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Music

Submission + - Warner Music Group Drops DRM (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SirLurksAlot
SirLurksAlot writes: According to an article on Ars Technica, Warner Music, Universal, and EMI (leaving Sony BMG as the last major holdout) will now be offering their entire music catalogs on Amazon completely DRM-free This move positions Amazon to be a major competitor for iTunes, and could spell the beginning of the end for DRM altogether.
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Submission + - The Secret to Winning at Rock, Paper, Scissors 1

Submitted by
Time Slows Down
Time Slows Down writes: "While most people are aware that rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper and paper covers stone, there is a psychological element to the game which many players may have missed. Recent research shows that rock is the most popular of the three possible moves in the game. That means that your opponent is likely to choose paper, because they will expect to you to start the game with stone so by going with scissors, you achieve an early victory. The scissors strategy has proven very successful in the past — in 2005 it secured auction house Christie's a £10 million deal. Rock, paper, scissors is also found in nature. A team of biologists described the curious mating strategies of a species of European lizard where some male lizards (call their type "rock") use force, invade the territory of fellow males to mate with females, others ("paper") favor deception, waiting until females are unguarded and sneaking in, and others ("scissors") work by cooperation, joining together to protect one another's females. Scientists speculate that such games may also describe human behavior in the corporate world, where strategies of force (takeovers), deception (fraud) and cooperation (mergers) also seem to supplant one another in an endless loop."
The Courts

Submission + - NYCL Needs Help Debunking the RIAA's "Expert&# (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
Groklaw Reader
Groklaw Reader writes: "The RIAA member companies have fired back after the last time we helped debunk their expert witness, they've filed a supplemental report. In it, Doug Jacobson explains how he's still sure that Marie Lindor is a filthy pirate because she and others use email and once plugged a 100 GB USB drive into the computer and didn't give it to the RIAA, even though there's no trace of Kazaa on the machine. NYCL needs our help again so as to figure out how best to pick this apart just in case her jurors have never used the internet. After all, such jurors might be confused about how Dr. Jacobson can follow the process outlined by the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists to perform a forensic investigation on a piece of paper with an IP address on it generated by a MediaSentry computer he previously testified he knew nothing about."
Privacy

Submission + - Connecticut enacts opt-out personal info law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Technical Writing Geek
Technical Writing Geek writes: "The State of Connecticut wants to bring the consumer-pleasing goodness of the federal Do Not Call registry to other forms of data. Governor Jodi Rell announced this week that she plans to offer a state-wide opt-out service that Connecticut residents can use to keep personal information from being aggregated and acted upon by online data brokers.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071227-connecticut-governor-plans-opt-out-system-for-personal-info.html"
Math

Submission + - Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs? (wikipedia.org) 4

Submitted by
Beetle B.
Beetle B. writes: "An argument has arisen over whether Wikipedia should allow pages that provide proofs for mathematical theorems (such as this one).

On the one hand, Wikipedia is a useful source of information and people can benefit from these proofs. On the other hand, how does one choose which proofs to include and which not to? Should Wikipedia just become a textbook that teaches mathematics? Should it just state the bare results of theorems and not provide proofs (except as external links)? Or should they take an intermediate approach and formulate a criterion for which proofs to include and which to exclude?"
Security

Submission + - Penn student at center of worldwide hacking invest (philly.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When a suspicious computer server crash at the University of Pennsylvania last year denied service to 4,000 students, faculty and staff, technicians called the FBI — triggering a case that would take agents around the world and lead to the arrest of a brilliant but brash Penn junior. Ryan Goldstein, a 20-year-old bioengineering major, conspired with a New Zealand hacker known as AKILL to use Penn's computer system as a staging ground for a 50,000-computer attack against several online chat networks, authorities said. The FBI and Secret Service are expected to announce indictments today against Goldstein, a Florida man, and three others. Police recently executed related raids in New Zealand, Florida, California and Pennsylvania. The latest came Tuesday near Philadelphia. An FBI agent from the region is in New Zealand this week, and more arrests are possible. "We've been executing search warrants all over the world in this case," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Levy. View article for more.
United States

Submission + - Senate Bill 1959 to Create Thoughtcrime (newstarget.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It's a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent." Source: http://www.newstarget.com/022308.html
Linux Business

Submission + - MPAA's University Toolkit May Violate The GNU GPL (ubuntuforums.org) 1

