Alternative Freedom is a documentary on intellectual property rights featuring lots of interviews with folks like Stallman and Lessig, as well as people like DJ Danger Mouse (creator of the Grey Album). They have a trailer available, but if you're in NYC the movie is now showing. If anyone manages to go, I'd love to see some real reviews of it.

Neopallium writes "Red Hat has announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The FAA executed a major systems migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one-third of the original scheduled time and with 30 percent more operational efficiency than the previous system."

Nintendo DS News writes "Lik Sang have posted a great hands-on article examining the new Nintendo DS TV Adapter. From the article: 'Both projects are converters displaying the image of your Nintendo handheld on Television sets. One is for the Gameboy Advance SP, the other is, more interestingly for the smoking hot Nintendo DS system.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "Scientists hope that mind-reading computers will one day replace typed passwords, making fingerprint readers and retina scans obsolete. Skeptics say don't count on it. From the article: 'Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, are exploring the possibility of a biometric security device that will use a person's thoughts to authenticate her or his identity. Their idea of utilizing brain-wave signatures as pass-thoughts is based on the premise that brain waves are unique to each individual. Some researchers believe the difference might just be enough to create a system that allows you to log in with your thoughts.'"

oscartheduck writes "ZDNet is reporting on the Microsoft/EU case, and things aren't going too well for the software giant. The Commission is delving deeply into the technical issues surrounding the case. In addition to 'a record $617 million' that may well be leveled against the American monopolist, Microsoft is also standing accused of knowingly going forward with marketing practices 'that had already been judged illegal by U.S. courts when it was used on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.'" More from the article: " The founder of the Samba team of developers, which took years to create print and file server software that works with Windows, said his team is held back and playing catch-up. 'The tiny device I have here in the palm of my hand is the sort of product that could emerge if the information required by the Commission were available,' Andrew Tridgell said, holding a paperback-size storage server that he said could be turned into a work group server. Once it gives over the information, 'Microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over the world's networks,' he said. "

Retroneous writes "The Nintendo Revolution has had its name changed to the Nintendo Wii." Confirmation on the official Revolution site. Update: 04/27 16:32 GMT by Z : More information available from a Gamasutra article: "New details on the disc format have also been revealed: 'Instead of a tray, a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs. Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.'"

zmarties writes "Having recently bought the company and 3d design product SketchUp, Google has now taken the next step of releasing a free personal version of the SketchUp software. Currently available for Windows XP, with a Mac version 'coming soon', the program allows for simple drag and drop design of 3d models - which amongst other uses can then be displayed in Google Earth. The pro version remains available for commercial use, with lots more features. Google are also introducing 3D Warehouse, designed as a repository for 3d models created in the program. The models can be viewed in Google Earth via a network link, so you can see geolocated models as you browse the world, rather than having to explicitly download them. Google has pre-populated the warehouse with a number of models which range from complete complex buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, through to individual design elements such as traffic lights and furniture."

calzones writes to mention a Gamasutra article, which reports on a WSJ claim that Microsoft will be buying Massive, Inc. at some point in the near future. From the article: "The article indicates that Microsoft is expecting to acquire the entirety of the New York City based company, which currently employees around eighty staff. Microsoft is reported to be keen to control how adverts are placed within a game and to try new business models which could allow the ads to subsidize lower prices or particularly expensive titles, such as massively multiplayer online games. No specific mention was made of the Xbox 360, which already displays advertising-like banners on its dashboard operating system, but has not yet permitted in-game ad companies to stream advertisements into games through Xbox Live. However, it is implied that Microsoft would not be using Massive's technology purely for Windows based games."

threeofnine writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article written by a copyright and technology lawyer asking if we are paying too much for digital downloads. From the article: 'Parallel imports are unavailable in the Australian digital market, however. Australian consumers cannot purchase downloads from iTunes or Wal-Mart in the US, which are often cheaper than downloads available here, without a US-issued credit card. And restrictive licensing conditions imposed by copyright owners also limit the sale of digital downloads across international borders. For both reasons Australian consumers miss out. And retailers cannot buy downloads from overseas and resell them here, even if it is worthwhile for them to do so. In a recent analysis, the prices of Australian-made CDs of artists such as Bon Jovi, REM and Robbie Williams were compared to those of legal parallel imports. It was found that the local product was as much as 300 per cent more expensive.'"

