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Music

Submission + - RIAA Insanity-Suing People For Ripping CD's They P (fastsilicon.com) 2

Submitted by
mrneutron2003
mrneutron2003 writes: "With this past weeks announcement by Warner to release its entire catalog to Amazon in MP3 format with no Digital Rights Management, you would think that the organization that represents them, The Recording Industry Association of America , would begin changing its tune. However in an inane display of hubris and futility, the RIAA presses on in it's tirade against the very consumers its partners rely on buy (we're not making this up) suing individuals who merely rip CD's they've purchased legally.

The Washington Post reports on the case being fought by a Scottsdale Arizona man, Jeffrey Howell, who is being taken to task for ripping his own store bought CD's to his PC as a violation of copyright.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
If the RIAA is successful here, it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of American music consumers will soon be classified as criminals under the law for attempting to use media they've legally purchased in a manner they desire.
http://www.fastsilicon.com/off-the-wall/riaa-insanity-suing-people-for-ripping-cds-they-purchased.html"
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA attacks Fair use (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by cyberfunk2
cyberfunk2 writes: It seems the RIAA has finally decided to drink their own koolaid. It seems the aforementioned entity is attacking the what most people believe to be holy ground in a case against Jeffrey Howell. The Washington Post reports In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. For his part, RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said in a statement that the industry "will continue to bring lawsuits" against those who "ignore years of warnings,". "It's not our first choice, but it's a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law." Fair use anyone ?
Programming

Submission + - What is preventing FLOSS Nvidia 3D Drivers? 1

Submitted by Slithe
Slithe writes: What information is Nvidia not providing that would allow one to write FLOSS drivers for Nvidia cards? I am not an expert on this topic, so this is why I am asking Slashdot. A modern graphics card is basically a piece of hardware that can do matrix and vector operations very quickly, and modern graphics cards are programmable with shaders. I know that Nvidia graphics cards use the GPU assembly language, whose instructions are available and form the basis of writing shaders. I also know that X.Org has an open-source Nvidia driver for basic (i.e. not 2d or 3d accelerated) operation of the graphics card. Could someone take the Mesa OpenGL library and write a shader or set of shaders for every OpenGL function that the card should accelerate? What am I not seeing that would allow this to work?
Robotics

Submission + - i-Snake, a new robotic surgeon

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Several newspapers in the UK have published today very short articles about the i-Snake, a new surgical robot which will be developed at the Imperial College London (ICL). For example, The Times of London writes that the ICL team has won a £2.1 million grant (2.84 million or US$4.2 million) to design this surgical robot over the next four or five years. This highly flexible robot 'could allow coronary bypass operations to be performed without the need for open-heart surgery.' And it would help heal your heart after travelling through blood vessels. The research team thinks that the i-Snake could also be used as a diagnosis tool replacing the eyes of a surgeon when looking inside us. But read more for many additional details."
Censorship

Submission + - Canada's Thought Police in Action (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Ginn
Ginn writes: "Noted author Mark Steyn has been ordered to appear before two Canadian judge's panels to defend his number one Canadian bestseller, "America Alone." "Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading "hatred and contempt" for Muslims. The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication." This lawsuit by the students, if successful, means anyone who "disagrees" with what you've written can sue you, drag you into court, where a court can force you to omit your opinion, your book, or eventually, material on the web. So, in essence, this ruling could eventually effect such sites as Slashdot."
Businesses

Submission + - Now Musicians Have Options Says Talking Head

Submitted by
Time Slows Down
Time Slows Down writes: "Scottish born musician and former record label owner David Byrne says the future of music as a career is wide open and identifies six different distribution models now available to musicians in an article in this month's Wired magazine. At one end of the scale is the 360, or equity deal, where every aspect of the artist's career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. At the other end of the scale is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. Between these two extremes lie four other models (the standard distribution deal, the license deal, the profit-sharing deal, and the manufacturing and distribution deal) that offer different levels of artist control. "No single model will work for everyone," says Bryne. "There's room for all of us. In the recent past, it often seemed like all or nothing, but maybe now we won't be forced to choose.""
Wii

Submission + - Nintendo Wii Fully Hacked at 24C3, runs Homebrew (wiinintendo.net)

Submitted by
cHALiTO
cHALiTO writes: "From the site:
The guys over at 24C3 just demoed a Wii hack that is set to provide native Wii homebrew in the near future (not running in GC mode, and with full access to all the Wii hardware!)
They were able to find encryption and decryption keys by doing full memory dumps at runtime over a custom serial interface. Using these keys, they were able to create a Wii 'game' that ran their own code (their demo happened to show live sensor/Wiimote information, amongst a few other things).
Read here and watch video here."
Television

