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Supreme Court Hears Texting Privacy Case->

Submitted by Bryan Gividen
Bryan Gividen writes "The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in City of Chino v. Quon today. As Slashdot reported, the case is about a policy officer from Ontario, California who used his government issued pager to receive sexually explicit messages. The department pulled the records of his messages and the employee sued for a violation of his civil rights. A copy of the transcript is available from the Supreme Court's website."
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Comment: Re:Good Idea (Score 1) 544

by Bryan Gividen (#31487640) Attached to: Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA

who the frack cares what a college student has to say?

I do when that college student has a PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Chemistry, was lead bioinformatics scientist at a pharmaceutical company, and goes to the most prestigious law school in the United States (possibly world). (Source: http://www.seringhaus.net/bio.html)

Comment: Doesn't Create a Need (Score 4, Insightful) 1713

by Bryan Gividen (#30921288) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open
This entire presentation seems a little disappointing. Really, it looks, acts, and feels like a giant iPod Touch. Whereas the iPhone and iPod really created a need , I don't see that this substantially innovate to make it a must-have. It doesn't seem to improve on anything so substantially that it is an obvious choice. Maybe I need to see a few more videos, but I don't see this pulling serious market share away from Kindle's targeted market segment.

Linux Media Center Apps?

Submitted by Bryan Gividen
Bryan Gividen writes "I am looking to turn my quickly-aging Dell Laptop into a Linux Media Center that I will hook up to a flatscreen TV. As a Linux novice, I use Ubuntu and am looking for good applications to make it a complete Media Center. Thing is, I don't know how complete, complete can be. I turn to Slashdot to guide me on everything I should install and any additional hardware I ought to look into."
It's funny. Laugh.

Alaskan Blob is an Algae Bloom->

Submitted by Bryan Gividen
Bryan Gividen writes "Time.com is running a story on the previously unidentified blob floating off of the coast of Alaska. The article states that the blob is an algae bloom — far less sinister (or exciting) than any The Thing or The Blob comparison that was jokingly made. From the article: "'It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while.' The blob, Konar said, is a microalgae made up of 'billions and billions of individuals.'""
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The Courts

RIAA Loses Bid To Keep Revenues Secret-> 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's motion to keep secret the record companies' 1999-to-date revenues for the copyrighted song files at the heart of the case has been denied, in the Boston case scheduled for trial July 27th, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The Judge had previously ordered the plaintiff record companies to produce a summary of the 1999-to-date revenues for the recordings, broken down into physical and digital sales. On the day the summary was due to be produced, instead of producing it, they produced a 'protective order motion' asking the Judge to rule that the information would have to be kept secret. The Judge rejected that motion : 'the Court does not comprehend how disclosure would impair the Plaintiffs' competitive business prospects when three of the four biggest record labels in the world — Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and UMG Recording, Inc. — are participating jointly in this lawsuit and, presumably, would have joint access to this information.'"
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It's funny. Laugh.

Apple Asks Microsoft to Stop New Ad Campaign->

Submitted by Hyppy
Hyppy writes "Microsoft COO Kevin Turner has received multiple correspondences from Apple requesting that Microsoft cease their new ad campaign. From the article: "Turner said Apple's legal eagles tried to depict the ads as inaccurate. 'Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices,' Turner quoted Apple's attorneys as saying. 'They took like $100 off or something,' said Turner. 'It was the single greatest phone call in history that I've ever taken in business.'""
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Hardware Hacking

Three Arrested For Conspiring to Violate the DMCA

Submitted by jtcm
jtcm writes "Three men have been charged with conspiring to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act after federal investigators found that they allegedly offered a cracker more than $250,000 to assist with breaking Dish Network's satellite TV encryption scheme.

Kwak had two co-conspirators secure the services of a cracker and allegedly reimbursed the unidentified person about $8,500 to buy a specialized and expensive microscope used for reverse engineering smart cards. He also allegedly offered the cracker more than $250,000 if he successfully secured a Nagra card's EPROM (eraseable programmable read-only memory), the guts of the chip that is needed to reverse-engineer Dish Network's encryption.

Jung Kwak owns a company known as Viewtech, which imports and sells Viewsat satellite receiver boxes. Dish Network's latest encryption scheme, dubbed Nagra 3, has not yet been cracked by satellite TV pirates."

The Internet

Al Franken Questions Sotomayor on Net Neutrality->

Submitted by Bryan Gividen
Bryan Gividen writes "As was reported this morning by Minnesota Public Radio, Senator Al Franken intended to question Supreme Sonya Sotomayor on the subject of net neutrality. Franken said, "I just want to make sure the Internet remains the Internet and that Internet service providers aren't being, in a sense, a gateway to the Internet and slowing down certain content and speeding up certain content." During the hearings, Franken specifically questioned Sotomayor about the Brand X decision and whether or not internet access was "compelling, over-riding 1st Amendment right." The LA Times has a brief blog post with the essence of Sotomayor's response: "Rights are not looked at by the courts as 'overriding.' Rights are rights and what the court looks at is how Congress balances those rights in a particular situation and then judges whether that balance is within constitutional boundaries.""
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Murray's Rule: Any country with "democratic" in the title isn't.