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it doesn't treat me like some criminal. I don't want my software to stop working because I had no internet access, and I now have to go out of my way and call technical support. I don't want my software to install root-kits on my PC because it thinks I might be a pirate. I don't want copy protection to be less useful than the pirated version. And so on and so forth.

LKM writes "Sony seems to think we should not be allowed to rip CDs we own to our iPods. In fact, doing so is stealing, and we should all re-buy songs, preferably one copy for each device. Says Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG: 'When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. Making a copy of a purchased song is just a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'.' I guess somebody should tell Sony about all the devices Sony produces that allow this stealing to occur!"

wolfeon writes "In 2005, Derek Sivers of CD Baby wanted to scrap his site and perform a rewrite in Rails. He hired Jeremy Kemper, also known as bitsweat on Freenode, to help on the project. Two years later, through blood and sweat, the project was then canceled because of limitations of Rails. Rails just wasn't meant to do everything since it is very much "canned" project. Mr. Sivers has written an entry in the O'Reilly blog: 7 reasons I switched back to PHP."

grrlscientist writes "New research has shown that the skeletal system may be an important player in preventing obesity and type-2 diabetes in animals. This may also be true for humans, and thus represents an important development for the treatment of these health conditions. From the article: 'Not only do bones produce a protein hormone, osteocalcin (pictured), that regulates bone formation, but this hormone also protects against obesity and glucose intolerance by increasing proliferation of pancreatic beta cells and their subsequent secretion of insulin. Osteocalcin was also found to increase the body's sensitivity to insulin and as well as reducing its fat stores ... "The skeleton used to be thought of as just a structural support system. This opens the door to a new way of seeing the bones," said Dr. Gerard Karsenty, chairman of the department of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center in NYC, who headed the team that made the discovery.'"

Late-Eight writes "Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working on a new type of nanogenerator that could draw necessary energy from flowing blood in the human body. The hope is to incorporate the new nanogenerator into biosensors, environmental monitoring devices and even personal electronics that will require no fuel source, internal or external. Once completed, this new cellular engine could find various applications, even beyond medicine."

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the Ludington Daily News, Michigan, Danish agricultural engineers have built a robot to help farmers with weeds. The Hortibot is about 3-foot-by-3-foot, is self-propelled, and uses global positioning system (GPS). It can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds and eliminate them by using its weed-removing attachments. It's also very environmentally friendly because it can reduce herbicide usage by 75 percent. But so far, it's only a prototype and the Danish engineers need to find a manufacturer for distribution."

An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports about the opening of a vault which should have been able to withstand a nucleair attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put an Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year 2007. Unfortunatly it turns out that the vault wasn't capable to withstand water, the once beautiful car is now a real rust bucket in the literal meaning of the word.

Makes one wonder about the quality of the other shelters..."

According to Davey Winder writing at http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1498.html the latest concept in Wii video game control could be pants, or boxers if you prefer. And let's not forget the bra either. It certainly brings a whole new meaning to gripping your joystick or twiddling with buttons to get excited during gameplay. As he says in the story "you will have to be really careful about who you invite over for a gaming session when that game is controlled by players physically touching each other in the underwear department. Even the invitation itself is probably best made to real close friends only, as you might feel uncomfortable asking strangers for a game of Pong in their panties." It appears that someone has designed a Wii controller that comes in two parts, one in a bra and the other in gents boxers. Mapping the game controls to the first device, a bra, was simple enough: "touching the left breast made the pong paddle go left and the right breast made the paddle go right." This has developed into two controllers, both with six sensors a piece. For the men it is the ladies bra, which they do not wear but rather stand behind their partner to control. For the ladies it is a pair of boxer shorts with strategically placed buttons. And before you ask, no I really don't fancy a game of Pong with you!

How the world of online gaming spawned a multimillion-dollar shadow economy measured in virtual coins, 80-hour workweeks and very real money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html?ex=1339732800&en=a6282d1ddf608fc1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

