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MPAA Goes After Home Entertainment Systems 402

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the jokes-that-some-people-just-wont-get dept.
philba writes to tell us that home theaters may become the new jurisdiction of our MPAA overlords. The MPAA is lobbying to make sure that home users authorize their entertainment systems before any in-home viewings. From the article: "The MPAA defines a home theater as any home with a television larger than 29" with stereo sound and at least two comfortable chairs, couch, or futon. Anyone with a home theater would need to pay a $50 registration fee with the MPAA or face fines up to $500,000 per movie shown."

The Failure of the $100 Laptop? 487

Posted by Zonk from the one-laptop-per-oops-you-need-juice dept.
RobertinXinyang writes "MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals, and the potential of the project to harm people in developing nations. The article goes on to liken the project to 'good-natured showboating', and cites the unreality of a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut. Perhaps there are better things to do with our time and money in developing nations?" From the article: "The entire idea may be misguided and counterproductive. At least that's what Stanford journalism lecturer an Africa watcher G. Pascal Zachary thinks. The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year, so why waste that sum on a laptop? What are they thinking? The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem. The real problem is lost mind share. The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."

Dvorak On Microsoft/Novell Deal 218

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-all-wear-party-hats dept.
zaxios writes, "John C. Dvorak has weighed in on the recent Novell-Microsoft pact. Among his insights: 'Microsoft has been leery of doing too much with Linux because of all the weirdness with the licenses and the possibility that one false move would make a Microsoft product public domain at worst, or subject to the GPL at best.' But now, 'the idea is to create some sort of code that is jammed into Linux and whose sole purpose is to let some proprietary code run under Linux without actually "touching" Linux in any way that would subject the proprietary code to the GPL.' According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."

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