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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 47 declined, 20 accepted (67 total, 29.85% accepted)

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Submission + - Jury Nullification (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: This guy was passing out pamplets on courthouse steps in Manhattan and other places. Clearly this is First Amendment stuff. Now he's being indicted on a charge of Jury Tampering. He says he doesn't target jurors, but gives the information to anyone. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/nyregion/26jury.html?hp This isn't specifically a "Rights Online", but if they can stop people from handing out pamphlets, what's to stop them from turning off websites? http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/2239245/US-Govt-Mistakenly-Shuts-Down-84000-Sites#comments

Submission + - FOSS Textbooks (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: Scott G. McNealy, cofounder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems is helping the free textbook movement. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/technology/01ping.html?src=me&ref=general

Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same. “Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.


Submission + - DivX Redux (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: "In the last year and a half, a broad alliance of high-tech companies and Hollywood studios has been trying to address this problem through an organization called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, or DECE.
...
The group is setting out to create a common digital standard that would let consumers buy or rent a digital video once and then play it on any device."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/technology/04video.html?8dpc

That is, any newly purchased from them device. And the alliance doesn't include Apple, so eliminate the iPod, and iPhone.

Submission + - Laptop fires on airplanes (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: As usual, xkcd gets it right: http://xkcd.com/651/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/27fires.html?_r=1&hpw

"More than half of the 22 battery fires in the cabin of passenger planes since 1999 have been in the last three years. One air safety expert suggested that these devices might be "the last unrestricted fire hazard" people can bring on airplanes."

Submission + - Is the Higgs Boson sabotaging the LHC (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: First it stopped the Superconducting Super Collider. Now it's throwing monkey wrenches into the Large Hadron Collider. It's the particle that doesn't want to be discovered.

This happened in the science fiction story, "Einstein's Bridge", now Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, are theorizing that it's happening in real life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?em

Submission + - Patent Troll Auction (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: "This is wrong on so many levels. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/technology/21patent.html?hpw The most glaring mistake in the article is to call patents just "Ideas". And the example patent in the article is some guys that thought "Let's use GPS to help locate people in distress" was a unique idea. Let's see, perhaps that's one of the reasons the military created the GPS system in the first place?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - U.S. Inquiry Into Hiring at High-Tech Companies (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: "The Justice Department has begun an investigation into whether the recruiting practices of some of the largest technology companies violated antitrust laws"

This sounds like a case of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't since you can get sued if you hire someone else's key employees, but the key here is collusion amongst the employers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/technology/companies/03trust.html?hpw
Toys

Submission + - Polaroid Lovers Try to Revive Its Instant Film (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: A small group of Dutch scientists are trying to bring back Polaroid film. This group has the machinery to make the film packs, but needs to recreate the chemicals. Polaroid Inc. stopping making the specialized chemicals years ago. The had stockpiled what they would need for their last production runs. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/technology/26polaroid.html?em
Education

Submission + - Linux boustrophedon text reader (traevoli.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: All you Dvorak keyboard types can now up their online reading speeds with this Linux boustrophedon text reader. http://traevoli.com/boust/

You can check out a sample here: http://traevoli.com/boust/pic/boust-0.1.jpg and here's a writeup about this style of reading: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/93/is-there-a-physical-reason-we-read-from-left-to-right
Music

Submission + - Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes:

Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management.

The converse is true for me. I don't download more than a tune or two a year, and I haven't bought a new CD in years. I buy used disks from older bands, and my kids get them free in Happy Meals. The last radio station in this area that played good, new, music switched formats, now I don't have any way to hear new music. (I mostly listen to music in the car, where I don't have Internet access)

The Internet

Submission + - Copyright infringment of books (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes:

Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, "The Left Hand of Darkness."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/technology/internet/12digital.html?hpw

Social Networks

Submission + - Judges Jail Youths for Profit (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: "At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page ..." "Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment." "The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?em
The Courts

Submission + - John McCain fights back vs. Jackson Browne (msn.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: John McCain used part of Jackson Browne's song, "Running on Empty," in a campaign commercial that targeted Obama's energy plan. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27820970/
Will McCain now push through legislation that makes it easier to keep your fair use rights? (or just exempt politicians from copyright suits, like they did with the "Do-no-call" registry and Can-Spam?)
McCain's lawyers claim the song is old,old,old, even thought it's not a old as McCain himself, perhaps the Senator will help prevent the extension of copyright limits.

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