prevett writes "This article is not an advertisement for any of the utilities/packages listed. These are the most common utilities which I use in a real world situation,to support friends and family (outside of real job) during my everyday life as an It Professional. I hope it will be helpful to anybody who reads this article. 5. RealVNC (http://www.realvnc.com) — Whenever I install a new machine, whether it be at the office, or in my personal life (you know, mom, dad, neighbor, etc), I always throw a copy of VNC server on their machine. Although I would generally consider this security risk, I always set the startup type to manual in the services management console. I then put a shortcut to the command to start the VNC server service on their desktop and open port 5900 on their firewall. Now, if they ever need my support, all I need to do is tell them to double click the VNC icon on their desktop, and hold their mouse over the little VNC logo next to the clock, and give me the ip address which pops up. Within seconds I am connected and fixing the issues which "magically" started happening to their machine... which they of course had nothing to do with. This generally works out just fine, unless they are behind a router, and have a private IP address, but even in most of these cases, I am the one who installed the router, and I have made sure that the correct ports are forwarded to the machine. Then I just tell them to send me an email from their local email. I can then in most cases get their routers IP address from the internet headers, and I am in. 4. Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE personal (http://www.lavasoft.de) — How many times have you logged onto somebody's computer to troubleshoot an issue, and you realize the issue is that the user has clicked on just about every single popup window he/she has ever seen in their life? This has caused 37 different toolbars to be running on top of IE, and whenever you open IE, 40-50 more IE windows popup with the content which you generally wait until really late at night to view! Now you get smart, and enter the registry and remove all 97 entries within the HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Run section, only to realize that as soon as you delete them they come right back. At this point I generally install Ad-Aware SE, let it update itself. Reboot the machine INTO SAFE MODE, and run it from there. Let it quarantine all 89000 items it has found. Upon reboot, the machine will be much more manageable, and you can then troubleshoot it, if the issue hasn't been fixed. 3. AVAST Antivirus by Alwil software (http://www.avast.com) — If I had a nickel for every machine which I set out to trouble shoot/fix which I found to have antivirus software which expired in 1989, I would probably be a millionaire. AVAST's business model allows for free home use of their product, AKA the "home" version. I actually don't really know the difference between the home and pro version. This nice Antivirus package scans everything, instant messaging, internet mail, a network shield, an Outlook plug-in, a p2p shield, a web shield, and a standard virus shield. It scans all files coming in and going out of the computer. And here is the kicker. It works, and works very well. I have actually found that it detects and cleans items which big boy AV software simply ignored. It's nice every morning when I turn on my home PC, it yells out "Virus Database has been updated" Every morning! Alwil software is on the ball! On another note, their pre-boot scan which AVAST can be set to do has helped me on a couple of occasions where the virus has been loading before the Virus software has loaded and would not get removed during a regular scan. The licensing on this software allows for home use, and not business use, but when my current two year virus license expires at the office, I will be purchasing Avast Pro for my 40 office computers and their server products for my servers. This is truly how happy I am with the product which this company puts out. 2. RyanVM Integrator (http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn) — How many times have you had to do a fresh install of Windows XP, and then, an hour later, after it has been installed, take another two hours to run windows update and download and install close to 100 updates? Well, this little utility, along with a secondary download will take your current windows XP SP2 CD, and Integrate all of Microsoft updates, and then create a new ISO which you can burn to a CD. You now have a bootable windows XP SP2 disk will 99% of the Microsoft updates already integrated into the install. I think the last time I did a fresh install, there were only like 7 updates which were required after the install. Need I say more? 1. BartPE — Preinstallation Environment (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder) If I could only tell you how many times this utility has saved my ASS in a hurry.. Have you ever had a windows XP or Windows Server machine which would simply not boot, and you had no way to get into the system to see what the hell is going on. This utility allows you to boot into a stripped down windows XP environment (completely outside of your computers environment) and yet get to your files on your hard drive. So that you can restore a registry or remove a virus, etc. you can set it up with Ghosting utilities, check disk, VNC, Remote Desktop, Firefox, and so much more. I have even created a thumb drive which boots this environment for those times when I don't have my trusty boot cd available. If you are an IT Pro, you should really have a look-see! You won't be disappointed."
http://www.techyreview.com/?p=13

NewsCloud writes "After reading about the Facebook platform launch, I spent the next week learning the API and building my application. Facebook's platform has been pretty successful despite complaints of poor documentation, instability and outcries over its application approval process. I've been waiting two weeks for my application to be approved for their directory and had my account disabled (temporarily) after I invited a large number of colleagues. While I'm impressed with the potential of the platform, the experience has made me more concerned about the lack of transparency in privately held social networks and the risks we take as developers when we invest time in a company's platform. Facebook's home page advertises itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." My concern with Facebook is that there's no one regulating the utility."

firesquirt sends us an article from Wired about a survey they conducted to determine major ISPs' data retention and other privacy practices. Over a period of two months, four national ISPs would not give Wired the time of day; and another four answered some of their questions in a fashion not altogether reassuring.

eldavojohn writes "According to Google, Microsoft's server software is at least twice as likely to host viruses or malware. The reason why? 'Google reports that IIS is likely used to distribute malware more often than Apache because many IIS installs are on pirated Windows versions which aren't configured to automatically download patches. (Even pirated Windows versions can automatically receive security fixes, however.) Our analysis demonstrates how important it is to keep web servers patched to the latest patch level,' Google notes."

A Seattle master spammer charged with fraud, money laundering and identity theft faces up to 65 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. But we can't stop spam with high-profile busts or sentences greater than rapists or murderers get.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/122539068/circuitcourt_0606

stevedcc writes "Ars Technica is running a story about next week's release of AACS, which is intended to fix the currently compromised version. The only problem is, the patched version has already been cracked. From the article: 'AACS LA's attempts to stifle dissemination of AACS keys and prevent hackers from compromising new keys are obviously meeting with extremely limited success. The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model.'"