An anonymous reader writes "This article analyzes Apple's negotiations with record companies and movie studios. It explains why Apple's preferences are aligned with those of consumers. Using a software model, it concludes that the iTunes Movie Store currently doesn't have the software/hardware lock-in that forced the music industry to agree to Apple's terms for the Music Store."

ubercombatwombat is looking for a bit of advice: "On the 9th of November, I have a meeting to discuss an Asterisk based phone system for a new elementary school. I am the network admin for the district. Currently, we are migrating from a T-1 based Nortel (option 61, 2 x option 11 and 7 x Norstar 8x32's, for those who care) to 1GB data fiber and a 2nd pair per site — to allow simple copper-to-fiber for the split T-1/Norstar's. We also just got a 10MB (scalable to 100MB) connect to the Internet. I can keep the VoIP basically on a separate network if need be as well. What do I install? Are there Asterisk vendors that are available and have enough experience?"

Uncle Dick writes "CNET has released the results of a study ranking every US Representative and Senator on a scale rating their relative friendliness towards various technology and internet related issues. Republicans and Democrats fare similarly in both houses of Congress, although CNET gives the edge to the GOP. Big Winner? Ron Paul (R-TX). 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA) does not fare so well."

Mr_Congeniality writes "Someone by the name of 'Brett' went all-out to prove how hot the XBox 360 can really get. So hot, the heatsink boils water on contact, but not only that, it can make a delicious meal. Be warned though, this video may not be suitable for those with weak stomachs!"

ShaunC writes "The PHP Group and Zend have released PHP 5.2.0, and upgrades are encouraged. The 5.2.0 update offers several security fixes, including patches for a couple recently announced buffer overflows in input parsing. This release also includes a number of library upgrades, bug fixes, and default bundling of the popular JSON extension to help with AJAX development. See the full changelog for more details."

Cycloid Torus asks: "IE7 is with us. It asked to be installed as a Critical Update this morning, so I decided to find out more about what was going on and if there are issues to this new and official piece of Windows XP. I found a site of known IE7 issues to be of use. Are there other sites with solid information which can help the wary from getting charred with this upgrade?"

alphadogg wrote in with a Network World story that begins: "Last week, a handful of employees at Dekalb Medical Center in Decatur, Ga., received e-mails saying they were being laid off. The subject line read 'Urgent — employment issue,' and the sender listed on the message was at dekalb.org, which is the domain the medical center uses. The e-mail contained a link to a Web site that claimed to offer career-counseling information. And so a few employees, concerned about their employment status and no doubt miffed about being laid off via e-mail, clicked on the link to learn more and unwittingly downloaded a keylogger program that was lurking at the site. Score another one for spammers."

mwnyc writes "The BBC is reporting on the sentence issued today to former CA boss Sanjay Kumar, who had pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and securities fraud. Mr. Kumar is expected to begin serving time in February 2007. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Kumar could have faced life in prison but the judge called that punishment 'unreasonable.'"

PatPending writes "American companies General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have joined with the New York Law School and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to inaugarate a new system of peer review for software patents. The four companies, plus Red Hat, the world's biggest listed open source software business, are the lead sponsors behind the Community Patent Review project. The one-year pilot program will begin in early 2007 and focus on published but not-yet-granted patent applications relating to computer software. Scientists and engineers will be able to submit prior art to patent examiners at the USPTO using an online system. All Community Patent review project documents will be available on the internet for public comment. 'High-quality patents increase certainty around intellectual property rights, reducing contention and freeing resources to focus on innovation,' said David Kappos, vice president of IP law at IBM."

bignickel writes "Researchers at Penn State have applied for a patent on software that automatically recognizes objects in photos and tags them accordingly. The 'Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures Real-Time' software (catchy name) trained a database using tens of thousands of images, and new images have 15 tags suggested based on comparisons with objects or concepts in the database. Not sure how you identify a 'concept,' and they're only talking about having one correct tag in the top 15, but still cool."

eldavojohn writes "As many of you know, the JPEG image compression is actually proprietary. This has resulted in many lawsuits between its owner, Forgent Networks, and other companies that have used it. Yesterday Microsoft and about 60 other defendants settled with Forgent to the tune of $8 million. For a company with annual revenues of $15 million, that's nothing to sneeze at. You haven't heard the last of Forgent yet, as the article states, 'It is currently pursuing claims against cable companies over a patent that it says covers technology inside digital video recorders.' Sounds like that one could be worth a little bit of cash, wouldn't you think?"

Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"

Via 1up, the news on the Coming Soon site is not good. Paul W.S. Anderson is to film a Castlevania movie, beginning next year. From the article: "Anderson's script spans many time periods but mostly takes place in 15th century Transylvania. It represents a fresh take on the much-filmed Dracula legend, mining back to its genesis in the story of the Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. 'You could almost call this movie Dracula Begins,' Anderson said. 'It's an action/horror project in the vein of Underworld and Blade, and hopefully it will be a big franchise for us, Rogue co-president Andrew Rona said." But ... Underworld and Blade are nothing like Castlevania.

Imaginary Friendly asks: "I'm the 3rd guy in a three-person IT firm. We're good and we're expanding. Our clients range from three computers to 30, with our largest client having six servers. We can handle the work but, thanks to my efforts and love (or just luck), I may be signing up two new clients who have 200 networked computers each. We're spread thin as it is, and hiring competent IT staff has been difficult. We're now doing 60-hour work weeks, so re-education has remained passive. How do we transition from manual rebuilds and CD deployments, to full scale (proper) IT administration?"

simoniker writes "There's been plenty of controversy about Rockstar's PS2 title Bully, but does it actually have anything to teach players? Ian Bogost looks into whether the game actually has a social message, explaining: 'Taking Bully seriously means acknowledging that the game has something to say about the world, not just that the world has something to say about it. It means assessing how effectively the game tackles the topic of bullying and how meaningful its claims about it are.' His conclusion? 'Sweeping away all the dust that Bully left in the wake of its release, it's hard to defend the game, not because it might be a pubic nuisance or a danger to kids, but because it could have been so much more of a scathing critique of high school social politics than it turned out to be.'"