John Callaham writes "The US video game ratings system created by the industry and the ESRB has come under attack in recent months, but is it really all that bad? FiringSquad decided to take an informal retail survey and compare how the ESRB rates games to how the movie and TV industry rates DVD releases." From the article: "One person who has been highly critical of the ESRB system is Leland Yee, the California Assemblyman who authored the bill that was signed into law last fall in that state that would ban the sales of certain games with violent content to minors (the law is currently not being enforced pending the conclusion of a court case started by the video/PC game industry). When the study of content descriptions in M-rated games was issued by Harvard earlier this month, Yee was quick to send out a press release ..."

srinravi writes to mention an Ars Technica article about another ambitious 'inexpensive computer' project. A Chinese manufacturer, YellowSheepRiver, is aiming to make available a $150 Linux PC built with inexpensive hardware components. From the article: "Urging potential customers to 'Say no to Wintel,' YellowSheepRiver is devoted to using its own Linux distribution and hardware designed and manufactured by Chinese companies. YellowSheepRiver hopes to close the "digital divide" by making computer technology available to the Chinese public at an affordable price. The Municator, which comes with 256MB of RAM, uses a unique 64-bit CPU with an instruction set based on a subset of the MIPS architecture. Designed by a Chinese company called BLX, the the cheap chip is clocked at 400 or 600MHZ and supposedly provides performance comparable to that of an Intel P3."

simoniker writes "Electronic Arts has officially revealed that it's working on a standalone version of its Madden football franchise for Nintendo Revolution, made by a new Revolution-specific internal studio within Electronic Arts Canada. EA's John Schappert explained the gameplay: 'You grab the controller, and you pull it up. And you snap the ball, without pushing a button. To throw, you take your hand and you gesture a throw motion. ... I don't think a winning approach on the Revolution is to port games to it, and I don't think you'll see us taking that approach. I think that approach will yield inferior software for the Revolution, and I don't think publishers will be rewarded for that.'"

Erikson Wright writes to mention a ZDNet article, covering a call by open-source vendors to banking institutions. The groups are asking powerful financial firms to contribute more code to the open source community. From the article: "Concerns over competitive advantage mean that it can be difficult to persuade companies to share code with the open-source community, as it can then be easily accessed by competitors. But for technologies that have little impact on competitive advantage, financial companies could probably be encouraged to contribute code, the conference panel agreed ... 'If you're using open-source technology on Wall Street, unless you're completely reliant on a vendor to provide a certified version, you will probably invest extra time to fix it,' he said. 'What will you do with your fix? You can keep it to yourself, but if you move it upstream by passing it on to the vendor or submitting it as a patch, you know it will be available in the next version of the product. That's what drives most open- source development--collective self-interest.'"

SuperMog2002 writes "An article over at Think Secret is reporting that Apple has fired much of the Aperture development team. The Shake and Motion team was assigned to work on Aperture's image processing pipeline for version 1.1. Apple has also dropped the price of Aperture from $499 to $299, and is offering those who purchased the program at $499 a $200 Apple store coupon." From the article: "Perhaps the greatest hope for Aperture's future is that the application's problems are said to be so extensive that any version 2.0 would require major portions of code to be entirely rewritten. With that in mind, the bell may not yet be tolling for Aperture; an entirely new engineering team could salvage the software and bring it up to Apple's usual standards."

patio11 writes "EA Spouse, who sparked a revolution (or, at least, a wave of lawsuits and promises for improvement) in the game development industry with a blog post decrying labor practices at Electronics Arts, was outed as Erin Hoffman in a Mercury News article. She and then-fiance, now-husband Leander Hasty were plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits against EA and continue to develop games and be activists for better working conditions for game developers." From the article: "More than a year later, game developers have won settlements in three class-action lawsuits alleging EA created exhausting work schedules without paying overtime and successfully pressed employers to ease unrelenting workloads. And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork."