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Nintendo

Wiimote Straps Result in Class Action Suit 812

Posted by Zonk from the sigh dept.
Kotaku reports the news that problems with breaking Wiimote straps has resulted in a class action lawsuit against Nintendo. From the press release about the suit: "Green Welling LLP filed a nationwide class action lawsuit on behalf of the owners of the Nintendo Wii against Nintendo of America, Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The class action lawsuit arose as result of the defective nature of the Nintendo Wii. In particular, the Nintendo Wii game console includes a remote and a wrist strap for the remote. Owners of the Nintendo Wii reported that when they used the Nintendo remote and wrist strap, as instructed by the material that accompanied the Wii console, the wrist strap broke and caused the remote to leave the user's hand. Nintendo's failure to include a remote that is free from defects is in breach of Nintendo's own product warranty."
The Courts

Submission + - Jack Thompson: "I'm out to shut down Rockstar.

Submitted by
SyncNine
SyncNine writes: "Jack Thompson was recently interviewed on Nightline by Bill Weir, in which he can be heard stating that "I want to shut down Rockstar because they're run by a bunch of sociopaths and they're a one-company crime wave." Something of value to note is that Bill Weir does a solid job of not agreeing with or really responding to Thompson's comments regarding this.

It seems that Thompson's vigilante quest to destroy all violence and disrespect in video games is actually a one-man assault on Rockstar Games, specifically. As his intentions at this point are crystal clear, at some point you've got to wonder how long Rockstar will put up with this before finding a way to counter-sue for lost revenue, etc. Does anyone think he'll succeed? Is he trying to wear Rockstar down?"
Media

Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal 364

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the google-next-on-their-list-of-targets dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent ruling in Federal court upheld the ruling that the operator and ISP that hosted the site 'mp3s4free.net' were guilty of copyright infringement violations because they provided access to the copyright material. From the article: 'Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."'"
Security

Submission + - Good Anti-Virus app for friends/family?

Submitted by
CTachyon
CTachyon writes: "A friend at work is having the usual Windows trouble with viruses and Trojans. She has an anti-virus program on there of some sort (unknown vintage, neither McAfee nor Symantec/Norton), and while it cleaned up a good chunk of the mess, there's still at least one more lurking on her system.

As one of the resident computer 'experts' at work, she came to me for advice. Unfortunately for her, I'm out of the Windows loop since I jumped ship to Linux years ago. While the proper thing for her to do at this point would be to back up her important data and reinstall from her recovery CD, I no longer have the patience for Windows to do that for anyone I'm not sleeping with, and it's a bit over her level of expertise to handle herself. That pretty much leaves trying another AV program.

Thus the problem. I'm out of the loop, so I don't know what's good and what's not. I did manage to instill in her a proper fear of Symantec/Norton, but I don't really know what I should recommend instead. If all else fails, I vaguely recall that AVG is decent, and it's little-f free (big plus for her). Do any of my fellow Slashdotters have some better advice for her?"
Toys

Submission + - New Type of Hot Air Blimp

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The lead story at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) is about a new kind of blimp. From the article "Alberto, whose name pays homage to Brazilian aviation pioneer, Alberto Santos-Dumont, is 102 feet long with a 70-foot diameter and uses hot air rather than helium for lift. Its innovative foldable frame (much like an giant umbrella) creates structural support of its hot-air envelope, and it has a fly-by-wire vectored thrust steering system. Alberto is a hybrid; a hot-air balloon with aluminum ribs that looks more like a blimp, but with a tail propeller that gives it directional control." Website for the blimp is www.personalblimp.com
Software

Submission + - Five issues Microsoft must deal with in 2007

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "It was a rough 2006 for Microsoft, relatively speaking for a company that posted $44 billion in revenue, as it weathered long-awaited new versions of Windows and Office. But as the software giant heads into 2007, the newest incarnations of its cash cows are out there, a number of important product upgrades are on the board, highlighted by Longhorn Server, and the path to success over the next 12 months is littered with other challenges. Here are five hurdles Microsoft must negotiate to stay on top in 2007. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/121806-five- issues-microsoft.html"
Space

