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Movies

Submission + - Harry Potter 5 Standard DVD Defective by Design

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many people I know — and unsurprisingly, many people online — have already written that the quality of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix standard DVD is of such poor quality that a VHS tape is a superior version. Even older DVDs from earlier movies in the series stand up with higher quality than this release. Is this a ploy by Warner Bros. to push the HD versions of the film?
Security

Submission + - Professor Breaks Bank Security to Prove Point

Submitted by
swehack
swehack writes: "Norweigan computer science professor Kjell Jørgen Hole was dissapointed at how his bank handled the security concerns he had. So he took matters into his own hands, and made it a project to break the security as a proof of concept. Along with his students he worked for approximately 100 hours and managed to successfully break the banks security measures, transfer money between accounts without the owner noticing and steal the identity of banking customers. Original article in Swedish."
Bug

Submission + - Linus blasts GCC developers (lkml.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linus blasted GCC developers on LKML today stating that "The gcc developers seem to have had a total disregard for what people want or need, and every time some code generation issue comes up, there's a lot of people on the list that do language-lawyering, rather than admit that there might be a problem." He also noted OpenBSD's efforts but regarded them as impractical, stating that "I think the OpenBSD people decided to actually do something about this, and I suspect it had *nothing* to do with license issues, and everything to do with these kinds of problems. I wish them all the luck, although personally I think LLVM is a much more interesting project." Read more on the LKML GCC flamewar here : http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/10/25/186
Microsoft

Submission + - Computer failure leads to man's execution (reuters.com)

Submitted by aethelferth
aethelferth writes: Reuters reports that a complaint was filed against a Texas judge who let a man be executed rather than keep the court clerk's office open for 20 minutes past closing time to allow an appeal to be filed on the basis of the Supreme Court's decision that day to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection. The reason that the appeal was late coming in? The attorneys had a computer failure. The nature of the failure was not described. So, if you ever find yourself on death row, you may be betting your life on your attorneys' IT infrastructure. How many attorneys who use something other than MS-Windows and x86 hardware?
The Internet

Submission + - Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy (informationweek.com) 3

Submitted by
Dotnaught
Dotnaught writes: "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion, said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
United States

Submission + - DashCam Catches Officer Threatening Motorist

Submitted by januth
januth writes: I just finished reading about this incident, in which a St. George, Missouri police officer was caught on a motorist's personal dashcam threatening to invent charges to arrest him even though the motorist had done nothing wrong.

"The incident began at around 2am. Darrow [the motorist] was to meet a friend who was working late and was going to pick him up. Darrow headed toward a 24-hour commuter parking lot in an unincorporated part of Saint Louis County in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. He put on his turn signal and entered the lot which, aside from Kuehnlein's cruiser, was essentially vacant. After stopping the car, the police officer approached and began questioning Darrow about what he was doing. When Darrow declined to discuss his personal business, the police sergeant exploded. Although the video clearly shows Darrow driving properly and using his turn signal, the police officer insisted that Darrow had broken the law."

Had Darrow not had his own video camera running it would have been his word against the police officer's. He has had another interesting run-in with the police that he captured on video as well. In both cases he's merely asking the questions any citizen should be able to ask of a police officer. In both cases, the police do not respond well.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Shaolin Monks to sue over tale of defeat by ninja (www.cbc.ca) 1

Submitted by
Socguy
Socguy writes: "China's Shaolin Temple has demanded a public apology from an Internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja beat its kung fu-practising monks in a showdown, a lawyer said Friday.

An open letter from the temple posted on the Internet on Thursday denied the fight ever took place and called on the person who posted the claim under the name "Five minutes every day" to apologize to the temple's martial arts masters.

Monks from the temple, nestled in the Songshan Mountains of central China's Henan province, said they will consider legal action if he or she doesn't make a public apology.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070831/K083106AU.htm l"
Google

Submission + - Google Earth Flight Simulator (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
marcog123
marcog123 writes: "Last week Google launched Google Sky as an addition to Google Earth. However, what they didn't tell us is that the sneaked in another key addition — a flight simulator. They appear to have held back on publicising this new feature, although it could be considered by some as more useful than Google Sky. It is currently limited to an F16 and SR22, but the selection of runways is impressive for an under-the-radar release. It's a great new addition that complements Google Earth well!"
The Courts

Submission + - Judge Rules Server RAM is Subject to Discovery (law.com)

Submitted by SomePoorSchmuck
SomePoorSchmuck writes: If you thought the torrent/P2P model of only providing indexing and not maintaining user data in nonvolatile memory kept your downloading activity relatively anonymous, think again. In a dogfight between popular site TorrentSpy and the MPAA, a federal judge has for the first time ruled that server RAM is subject to discovery by MPAA lawyers. The MPAA seeks records of TorrentSpy's server RAM to track the site's file transfer activity. TorrentSpy's attorney Ira Rothken explains that now "any company currently being sued — even before any liability has been found — could end up having to collect and turn over RAM data at great cost." Given its past strong-arm tactics, one can't help but wonder if obtaining RAM data is the MPAA's real goal, or simply increasing the power of the lawsuit as an administrative nightmare for the defendant.

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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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