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The Courts

Submission + - Copyright Misuse Claim Against RIAA Upheld

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's attempt to dismiss a "copyright misuse" counterclaim against it has been rejected by Judge Charles L. Brieant, in a White Plains, New York, case, Lava v. Amurao. The counterclaim (pdf) calls for the record labels to forfeit their copyrights on the ground that they "are competitors in the business of recorded music.....[and] are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy, by litigating and settling all cases similar to this one together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in an identical manner and through common lawyers..... Such actions represent an attempt....to secure for themselves rights far exceeding those provided by copyright laws......Such acts constitute misuse of copyrights, and lead to a forfeiture of the exclusive rights.....". The judge also upheld (pdf) a counterclaim for declaratory judgment of non-infringement, and granted the motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - DEFCON for Linux Announced

Submitted by dylan_-
dylan_- writes: UK indie game developer, Introversion, best known for the weirdly retro Darwinia have released the much-awaited Linux version of their latest hit title DEFCON. If you liked the film "Wargames" then maybe this is for you.

As the website says:
"It's Global Thermonuclear War, and nobody wins. But maybe — just maybe — you can lose the least."
AMD

AMD's New DRM 382

Posted by kdawson from the for-your-eyes-only dept.
DefectiveByDesign writes "Remember how AMD said they'd make use of ATI's GPU technology to make better technology? Well, not all change is progress. InfoWorld's Tom Yager reports that AMD plans to block access to the framebuffer in hardware to help enforce DRM schemes, such as allowing more restricted playback of Sony Blu-Ray disks. They can pry my Print Screen key from my cold, dead fingers."
Hardware Hacking

LinuxBIOS Gets GUI 171

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-pretty dept.
LWATCDR writes "Has a great write up on combining LinuxBios a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one. All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go."
The Internet

Submission + - U.S. Lobby Groups Criticize the World on Copyright

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The International Intellectual Property Alliance — a group that brings together several U.S. lobby groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, the ESA, and publisher groups, has just released its Section 301 recommendations, criticizing 60 countries for their copyright laws. While the report leads to dire media coverage, Michael Geist has just debunked the lobby campaign demonstrating how "the U.S. approach is quite clearly one of 'do what I say, not what I do' (fair use is good for the U.S., but no one else), criticizing country after country for not enacting a DMCA, and blasting national attempts to improve education or culture though exceptions or funding programs."
Programming

Submission + - P = NP Finally Proved?

Submitted by Yosi
Yosi writes: Ashay Dharwadker claims to have proved that P = NP. In a paper he publishes on his website he claims to have found a polynomial algorithm for finding maximal independent sets in a graph and provides actual source code implementation of the proposed algorithm. If this is indeed true, I guess a lot of professors will start looking for a new job.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft support network down after vista upgrade

Submitted by
Oggie
Oggie writes: "I don't have a lot of detail since it wasn't me that made the call, but here's what I know. A co-worker called Microsoft Support for a normal support issue. He was told to call back in 24 hrs because they tried to upgrade to Vista and it crashed their network.... I wonder if we can get a discount for the poor support..."

Feed Microsoft Teams With ID System (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
The software giant will partner with a Web 2.0 effort to drastically change how users log into software services. It could spell the end of password woes. In 27B Stroke 6.


Music

Submission + - Steve Jobs talks about DRM

Submitted by Disoriented
Disoriented writes: Steve's thoughts on iTunes, the music industry, and DRM. From the article:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Software

Submission + - Revamped UK Times newspaper disaster

Submitted by
Ethelred
Ethelred writes: "The UK Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk) newspaper today unveiled a new website that has proved an unworkable disaster. Regardless of subjective views as to the sites new layout, the new website has proved utterly unusable with either no responses to page requests or responses taking minutes. Response times take one back to the days of 1200/75 modems. Interestingly, the development was outsourced to India and one can only assume that the previews were being viewed in the UK employing T1 connections."
United States

Submission + - Scientology critic arrested

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Last Friday, Arizona police arrested Keith Henson, an engineer, writer and long time critic of the Church of Scientology. Back in 2001, after picketing outside Scientology's main headquarters in Hemet, California, he was convicted of "interfering with a religion", a misdemeanor under California law. Due to a number of death threats to him and his family, he escaped to Canada where he unsuccessfully tried to get political asylum. Until last Friday, it wasn't known that he was living in Prescott, Arizona, where he was arrested, after Scientology tipsters allegedly set the authorities off to his location. In response, a "Free Keith Henson" blog and a legal defense fund have been created. Depending on the result of his hearing today, he may be extradited to California.
Politics

British E-Voting Pilots Announced 166

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the progressive-thinking dept.
rimberg writes "The Department for Constitutional Affairs has announced it is going to trial Electronic voting using the internet and/or telephone. Bridget Prentice, Elections Minister at the department said 'We need to make sure that people can vote in more convenient ways consistent with a modern lifestyle. [...] More and more people, and particularly young people, are using the internet everyday. We need to see if we can use this to encourage people even more to participate in the democratic process.' The Open Rights Group (Think British EFF) have responded by saying 'E-voting threatens the integrity of our elections and we oppose its use in our democracy.'"

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