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DHS Wants Mozilla To Disable Mafiaafire Plugin->

Submitted by
Davis Freeberg
Davis Freeberg writes "The Department of Homeland Security is hard at work again, protecting the industry from websites that the big studios don't want you to see. This time they're targeting the Mafiaafire plugin by asking Mozilla to disable the addon at the root level. Instead of blindly complying with the government's request, Mozilla has decieded to ask some tough questions instead. Unsurprisingly, when faced with legitimate concerns about the legality of their domain seizure program, the DHS has decided to clam up."
Link to Original Source

Disney War On Rental Leaves Out Hard Of Hearing->

Submitted by Davis Freeberg
Davis Freeberg writes "In order to try and convince consumers to quit renting and to start buying, Disney has removed all closed caption data from rental copies of the film Up. This has left hard of hearing viewers out in the cold, when it comes to renting the film. Despite calls for a boycott against the company over the discrimination, Disney has remained quiet as a mouse on the controversy. Leaving out bonus content might help them sell a few more films, but making the disadvantaged pay more for their movies seems like a bad "marketing" decision when you consider the big picture."
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Digital

Money For Nothing and The Codecs For Free->

Submitted by Davis Freeberg
Davis Freeberg writes "In an in depth discussion on the codec industry, CoreCodec CEO and Matroska Foundation board member Dan Marlin shares his thoughts on the growing popularity of the MKV container, confusion in the marketplace between X.264/MKV and DivXHD and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player. His interview offers a behind the scenes look at an important piece of technology that is helping to power the P2P movement. It also raises the prickly question of whether or not Microsoft is abusing their OS monopoly, in order to rein in competition within the codec industry."
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The Almighty Buck

Gej Quits DivX

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Over the years, DivX has generated it's fair share of controversy and while they may have been able to survive the dot.com collapse, an antagonistic relationship with XviD splinter factions and an ill fated partnership with the notorious spyware company Gator, they apparently weren't able to save themselves from the success of going public. Over the last 15 months, all five of DivX's co-founders have left the company over objections with the way it's being run. The culmination of this exodus occurred in early February after Gej, the hacker who originally created the DivX codec, left the company to pursue other alternatives."
Security

Defendant must tell government his password-> 1

Submitted by
sohp
sohp writes "Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, reports are out that the case of a man who invoked the 5th amendment when asked to supply the password to decrypt his hard drive to allow police to search for child pornography has a new development. A judge has overturned the original magistrate's decision allowing the defense and has ordered Sebastien Boucher to supply the prosecutors with a decrypted hard disk. Note that the order is not that he produce the key — just that he provide an unencrypted copy."
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The Military

Superguns Helped Defeat Spanish Armada

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth's "supergun", although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck and out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. "Elizabeth's navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage," says Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University adding that Elizabeth's navy had worked out that a few big guns were less effective than a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once. "[Elizabeth's] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England's enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.""

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.