1. CBS owns the rights to the 1940 cartoon show ‘Mighty Mouse’.

2. Apple licenses that name ‘Mighty Mouse’ from CBS and affixes said name to their mouse and markets this pimple of a peripheral in 2005, see exhibit A:

Exhibit A: Apple’s Might Mouse

3. Unbeknownst to Apple, another computer HW manufacturer (Man & Machine) produced its own industrial grade mouse called ‘Might Mouse’ and has been selling it since 2004, exhibit B.

Exhibit B: Man & Machine’s Mighty Mouse

4. Lawsuit ensues. Man & Machine claims infringement of trademark by Apple.

Question: Who is in the right and the wrong here? We’ll have to wait and see, if you’re interested in more, check the Reg. In this layman’s opinion if M&M is not already infringing on CBS’ trademark for the just the name itself, then clearly the big bad bully Apple must pay.

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Wednesday was the day the Wii Fit was made available in stores everywhere (at least in the Pacific Northwest). I asked the wife the other day if she would throw herself into the fray, the pack of wolves that would surely descend upon Circuit City’s and Best Buys everywhere to snap up these peripherals.

She did indeed show up 30 minutes before the Circuit City opened today, lined up early in front of the door and was #4 to purchase one (in all 20 people were waiting for the door to open).

I haven’t even put batteries in it yet and I’m feeling fitter already, man Nintendo is good!

So we’re clear, that’s not me above.

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In order to find out when the station will be visible over your city, visit the NASA Sightings site.

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Jeez Louise, bidding has begun on official backstage passes for all 5 days at the Star Trek convention this August in Vegas. Looks like the starting price is $1200, which may not be too bad when you consider getting an opportunity to rub elbows with Spock, Data and Captain Janeway.

However, I’ll pass on the pass, thank you.

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I stumbled across this youtube video. Looks like NASA has a bug problem or Space Spiders from Mars will thwart our attempts to reach their planet.

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Old School	New Hotness

The remake to Get Smart is released to theaters in about 4 weeks and from the trailers I think there’s a good chance it’ll do the original show justice. Though I’m completely sold already on Steve Carell as Smart, I’m not so sure about Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. We’ll just have to bide our time for the next month and see, but while you wait you can visit the official Get Smart site for some KAOS/Control fun.

The trailer poster is at the bottom, instead of providing the remake’s trailer on Geeknews we’ll go old school and reminisce about the original from 40 years ago by watching the intro sequence to the first season of Get Smart…it’s classic:

Plot to the remake of 2008:

Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is on a mission to thwart the latest plot for world domination by the evil crime syndicate known as KAOS. When the headquarters of U.S. spy agency Control is attacked and the identities of its agents compromised, the Chief (Alan Arkin) has no choice but to promote his ever-eager analyst Maxwell Smart, who has always dreamt of working in the field alongside stalwart superstar Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson).

Smart is partnered instead with the lovely-but-lethal veteran Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). Given little field experience and even less time, Smart—armed with nothing but a few spy-tech gadgets and his unbridled enthusiasm—must thwart the doomsday plans of KAOS head Siegfried (Terance Stamp).

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Monkeys genetically modified to have Huntington’s [Reuters]
Scientists have created monkeys genetically modified to have Huntington’s disease in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the fatal ailment and uncover clues to possible new treatments.

Style and Design Important for Bluetooth Headsets [PC Magazine]
New Bluetooth headsets, including the just-announced Aliph New Jawbone, are likely to appeal to Californians as the state prepares to adopt a hands-free driving law.

Wii Fit’s workouts are fun, if not entirely motivational [Seattle PI]
Anything that gets people up off their couches and moving probably is a good thing. And it seems Nintendo is hoping to do exactly that with its much-publicized Wii Fit — a new game for the Wii that insists we get off our keisters.

MySpace Suicide Case Leads To Tougher Laws [eFluxMedia]
After the troubling suicide commited by a Missouri teenager due to an Internet related incident, state lawmakers voted and gave final approval yesterday to a bill which will deal with cyber-harassment.

Orange to help Apple expand iPhones overseas [San Francisco Chronicle]
In the latest agreement to put the iPhone in the hands of international users, France’s Orange said Friday that it has signed a deal to offer the popular smart phone in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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The University of Arizona is looking for a few good eyeballs and science geeks.

They have very high res photos of the targeted landing location for the ill fated Mars Polar Lander that disappeared in 1999 when it entered the Mars atmosphere. You may be the first person in years to see the lander since it left earth by helping to pour over some of their photos and possibly even solve one of NASA’s mysteries.

Probably our best chance of identifying the landing site is via the backshell and parachute. With the exception of Viking Lander 2, all of the successful landers‘ parachutes are bright objects in the HiRISE images. It is likely that the MPL parachutes would also be bright, if they deployed, due to their relatively short time on Mars.

Here’s a PDF that teaches you how to distinguish rocks from landers and heat shields or parachutes from dust devil tracks.

If interested, here’s the JPL report on the lost lander.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get cracking.

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Oh, and this landing will be a nail biter because it won’t be using the airbags. It’ll use rockets to slow itself down, right itself to the correct attitude and cross it’s robotic fingers it doesn’t land on a rock.

Here’s a cool NASA video describing the entry and landing at the planet: Phoenix Mars Lander: Entry Descent and Landing

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