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Music

Submission + - Poll: What is your favorite RIAA target?

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: With all the **AA posts lately, it's time for an RIAA POLL:

What is your favorite RIAA target?

College Students
Single Mothers
Dissabled Vets
Household pets
The Deceased
Newborn babies
People without internet
PirateNeal

Credit where credit is due: This is inspired by by Drakin020's comment #18447205 Re:Welcome to ...
Education

Submission + - Purdue University decides not to follow UW-Madison

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I attend Purdue University and apparently, they will be bowing to the RIAA not soon after another Big 10 school spat in their face (University of Wisconsin). Every student has been sent the following email:

Some users of the Purdue University Internet network this week will begin receiving notices of threatened legal action from the Recording Industry Association of America.

In a stepped-up effort to enforce music copyright, the association is harvesting Internet addresses of computers that allegedly offered music for others to download illegally. It then is sending emails to Internet service providers and asking that the emails be forwarded to these computer users.
The notices offer the option of paying a settlement fee or facing legal action.

Purdue University, as an Internet service provider, will forward these emails to the user of the specified address when the user can be accurately identified. While the university will do its best to deliver these notices to the proper individuals, it is not responsible for the accuracy of the identification or address to which such notices are sent.

It will be up to each recipient to decide how to respond to these notices.
All users of Purdue IT resources are ultimately responsible for their own conduct and for responding to any notification received from a copyright owner. Should an individual choose not to pay the settlement, the RIAA may ask Purdue for its logs for the purpose of pursuing legal action. The next step would be for RIAA to file a request to subpoena the name of the computer owner. The university will at all times honor valid subpoenas.

Purdue does not generally monitor the content of Internet transmissions.
The university, however, can match computers to the addresses they use when connecting to the Internet.

Information on your legal obligations and methods to protect yourself can be found at:
http://www.purdue.edu/securepurdue/copyright.cfm

Individuals with questions regarding the settlement notice should contact legal counsel of their own choosing for advice.

Sincerely,

Gerry McCartney
Interim Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
Purdue University

Thomas B. Robinson
Vice President for Student Services
Purdue University
Music

College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time 261

Posted by Zonk from the me-next-me-next dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've already seen the University of Wisconsin tell the RIAA to go away, but the University of Nebaska has gone one step further: it's asking the RIAA to pay up for wasting its time with the silly demand to push students into paying up. The spokesperson for the University also notes that since they constantly rotate IP addresses and have no need to hang onto that information for very long, they simply cannot help the RIAA. They have no clue who was attached to which IP address at the time the RIAA is complaining about."
The Courts

RIAA Balks At Complying With Document Order 166

Posted by kdawson from the show-me-the-money dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "When the RIAA was ordered to turn over its attorneys' billing records to the defendant's lawyer in Capitol v. Foster, there was speculation that they would never comply with the order. As it turns out they have indeed balked at compliance, saying that they are preparing a motion for a protective order seeking confidentiality (something they could have asked for, but didn't, in their opposition papers to the initial motion). Having none of that, Ms. Foster's lawyer has now made a motion to compel their compliance with the Court's March 15th order."
Music

RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation 267

Posted by samzenpus from the catch-22 dept.
JeffreysTube writes "The RIAA's legal fight against a divorced mother has run into trouble, with the judge now telling the RIAA that its only two options are to proceed with a jury trial against Patty Santangelo or dismiss the case with prejudice. If the latter happens, Santangelo officially "wins" and could collect attorneys' fees. The judge is less than pleased with the RIAA, which is now trying to drop the case without giving Santangelo a chance to be declared guilty. 'This case is two years old,' wrote Judge McMahon. 'There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not.'"
Google

Googlebot and Document.Write 180

Posted by kdawson from the ajax-the-foaming-indexer dept.
With JavaScript/AJAX being used to place dynamic content in pages, I was wondering how Google indexed web page content that was placed in a page using the JavaScript "document.write" method. I created a page with six unique words in it. Two were in the plain HTML; two were in a script within the page document; and two were in a script that was externally sourced from a different server. The page appeared in the Google index late last night and I just wrote up the results.
The Internet

Submission + - Second Life Ends First Land Program

Submitted by
RancidPickle
RancidPickle writes: "Second Life, the virtual word created and run by Linden Labs, announced they were no longer issuing First Land to premium members.

Effective immediately, the supply of cheap First Land parcels by Linden Lab will cease. Premium accounts will still be able to own up to 512m of land as part of their Premium membership package as they do now, the only change is that we will not be supplying the discounted parcels as we have done in the past. The website and knowledgebase will be amended to reflect this change shortly.


As a premium SL user who spent hours looking for First Land, this does not bode well for me or the users who will be left out in the cold — literally."
The Internet

Ten Predictions for XML in 2007 71

Posted by CowboyNeal from the crystal-balls dept.
An anonymous reader writes "2007 is shaping up to be the most exciting year since the community drove off the XML highway into the Web services swamp half a decade ago. XQuery, Atom, Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), XProc, and GRRDL are all promising new power. Some slightly older technologies like XForms and XSLT are having new life breathed into them. 2007 will be a very good year to work with XML."
Music

Submission + - Getting rid of DRM! How?

Submitted by FredDC
FredDC writes: Lately it seems that every day I read one or more stories about someone saying DRM is bad. I think the question no longer is if DRM is bad or not. Everyone, or most anyway, involved seem to agree on that by now. The real question is, what is being done to get rid of DRM? So far, not alot! The problem is that noone is willing to take the first step... What can we, the consumer, do to push those involved into getting rid of DRM? To get someone to take the first step!
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - In case of a terrorist attack...

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Dept. of Homeland Security has released these signs to help you prepare for an attack. Now safenow.org has provided their own interpretation, hilarity ensued. http://homeland.gov.safenow.org/
The Media

Submission + - biggest military computer hacker back in court ..

Submitted by
rs232
rs232 writes: "biggest military computer hacker back in court ..

Gary McKinnon, who carried out the 'biggest military computer hack of all time', is back in court to fight his extradition to the US. His lawyers argue that he was subject to improper threats that infringed the European Convention on Human Rights and also that he would be subject to an unknown amount of pre-trial detention.

McKinnon, hack consisted of logging into passwordless desktops and installing RemotelyAnywhere in a search for evidence of a UFO coverup by Nasa, and/or the Pentagon. He states that the systems was wide open and at the same tims as him, there were hackers online from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Turkey and Thailand. He also states that he can't remember a lot as he was smoking a lot of dope at the time. If they allow him to light up in the dock, it may all come back to him, it always has worked for me .. :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_we st/6360917.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1523143 ,00.html"
Supercomputing

Quantum Computer Demoed, Plays Sudoku 309

Posted by kdawson from the more-qubits dept.
prostoalex writes "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer (discussed here earlier) that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has a more technical description of how the quantum computer works, as well as possible areas of application: 'The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles.' Another attendee provides some videos from the demo." Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Amazing Cancer Drug Found; Scientist Annoyed.

Submitted by
sporkme
sporkme writes: "A scientist was frustrated when the compound she was working with destroyed her sample of cancer cells. Further research revealed that the substance was surprisingly well suited as a cancer treatment. From the article:

"I made a calculation error and used a lot more than I should have. And my cells died," Schaefer said. A colleague overheard her complaining. "The co-author on my paper said,' Did I hear you say you killed some cancer?' I said 'Oh', and took a closer look." They ran several tests and found the compound killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen."
Lab test results on hapless mice have resulted in the destruction of colon tumors without making the mice sick. The PPAR-gamma compound is expected to be especially useful in combating treatment-resistant types of cancer."

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