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Media

The Perils of DRM — When Content Providers Die 275

Posted by Soulskill from the involuntary-renting dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you purchase music or movies online, what happens if the vendor goes out of business? Will you have trouble accessing your content? The question came up recently after HDGiants — provider of high-quality audio and video downloads — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A consumer says his content became locked inside his PC. Walmart customers suffered a similar fate last year when the retailer shut down its DRM servers (a decision they reversed after many complaints). And if Vudu dies? Your content may be locked in a proprietary box forever. Time to start buying discs again?"

Comment Re:Welcome to 1995 (Score 1) 254

by DramaGeek (#28209103) Attached to: Music Streaming to Overtake Downloads

...what we can do for free without their hardware (yeah, Verizon, I'm looking at YOU).

In some cases, we can do it for free WITH their hardware, too. I had a Motorola E815 a few years ago. Motorola designed it with a bunch of features (Bluetooth OBEX, microSD usage, Dialup tethering, music player off internal memory, etc.) that Verizon disabled so that you would have to pay and use their Get It Now service.

Fortunately, it was fairly easy so seem-edit the phone, and with the USB tether for the phone and a few questionably-legal programs you could re-enable all of the features. If you were really dedicated to the task, you could mash some of the alltel firmware in, and run Java (though I never did).

I would have replaced it with another of the same model (it was falling apart from wear and tear), but of course it had been replaced by the 'newest and greatest.'

Oh, and the best part of the phone? It DIDN'T run Verizon's OS.
Television

Norwegian Broadcasting Sets Up Its Own Tracker 187

Posted by timothy from the some-things-are-neutral dept.
eirikso writes with an interesting story from Norway; the state broadcaster there has decided to put up some of its content on BitTorrent. "The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."
Image

Student Arrested For Classroom Texting Screenshot-sm 1246

Posted by samzenpus from the the-strong-arm-of-the-education-system dept.
A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she refused to stop texting during a high school math class. The girl denied having a phone when confronted by a school safety officer, but a female cop found it after frisking her. The Samsung Cricket was recovered "from the buttocks area" of the teenager, according to the police report. The girl was banned from school property for a week, and is scheduled for an April 20 court appearance for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. I applaud the adults involved for their discretion and temperance in this heinous case of texting without permission.

Comment Re:Doesn't need to be a spaceship (Score 2, Informative) 436

by DramaGeek (#26524071) Attached to: The Science and Physics of Back To the Future
Actually, it looks like you're pretty close:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine#Operation

"As it accelerates, several rails around the body of the car glow blue, a wormhole generator on top of the car makes a wormhole in front of the car."

As I remember, the car does shoot a couple of sparks or something forward just before the jump.
Space

Soyuz 4/5 Made History 40 Years Ago Today 166

Posted by kdawson from the probably-wearing-dockers dept.
dj writes in with a reminder that forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, the two Russian spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft. Wired's piece gives a gripping account of "one of the roughest re-entries in the history of space flight": "Soyuz 5's service module failed to detach at retrofire, causing the vehicle to assume an aerodynamic position that left the heat shield pointed the wrong way as it re-entered the atmosphere. The only thing standing between Volynov and a fiery death was the command module's thin hatch cover. The interior of Volynov's capsule filled with noxious fumes as the gaskets sealing the hatch started to burn, and it got very hot in there (which, a short time later was something he probably missed). ... But wait. There's more."
Earth

Robot Submarine To Dive Deep In the Caribbean 99

Posted by Soulskill from the why-don't-we-make-robot-sharks-instead dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to BBC News, a new UK autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), Autosub6000, will soon start to explore the world's deepest undersea volcanoes, located in the Caribbean. Autosub6000 has a range of up to 1,000 kilometers and has a maximum operating depth of 6,000 meters. It is 5.5 meters long, has a diameter of 0.9 meters, and is equipped with a high-performance GPS unit. For these two expeditions, each close to a month long, Autosub6000 will be joined by the Isis remotely operated vehicle, which is able to operate at a depth of 6,000 meters and grab animal specimens. Researchers from the National Oceanography Center in Southampton will lead these missions. They expect that 'one in every two animals they come across will be a species new to science' once the robots reach a depth of 3,000 meters." Specifications for the submarine (PDF) are also available.
It's funny. Laugh.

