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The Courts

Tenenbaum Lawyers Now Passing the Hat 388

Posted by timothy from the lawsuit-based-on-plot-of-the-producers dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Just when you think this case couldn't get any stranger, it now appears that the defendant's 'legal team' in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum is passing the hat, taking up a collection. Only the reason for the collection isn't to defray costs and expenses of further defending the action, but to pay the RIAA the amount of the judgment so that their client won't have to declare bankruptcy. I would suggest there might have been a much better way of avoiding bankruptcy. It's called 'handling the case competently.'"

Comment Re:back in my day (Score 1) 785

by visionsofmcskill (#28904393) Attached to: School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones

Sorry man, your mostly wrong. I commend you and your accomplishments, and my own background reinforces that FORMAL eduction (getting a piece of ink on a piece of paper) is inherently meaningless.

HOWEVER, you and me do NOT a trend make. Just because X amount of people like us can kick massive booty in the real world without the benefit of a highscool diploma or a college one doesnt degrade the value thereof.

Statistically speaking, a high school diploma is a SIGNIFICANT variable on life expectancy, incarceration rates, income potential and every other metric you want to throw at it, even despite (some degree) of relative IQ. Your employment opportunities are severely limited for each level of academic accomplishment you cant proove, particularity in technical fields and more explicitly for the high school level. Indeed you become almost unemployable.

So while you can say graduating doesn't GARUNTEE success, youo cannot compare that with the likelihood of failure if you dont graduate. in the simplest form its simply a matter of risk management on the employers (and/or clients) side.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but i don't think anyone should be a cheerleader for NON-COMPLETION of scholastic advancement in our society no matter how successful they've managed to be. Should our society change so significantly as to measure a persons worth through other means... then fine. But in todays world it is an UNDENIABLE fact that your level of educational attainment has a very DIRECT cor-relation towards your quality of life and earnings potential.

see below for starters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States

average income of HS grad : 36k
average income of masters : 78k
average income MD / ESQ : 100k
average income doctorate : 96k

Average income NO high school degree : 22k

HUGE discrepancy.
Music

RIAA Awarded $675,000 In Tenenbaum Trial 492

Posted by Soulskill from the songs-apparently-cost-as-much-as-cars dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The jury awarded the record company plaintiffs $675,000 in the Boston trial defended by Prof. Charles Nesson, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. I was not surprised, since exactly none of the central issues ever even came up in this trial. The judge had instructed the jurors that Mr. Tenenbaum was liable, and that their only task was to come up with a verdict that was more than $22,500 and less than $4.5 million. According to the judge, her reason for doing so was that, when on the stand, the defendant was asked if he admitted liability, and he said 'yes.' The lawyers among you will know that that was a totally improper question, and that the Court should not have even allowed it, much less based her holding upon the answer to it."
Image

iPhone App Tracks Sex Offenders Screenshot-sm 358

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-a-sweaty-app-for-that dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "All 50 states in the US require the 50,000 people convicted of sexual offenses to sign a register so that their whereabouts can be tracked and monitored. The Telegraph reports that now users of the iPhone Offender Locator application can search for sex offenders living nearby a friend or colleague whose address is stored in their Apple iPhone address book, or they can type in a street address to generate a list of convicted sex offenders in the local area. 'Offender Locator gives everyone the ability to find out if registered sex offenders live in their area,' says the application developer, ThinAir Wireless, on its iTunes page. 'Knowledge equals safety. They know where you and your family are...now it's time to turn the tables so that you know where they live and can make better decisions about where to allow your kids to play.' Offender Locator uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to pinpoint the user's location, and then provide a map listing sex offenders in the local area. Tapping on one of the 'pins' dropped on to the map brings up a photograph of the offender, as well as their address, date of birth and list of convictions."
Medicine

Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' 539

Posted by samzenpus from the batteries-not-included dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain. He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. 'It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,' he said."
Graphics

Small, High-Resolution LCD Monitors? 370

Posted by samzenpus from the making-the-best-use-of-space dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm a veteran user of an old 17" Dell Trinitron CRT monitor. I run it at 1400x1050 with an 80Hz refresh rate — about as high as it goes before it'll go out of the monitor's scan range. More recently I've been looking to finally upgrade to an LCD monitor but found that, for the most part, every 17" monitor on the market runs natively at 1280x1024, as does every 19" monitor — I have to go for a 20" to go higher. Now yes, I know I'm complaining about just 120 pixels horizontal and 26 pixels vertical, but my laptop's 15" display runs natively at 1400x1050. Is there any standalone monitor on the market that'll natively do higher than 1280x1024 without killing my desk space?"
Networking

European Union Asks US To Free ICANN 503

Posted by Soulskill from the icann-see-why dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, is calling for the United States to hand over control of ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). She said that the organization running ICANN needs be free of control by a single nation, and rather controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations. ICANN, headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, was created in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet related tasks. Reding said, 'In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.'"
Software

