kemushi88 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Woman to pay $222,000 for Kazaa-ing (npr.org)

Submitted by

Anonymous - For Reala

on Saturday October 06, 2007 @12:37AM

Anonymous - For Reala writes: "In what seems like a shopping spree gone bad, Jammie Thomas of Brainerd Minnesota will be forced by the long arm of the corporate law to pay $222,000 for supposedly sharing music on Kazaa. Jammie who lives check to check refused to be bullied into paying one quarter of her paycheck to the recording industry who claimed she was an illegal — music sharer. After her ISP and a security firm testified the Internet address belonging to "tereastarr" was her the attorneys used their classy educations to slap some sense into her for taking money away from poor, starving, struggling recording industry corporate executives. Jammie argued it wasn't her on the box but the jury in the case set a precedent by deciding it didn't matter who was sharing music on her computer but just that it was her computer that was sharing it.

For more info:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005471.php

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15046455&ft=1&f=1001

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9792155-7.html?tag=nefd.blgs"

Submission + - NASA says dramatic sea ice loss due to wind shifts

Submitted by

radioweather

on Saturday October 06, 2007 @12:17AM

radioweather writes: "There's been a lot of news about the rapid sea ice loss in the artic this year, reaching a new record low extent. It's been attributed to global warming by many familiar with the problem. But NASA issued a press release this week that explains the mechanism as being shifts in polar wind patterns. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," said Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of the study. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

In simpler terms, polar wind patterns changed and blew sea ice further south to warmer waters than it normally would.

At the same time, a new Antarctic maximum ice record extent has been set. While the Arctic ice has shrunk to 3 million square kilometers, the Antarctic has peaked at a record 16 million square kilometers. With one pole shrinking and another gaining, the net change in ice area worldwide is only about 5%. According to researchers, over the last 100 years, there appears to have been no statistically significant change in seasonal variations of sea ice."

Submission + - Knocking down the RIAA (wordpress.com)

Submitted by rapierian on Saturday October 06, 2007 @12:17AM

rapierian writes: Would this work?

1. Write a program that writes a binary file to disc from either a sequence of numbers in a text file, or a recording of a single person saying a sequence of digits (depending on whether you want to base the case off of freedom of speech or press).

2. Distribute the program freely, under an open license.

3. Take a popular song under heavy licensing by the RIAA. Either read or type (again, depending on how you want to base the case) every number in the file. To save time, you probably want to read or type the file in decimal or hex.

4. Distribute said file.

Now: while you could be cited for plagiarism, that's an academic offense, not a criminal offense. So anyone involved in the academic world (such as myself) shouldn't attempt this. However, every one of the preceding steps is clearly covered under freedoms that are supposed to be guaranteed under our Bill of Rights. Either the RIAA will ignore the case, which I imagine might give some weight in court to people being sued in the future — and would at least make good publicity — or the the RIAA will open a lawsuit against the person distributing their music. If they do so, it puts freedom of speech/press straight up against file distribution once and for all.

Submission + - iPod Nano the Hottest MP3 player around, LITERALLY

Submitted by clintonogamy on Saturday October 06, 2007 @12:11AM

clintonogamy writes: WSB-TV is reporting that an iPod nano burst into flames in the pocket of a man working at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.

"...the burn hole from the pocket of his pants marks the spot of his 15 seconds of flame. He said he had an iPod Nano and an glossy piece of paper in his pocket. He believes the paper shielded him from being burned."

Apple is offering to replace his iPod, but they refuse to acknowledge a problem. Has this happened to anyone else?

Submission + - Update Java, get a FREE copy of OpenOffice!? (java.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Saturday October 06, 2007 @12:08AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Just had an update notice from Java on my winbox informing me that if I update Java now I can get a FREE copy of OpenOffice. What a deal!

Exact quote:
"To get a FREE copy of OpenOffice, the global standard in free Microsoft Office compatible productivity software, just click the More Information link below."

link for more information: http://java.com/en/download/javacom_update.jsp"

Submission + - Secret details on Intel Penryn processors leaked! (techarp.com)

Submitted by

crazyeyes

on Friday October 05, 2007 @11:58PM

crazyeyes writes: "The guys at TechARP has scored again! Their mole in Intel has given them access to secret details of Intel's future 45nm Penryn processor. This includes details of the next-gen Penryn-refresh CPUs in Q2'08. Can you say QUAD-CORE for notebooks? Below is their news post.

We score again! We have exclusive details on Intel's upcoming 45nm Penryn mobile processors! The new Penryn processors will continue to use the Core 2 nomenclature, with new model series of 9000 and 8000. The 9000 series Penryn processors will have a 6 MB L2 cache while the 8000 series processors will only have a smaller 3 MB cache.
"

Submission + - And on the sixth day, man created life (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by dr.angelos on Friday October 05, 2007 @11:17PM

dr.angelos writes: The Guardian is reporting that a scientist is planning to announce that he has created artificial life by building a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals. This development, if confirmed to be true, is bound to raise new exciting possibilities in the development of new technology to combat problems like global warming, and conversely is likely to raise a number of ethical concerns. Are we seeing the twilight of a new era in technological progress?

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