Submitted by
bobbocanfly
bobbocanfly writes: "It seems in a new level of hypocrisy the anti-piracy goons at the MPAA created a tool for spying on University students' computer activities called "University Toolkit", which they are heavily promoting to University administrators across the USA. The tool is actually a modified version of U/Xubuntu, and in fact doesn't change any of the default artwork. Against the terms of the GNU GPL no source code is provided on their website at http://universitytoolkit.org/
There would be reason to believe that they are at minimum violating Ubuntu's trademark, and likely also violating the GPL and thus committing copyright infringement or "piracy" as they like to call it.
Everyone knows this isnt the first time the MPAA has commited an alleged act of piracy. Remember the Forest Blog fiasco."
Media

Submission + - MediaDefender Leaks Saga : unexpected outcomes (p2pnet.net) 4

Submitted by ShakaZ
ShakaZ writes: Following the leaks of all the internal emails and later the source code of all the anti-p2p software of MediaDefender, the boss and an employee of the company have been arrested by the LA police. They are charged for illegal uploading with intent to deceive, bandwidth theft, and grievous misrepresentation.
More handcuffs there : http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13397

Due to the released emails, ThePirateBay have proof of infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, for which they filed a complaint to the Swedish police. 10 companies of the music, movie and gaming industries are listed in the complaint.
More pirates here : http://thepiratebay.org/blog
Privacy

Submission + - 'Opt Out' soon or Verizon will sell your CPNI 1

Submitted by
Rothfuss
Rothfuss writes: "I actually opened and read one of the 'Updates to my Customer Agreement Terms and Conditions' that I received from Verizon today. I have no idea why. This one explains that they will be upgrading my service by assuming (unless I tell them otherwise) that I am willing to let them sell my Customer Proprietary Network Information or give it to anyone they choose. Apparently that will help me. However, the FCC won't let them do this without your permission — like, for example *not* calling them and opting out. If you are a Verizon customer and would like to opt out, you can do so by calling 1-800-333-9956. Ask to speak to Mr. Prosser."
Biotech

Submission + - Cure for cancer may be ready in two years (newscientist.com)

Submitted by GnarlyDoug
GnarlyDoug writes: Dr Zheng Cui has, through a stroke of luck, found that the granulocytes from some mice are up to 50 times better at fighting cancer than others. He has cured mice with simple transfusions of granulocytes. These cells seem to recognize almost all cancer lines, are extremely effective even in advanced cases, and and the resistance seems to last for the life of the mouse. So not only does this treatment cure many cancers, but it also provides resistance to future cancers as well.

Evidence suggests that this should hold true for humans as well. Because this is based on blood transfusions, a technology already long established, this could be ready to so very soon. The go-ahead for a human trial has already been given, and if it pans out then this could be available in as little as two years time. Some simple tests to find people with the resistant strain of blood and then a system of transfusions is all that is needed to get this started.

If it pans out, we may be looking at a general cure for cancer within a few years time.
Wii

Submission + - Wii uses elliptic curve cryptography

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A user at the Nintendo-Scene forums just posted a lengthy post about his discovery that the Wii savegame files are signed and encrypted with NIST B 233 bit elliptic curve cryptography. Could this be the first step for a Wii softmod the homebrew community have waited for?
Media (Apple)

Submission + - The largest underground Mac community faces coup (macserialjunkie.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "In a palace coup only imaginable in one of Shakespeare's tragedies, a moderator faction of one of the largest underground Mac communities was shut out this weekend after it was discovered many staff members were staging a coup, including an attempt to surreptitiously acquire the domain. (http://www.macserialjunkie.com/) In an Steve Jobs-like "Open Letter to the Community", the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute. In an age of terrorism, are Western societies now taking cues from hostile countries instead of the other way around?"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Einstein's spooky action leads to quantum computer

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Physicists at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how two separate atoms can communicate with a sort of 'quantum intuition' which Albert Einstein referred to as "spooky". In doing so, the researchers have made an advance towards super-fast quantum computing and even a quantum internet.

The scientists used light to establish an "entanglement" between two atoms, which were trapped one metre apart in separate enclosures. "This link between remote atoms could be the fundamental piece of a radically new quantum computer architecture," said Professor Christopher Monroe, the principal investigator on the project who is now at the University of Maryland. "Now that the technique has been demonstrated, it should be possible to scale it up to networks of many interconnected components that will eventually be necessary for quantum information processing."

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