Comment Re:What a great example! (Score 1) 544
My lawn.
Off it.
Now.
P.S. To the ~0.8% of you to whom this does not apply: sorry.
Submission + - RIAA 'making available' theory rejected in Barker (blogspot.com)
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In a 25-page decision (pdf) which has been awaited for two years in Elektra v. Barker, Judge Kenneth M. Karas has rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory and its "authorization" theory, but sustained the sufficiency of the complaint's allegations of "distribution" and "downloading", and also gave the RIAA 30 days to cure the defects in its complaint by filing a new complaint. The judge left it open for the RIAA to allege that defendant made an "offer to distribute", and that the offer was for "the purpose of further distribution", which, the judge held, would be actionable."
Submission + - Intel Releases 965/G35 IGP Documentation (phoronix.com) 1
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Intel is now releasing specifications for the 965/G35 integrated graphics processors. While there have long been open source display drivers for them, the specifications themselves were not available without an NDA until recently. The specifications are now available under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License."
Submission + - Learning From Columbia Disaster, 5 Years Later (popularmechanics.com)
mattnyc99 writes: It's hard to believe that five years have passed since the Columbia Space Shuttle went down on Feb. 1, 2003, but NASA is remembering the loss, while the legacy of the crew lives on and the disaster affects plans for the Shuttle's replacement every day. From former astronaut Tom Jones: "Columbia's loss forced the realization that the aging, fragile shuttle had to be replaced. Now that the process has begun, the president and Congress have failed to deliver promised funding, and NASA is wrestling with capsule-weight and booster-vibration problems; Orion's piloted debut has slipped back to early 2015. But its safety-oriented design shows the agency is trying to put Columbia's costly lessons into practice, lowering risks for future astronauts."
Submission + - Engineers == terrorist mindset?
whoever57 writes: An article
EE Times, notes a study by two Oxford University researchers — Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog" in which they point to overrepresentaion of engineers in Islamist movements, and especially in violent groups.
The paper's abstract states: "We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering,
and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the
Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have
emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone
are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups"
The original paper is here
Submission + - MSFT and McLaren to provide Engine Controls to F1 (speedtv.com)
onescomplement writes: "Formula One, in a probably vain attempt to contain costs, has partnered with McLaren and Microsoft for a standard Engine Control Unit. Orignally this was meant to control "driver aids" such as traction and skid control but the regulating organization figured out that it was folly to try to figure out whether the system was being gamed. (Can you say obscured code? Sure, I knew you could.)
One comment I found kind of hilarious was that "...There is a huge engineering community in motorsport and the way they look at data is all built on the products that sit on PCs. Most of those PCs are running core infrastructure that comes from Microsoft. In motorsport you operate as close to the boundaries as you are comfortable doing. Getting close to Microsoft allows you to push those boundaries in that area."
Huh?"
One comment I found kind of hilarious was that "...There is a huge engineering community in motorsport and the way they look at data is all built on the products that sit on PCs. Most of those PCs are running core infrastructure that comes from Microsoft. In motorsport you operate as close to the boundaries as you are comfortable doing. Getting close to Microsoft allows you to push those boundaries in that area."
Huh?"
Submission + - Collapsed UK bank attempts to censor Wikileaks (wikileaks.org)
James Hardine writes: Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn. The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands! The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know.
Submission + - FBI wants you to help solve 36-year old mystery (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "In what is likely the last push to solve one the most notorious crimes of this century, the FBI this week opened previously sealed files and unseen photos on the now 36 year old Dan (DB) Cooper hijacking case. In November 1971, between Seattle and Reno, Cooper parachuted out of the back of an airliner he'd hijacked with a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash. He's never been found, though some of the stolen money was recovered. This week the FBI Special Agent Larry Carr put out new information and a release looking for further public help in solving the 36-year old mystery. "This case is 36 years old, it's beyond its expiration date, but I asked for the case because I was intrigued with it," Carr told the New York Times. Carr, a federal agent based in Seattle who usually investigates bank robberies, and who was 4 when the hijacking occurred. "I remember as a child reading about it and wondering what had happened. It's surreal that after 36 years here I am, the only investigator left. I wanted to take a shot at solving it."
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23435"
Submission + - Research: Drivers on cellphones cause traffic jams (networkworld.com)
BobB-NW writes: University of Utah researchers have conducted a new study that drivers on cell phones are to blame for more than causing accidents — they also cause traffic jams. And that costs society plenty, too, in lost productivity and fuel costs.
Submission + - Lessig Corrects ASCAP on Creative Commons (lessig.org)
Submission + - Tax on camera storage to benefit RIAA
An anonymous reader writes: "New levies proposed for iPods and memory cards": The Canadian government is proposing that the common, portable, digital storage mediums (DVDs, CDs, compact flash, SD cards, etc) be whacked with a levy to reflect their use in piracy and that the money from that levy goes to...you guessed it, the music industry. If it were just CDs, I might be happy, but solid state storage is just a bridge too far.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071221/copyright_act_071221/20071222?hub=Canada
Submission + - New York judge grabs all Brooklyn RIAA cases
newtley writes: ""I wonder how many of the defendants think the settlements were 'equitable'?" That's Recording Industry vs The People on news that a New York judge has decided only he and another judge should preside over Brooklyn cases. Judge J. Trager, "has denied the motions by the defendants in two Brooklyn cases, Maverick v Chowdhury and Elektra v Torres, for random judicial assignment of RIAA cases," it says. Trager holds, "the cases should all continue to be assigned just to himself and Magistrate Judge Levy". In this decision denying the defendants' motion, "Judge Trager said that (a) many of the defendants have retained the same attorneys, (b) there have been approximately 350 RIAA cases in the Eastern District of New York, and (c) Magistrate Levy has brought about 'equitable settlements'," says RIvTP's Ray Beckerman."
Submission + - Bell Canada DSL service throttles P2P arbitrarily
Dembonez writes: The fine folks over at P2Pnet.net have compiled some great details on a very dirty deed. That is, Bell Canada as a DSL ISP is following the lead of Comcast in the US and Rogers up in Canada by throttling P2P traffic. Beyond what the other two are doing, Bell are imposing bandwidth caps for 'unlimited' service subsribers, stating that they've gone over the allotted bandwidth restriction for the month. Of course, nowhere in their terms of service do they outline what that restriction is for unlimited users.
It gets better, though!
Bell being an ILEC have 3rd party reseller ISPs. If you were to leave Bell after being identified as a heavy user, they'll deny any of their 3rd party resellers from signing you up!
Bell being as big as they are, they have 3 of the 5 seats on the committee for fair competition in Canada. This means that it's highly unlikely that any complaint about unfair business practices or false advertising would be quashed.
If you're in Canada and using Bell, send them a message... and go elsewhere.
Want to know more? TFA: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13883
Submission + - Judge Rules Investigation Into CIA Tapes Legal (aljazeera.net)
TDarwin writes: Many may know that the Bush Administration, through the Justice Department, tried to stop the investigation into the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes by saying that the incidents didn't happen in Guantanamo and therefore were not protected by previous orders to keep any evidence of the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.
On December 19th, A Federal Judge ruled that this was not the case and that the investigation into the tapes' deletion could continue. For more, see this article from Al Jazeera.
Submission + - Time Warner Cable Wins State-Wide Cable Franchise (state.oh.us) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Time Warner Cable has received the second state-wide franchise agreement, covering 260 communities, in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide agreement.
Normally operators negotiate franchise agreements at the local level.
