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Sci-Fi

The Real Monsters Behind Godzilla 243

Posted by kdawson from the radioactively-enhanced-cash-cow dept.
eldavojohn writes "A Wired blog looks at the real monsters behind Godzilla: his lawyers. Do you think Godzilla is basically a glorified T. Rex? Guess again, as his lawyers have tirelessly argued: 'He's erect-standing. He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow, he's got an anthropomorphic torso. The T. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle.' Read on to find out why they targeted the site davezilla.com but not mozilla.org. Another abuse of the American trademark & copyright system? You decide — just don't make a float of him or you'll find yourself paying an undisclosed sum to Toho Co. Ltd."
Security

Lenovo Service Disables Laptops With a Text Message 257

Posted by kdawson from the say-the-magic-word dept.
narramissic writes "Lenovo plans to announce on Tuesday a service that allows users to remotely disable a PC by sending a text message. A user can send the command from a specified cell phone number — each ThinkPad can be paired with up to 10 cell phones — to kill a PC. The software will be available free from Lenovo's Web site. It will also be available on certain ThinkPad notebooks equipped with mobile broadband starting in the first half of 2009. 'You steal my PC and ... if I can deliver a signal to that PC that turns it off, hey, I'm good now,' said Stacy Cannady, product manager of security at Lenovo. 'The limitation here is that you have to have a WAN card in the PC and you must be paying a data plan for it,' Cannady added."
Media

Submission + - Mythbuntu 8.04 Release Candidate (mythbuntu.org)

Submitted by
murisfurder
murisfurder writes: "Today we are introducing the Mythbuntu 8.04 release candidate.

Feel free to checkout the updated screenshots

Changes from Beta:

Artwork
* All of the artwork on the CD has been improved upon. Also, the website has been refreshed.

MythTV improvements
* MythTV knows how to send shutdown and restart commands via dbus/hal.
* Firewire improvements

Diskless support
* Diskless support is now in RC. The MCC interface for it is now available, as well as an Alternate Disk."
The Internet

A Law Professor's Opinion of Viacom vs YouTube 155

Posted by Zonk from the winning-isn't-everything dept.
troll -1 writes "Lawrence Lessig, a well-known law professor at Stanford, has an op-ed in the NY Times entitled Make Way for Copyright Chaos which references the Viacom vs YouTube case. What's interesting about this article is that it gives some historical perspective on copyright law and the courts. Up until Grokster, Lessig says the attitude of the courts was, 'if you don't like how new technologies affect copyright, take your problem to Congress.' But in the Grokster case the court seemed to rule against the technology itself, cutting Congress out of the picture. He also explains that Viacom is essentially asking the Court to rule against the safe harbor provision of Title II of the DMCA which should protect YouTube and others against liability so long as they make reasonable steps to take down infringing content at the request of the copyright holder. Lessig doesn't give us any insight into who's going to win but he does conclude that 'conservatives on the Supreme Court have long warned' about the dynamic of going against Congress when it comes to copyright."
Microsoft

Submission + - Does Microsoft really suck ? And if so ,how bad?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MICROSOFT's formerly tame blogger Robert Scoble has recently protested that Microsoft sucks . I just wanted to know what has Microsoft done lately that has been right besides belittle the competition . I know they released Vista but I didn't see anything there that was earth shattering . With so much money in the bank has Microsoft become to big move effectively through the market. Has Microsoft's sheer size killed any agility in the market . Instead of offering good innovating products at reasonable prices , they use there market dominance end up shoving them down your throat. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/ind ustry_sectors/technology/article1529988.ece
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's lame attempt at advertising.

Submitted by
Azhar
Azhar writes: "After their pathetic Ads for the Zune, Microsoft manages to come up with something even lamer, this time in India (this shot is from the Times of India) to promote their Genuine Software. Not only is the entire thing ironic, it's just stupid. Enjoy"
Education

Submission + - Clever Garbage Disposal methods

Submitted by
Grumbeys
Grumbeys writes: "So after a recent college visit i realized that garbage just tends to accumulate in any space of living, pretty much no matter how often you clean. So i thought, perhaps there is a lazy mans way to avoid this constant picking up of beer cans and such. Something that involves a few of the following -A wet/dry vac on reverse -Some tubing of some sort, either pbc or duct i'm assuming. my plan is to construct a device that will allow one to throw garbage into a vat and have the garbage propelled by the wet/dry vac into a large garbage container far away from the living quarters. I need some ideas, and comments. could this work or can i not get enough propulsion from a wet/dry vac.."

The Videogame Industry is Broken 232

Posted by Zonk from the busted-up dept.
GameDaily is running an interesting opinion piece running down the ways in which the gaming industry is just broken. The author cites soaring costs, huge risks, a reduction in creativity, and a stagnation in market growth as just some of the signs of this crisis. From the article: "The next-gen systems require publishers to place very large bets with each title. This will mean decreased risk taking and just regurgitated sequels of big brand franchises. How many publishers will take risks with multiplatform original IP? This is clearly not good news for the consumer as innovation has driven our industry from the beginning. The irony is that the amazing tools, capabilities and quality of the new systems may very well doom what is most important, which is the game itself. Reconciling what a creative team wants and what the executive suite needs in terms of profits will be a growing challenge for many companies."

Linux/Mac/Windows File Name Friction 638

Posted by Hemos from the like-doing-it-with-sandpaper dept.
lessthan0 writes "In 1995, Microsoft added long file name support to Windows, allowing more descriptive names than the limited 8.3 DOS format. Mac users scoffed, having had long file names for a decade and because Windows still stored a DOS file name in the background. Linux was born with long file name support four years before it showed up in Windows. Today, long file names are well supported by all three operating systems though key differences remain. "

Microsoft to Turn to Driver Quality Ratings System 333

Posted by samzenpus from the four-stars dept.
QT writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft is finally trying to do something about PC driver problems. A new crash-report-driven Driver Quality Rating system will be used in Windows Vista to rate drivers. Drivers that rate poorly in real world use by users will lose their logo certification status, which would be bad news for OEMs and the device manufacturers themselves. Maybe now submitting crash reports will feel more useful? This is long overdue."

ATI's Radeon X1900GT On Test 101

Posted by Hemos from the beating-the-tar-out-of-each-other dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ATI's Radeon X1800XT reached end of life last month and the company announced its replacement on May 5th: Radeon X1900GT. Bit-Tech has put a pair of retail Radeon X1900GT cards from Connect3D and Sapphire to the test in a range of real-world benchmarks to find out how it matches up to NVIIDA's 7900 GT."

Vim 7 Released 665

Posted by Hemos from the time-to-get-your-upgrade-on dept.
houseofmore writes "After many years of development, Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, today announced version 7 of the widely used editor. New features included spell checking in up to 50 languages, intelligent completion, tab pages, extended undo branches and much more. Downloads available here for Unix, Windows, Mac and more."

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