ever made, and best of all over 3,000 of your friends can play Tekken on it. The computer is made from 1,716 PlayStation 3s linked together, and is used to process images from spy planes. From the article: "The Air Force calls the souped-up PlayStations the Condor Supercomputer and says it is among the 40 fastest computers in the world. The Condor went online late last year, and it will likely change the way the Air Force and the Air National Guard watch things on the ground." We covered this story back in December when the Condor first went online.

wiredmikey writes "A former contract security guard who admitted hacking into a hospital's computer systems (where he worked), was sentenced to 110 months in Federal prison. Why did he do it? He admits that he intended to use the bots and the compromised computers to launch DDoS attacks on the websites of rival hacker groups. The FBI says he posted video of himself hacking into the hospital computers on YouTube — While the theme of 'Mission Impossible' played, he described his hack, step by step, including the insertion of a CD containing the OphCrack program, which allowed him to bypass all security. The FBI found the CD containing the OphCrack program in McGraw's house and found the source code for the bot on his laptop."

Zothecula writes "This is one home security alarm you won't want to trigger by mistake! Burglar Blaster mounts on a wall inside the home, and once armed, uses an infrared beam to detect when an intruder has entered the house. It then emits a cloud of pepper spray, that will severely inconvenience anyone within 2,000 square feet (186 square meters)."

The pentagon expects members of the military to deal with seeing blood, guts, and traumatic amputations but feels the horrors of a same-sex kiss might be too much for even the grittiest Marine. A new batch of training materials is being sent out to help commanders figure out how to tell those under them how to react should they see such a display of affection. From the article: "Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall."

Pigskin-Referee writes "Never want to read another story about Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen? Now there's an app for that. 'Silence of the Celebs,' a program created by Manhattan web design studio Gesture Theory, lets you filter out all mentions of a celebrity from online news sources just by entering their names."

An anonymous reader writes "25-year-old Hidayat Sudirman found that his new laptop came loaded with more than just the usual software, it also contained 10GB of someone else's documents. From the article: "A buyer on the lookout for a new laptop got more than he bargained for at his local computer fair when the 'new' device came loaded with over 10GB of personal documents — including divorce papers and tax returns."

theodp writes "After a 10-year struggle, the USPTO was convinced to issue Google a patent Tuesday for Systems and Methods for Enticing Users to Access a Web Site, aka Google Doodles. Among other things, Google explains that the invention of co-founder Sergey Brin covers modifying a company logo with 'a turkey for Thanksgiving' and 'a leprechaun's pot of gold for Saint Patrick's Day.' To help drive home its point, Google included an illustration showing the USPTO that hearts could be displayed on the Google home page for Valentine's, which would be deja-vu-all-over-again for the 394 lovers who used the UIUC PLATO system on Feb. 14th, 1975."

ChronoFish writes "The FARS news agency and a host of others are reporting on Iran claiming to have created a flying saucer-like drone. There is one small problem however. The press release photos from the state-run news service are from a movie."

An anonymous reader writes "Police in Michigan have arrested 34-year-old Richard Leon Barton Jr. on charges of polygamy, thanks to incriminating wedding photos on Facebook. The man unfriended his first wife on the social network before marrying his second wife, but unsurprisingly that wasn't enough."