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Music

Submission + - Major record producer blatantly ignores copyright

Submitted by gloom
gloom writes: In a follow-up to one of the more exciting David VS Goliath-stories so far this year, american super-producer Timbaland now speaks out on a radio-show ("Elliot In The Morning") and to MTV regarding the allegations that he stole a song from finnish demoscene musician Janne Suni. It would be sort of funny if it wasn't so serious — I quote:

""It makes me laugh. The part I don't understand, the dude is trying to act like I went to his house and took it from his computer. I don't know him from a can of paint. I'm 15 years deep. That's how you attack a king? You attack moi? Come on, man. You got to come correct. You the laughing stock. People are like, 'You can't be serious.'"

Is this new version of the Chewbacca-defence going to hold up? Is it okay to steal music and pass it off as your own as long as you are already famous?
Windows

Submission + - How much does Vista's Content Protection cost us?

Submitted by
em8chel
em8chel writes: "Peter Gutmann points out in his detailed A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection": "Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server)...""
Education

Submission + - One Desktop per Child - miniPCs for schools?

Submitted by gwjenkins
gwjenkins writes: I'm a teacher in charge of IT in a small school. We would like to bust out of the computer lab model but don't want a trolley of laptops wheeled from class to class. I've drooled over wifi pdas but just can't afford a class set (and the batteries drain too fast). In a classroom, space is at a premium and teachers won't use a technology that takes too long to set up. 90% of the time the kids are just researching (google), or typing (google docs), the rest of the time they can go to a lab. I would love to have a desk-based solution. My question is, can you run a wifi minipc (sitting under the desk) from a 12volt rechargable battery (sitting under the desk) with a 7" LCD (sitting on the desk), that boots from flashcard into firefox (Damn Small Linux?). No wires! No setup time! Has anyone done this? How? Alternatively can anyone say why this is silly."
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube bans video containing Qur'an quotes

Submitted by
skraps
skraps writes: "YouTube, in a move that has caused quite a reaction in the community, has censored popular atheist commentator NickGisburne. Mr. Gisburne has built a large following on YouTube by making simple and accessible logical arguments against Christian beliefs, and had recently decided to change the focus of his videos to the Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam. YouTube reacted by deleting his account, along with 60+ videos, after he posted a simple slide-show video with direct quotes from the English translation of the Qur'an, containing no commentary aside from the video's title "Islamic Teachings — Cruelty from the Qur'an". YouTube's explanation was "After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down."

Do "Web 2.0" sites like YouTube fit the legal definition of a "public commons", and if so, what will it take for corporations like YouTube to start honoring constitutionally protected speech?"
AMD

AMD's Showcases Quad-Core Barcelona CPU 190

Posted by Zonk from the four-times-the-fun dept.
Gr8Apes writes "AMD has showcased their new 65nm Barcelona quad-core CPU. It is labeled a quad-core Opteron, but according to Infoworld's Tom Yeager, is really a redefinition of x86. Each core has a new vector math processing unit (SSE128), separate integer and floating point schedulers, and new nested paging tables (to vastly improve hardware virtualization). According to AMD, the new vector math units alone should improve floating point operation by 80%. Some analysts are skeptical, waiting for benchmarks. Will AMD dethrone Intel again? Only time will tell."
Networking

Submission + - MIT scientists reach fiber-optic breakthrough

Submitted by kcurtis
kcurtis writes: The AP (via boston.com) has a story about how MIT scientists have detailed a breakthrough in optics that could lead to cheaper, more efficient optic communications. From the story: "Like polarizing sunglasses that block light waves oriented in different directions, the MIT researchers created a clever device that splits the light beams as they pass through a circuit. The device then rotates one of the polarized beams, before both beams are rejoined on their way out of the circuit, retaining the signals' strength. But it's not just that device that the researchers are touting. They're also trumpeting the innovative method they devised to integrate the optical circuitry with electronic circuitry on the same silicon chip."
Privacy

Submission + - China Creates Massive Online ID Database

Submitted by schwaang
schwaang writes: While the US continues to hash out concerns over the Real ID Act, which aims to create a national ID by standardizing state driver's licenses, China Digital Times points out a story from Xinhua Daily News describing China's massive online ID database, which they sell will help prevent fraud. From the article:

Anyone can now send a text message or visit the country's population information center's website, to check if the name and the ID number of a person's identity card match. If they do match the ID cardholder's picture also appears, said the Ministry, adding that no other information is available to ensure a citizen's privacy is protected.

Completed at the end of 2006, China's population information database, the world's largest, contains personal information on 1.3 billion citizens.

Giving public accessing to the database is also designed to correct mistakes if an individual discovers that their name, number and picture don't match.
Businesses

Cartoon Network CEO Resigns Over Aqua Teen Scare 710

Posted by Zonk from the i-doubt-he's-laughing dept.
DesertBlade writes "Jim Samples, CEO of Cartoon Network, has resigned over the bomb scare prompted by the Aqua Teen marketing campaign. Turner (CN's parent company) ended up paying over 2 million in restitution to the city of Boston, and a man with a thirteen year record at the company has lost his job. Though many people have been citing this as 'the ultimate successful advertising campaign', there have obviously been real consequences from the incident." By virtue of the consequences of the campaign, was this now officially a bad idea? Or is your opinion that this is all far too much knee-jerking? Have your say in the comments.
Biotech

Journal Journal: Temporary blood vessel shunt to be used to save limbs in war 157

Journal by Stile 65

The FDA has just approved for military use a shunt which allows partially-severed limbs to continue to get circulation. According to the article, "For most, it won't be a matter of saving a limb outright but rather salvaging the quality of a wounded leg or arm." This is because "The tubelike device is designed to connect the two ends of a severed blood vessel, providing a temporary bridge or shunt around a wound to restore blood flow to an
Science

Doomsday Seed Vault Design Unveiled 293

Posted by Zonk from the any-room-for-humans-in-there dept.
in2mind writes "The BBC News is reporting on the completion of a design for a 'doomsday' vault ... that will house seeds. All known varieties of food crops will be represented in the structure, which will be constructed by the Norwegian government. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes by building into the side of a mountain. On a remote island. Near the North pole. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will house the seed samples at a preservative -18C (0F), and could be used by post-apocalyptic people to feed a hungry planet."
Role Playing (Games)

How D&D Shaped the Modern Videogame 128

Posted by Zonk from the roll-to-save-vs-awesome dept.
PC Gamer UK, via the CVG site, has a feature up on the influence Dungeons and Dragons had on the development of videogaming. The role D&D has had in inspiring gamers is fairly well known; Masters of Doom chronicles the inspiration the Johns' campaign had on the creation of Doom and Quake. The article discusses more recent confluences of the tabletop game and videogame development, such as Obsidian's use of pen-and-paper to develop the early areas of Neverwinter Nights 2. Ideas for the late, lamented, Fallout 3 were sparked by a number of tabletop roleplaying moments from developer campaigns.

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