ColinPL writes, "The MPAA has launched yet another 'defensive attack,' this time on a small business that is pre-loading movie DVDs onto iPods and reselling them. The original DVDs of the movies that are loaded are also given to the customer. The MPAA is claiming that the service Load 'N Go Video offers is completely illegal because ripping a DVD is against the DMCA. The MPAA is also suing the company for copyright violation."

Rustcycle asks: "I'm attending the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, which has just announced that they are offering a Master's Degree in their Games and Media Integration (GMI) program. There is a fair amount of overlap between the GMI curriculum and the CS courses, so I'm considering a switch in degrees. If you were hiring MS grads outside the game industry for visualization work, am I worth more to you with the more specialized program or would you be more interested in me if I had more exposure? Within the gaming industry, how much does a specialized degree compel a company to hire a recent grad?"

Cherita Chen writes, "Yesterday NASA, Cornell University, and the USGS celebrated the Mars Exploration Rovers' 1000th Sol on the Red Planet. The first rover to land, Spirit, reached the 1000 Sol mark a few weeks ago while the planet was in Solar conjunction. 'Opportunity,' Spirit's twin, and the second lander to make the bounce to Mars, celebrated the milestone yesterday while sitting atop Victoria Crater on the other side of Mars. Both Rovers are still operational (though Spirit is limping) and are sending back valuable data. Not bad for what was slated to be a '90 Sol' mission."

mikemuch writes "Games for Windows Magazine and ExtremeTech teamed up to determine which prebuilt high-end PC delivers the ultimate game performance in terms of frame-rate and ability to yield the highest game quality settings on large displays. The winner, VoodooPC's Omen, features an Intel Core 2 Duo QX6800 processor and two Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX's in SLI configuration. It delivers over 15,000 3DMarks (as do a few of the other contestants), but 'only' costs $5,700 — in contrast with some of the other machines that go for close to eight grand."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in Arista v. Greubel has filed an answering statement. The statement says that the RIAA's case against him, since it's based upon his use of Kazaa, is barred by the RIAA's receipt of $115 million from Kazaa. Mr. Greubel also challenged the constitutionality of the RIAA's $750-per-song damages theory, saying damages should be limited to $2.80 per song. See the previous Slashdot discussion of that issue and Judge Trager's decision in UMG v. Lindor."

1sockchuck writes "It's been a bad week for transparency and disclosure in the blogosphere, demonstrating that once blogging starts making money, the rules change. Nick Douglas was dismissed from ValleyWag, Jason Calacanis bolts from AOL, and co-founder Duncan Riley abruptly departs from b5media. Where do we get the real story? From The New York Times, or not at all. If we've come to expect honesty and straight talk from blogging icons, it's because so many blogospheric leaders have told us we should. And now suddenly we're getting the snarky insider accounts of blogospheric dirt from The New York Times?"

evanwired writes "Quinn Norton offers a great first-hand account of the first South Korean Hacker con. Marked by conservative dress and polite conversation, the group was nevertheless still very much concerned with the shortcomings of computer security." From the article: "A police crackdown three years ago left South Korea's hacking community broken and fragmented. One of the conference's more animated speakers, 'Xpl017Elz,' complained that many of Korea's best and brightest hackers wound up emigrating to more receptive environments with better pay for security researchers. But he also demonstrated a large and difficult divide between how the hacker communities behave in Korea and the United States. Xpl017Elz's presentation focused on four (of a reported seven) attacks he developed against Red Hat's Fedora Core using ExecShield. He demonstrated privilege escalation, where a logged-in user can become root and take over the machine, and remote code execution, wherein an external attacker can gain root without a login."

Rob T Firefly writes "The International Herald Tribute reports that the lifting of China's Wikipedia ban earlier this week was short-lived. Wikipedia is once again inaccessible from behind the Great Firewall, along with all other Wikimedia projects. Additionally, the URL of Chinese Wikipedia is once again a banned search term. No reason has yet been given for any of it." From the article: "It wasn't immediately clear if Wikipedia was inaccessible due to technical glitches or because government censors had blocked the site again. The Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Information Industry did not immediately respond when contacted for comment Friday. Beijing blocked access to the English and Chinese versions of Wikipedia in October last year, apparently out of concern about entries touching on the country's sensitive spots -- Tibet, Taiwan and other topics."

