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Government

James Murdoch Criticizes BBC For Providing "Free News" 703

Hugh Pickens writes "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a 'dominant' BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. 'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch. 'The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.' In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US." Note that James Murdoch is the son of Rupert Murdoch.

Comment Re:Energy Space (Score 1) 304

It seems that if you keep reading the link, there's a lot more than just "THOUGHT"...

"The Moon's surface contains helium-3 at concentrations on the order of 0.01 ppm."

"each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world." - Chinese Lunar Exploration Program

"In January 2006, the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020,[43] if funding can be found."

Medicine

Scientists Turn Used LCDs Into Medicine 30

schliz writes "Scientists from the University of York have come up with a new recycling technique that extracts PVA from used LCD panels to create a 'a bioactive sponge.' The technique could allow recovered PVA to be used in pills, wound dressings and tissue scaffolds that aid human tissue regeneration. It could also keep waste LCD screens from incineration or landfill altogether."
The Courts

Judgement Against Microsoft Declares XML Editing Software To Be Worth $98? 230

Many people have written to tell us about the patent infringement lawsuit that resulted in a $200 million judgement against Microsoft by a small Toronto firm called i4i. Techdirt has a line on the details of the suit where the patent in question is for "separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document." i4i argues that this covers basic XML editing to the tune of $98 per application. "It's quite troubling that doing something as simple as adding an XML editor should infringe on a patent, but what's even more troubling is that the court somehow ruled that such an editor was worth $98 in the copies of Microsoft Word where it was used. An XML editor. $98. And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?"
Books

What Can I Do About Book Pirates? 987

peterwayner writes "Six of the top ten links on a Google search for one of my books point to a pirate site when I type in 'wayner data compression textbook.' Others search strings actually locate pages that are selling legit copies including digital editions for the Kindle. I've started looking around for suggestions. Any thoughts from the Slashdot crowd? The free copies aren't boosting sales for my books. Do I (1) get another job, (2) sue people, or (3) invent some magic spell? Is society going to be able to support people who synthesize knowledge or will we need to rely on the Wikipedia for everything? I'm open to suggestions."

Comment Re:Dispute resolution? (Score 1) 343

Is there a dispute resolution mechanism if I happen to be a Frenchman who's been falsely accused three times (I'm not French, and I haven't been accused of filesharing, I'm just curious).

But have you ever been accused of being French?

If someone accuses you of being French three times, you get to pass unfair laws that no one wants.

Media

Boxee Drops Hulu Support 375

frdmfghtr writes "According to a boxee blog entry, Hulu will no longer be supported. From the post: 'two weeks ago Hulu called and told us their content partners were asking them to remove Hulu from boxee. we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it. you can see their blog post about the issues they are facing.' Reading the hulu blog post, the only 'issue' I see facing Hulu is that content providers have (once again) shot themselves in the foot, switching off a media conduit they should have been promoting." Update: 02/19 14:31 GMT by T : Jamie points out this interesting (speculative) piece at O'Reilly Radar about the thought process that may have driven the decision.
The Almighty Buck

Vital Parts of Games As DLC? 446

Epic Games president Michael Capps did an interview recently with GamesIndustry, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of downloadable content, and how it will affect the retail games market. He also discussed the trend toward social gaming, and Epic's plans in that regard. Quoting: "I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by ... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code. I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used — way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."

Comment My experiences... (Score 1) 895

I recently finished upgrading my setup from a five-year-old 32" CRT HDTV to a 70" SXRD.
I upgraded the TV first. I was very disappointed with the performance when I put the first disk in the player. It looked very grainy and splotchy. You could see all the compression artifacts. It was very sad.

I upgraded the DVD player to a very good Oppo DVD player that was advertised as having an extremely good up-converter. I found that this gave much better results, but it didn't really knock my socks off. Impressive, yes. But not anything that made me wet my pants.

After HD-DVD threw in the towel, I finally upgraded my PS2 to a PS3. When I put in the first Blu-Ray movie into the PS3, I finally had my first bout of incontinence. It looked better than I thought possible on a TV screen.

I set up the system so I could flip between my old DVD player and the PS3 Blu-Ray version of the movie 2001. It really amazed me. The Blu-Ray version was so full of detail and so devoid of artifacts. Almost a year later, the TV finally had achieved its potential.

Ever since, I've stopped buying regular DVDs and started looking for sales to replace some of the action/Sci-Fi DVDs with Blu-Rays.

Now, for some background.
When the HD-DVD / Blu-Ray war began, I hated it. I didn't have a very big HDTV, but it looked great with my ancient DVD player. I chalked the battle up to the studios pushing a new technology into a market that just didn't need it. I didn't want to buy a new player and I really didn't want to replace all my movies with yet another standard.
All that changed once I saw how things look on a really big TV screen. Once you get a screen that lets you really see how bad compression can get, you understand why an uncompressed movie makes such a difference.

I still think Blu-ray is too expensive, which causes quite a barrier, but it will eventually come down. I don't think Blu-rays will go the way of Laser Discs, but it's going to take a while for them to take down DVDs...

Privacy

DHS Allowed To Take Laptops Indefinitely 1123

andy1307 writes with a Washington Post story giving details of Department of Homeland Security policies for border searches of laptops and other electronic devices (as well as papers). (We have been discussing border searches for a while now.) DHS says such procedures have long been in place but were "disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter," according to the article. Here is a link to the policy (PDF, 5 pages). "Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption, or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement... DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including US citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism... The policies cover 'any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,' including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover 'all papers and other written documentation,' including books, pamphlets and 'written materials commonly referred to as "pocket trash..."'"
Bug

Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix 377

RCTrucker7 writes with a link to a Maximum PC story, which begins: "Details of Dell's surreptitious collusion with RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) have emerged. Apparently, the computer manufacturer disabled the Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/Wave Out sound recording function on certain notebooks to assuage RIAA. The hardware functionality is being disabled without any prior notice and one blogger has even alleged that he was asked by Dell's customer support staff to [shell] out $99 if he desired the stereo mix option. Gateway and Pac Bell are the other two manufacturers to have bowed to RIAA at the expense of their customers' satisfaction and disabled stereo mix without warning." (There are some workarounds posted in the comments of the linked article.)

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