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In about three months, a little-known company called Novatium plans to offer a stripped-down home computer for about $70 or $75. That is about half the price of the standard "thin clients" of this kind now sold in India, made possible in part by some novel engineering choices. Adding a monitor doubles the price to $150, but the company will offer used displays to keep the cost down.
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The first task at hand is understanding how Monday's landmark ruling against Grokster and StreamCast Networks will change the landscape for file swapping and for the music and movie industries. While far from a death knell for unregulated peer-to-peer networks, the decision has certainly cast a dark cloud over the future of companies seeking to profit from swapping software.
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Two lower courts had previously ruled that the Grokster and StreamCast could not be held responsible for copyright infringement carried out using their software. This was based on a precedent set by another Supreme Court decision, in 1984, which absolved Sony from liability for copyright infringement carried out using Betamax video tapes, because the tapes also had legitimate uses.
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The CAIB also recommended NASA eliminate all foam and ice that comes off the external fuel tank during launch. A suitcase-sized chunk of foam from the tank ultimately caused the Columbia accident when it punctured a hole in the orbiter's wing during launch. Hot gases flooded in and blew up the orbiter when it re-entered the atmosphere on 1 February 2003.
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The feature measures about 230 kilometres long and 70 km wide and, intriguingly, lies below Titan's cloudiest region. "It might not be surprising for a methane-filled lake to persist for a long time," says team member Tony Del Genio of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, US.