The Final Fantasy series is almost twenty years old. When Square developed the first title in the series, the game's name was meant to coincide with designer Hironobu Sakaguchi's retirement. Instead, the game's popularity set the stage for a series that has now reached twelve 'main' titles and more than half a dozen offshoots. Almost everything about the series has changed over the years, except for popularity and a generally high level of quality. Final Fantasy XII has changed almost everything from the series norm, except the quality. The result is a game that very well may be considered the best Japanese RPG in years. It's a smarter, more adult, and absolutely beautiful title; the perfect balm for anyone not taken with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion . Read on for my impressions of the newest and most ambitious chapter of the Fantasy that's never quite Final.

bethr writes "Technology Review has a Q&A with Andrew Maynard, the science advisor for the Woodrow Wilson International Center's nanotechnology project regarding the dangers of nanomaterials and why we have to act now." From the article: "Individual experiments have indicated that if you develop materials with a nanostructure, they do behave differently in the body and in the environment. We know from animal studies that very, very fine particles, particles with high surface area, lead to a greater inflammatory response than the same amount of larger particles. We also know that they can enter the lining of the lungs and get through to the blood and enter other organs. There is some evidence that nanoparticles can move into the brain along the olfactory nerve, so this is completely circumventing the blood-brain barrier."

Gamasutra's semi-regular feature taking the pulse of folks in the game industry turns its attention this week to the PS3 and Wii launches. From the comments submitted to the site, it seems that many industry vets are generally more excited about the Wii than with Sony's offering. From the article: "'Definitely a Wii (already pwii-ordered). The price point of the PS3 and the lack of enticing launch titles makes me as interested in a PS3 as I am interested in getting a root canal.' — Ryan Conlon, Gearbox Software. 'I am buying a Wii because Sony is too arrogant, from their dev tools to the price point.' — Ed O'Tey, Electronic Arts. 'Wii — pre-ordered. I applaud the attempt to expand and explore game interaction with the Wii. I will not be purchasing a PS3.' — Jim Perkins, EA Canada"

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that Tony Blair's outgoing chief strategy adviser fears the internet could be fueling a crisis in the relationship between politicians and voters. 'Mr Taylor said Mr Blair's online grilling from voters — and other initiatives such as environment secretary David Miliband's blog and Downing Street's new online petition service — showed the government was making good progress in using the Internet to become more open and accountable. But he said more needed to be done by the web community in general to encourage people to use the internet to "solve problems" rather than simply abuse politicians or make "incommensurate" demands on them.' 'But rather than work out these dilemmas in partnership with their elected leaders, they were encouraged to regard all politicians as corrupt or mendacious by the media, which he described as "a conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self-righteous rage." Whether media was left wing or right wing, the message was always that 'leaders are out there to shaft you.'" Some credit was given to the Internet for high voter turnout in this month's elections ... how is that a bad thing?

dhahn asks: "I have a project where I'm building a large Linux router (about 40 ports or so). At this point, my only hardware solution is to purchase a box with lots of PCI-ish slots and fill them multi-port ethernet cards. I've looked into currently available solutions and haven't found anything that gives me the control I want. Does anyone know of where I could purchase a 'naked switch?' I just want the switch hardware with enough guts to allow me to customize a Linux OS and load it up." If anyone else has been in this situation, what did you do?

dptalia writes "Israel is looking to create a small robot, no larger than a hornet to follow, film, and kill terrorists. It's just one of a series of weapons the country is considering as an alternative to conventional technologies. Other ideas floating around include gloves that would give their user 'bionic strength', and ultra-miniaturized sensors to detect explosives on suicide bombers." From the article: "The research integrates nanotechnology into Israel's security department and will find creative solutions to problems the army has been unable to address, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Yedioth Ahronoth. 'The war in Lebanon proved that we need smaller weaponry. It's illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicidal terrorist. So we are building futuristic weapons,' Peres said."

Quinton writes "Around midnight Pacific time on the 17th, Sony updated their Open Platform website needed to install PPC Linux on the PS3. The FTP Site contains the CELL Linux ADDON CD image, which has the bootloader (kboot/otheros.bld) and instructions needed to install Fedora Core 5, PPC. A full install from DVD takes about two hours. Most all hardware is supported except for graphics accelerator support (framebuffer only, up to 1920x1200)."