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ruphus13 writes "Following up their 'pay what you like' music album, Radiohead is once again pushing forward with trying to innovate in an industry that has typically innovated with lawsuits alone. Radiohead has now decided to open source a music video. According to the article, 'Its new single "House of Cards" has a video that was created using advanced visualization techniques and various computer-rendered models. The band has teamed up with Google to release the data for the promo as open source using a Creative Commons license.'" The article links a making-of video on YouTube. The music of "House of Cards" was not open sourced, just the visual data. according to a story in the UK Guardian, people are beginning to play around with the data.

if you google it, you can install with command line switches to not even install this part of the program.

and thus you dont need to disable it, and thus you dont get the "somethings wrong" icon (which i just autohide anyway).

and as to AVG being slimey, get real.

The SLIMEY bastards in the anti-malware, anti-virus world are symantec and macafee.

both install horribly bloated piles of horse dung which attempt to hijack everything a user does, and prevents themselves from being disabled easily for testing purposes.

AVG provides a product that for the most part is ABSOLUTELY FREE.

thus if you dont like it, dont use it.

and as for the user agent strings, i'd be willing to agree with the poster above about them being legit looking IE strings to prevent possible redirection based on them if they used their own, by malware laden and virus laden sites.

psyopper writes "Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday. Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as 'speculative' and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives." Update: 07/03 18:05 GMT by T : Brian Aker, now of MySQL but long ago Slashdot's "database thug," writes a journal entry on how companies could intelligently treat such potentially sensitive user data.

holy_calamity writes "An international research group has created the most perfect spheres ever made, in a bid to pin down a definition of the kilogram. It should be possible to count exactly the number of atoms in one of the roughly 9cm silicon spheres to define the unit. Currently the kilogram is defined only by a 120-year-old lump of platinum in Paris, but its mass is changing relative to copies held elsewhere. Other SI units have more systematic definitions."

Ian Lamont writes "Anti-spam service Knujon has released reports highlighting how certain registrars in the US and abroad have consistently failed to live up to certain WHOIS-related obligations under ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) — specifically, the requirement that people or company registering domains provide valid contact information. Now the firm is requesting that ICANN shut down the worst alleged offender, Xinnet Bei Gong Da Software. According to Knujon, none of the WHOIS records in a sample of 11,000 alleged spam sites registered through Xinnet and reported by Knujon to ICANN's Whois Data Problem Report System were corrected in a six-month period ending in May 2008 — and the Chinese registrar continues to register about 100 spam sites per day. In many cases, says the Knujon document (PDF), Xinnet does not have 'any Whois record data for review while the sites are still active' and the spam sites further promote 'seal abuse' by posting bogus BBB, Verisign, and other trusted industry seals. ICANN says it is investigating. ICANN has just posted a draft revised RAA that is open for public comment until August 4. However, the wording of Section 3.7.8, governing registrars' obligations to check and correct domain owners' contact information, hasn't changed."

as they talk to their "nice" guy friends about how they wish they could just find a "nice" guy, all the while ignoring him to chase the guys they constantly complain about...

Speaking as someone who was a "nice guy" all through highschool, it's the fault of the nice guy as well. Why buy the cow if the milk is free? If a "nice guy" is going to be a "good friend" and supply emotional support/fulfillment then the cute girl doesn't have to have that need met by her conceited prick boyfriend. Girls who date pricks will always want to have a nice guy friend, because girls need emotional fulfillment in the same way that guys need sexual fulfillment. So all you nice guys out there stop giving it away for free, get your needs met as well or get out of that relationship. When they say "you're so nice, why can't the guys I date be more like you?" point out that emotionally they are dating you, they just happen to be fucking someone else.

Many of us have been watching Apple's WWDC 2008 keynote unfold live. There are many exciting tidbits, but most of all is the announcement of the 3G iPhone. Featuring an even thinner profile, black plastic back, metal buttons, flush headphone jack, improved audio, GPS support, and improved battery life, this is bound to make quite a few people stand up and take notice. Update 18:54 GMT by SM: Best of all it looks like they really took the price point to heart, 8GB iPhones are now $199 and a 16GB model will be available for $299, coming to an Apple store riot near you on July 11,2008.

Aidtopia writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing auctioning off an unused part of the 25 MHz spectrum on the condition that the winner provide free wireless Internet access. The proposal sets coverage targets that ramp up to 95% of the population within 10 years. The catch: the provider must filter out obscene content." I wonder what definition of "obscene" the FCC would like to use.

mksmac writes "According to the KOMO TV Website, Microsoft has withdrawn its bid for Yahoo after presenting them with an increased offer that was subsequently declined by Yahoo. Frankly, this seems like a smarter decision on Microsoft's part, but I'd like to hear how other people feel about the deal. Should Microsoft have walked away, pressured Yahoo via a hostile takeover or sweetened the pot until Yahoo gave in?" For those who prefer it, the NYT also has coverage, and the story is also at news.com, among many others. I like the Beeb's version as well. And for the Microsoft-centric explanation of why the courtship is over, see Steve Balmer's letter to Jerry Yang.

Netcraft confirmed it ... Slashdot was dying for several hours (along with SourceForge, which shares a corporate overlord and router). Some planned downtime from our provider apparently didn't come back up quite as planned. Sorry for the inconvenience. On the upside, we're moving to a new network and hardware soon, so the site should be much faster and more stable rsn.

An anonymous reader sends word that Microsoft Windows XP SP3, which had been scheduled to hit the Web today, was pulled back at the last minute. SP3 apparently broke a Microsoft application, Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Their solution is to set up a filter to make sure that no system running the affected software will get automatically updated; once the filter is in place, SP3 will be released to the Web. A fix for the incompatibility will follow.

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, brings news that Dell will be offering Windows XP pre-installed on their computers past the June 30 cut-off date. Computers purchased with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate past June 30 will come with a copy of XP Pro. Dell plans to simply install that copy upon request to save users a step. Perhaps this will help Microsoft officials make up their minds about another extension.

mikesd81 writes "Channel News reports that Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline. Google said users of its Google Docs word processing application can use Google Gears to save and then edit documents without being connected to the Internet. 'The offline capability will be limited to word processing documents, though the company plans to add it to spreadsheets and presentations in the future.'"

StarEmperor writes "A team of Canadian and German scientists have fabricated a room-temperature superconductor, using a highly compressed silicon-hydrogen compound. According to the article,"The researchers claim that the new material could sidestep the cooling requirement, thereby enabling superconducting wires that work at room temperature.""

PhilLong writes "Slysoft has reaffirmed that laws of physics hold and that it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to encrypt a message against it's intended recipient AnyDVD HD 6.4.0.0 now provides for fair use rights to legitimate holders of BD+ blu-ray titles."