Geohashing Meets an Angry Rancher With Firearms 800

Posted by Soulskill from the viral-marketing-for-xkcd-fps dept.
katicli writes "Geohashing, an obscure xkcd pastime which involves going to random coordinates generated by md5 hashing, the date, and the opening status of the stock market, appears to have just gotten far more interesting. The official wiki reports a warning for other geohashers intending to go to the spot designated for June 14th in the San Francisco area, as several avid fans of xkcd were met by an angry rancher and firearms."
Windows

TechNet Users Revolt Over Vista SP1 Unavailability 203

Posted by kdawson from the core-available-but-not-to-you dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "There's a growing revolt among Microsoft TechNet & MSDN subscribers who are frustrated that they can't yet get Vista SP1 and test their software on it. This can't be good news for anyone hoping that SP1 will have better compatibility. While SP1 has been released to manufacturing, and pirate copies are easy to find, Microsoft is withholding it from subscribers until early March. According to the article, some frustrated users are upset enough that they plan to abandon TechNet entirely and turn to piracy." Update: 02/12 17:37 GMT by KD : Sean0michael writes, "Aaccording to the Technet blog, they have pushed up the date to before the end of February, though no exact date is mentioned."
Space

Submission + - Arecibo Observatory's Future in Doubt

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The future is hazy for the legendary Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico, a 'jewel of space instruments'. The New York Times reports that the National Science Foundation, which pays for the observatory's operation, has slashed Arecibo's annual budget from $10.5 million to $8 million, and may close it altogether in four years, imperiling its historic work, including its detection of the near-Earth asteroid KW4 eight years ago. "The planetary science community is in danger of losing one of its instrumental crown jewels," Donald K. Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics."
Media

Submission + - FOX News content too racy for Digg and YouTube (bravenewfilms.org) 1

Submitted by
Leighton Woodhouse
Leighton Woodhouse writes: "Hi, my name is Leighton Woodhouse and I'm the Communications Director at Brave New Films. Last week, we had an experience with our latest YouTube video release that we thought you might be interested in hearing about.

The editors at Digg.com temporarily banned Brave New Films from posting on their site, and YouTube flagged our latest video as inappropriate for minors. We've been penalized for submitting "Adult Content" to each of the web sites.

What did we post? Clips from FOX News.

A little background: Brave New Films is the producer of "OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Following on the success of that feature length documentary, BNF has been busy producing short online videos highlighting FOX's flagrant biases and the speciousness of its claim to be a real news organization. The series is called "FOX Attacks."

We've produced videos focused on FOX's racism, its warmongering, its global warming denial, and numerous other issues. Our latest video, which has garnered well over half a million views and counting, focuses on FOX's technique of driving up ratings by featuring explicit sexual content, frequently in stories denouncing the moral depravity of the "liberal media" for broadcasting that very material. The video, as you will see, masquerades as adult entertainment:

http://foxnewsporn.com/

You might wonder, as we did: Are the editors at Digg and YouTube just clueless, and incapable of understanding parody? After all, we weren't posting actual "adult content," just content lifted from FOX News programs that we facetiously labeled X-rated. Right?

Apparently not, according to one such Digg editor, who patiently explained to us that "that submission was Adult content. Yes, it was against our TOS, even though it was broadcast on FOX."

We thought we were doing parody, but apparently we weren't. According to Digg, FOX News IS porn. No irony necessary.

Our question is: Could Digg have banned BNF to cozy up to the News Corp., owner of FOX News, which they're rumored to be courting for a possible acquisition?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/24/digg-does-the-acquisition-dance-with-news-corp/

Our privileges have now been reinstated at Digg, after we were forced to promise that we wouldn't post FOX News' inappropriate content again. And after a minor rebellion by Digg users, Digg founder Kevin Rose was even forced to post a personal apology for censoring us.

YouTube, however, still has our sample of FOX News' footage behind an adult content firewall.

If you're interested in learning more about this story, please let me know. We'd like people to learn about this ridiculous episode, and I'm happy to help however I can."

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