HarbingerKtS - Slashdot User

Submission + - Cable companies required to use CableCard

Submitted by dreamt on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:44PM

dreamt writes: According to an AP story (found on TivoBlog), starting July 1, Cable Companies will be required to use CableCard in their own rental set-top boxes. This will hopefully prevent disasters such as the Vista MediaCenter issues and various issues that various people have had with their Tivo Series 3 boxes, as the cable companies will be required to use Cable Card in their own boxes as well.

Submission + - The Theory of Unparticle Physics (physorg.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:38PM

eldavojohn writes: "There's a lot (potentially mad) scientists out there with theories that they hope will be proved/disproved by the Large Hadron Super Collider (LHC) that's under construction. Enter Professor Howard Georgi who has recently proposed unparticle physics or physics that cannot be explained by particles. Described as 'fun' by Georgi, this new theory would describe an uncharted area of the standard model where scale-invariance holds and properties of objects don't change when their dimensional qualities are multiplied by a scalar factor. You can access his first paper on Unparticle Physics as well as his second paper which are both up for review."

Submission + - Pentagon Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'

Submitted by nam37 on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:15PM

nam37 writes: CBS 5 has an interesting article about a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

Submission + - RIAA uses local cops in Oregon fleamarket raid

Submitted by

newtley

on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:26AM

newtley writes: "Fake cops employed by the RIAA started acting like real police officers quite a while ago, one of the earliest examples coming in Los Angeles in 2004. From a distance, the bust, "looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black 'raid' vests the unit members wore," said the LA Weekly. That their yellow stenciled lettering read 'RIAA' instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency, "was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo." But it's also SOP for the RIAA to tout genuine officers paid for entirely from citizen taxes as copyright cops. Police were used in an RIAA-inspired raid at two flea markets in Beaverton, Oregon. "Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000," says The Oregonian. But this is merely the tiny tip of an iceberg of absolutely staggering dimensions, an example of the extent coming in a GrayZone report slugged RIAA Anti-Piracy Seizure Information."

Comment Re:If DVD ripping is legal then.. (Score 1) 213

by HarbingerKtS on Monday April 30, 2007 @08:00AM (#18926041) Attached to: Kaleidescape Triumphant in Court Case, DVD Ripping Ruled Legal

Estoppel comes into play. Check it. For one moment lets go all hypothetical and say that what you're suggesting is true, and that the MPAA and CCA broke the law horribly by denying people fair-use rights. Well, they can then claim that they've been telling people for years that the discs are encrypted (which they have) and that any challenge on this ground these years later should be effectively ignored on the grounds that "the public knew we've been doing this for so long and said nothing."

Could that point be argued in court? Probably. But a good lawyer would pad the estoppel claim with many others just in case someone did manage to shoot it down.

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