Submission + - Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" to return (discovery.com)

Submitted by
Epeeist
Epeeist writes: "In 1980, the landmark series COSMOS premiered on public television. Since then, it is estimated that more than a billion people around the planet have seen the series. Now the Science Channel brings the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning COSMOS back, digitally remastered and with enhanced computer graphics."
Privacy

Submission + - Do Not Call Registry gets wake-up call (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "If you signed up for the federal or your state's Do Not Call Registry a few years ago, you might want to thing about refreshing it. Pennsylvanians this week got a wake up call, so to speak from the state's Attorney General Tom Corbett who kicked off a public awareness campaign designed to remind people what many have forgotten or never knew — that the 2002 law set registrations to expire after five years. That is of course unless you want to start hearing from those telemarketers as you sit down to dinner. Corbett said about 2 million people signed up in the immediate aftermath of the law taking effect and those who do not act by Sept. 15 will have their numbers dropped from the registry on Nov. 1. The Pennsylvania action is a reminder that the National Do Not Call Registry has a five year life span as well. The Federal Trade Commission is set to being a nation campaign in Spring 2008 to remind all US citizens to refresh their federal Do Not Call Registry standing. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18066"
Announcements

Submission + - Worlds Largest Telescope now in use (itwire.com.au)

Submitted by apdyck
apdyck writes: ITWire recently had an article announcing that the world's largest telescope is now up and running, conducting one-year series of tests. The Great Canary Telescope, located in the Canary Islands, is the largest telescope in the world at 10.4 m(34') in diameter. Not for your average stargazer! Check out the article at http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/13520/1066/
Digital

Submission + - Live Free in a World of Blu-ray and HD-DVD Drives (dvrplayground.com)

Submitted by
Egadfly
Egadfly writes: "While Blue-ray and HD-DVD fight it out in the market place, consumers face all the controls increasingly imposed on their media usage and computer functions. Here, hardware engineer Dennis Schmitz's "bad attitude" toward DRM leads him to explore simple holes in the tightening corporate control. As he describes the DRM attempts to control your hardware pipeline from storage disk to output, it is possible to get a new appreciation for open source software, innovatively written device drivers, and hypothetical adjustments to graphics cards."
United States

Submission + - Robot aircraft crush worldwide enemies - from Nev. (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The first unmanned attack squadron in aviation history will arrive in Iraq today looking to deliver 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles to the enemy — all from the comfort of a US Air Force base in Nevada. The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper can be controlled via satellite link thousands of miles away from operational areas. The planes are launched locally, in this case Iraq and Afghanistan, but can be controlled by a pilot and sensor operator sitting at computer consoles in a ground station, or they can be "handed off" via satellite signals to pilots and sensor operators in Nevada's Creech Air Force Base or elsewhere. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1756 0"
Quickies

Submission + - Japan earthquake hits near Kyoto (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Tetch
Tetch writes: The BBC is reporting that not only did this morning's magnitude 6.8 earthquake damage a nuclear powerplant in Japan and kill 7 people, but that also some hours later a second magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck the seabed off Kyoto.

When a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Kobe (http://www.drj.com/special/quake95.html, January 1995) we were all warned of a possible worldwide semiconductor shortage due to Kobe being home to a huge proportion of the world's chip encapsulation material manufacturing capacity. Let's hope there's no reprise of that. Mercifully it seems there has been no comparable casualty rate (the Kobe earthquake killed 5000 and injured 30000). It seems the quake struck on the opposite side of Honshu island from the nearest semiconductor plants — however, some concerns are being expressed : http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articl eid=CA6428520.
Announcements

Submission + - Top 5 Really Alternative Home Energy Sources (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Inhabitat.com
Inhabitat.com writes: "As solar panels and wind turbines become more and more commonplace in homes, it appears that green energy is finally moving into mainstream. But lest you fear that solar power is becoming too played out, there are still plenty of TRULY ALTERNATIVE energy sources to out there to sink your trendspotting teeth into. From kinetic energy to sound-power and even natural waste (yes, poo), there are more and more creative, weird, and super-promising ways to deliver all the power you need from renewable energy sources all around us. Here are our top 5 Really Alternative Energy Sources... (Cow Poop, Sound, Human Motion, Wind/Kinetics, Spinach)... see article for full descriptions. http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/07/16/top-5-weirdest -ways-to-power-your-home/"

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