Patriotic Facebook

At first glance, it looks like Facebook with a different script. But it is actually a clone. Youface.uz’s resemblance to Facebook does not stop with the welcome page. Ayub Abdulloh, the site’s founder, told news agency RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service his website may look like the world’s biggest social networking site but this is just to help it gather new members.

Eternal quest

Are we really alone in the universe? It is a question many of us have pondered. Till late, there has been no concrete proof of the existence of life besides ours in the universe or the lack of it. Arthur C Clarke once said, “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”

Confusing signal

Come July, TV screens in several households in the metros will either go blank, or people will find their energy metres ticking fast. As per a notification issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on April 30, cable TV networks in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will have to be digitised by June 30 under the first phase of the digitisation programme. The programme will be applicable across the country by 2014.

Righting the copywrong

It was an opportunity for all MPs to come together and they made the most of it. There were long speeches, some mawkish, others rambling and nostalgic and much of it not germane to the issue on the table: the Copyright Act (Amendment) Bill, 2012.

Distance between Earth and Sun

It was nine o’clock in the morning on October 8, 1771. Guillaume le Gentil was exhausted, weary after a long travel and eager to meet his wife.

Annoying the US, our way

America, the global police of all things large and grand such as human rights and democratic values the world over—leaving aside, of course, powerful oil kingdoms with barbaric laws and Latin American dictators who make huge chunks of their restive population “disappear”—also does a tough cop act on intellectual property rights (IPRs) and how well such rights are being protected.

Google booked

The US telecom regulator has fined Google $25,000 for stalling a probe into its Street View online mapping service. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) announced the penalty, saying it was dropping the investigation into whether Street View cars gathered data from private wireless networks.

Our complex world

Brian Cox is a veritable rockstar among physicists. A keyboard virtuoso, he was a part of the now disbanded rock group, D: ream, whose music regularly featured in the UK’s hit charts in the 1990s. His current star status, however, derives from his vocation as a physicist. Cox is well-known as the presenter of two BBC TV series on physics that have attracted millions of viewers.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Astrophysics Star-eating monsters

Bowing to web

The volumes once synonymous with the word encyclopaedia are going out of print. When this magazine hits stand, Encyclopaedia Britannica would have gone out of print, bringing an end to a 244-year-old history.