Congress Endorses Open Source For Military 145

Posted by kdawson from the because-it's-better-that's-why dept.
A draft defense authorizing act in Congress includes wording plugging open source software. It seems both cost and software security were considerations. This is an important victory for open source. "It's rare to see a concept as technical as open-source software in a federal funding bill. But the House's proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (H.R. 5658) includes language that calls for military services to consider open-source software when procuring manned or unmanned aerial vehicles."
Image

Man Attempts To Cross English Channel With Jet Wing Screenshot-sm 175

Posted by samzenpus from the shorter-commute dept.
Back in May, we told you about Swiss pilot Yves Rossy and his personal jet powered wing. It seems Mr. Rossy will now try to cross the English Channel with his invention. The flight was planned for Sept. 25 but had to be canceled due to poor weather. Yves will leap from a plane more than 2,500 meters off the ground, fire up his jets and try to make the 35-kilometer flight from Calais in France to Dover in England. If all goes well, the flight will take about 12 minutes. I'd like to officially ask Mr. Rossy for a review model for Slashdot.

Comment Sites and others will move to SSL (Score 1) 292

by visionsofmcskill (#23668417) Attached to: Covert BT Phorm Trial Report Leaked
This sort of BS will cause standard non-commercial / login sites to all move to SSL.

redirect Http://youriste.com to https://yoursite.com/ before anything is served.

If anyone thinks any of the CPM ad networks or major sites will allow this for even an instant, your eye is not on the money.

If they use such tech for the less easily encrypted protocols... you'll find those as well slowly pushed into it.

Which leaves the ISP's with two options if they wish to pursue this, they can proxy everything their customers connect to and essentialyl monkey in the middle the whole affair (not possible due to sheer processing/bandwidth... yet)... or they may form an alliance with the ad networks (scarier more likely prospect).
PC Games (Games)

Game Developers Should Ignore Software Pirates 458

Posted by Soulskill from the please-insert-the-play-disc-to-continue-reading dept.
wraith808 points out a story about remarks made by the CEO of software and game development company Stardock about sales in the PC game industry. His suggestion to other developers is simple: ignore the software pirates. From Ars Technica: "'So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for,' Wardell writes on his blog. 'But not PC game developers.' Don't let people who aren't your audience control the titles you make, and ignore piracy. This is much like Trent Reznor's strategy, although the execution is different. Instead of worrying about pirates, just leave the content out in the open. The market Reznor plays to will still buy the music; he's simply stopped worrying about the pirates. He came to the same conclusion: they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose."
The Internet

Time-Warner Considers Per-Gigabyte Service Fee, After iTunes 557

Posted by Zonk from the isn't-this-a-step-in-the-wrong-direction dept.
destinyland writes "Time-Warner is now mulling a plan to charge a per-gigabyte fee for internet service. A leaked memo reveals they're now watching how many gigabytes customers use in a 'consumption-based' pricing experiment in Texas, which we discussed early last month. The announced plan was that they were considering a tier-based approach, as opposed to per-gigabyte fees. 'As few as 5 percent of our customers use 50 percent of the network,' Time-Warner complains, with plans to cap usage at 5-gigabytes, and more expensive pricing plans granting 10-, 20-, and 40-gigabyte quotas. Steven Levy at the Washington post suggests Time-Warner's real aim is to hobble iTunes, raising the cost of a movie download by $10 (or $30 for a high-definition movie). Eyeing Time-Warner's experiment, Comcast cable also says they're evaluating a pay-per-gigabyte model."
Earth

China Vows to Stop the Rain 214

Posted by samzenpus from the way-ahead-of-the-germ-warfare-division dept.
Since the Olympic stadium doesn't have a roof, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been given the task of making sure the games remain dry. According to Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation (best title to have on a business card ever) at the bureau, they've had success with light rain but heavy rain remains tough to control. I see a hurricane cannon in some lucky country's future.
Music

Music Labels say No Deal with Qtrax 58

Posted by Zonk from the so-close-and-yet-so-far dept.
mikesd81 writes "Sunday we discussed apparently great news: a company announced making a deal with the major labels to provide DRM-free, ad-supported music. There's just one problem with that. Reuters reports that the Big 4 music labels have denied having any deal with Qtrax. Contrary to Qtrax's reports, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner had publicly denied that they had agreed to back the new Qtrax service. Universal Music, the largest of the group, said it also had not signed a deal for the new Qtrax service and is still in discussions. EMI Group said that while its song publishing unit has an agreement with Qtrax, its recorded music arm, EMI Music, does not. EMI Music, Sony BMG and Warner all previously had agreements with Qtrax, which was testing a paid music download service. Sources say those agreements expired in the last year and did not cover the new free, ad-supported model now being promoted by Qtrax. Qtrax did not immediately respond to further queries about its agreements with other companies."
Cellphones

iPhone Application Key Leaked 247

Posted by kdawson from the sign-early-and-often dept.
HighWizard writes with word from Engadget that the iPhone SDK Key has been leaked early. "We're not exactly sure how this all went down, but we trust Erica Sadun over at TUAW when she says that it appears that the iPhone's SDK key — which will probably be required by all 'official' third-party apps — has been leaked. Two different sites currently have the key posted, but it's all just for show until next month, when the SDK hits for real — and the code is undoubtedly changed."

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