denebian devil writes "On the heals of allofmp3.com's press conference trying to clean up its image, Visa has suspended its credit card service to allofmp3.com. From the article "[Allofmp3 is] no longer permitted to accept Visa cards," said Simon Barker, a Visa International spokesman. "The action we've taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law." Almost simultaneously, allofmp3.com has announced that it is shifting over to an ad-supported model. For those who don't want to (or can't) buy allofmp3's DRM-free music, they are providing DRM-laden music that can be played only within a restricted player provided by the website."

mjeppsen writes "The Motion Picture Association of America is turning a blind eye towards movie piracy on Usenet, going after torrent link sites instead. PC Magazine says it is because the studios are in bed with GUBA, who is also shilling downloadable movies for the MPAA at a premium price."

bombduck writes "Barablu demonstrates free calling from Nokia Series 60 based phones to Windows Mobile phones and PDAs using a Wi-Fi connection. Both Nokia E Series and N Series Wi-Fi enabled phones tested, showing not only Voice but IM, video and conference calling. "

dptalia writes "Chongqing province in southwest China has just passed a law fining people who post malicious rumors online. An individual can face fines of 1,000 to 5,000 yuan ($630) and an organization can be fined between 3,000 and 15,000 yuan."

DemiKnute writes "According to the official Penguin.SWF blog, the a beta release of the long-awaited Flash 9 for Linux is available for download, a mere year after the release for Windows." From the blog: "While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory." Report bugs here.

nuxx asks: "I have a copy of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition here, with 25 Client Access Licenses which I don't need. I don't want to throw it away, but because it's a Not For Resale copy, I can't list it on eBay. So, I'd like to give it to a charity. It's a completely new, unused, legal copy which was handed to me by a Microsoft rep a few weeks ago, so this should be legal to do. The problem is, I'm not really sure how to donate software to a charity. Does anyone have any experience with this? Do you know of any resources available regarding how to send such donations and which organizations find them useful?"

KevHead writes "Speaking at a conference of international police chiefs, FBI Director Robert Mueller called for strict data retention guidelines for US ISPs. Echoing DHS head Michael Cherthoff's assertion that the Internet was enabling terrorists to telecommute to work, Mueller went further and said that the US needs stricter data retention guidelines. '"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. The solution? Forcing ISPs to retain data for set periods of time.' If that happens, how long before the MPAA and RIAA start asking to take a peek at the data too, as they have in Europe?"

MaestroRC asks: "I've been looking around online, and I have found several people wanting to do the same thing, but no one seems to have figured it out yet. What I am wanting to do (and before you go further, understand this is for work, i.e.: no innocent people will be harmed in the implementation) is to set up a name server that selectively forwards queries. For example, I would like to create a list of acceptable domains (less than 20) using wildcards such as *.google.com, that the name server will forward a query on to and reply to normally. For anything not in the list, I want it to reply NXDOMAIN or some such. I've looked at BIND, and there doesn't appear to be a way to do what I'm wanting; it can either have recursion on or off, and any specific zones of type forward still do not forward if it is off. The solution doesn't have to be pretty, and it can just be a simple DNS proxy, but I'm not adept at coding, so it needs to be installable by a regular sysadmin on Linux. Has anyone heard of something like this?"

PreacherTom writes "The party line for the music industry has been clear: discourage music downloads at all cost. However, singer Peter Gabriel is taking things in a different direction. In order to promote his own label, he is actually encouraging people to not only download his music, but also adapt it into something more modern. In doing so, he actually posted a sample pack of Shock the Monkey consisting of vocals and other pieces of the original multitrack recording. Some in the music business would call this the commercial equivalent of hiring kidnappers to babysit. In actuality, Gabriel is pleased with the results."

eldavojohn writes "In 1994, there was speculation that there might be a southern ice cap on the moon — something our exploration of it could take advantage of. Unfortunately, recent evidence has come to light revealing that this probably isn't true." From the article: "If there is any ice at the South Pole, it probably comes from tiny, scattered grains that probably account for only one or two percent of the local dust, the authors suggest. "Any planning for future exploitation of hydrogen at the Moon's South Pole should be constrained by this low average abundance rather than by the expectation of localized deposits at higher concentrations," the paper says soberly. The research involved sending a radar signal from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. The signal hit the southern lunar region and the reflection was picked up by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia." Well, it looks like we're going to have to hit Hoth before we hold that kegger on the moon."

Despite a 5.4 percent slip in third quarter operating margins (AMD attributes the decline to lower average selling prices for processors used in desktop computers), AMD beat analyst estimates for financial performance. AMD reported a net income of $134 million, or $0.27 cents a share on revenue of $1.33 billion, as it continues to pressure number-one chipmaker Intel Corp. "When memory products sales are excluded, AMD's sales grew 9 percent from the previous quarter and 32 percent from last year's third quarter, Robert Rivet, AMD's chief financial officer. AMD has been taking semiconductor market share away from rival Intel in the last year with new dual-core processors, forcing Intel into a defensive posture."

Luis Escalante writes "After over a year and a half, IE7 has been released to the public as of Monday afternoon. Download it directly here. Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog."

Sylentmode writes "A recent study by Brookings Institution's Brown Center shows that students who are good with math are less likely to be happy, and are likely to have low confidence. From the article "In essence, happiness is overrated" says study author Tom Loveless. I wonder if Loveless is just a nickname, because he is so good with math."

Logitech today announced the purchase of Slim Devices, longtime makers of network audio players SliMP3, Squeezebox, and the new Transporter. A couple years back Logitech bought Harmony Remote, becoming the makers of all my wireless control devices for my entertainment center (Bluetooth mouse, remote control, and PS2 controllers). Now they make my Squeezebox, too.

eldavojohn wonders: "With the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google, there has been a lot of speculation (on both Slashdot & The Toronto Star) that we are nearing the second economic bubble created largely in part by growth in the digital sector. While one may be able to debate that the revenue from advertising and sales can indeed back this growth, are we headed towards the second bubble and, if so, how hard is it going to pop? Keep in mind that popular voodoo economic theory has attributed the first bubble phenomenon to 'a combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital.' I think we're experiencing all those, although it is not as flagrant as it was during the first bubble. What do you think?"