News Briefs

Possible trouble for Digg

The popular website, Digg.com, may be in for a very hefty legal battle based on their recent decision to no longer remove any stories that contain a 32-digit hexadecimal code which enables users to crack the copyright protection on HD-DVDs. The decision to not remove the code was made after the website’s users became outraged after several stories containing the code were banned by the site. Afterwards, the users began posting hundreds of stories containing the code. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, later announced that Digg will stick by its users and not remove stories with the code based on the community reaction. He said, “You’d rather see Digg go down fighting…We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”



New power plant based on cow announced

Purdue University researchers have recently built a power plant that mimics the digestive tract of a cow in order to generate electricity. A normal cow releases enough methane to power the furnace of a house for 24 hours. The “biorefinery” created by researchers took three years to develop and cost $850,000. It runs completely on kitchen scraps and other trash to produce ethanol that fuels an electrical generator. The device was requested by the U.S. Army so that they could reduce the amount of fuel used to run diesel generators in addition to shrinking the amount of garbage produced by a 600-person field unit. It is the size of a moving van and produces enough electricity to power to a large mess-tent when fed 2,500 pounds of garbage.



UK UFO files published soon

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense announced that is planning to release all its UFO related files which date back to 1967 “within weeks.” This was inspired by the French government’s recent release of their UFO records. Many conspiracy theorists believe that this is not enough and want to see real, tangible evidence of aliens instead of paperwork.