Comment Re:'Never forwarded that information' (Score 1) 179
Who knows, but at least the prosecutor did the right thing and dropped the charges instead of dragging it on and on and on (and so forth).
Comment Re:doesn't make sense (Score 1) 642
Please tell me why you think you need a passport to leave the USA ??
A passport is simply a note from the US state department documenting that you are a USA citizen. Some countries may require you to have one to enter it ( the other country ) But you sure do not need one to LEAVE the usa
Actually, I've had my passport checked by ICE as I was leaving the US by car. The Sweetwater border crossing in MT requires you to have your passport checked by ICE before you get to the Canadian border. They pulled the car in front of my off to the side and searched it.
And yes, I have see this multiple times at that crossing.
*ICE = Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Comment Re:Is this legal? (Score 1) 148
There is no good reason the CBC cannot approach the copyright holders of Creative Commons works the same way they approach the copyright holders of commercial works. In fact the CBC is much more likely to obtain permission without having to spend money in the case of CC-licensed works. There's no good reason why they would have to completely avoid this option.
There's no good reason but there is a reason. There is a lot of money and political clout behind the monied copyright interests. This maneuver benefits them, satisfying "que bono?". The question is whether you think that's a complete and total coincidence caused by a completely free, unprompted, un-coerced, un-pressured decision on the part of CBC. Anyone who wants to believe that so badly that they'll dismiss all other notions as "conspiracy theory, get a perspective" is either naive or deluded.
I've got another reason for you. Time and money. Consider this.
Negotiation for license rights = 50/hr (numbers pulled out of my ass. This includes the negotiations, contract signing, accounting to cut any cheque for payment, time for the legal dept to review the contract, etc)
So, to license from a library of works = 4 hours of work.
To license from 750 different license holders = 3000 hours of work.
Hmm....$200 in labour for a blanket license, or $150,000 to license 3 songs / podcast (5 shows a week + 2 weeks vacation/reruns in a year. Add in the costs of researching and maintaining records of each license agreement....). As long as the cost of the exclusive library license is less then the cost of negotiating all those individual license agreements, CBC will go exclusive.
Could they go and use CC music? Yeah, no reason not too other then the cost.
Rare Sharing of Data Led To Results In Alzheimer's Research 159
jamie passes along a story in the NY Times about how an unprecedented level of openness and data-sharing among scientists involved in the study of Alzheimer's disease has yielded a wealth of new research papers and may become the template for making progress in dealing with other afflictions. Quoting:
"The key to the Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. 'It was unbelievable,' said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer's researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. 'It's not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.'"
Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope
the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new
Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under
disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source
projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."
Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What? 258
The Opposable Thumbs blog is running an interesting article contrasting everything Activision did "wrong" in creating and marketing Modern Warfare 2 with the game's unqualified success. Despite price hikes, somewhat shady review practices, exploit frustrations, and the dedicated server fiasco, the game has raked in over a billion dollars in sales.
"There was only one way to review Modern Warfare 2: on the Xbox 360, in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision. Accepting the paid trip, along with room and board, was the only way you were going to get a review before launch. Joystiq noted that this broke their ethics policy, but they went anyway. Who can say no to a review destined to bring in traffic? Shacknews refused to call their coverage a 'review' because of the ethical issues inherent in the situation, but that stance was unique. The vast majority of news outlets didn't disclose how the review was conducted, or added a disclaimer after the nature of the review was made public. This proved to Activision that if you're big enough, you can dictate the exact terms of any review, and no ethics policy will make news outlets turn you down."
Comment Simple answer perhaps? (Score 1) 964
Maybe they just didn't have distribution rights for that models images outside of North America? Always possible that is what happened, and it didn't get caught until late enough that it was cheaper to photoshop then reshoot.
I know, I know, how dare I give them benefit of the doubt.
US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."
3 Firms Confess To Fixing LCD Prices, Agree To Pay $585M Fine 417
Oldyeller89 writes "LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They fixed the prices on LCD screens used not only in their products but also in other products such as Apple's iPods. The three companies agreed to pay $585 million in fines. Perhaps this will cause the price of our TVs to drop?" The New York Times also has a story on the outcome of this case.
Comment Re:Karma (Score 1) 616
sadly they only have to give you the minimum required by law at that point.
In Alberta:
* one week - for employment of more than three months, but less than two years
* two weeks - for employment of two years, but less than four years,
* four weeks - for employment of four years, but less than six years,
* five weeks - for employment of six years, but less than eight years,
* six weeks - for employment of eight years, but less than 10 years, and
* eight weeks - for employment of 10 years or more.
Australian Police Chief Seeks Terror Reporting Ban 146
DJMajah writes "News.com.au reports that Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty has called for a media blackout on reporting of terrorism investigations and cases before trial in a speech to the Sydney Institute last night. Although he doesn't believe public institutions should be immune from public accountability, he goes on to say that public discussion should be delayed until information is made available by the courts or legal proceedings are complete. This all comes after last year's widely reported case of Dr. Mohammed Haneef who was detained then later deported from Australia on evidence described as weak — and seen by some, including Haneef, as a conspiracy."
US Military Leaks its Secrets Online 198
athloi writes "Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq, geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad and plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan are among the items accidentally left online by government agencies and contractors."
Underfunded NSA Suffers Brownouts 198
An anonymous reader writes "Almost ten years after the an internal report, and a year after a Baltimore sun story warned that the electrical system at the fort Meade NSA HQ couldn't keep up with the growing electricity demand ... the problem has got worse. The 'NSA has had to resort to partial, rolling brownouts at its computer farms and scheduled power outages and some offices are experiencing significant power disruptions'. NSA director Alexander testified to congress about this problem. It is suggested he wanted to add more than $800 million to the 07 budget. A recent public powerpoint presentation suggested 70% of of all intelligence spending goes to contractors. It also included a graph, without numbers, of this spending. It suggests that US intelligence spending is around $60 billion. An internal survey that showed NSA employees have problems trusting each other."
Submission + - Legal guitar tabs return to the 'Net
Guitar Hero writes: Guitar players will soon be able to access guitar tablatures online, thanks to an agreement between the Music Publishers Association and Musicnotes. Popular and free online guitar tab sites were shut down last summer after the MPA said that the sites — which were built on the contributions of individual guitar players — infringed on their copyrights. The new site will go online this summer and will be ad-supported: 'the site will be making its money from users, who create and edit the tabs in question. Users get free access to legal tabs, while Musicnotes and music publishers get the cash. Will guitar players want to donate their time and energy to propping up The Man? Probably, if the site is slick, enough publishers sign on, and everything is fast and simple to use.'
Submission + - Windows Vista restricts GNU GCC apps to 32 MB
Dave Coffin writes: "In Windows Vista, applications that don't link the Win32 API cannot use more than 32 MB of RAM. This affects all executables generated by GNU compilers. No such limit exists in earlier versions of Windows, and no work-around has yet been found. See http://www.trnicely.net/misc/vista.html for details."
