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The Courts

Will Obama's DOJ Intervene To Help RIAA? 546

Posted by kdawson from the jury-is-out dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's statutory damages theory — seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages — is being tested, the US Department of Justice has just filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case to defend the constitutionality of such awards, and requesting an extension of time (PDF) in which to decide whether such intervention 'is appropriate.' This is an early test of whether President Obama will make good on his promises (a) not to allow industry insiders to participate in cases affecting the industry they represented (the 2nd and 3rd highest DOJ officials are RIAA lawyers) and (b) to look out for ordinary citizens rather than big corporations."
Games

Study Finds Gamers Prefer Control, Competence Over Violence 219

Posted by Soulskill from the making-pixels-bleed dept.
Science News reports on a new study which found that the violence in video games was not a significant contributing factor to players' enjoyment. Instead, the feelings of control and competence the games engendered were closely linked to how fun the players found it. Quoting: "... the researchers extensively modified a popular first-person shooter video game called Half-Life 2 to have less gore. Half the people in a group of 36 male and 65 female college students were instructed to dispatch adversaries as the original game intended, 'in a thoroughly bloody manner,' says Ryan. The other half was instructed to tag enemies with a marker. 'Instead of exploding in blood and dismemberment, they floated gently into the air and went back to base,' Ryan describes. An extensive survey of the two groups showed that the exclusion of violence didn't diminish players' enjoyment of the game."
The Courts

You Are Not a Lawyer 693

Posted by kdawson from the help-in-thinking-like-one dept.
Paul Ohm is starting a new "very occasional" feature on the Freedom To Tinker blog called You Are Not a Lawyer — "In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system)." In the first installment, Ohm walks through the reasons why many techies' faith in the presence of "reasonable doubt" is so misplaced. "When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on [the 'beyond a reasonable doubt'] legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can't count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the 'open wireless access point defense,' the 'trojaned computer defense,' the 'NAT-ted firewall defense,' and the 'dynamic IP address defense.' ... People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards — the legal standards governing search and seizure — you should worry about long before you ever get to 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'"
Input Devices

Developing "Eyes-Free" Gadgets and Applications 85

Posted by Soulskill from the translating-web-sights dept.
The New York Times is running a story about Google engineer T. V. Raman, who lost his vision at age 14 but didn't let that stand in the way of his interest in technology. In addition to modifying a version of Google's search engine to give preference to pages that were more compliant with accessibility guidelines, Raman is now working on making cell phones easier to use without needing to look at them. "Since he cannot precisely hit a button on a touch screen, Mr. Raman created a dialer that works based on relative positions. It interprets any place where he first touches the screen as a 5, the center of a regular telephone dial pad. To dial any other number, he simply slides his finger in its direction — up and to the left for 1, down and to the right for 9, and so on. If he makes a mistake, he can erase a digit simply by shaking the phone, which can detect motion." Raman and a co-worker, Charles Chen, are also attempting to extend various phones' ability to read back scanned text to include signs that are anywhere in the phone's field of view.

Comment Re:Don't. (Score 1) 262

by Escogido (#26306249) Attached to: Getting Started With Part-Time Development Work?

Actually, the 'get a vacation' part was a honest piece of advice from me rather than sarcasm. It is highly likely (at least it seems so to me) that the guy is just in need for some change - and vacation, VERY unlike changing one's job, fits the bill perfectly.

Once he have rested and contemplated what his real options are, he will be able to take a much better informed decision, at the very least because his accrued irritation will no longer become a factor.

Also, if he was single, that would have been a different story. But having to endure an unpleasant job is one of the costs of having a wife and kid(s).
Data Storage

Why Not To Shout At Your Disk Array 125

Posted by timothy from the that's-what-your-subordinates-are-for dept.
Brendan Gregg of Sun's Fishworks lab has an interesting video demo up at YouTube demonstrating just how bad vibes, if expressed with sufficient volume in front of a rack full of disks, can cause a spike in disk latency. White noise, evidently, doesn't do them much harm. (Maybe they just feel awkward to get yelled at on camera.)
Earth

Leap Second To Be Added Dec 31, 2008 255

Posted by timothy from the pregnant-pause dept.
ammorris writes "Don't be the laughingstock of your friends when you shout 'Happy New Years' a second too early ... The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service has announced that a leap second will be added on December 31, 2008 at 23h 59m 60s, meaning that this year will be exactly one second longer. The last leap second occurred Dec 31, 2005; they are added due to fluctuations in the rotational speed of the earth. You can read all about leap seconds on Wikipedia."
Music

Managing Last.FM's "Mountain of Data" 139

Posted by Soulskill from the because-it's-there dept.
Rob Spengler writes "Last.FM co-founder Richard Jones says the biggest asset the company owns is 'hundreds of terabytes of user data.' Jones adds, '... playing with that data is one of the most fun things about working at the company.' Last.FM, for those who have been living on Mars for the last two years, is the largest online radio outlet, with millions of listeners per day. The company surpassed Pandora and others largely due to its unique datamining features: 'Audioscrobbler,' the company's song/artist naming algorithm, can correctly determine a track even with tens of thousands of false entries. Jones says sitting on that much data has even helped police: 'thieves listening to music on an Audioscrobbler-powered media player have helped police in the US, UK, and other countries track down users' stolen laptops.' Does sitting on a mountain of data make Last.FM powerful enough to start making a stand against the record industry? CBS certainly thinks so — they bought the company for £140 (~$200) million last year."
Technology

Top Tech Breakthroughs of 2008 116

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the r&d-still-hard-at-work dept.
As we approach the end of the year it's time once again for the never-ending stream of retrospectives and year-in-review discussions. Wired has their version of the best technology breakthroughs of 2008. From phones to shrinking laptops to flexible displays, there is no shortage of interesting advancements when looking back at this year. What other groundbreaking advancements were made this year, and what do we have to look forward to for 2009?
Medicine

Sarcasm Useful For Detecting Dementia 389

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yeah-that'll-work dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic."

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