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The Courts

17,000 Downloads Does Not Equal 17,000 Lost Sales 398

Posted by timothy from the channeling-captain-obvious dept.
Andrew_Rens writes "Ars Technica has a story on a ruling by a US District Judge who rejects claims by the RIAA that the number of infringing downloads amounts to proof of the same number of lost sales. The judge ruled that 'although it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free.' The ruling concerns the use of the criminal courts to recover alleged losses for downloading through a process known as restitution. The judgement does not directly change how damages are calculated in civil cases."
Sci-Fi

Ricardo Montalban Dead At 88 280

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-fantasy-island dept.
DesScorp writes "Ricardo Montalban, immortalized as Khan in the Star Trek franchise, is dead at age 88, passing at his Los Angeles home. Montalban had a long and successful career on television and film. The voice of Rich Corinthian Leather is silenced, but we still have the memories."
The Courts

Worlds.com Sues NCSoft Over MMO-Patent 261

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the very-bad-ideas dept.
Lulfas writes "Worlds.com today sued NCSoft over its patent on a scalable virtual world, filed in 2000 and granted this February. This is a very broad base patent, and there is no reason to expect they will only sue NCSoft, when they should be able to use the same patent against other companies. 'Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tabula Rasa.'"
NASA

NASA Outsources ISS Resupply To SpaceX, Orbital 151

Posted by kdawson from the minding-the-gap dept.
DynaSoar writes "NASA has signed two contracts with US commercial space ventures totaling $3.5 billion for resupply of the International Space Station. SpaceX will receive $1.6 billion for 12 flights of SpaceX's planned Dragon spacecraft and their Falcon 9 boosters. $1.9 billion goes to Orbital for eight flights of its Cygnus spacecraft riding its Taurus 2 boosters. Neither of the specified craft has ever flown. However, the proposed vehicles are under construction and based on proven technology, whereas NASA has often contracted with big aerospace companies for services using vehicles not yet even designed."
Data Storage

Submission + - VHS finally dies a death, no really 1

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: The last major supplier of VHS videotapes, is ditching the format in favor of DVD, effectively killing the format for good. This uncharitable commentator has this to say:"Will VHS be missed? Not ... with videos being brittle, clunky, and rather user-unfriendly. But they ushered in a new era that was important to get to where we are today. And for that reason, the death of VHS is rather sad. Almost as sad as the people still using it."
Portables

Submission + - It's Official: The PDA is Dead

Submitted by fm6
fm6 writes: Some you will recall how Apple invented the PDA back in 1989. Their implementation had issues that we need not belabor, and was eventually discontinued. Its market niche was taken over by a simpler device, the Palm Pilot, which dominated the PDA market from that point on.

Nowadays, Palm mostly sells smart phones. Although they sold $11 million worth of PDAs last quarter, they haven't developed any new models since the TX and Z22 were released in 2005. Last Friday, CEO Ed Colligan announced what everybody had already figured out: these two models will be the last. The PDA is dead. Long live the Smart Phone!

Comment Re:I don't care what happens. (Score 2, Interesting) 873

by Hsensei (#26176231) Attached to: The US economy is heading toward ...
You know. from where I set the "responsible adults" in power don't seem to want to solve the problem either. They are the ones hiding the information that we would need to form a plan to get ourselves out of this mess. Hell, for most of them they have incentive to prolong our misery as long as is possible. When the shit finally does hit the fan... I doubt the quality of life of those hunkered down will drop as much as the rest of us who are used to our current instant gratification lifestyles. If the people in power were going to try and fix the problem I would agree with you, but from the way I see it they are not. So I really hope it's just me being cynical with no faith in humanity. I pray for all of us that's all it is. Is it time for the 4th box to be used in the defense of democracy?
PC Games (Games)

EA Hit By Class-Action Suit Over Spore DRM 538

Posted by Soulskill from the was-it-worth-the-hassle? dept.
The ever-growing unrest caused by the DRM involved with EA's launch of Spore came to a head on Monday. A woman named Melissa Thomas filed a class-action lawsuit against EA for their inclusion of the SecuROM copy-protection software with Spore. This comes after protests of the game's DRM ranged from a bombardment of poor Amazon reviews to in-game designs decrying EA and its policies. Some of those policies were eased, but EA has also threatened to ban players for even discussing SecuROM on their forums. The court documents (PDF) allege: "What purchasers are not told is that, included in the purchase, installation, and operation of Spore is a second, undisclosed program. The name of the second program is SecuROM ... Consumers are given no control, rights, or options over SecuROM. ... Electronic Arts intentionally did not disclose to any such purchasers that the Spore game disk also possessed a second, hidden program which secretly installed to the command and control center of the computer."
Music

Copyright Board Lawyer Responds On Pandora's End 174

Posted by kdawson from the cutting-off-the-air-supply dept.
mattnyc99 writes "A month ago we talked about the impending death of streaming music site Pandora thanks to a very backwards fight over royalties. PopMech follows up with an article that, besides noting how insane it is that Pandora has to pay record labels for the bad songs that users skip, also gets the (three-member) Copyright Royalty Board to try and defend itself about why the government is determining royalty rates for the music industry. Quoting: 'It was uninvited,' says Richard Strasser, senior attorney for the Copyright Royalty Board. 'I don't think anybody was jumping up and down with joy in the government that they have this responsibility, but the former systems just weren't working out.'" No one seems to be trying to defend or explain why Internet radio is being hit so much harder than satellite or broadcast.
Earth

Environmental Cost of Hybrids' Battery Recycling? 520

Posted by timothy from the they're-good-for-bludgeoning-seals dept.
LostMyBeaver writes "I have been considering the purchase of an electric or hybrid vehicle for some time. The biggest problem I have currently is that both technologies make use of rechargable batteries. The same tree-huggers telling me gasoline is bad are telling me that batteries are bad too. I'm only partially knowledgable in this area, but it appears the battery technologies are generally based at least on lithium ion, nickel metal hydride, lead acid and nickel-cadmium. I was hoping someone on Slashdot would be knowledgable enough to explain the environmental cost of recycling these batteries. If I understand correctly, after these chemicals are 'spent' so the cells no longer maintain a charge, they are not useful for producing new batteries. I can only imagine that the most common method of recycling the cells is to store the toxic chemicals of the batteries in barrels and refilling the cells with new chemicals. This sounds like an environmental disaster to me. Is there someone here that can help me sleep better at night by explaining what really happens?"
Role Playing (Games)

LOTRO Dev Talks About Bringing MMOs To Consoles 129

Posted by Soulskill from the give-me-a-mouse-and-keyboard-or-give-me-death dept.
Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer for Lord of the Rings: Online recently spoke to Eurogamer about the game's upcoming expansion and its future in the MMO market. One thing he mentions is the challenge of designing an MMO for consoles, which have a larger player base than PC games. He admits that UI development would be a huge issue, but also thinks MMOs could benefit from splitting tasks between various devices. "Long term, for me, the real exciting vision is ... thinking about a game, a franchise, as this centralised content. There's this thing called Lord of the Rings that sits on a bunch of servers ... and whether you're on your PC, your console, your mobile device, those are all just access points, and they're all good at different things. ... The console is great for fast action, immediate activities. Combat, raids, things like that could be a lot of fun sitting on your couch. And some things that are necessary but slightly rote and boring, like managing your inventory or setting up for a raid, or some elements of crafting — those are things that you can do instead of playing Bejeweled when you're sitting on the train or on a break or whatever it happens to be."

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