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The Courts

Submission + - Copyright and the trillion dollar fashion industry

Submitted by Paul Fernhout
Paul Fernhout writes: The CS Monitor has an article about how leading fashion designers lobby to copyright their work to curb the knockoff industry. From the article: 'ABS and a growing number of other companies can copy these designs, most with minor alterations — different ruffles on the Versace skirt, for instance, or a single dress instead of two pieces on Blanchett's outfit — because unlike music and movies, fashion apparel cannot be copyrighted. Some industry analysts, and some consumers, applaud this, calling imitation the life-blood of the fashion world. Designers call it bad copyright law, and say even if it's legal, copying someone else's designs is at least unethical. A new federal bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R) of Virginia in 2006 and backed by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, would allow individuals to copyright a design for three years. CFDA executive director Steven Kolb expects the bill to be reintroduced this month. But as battle lines are being drawn, many cultural observers say this is more than a struggle over the future of a trillion-dollar global industry. It's also a window into changing American ideas about ownership and ethical behavior.'
Privacy

Journal SPAM: Danger Room: The Pentagon Wants TiVo to Watch You 256

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. So, what are the implications of using
Space

Submission + - Cassini Returns Amazing New Imagery from Saturn

Submitted by SeaDour
SeaDour writes: The Cassini spacecraft has recently entered a highly-inclined orbit around Saturn, revealing some never-before-seen images of the planet's ring system as seen from above and below the planet. "Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute. "Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before. It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo." The spacecraft will eventually return to its standard orbit parallel to the ring plane in late June.
Programming

Submission + - Why does Ruby shines

Submitted by
stefani
stefani writes: "Ruby on Rails made Ruby such a popular programming language. But why ? Why does Ruby shines? The maintainability side of Ruby on Rails is what people like. The fact that Ruby forces MVC on you helps too, also the fact that the templating and Object Relational Mapping (ORM) and testing and application code are all so tightly integrated helps. Good applications, once built, tend to be in production for an astonishingly long time. Which means that they have to be maintained for an astonishingly long time. Which means that maintainability is important. There are a lot of things that go into maintainability, but the biggest are object-orientation, MVC architecture, code readability, and code size."
Wireless Networking

The Assassination of Wi-Fi 258

Posted by Zonk from the sniper-has-range-on-the-target dept.
justelite writes "John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine has up an article looking at the new strategy of American cell-phone-service companies. From article: 'There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi. After all, it is a huge long-term threat to them. We've seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone-service companies are no dummies.'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Curiosity killed the cat and created gods .... 5

Journal by OldHawk777

/. Zonk Post: Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/04/1925246

No genetics and survival of the fittest depends on knowing what others fear, deny, and/or evade.
Curiosity, depends on genetics and survival of the fittest, to have the courage to overcome our
fear, deny flight/fight lower brain functions, and invade the unknown to learn and survive.
Windows

Submission + - Old PC games vs. the new ones

Submitted by
Dark_Brother
Dark_Brother writes: "Hello! [url=http://oldversusnew.blogspot.com/]This[url] is my first blog, so forgive me for some eventual mistakes. In this blog, I will write about the problem that bother many gamers. Or least I think so... Now, the problem is (fanfare, please...) lack of ideas and innovation in PC games. You certainly noticed that all the games of the specific genre are practically SAME. For example, look at Medal of Honor and Call of Duty (1 or 2, whatever). There certainly are some improvements, like AI, graphic and some minor things, but did you noticed ANY radical changes in gameplay? No? What a surprise! Their mechanic is almost same like mechanics in Wolfenstein 3D, for exmaple. In this blog, I will compare some new games (2005-2007), with their older brothers. This is just the beginning. There will be more games. I think I will add one comparing by a day (or two), so don't worry, there will be plenty to read! *Note: All that is written here is my personal opinion. All games that are here are OK, but mostly, their "old brothers" are better."
Programming

Submission + - 3rd edition of TopDev: the Open Coding Contest

Submitted by
Chrystel COASSIN
Chrystel COASSIN writes: "The third edition of the programming contest TopDev 2007 will take place on March 24th-25th 2007.
This contest is original by its independance from any languages. The winners will not be the fastest programmer, but the ones who will propose the greatest technical solution with the most complete documentation.("it's not a speed contest, upon an arithmetical problem").

Anyone can contest TopDev (students or professionals, alone or in pair,...). More than one thousand participants are expected for this world-wide contest. The previous edition gathered 750 concurrents from 65 countries.
A realistic and detailed business case is to be realized using any language (Java, PHP, C#, ASP.Net, Python) within only 60 hours, from home.

This contest is managed by a programmers association, independent from any programming software editors, in relation with the French Minister for Education and Research. A jury of professors of Universities (from U.S., Canada, France, Belgium, ...) decides on the winner.

For more information and Subscription : http://www.topdevone.com/"

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