Another Small Step Before the Giant Leap 277

Posted by Hemos from the a-brave-new-tomorrow dept.
Armchair Anarchist writes "Over at Futurismic, a new column proposes that NASA's plans to establish a lunar colony are an attempt to run before we can walk properly, and that developing orbital habitats first would be a wiser and more realistically attainable project. From the article: "... it seems to me that the trump card is with the orbitals; orbit is closer, cheaper and easier to get to, and offers more flexibility as a long-term outpost. Sure, let's put men back on the moon, mine it for helium-3, research its history and origins. But it makes more sense to launch missions of that type from an already-established colony in orbit.""
Software

Submission + - Various ways of detecting rootkits in GNU/Linux

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article explains two ways in which you can detect any rootkits in your machine running Linux, infact any version of Unix. Rootkits are widely used by hackers to get information residing in the computer as well as to do things in the system impervious to the user and without his permission.
The article notes...
Hackers are not the only ones who are found to introduce rootkits in your machine. Recently Sony — a multi billion dollar company, was found guilty of surreptitiously installing a rootkit when a user played one of their music CDs on Windows platform.This was designed *supposedly* to stop copyright infringement. And leading to a furore world wide, they withdrew the CD from the market.
Security

Submission + - The Dangers of Improper Cookie Use

Submitted by shifted89
shifted89 writes: Over the last year, the security community have exposed web application security for what it is — extremely lacking. However, for all the focus on XSS, CSRF, history stealing, etc., not much attention has been given to the cookie. Unfortunately, cookie misuse can be just as dangerous, if not more so than XSS attacks and InformIT illustrates why. In short, the author clearly demonstrates what can happen when a website improperly uses cookies for customer tracking — including a working illustration.
Censorship

Submission + - Blogging in Iran takes courage

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "This morning's Boston Globe has a thought-provoking profile of Iranian bloggers who are risking everything, quite literally, to bring a modicum of openness and truth to a society where the former is not tolerated and the latter strictly defined by government/religious authorities. It's worth taking a moment to salute their courage.

Globe story:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articl es/2006/12/18/iran_bloggers_test_regimes_tolerance /

Blog post about it:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9808 "
Microsoft

Submission + - Zune Sales Continue to Weaken

Submitted by Dak RIT
Dak RIT writes: Market share data for the first month of Microsoft's Zune sales is now available, and appears to confirm that after the initial hype, sales have fallen off dramatically. Microsoft came in fourth for sales during the month of November with only 1.9% of the market. Apple remained unchanged at 62.2%, and SanDisk even managed to increase to 18.4% (looks like the Zune might not even be able to compete with the rest of the market, let alone the iPod). The one surprise though is that the brown Zune is apparently not only being bought, but more popular than the white model.
Movies

Submission + - BubblePLY.com: Make Your Own Pop-Up Video

Submitted by
doublebubble
doublebubble writes: "A new website, Bubbleply.com has just been launched, which allows users to easily make creative additions to any online video, much like a "user-generated pop-up video". BubblePLY.com is the first of a series of interactive applications that has been developed by PLYmedia, a company whose technology enables layers of independent content to be added on top of any existing video so they can be viewed together. BubblePLY employs innovative technology whereby a transparent layer, known as a 'PLY' is created. This PLY is placed on top of a video on which independent content can be added without infringing upon the original content owners rights as their video is never altered, edited nor copied. On this layer, the user can add "Bubbles" — similar to those in comics such as a speech, thought or commentary captions — that can currently include comments, links and other effects to accompany, explain or enhance the underlying video. Shortly, pictures and sounds will be able to be added too."
The Internet

Submission + - Copyright Holders Sign China Piracy Agreement

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "On Friday, a whole bunch of associations signed an agreement with China to combat internet piracy. From the article, "China's National Copyright Administration said the country would investigate and punish those suspected of online intellectual property abuses by the movie association as well as other groups such as the Association of American Publishers." From another article, I found that not only was it the MPA but also the Business Software Alliance (BSA), Association of American Publishers (AAP) and The Publishers Association (TPA) of the U.K."
Databases

Submission + - MySQL's Questionable Activities

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "There's a two page article at ITWire about a recent deal that MySQL did with Microsoft and delays in releases for Debian. The open source company has struck a deal to make a plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 which would make it possible for Visual Studio developers to build applications for MySQL. It would also mean that users can manage MySQL databases from Studio environments. There's nothing wrong with building interoperability of your product but the question remains whether this plug-in or subsequent improvements/additions to it will be open source. It is also curious that MySQL has delayed production of binaries for its enterprise product for Debian. Is this a sign that supporting Microsoft is slowly becoming a primary concern for this open source company?"

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