An anonymous reader writes "For the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, Hollywood implemented a complete copy protection scheme; almost everything has to be encrypted and authenticated. Despite the crypto-stuff in Advanced Access Content System and High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, they left the backdoor wide open — they forgot about the PrintScreen button. Using this function you can create exact digital copies of a film picture-by-picture and reassemble them into a stream."

Lord Kano writes "The Guardian Unlimited is reporting that a new Sony ad for the upcoming white PSP has caused an uproar because of claims that it carries racist overtones. The ad depicts a white woman, clad all in white, grabbing the face of a black model in a dominating pose." From the article: "It's questionable whether the world is ready to explore themes of race and domination in the context of a videogame console ad. Although not as wilfully controversial as Benetton's infamous 'United Colours' campaign, many viewers will be unwilling or unable to decode the imagery until it becomes about two different colours of plastic." What do you think about this latest in a long line of PSP ads of questionable taste?

Krishna Dagli writes to mention a post by Bruce Schneier on his site indicating that the U.S. Navy may be patenting the Firewall. Whether or not it is their intention to do so is unclear. From the patent description: "In a communication system having a plurality of networks, a method of achieving network separation between first and second networks is described. First and second networks with respective first and second degrees of trust are defined, the first degree of trust being higher than the second degree of trust. Communication between the first and second networks is enabled via a network interface system having a protocol stack, the protocol stack implemented by the network interface system in an application layer."

Mark Owen writes "With technology buzzwords becoming so commonly used in daily life, Webster and Oxford have both begun to include some new terms in their latest editions. Some of their newest additions include: adware, biodiesel, codec, digicam, google (as a verb), geocaching, hacktivism, mash-up, rewriteable, ringtone, spyware, and texting."

mikesd81 writes "Apparently street gangs have gotten Web-savvy. Web Bangers are posting potentially incriminating photos and taunts on their websites. Police departments suddenly faced with gangs are looking for help on the gangs' own easy-to-find Web sites. The director of the National Gang Crime Research Center has stated "In order to understand any subculture, be it al-Qaida, witches, devil worshippers or gangs, you have to be able to know their own language.' Knox said it's important for police to learn how to read between the lines on gang Web sites and blogs. Just as time on the streets has given gang investigators the ability to read the hieroglyphics of wall graffiti, time on the Web helps them understand arcane Web clues. Gang identifiers, such as tattoos, graffiti tags, colors and clothing often are embedded in each site."

PCM2 writes "Virtualization is all the rage these days. All the major Linux players are getting into the game with support for Xen, while Sun has Solaris Containers, Microsoft has Virtual PC, and VMware arguably leads the whole market with its high end tools. Even AMD and Intel are jumping onto the bandwagon. InfoWorld is running a special report on virtualization that gives an overview of all these options and more. Is it just a trend, or will server virtualization be the way to go in the near future?"

Andrew Stellman writes "Jennifer Greene and I have an article in the new issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal called "Quick-Kill Project Management: How to do smart software development even when facing impossible schedules." We got a lot of great feedback from our last article on open source development, but there were a bunch of people who wanted to know whether it was really feasible to do planning and reviews on a tight schedule. That's a fair question, and this article is meant to be an answer to it. We pulled out bare-bones project management practices that will help you protect your project from the most common and serious problems, and gave instructions and advice for implementing them that should work in a real-life, high-pressure programming situation."

eieken writes "The physics of Superman mostly belong in the realm of comic books, but some scientists decided to give their input on the matter. The article tells of 'a scientific experiment in which a researcher put several chickens in a centrifuge and raised them in twice-normal gravity for months at a time. When they emerged, the chickens were stronger and had larger bones and muscles, and greater endurance. In other words, they were superchickens.' Do they have human sized centrifuges?"

circletimessquare writes "A New York Times reporter was granted access to the trove of 40 years of Star Trek props that Christie's, the auction house, is cataloguing for auction in October. 'The stuff of "Star Trek' — uniforms, communicators and other props, including pointy rubber ears — has boldly gone to a place where the intrepid crew never took the Enterprise: the Bronx.' For an opening bid of $1,000 to $1,500, you can own an original tribble. 'It's an Auction, Jim, but Not as We Know It.'"

whoever57 writes "eBay has added Google Checkout to the list of payment options banned on eBay. A recent update to the Accepted Payments Policy includes Google Checkout (click on 'Show' next to 'Some Examples' to reveal the list). More comments on this action can be found at the eBay Strategies Blog."

robzster1977 writes "Judges in the UK have given the go-ahead to the extradition of UK hacker Gary McKinnon. McKinnon is accused of breaking into US Navy, Army and Department of Defense computers in 2001 and 2002." From the article: "On 4 July the secretary of state signed an order for Mr McKinnon's extradition to the United States for charges connected with computer hacking. Mr McKinnon had exercised his right to submit representations against return but the secretary of state did not consider the issues raised availed Mr McKinnon."

mikesd81 writes "AOL may give away more services including its AOL.com accounts reserved for paying customers. They have a proposal under consideration which calls for Time Warner's online unit to stop charging subscription fees to users who have high-speed Internet access or even dial-up service from a rival provider. Under the plan the company would continue to charge the fees for those needing dial-up access through AOL. The AOL software also would allow subscribers to continue using instant messaging, Web journals and other services without having to download separate software or figure out Web-based options. That would ease the transition and encourage them to keep using AOL services, the person familiar with the matter said."

Wednesday's press-release-borne message from security firm Sophos that the best way for Windows users to compute untroubled (or less troubled) by malware is to switch to Mac OS X drew more than 500 comments; read on for the Backslash summary of the conversation.

ShellFish writes "According to a report from Engadget, Microsoft is poised to finally take on the Apple iPod this holiday season. Tired of uninspiring offerings from its hardware partners, Microsoft is getting into the ring itself. The new media player from Microsoft will feature a bigger screen than the iPod Video, have built-in WiFi for downloading music without a PC, and Microsoft will work with music and TV content providers to build an iTunes Music Store competitor. In what may be the crucial competitive stroke, Microsoft will also allow you to download from its store any song that you've purchased from Apple, unlocking users from iPod's vendor lock-in."

Nom du Keyboard writes "The Inquirer is reporting that the new Intel Core 2 processors Woodcrest and Conroe are suffering badly when running RAID 5 disk arrays, even when using non-Intel controllers. Can Intel afford to make a misstep now with even in the small subset of users running RAID 5 systems?" From the article: "The performance in benchmarks is there, but the performance in real world isn't. While synthetic benchmarks will do the thing and show RAID5-worthy results, CPU utilization will go through the roof no matter what CPU is used, and the hiccups will occur every now and then. It remains to be seen whether this can be fixed via BIOS or micro-code update."