Faterson - Slashdot User

Last.fm User Data Was Sent To RIAA By CBS 334

Posted by kdawson on Saturday May 23, 2009 @09:46PM from the doing-their-bidding dept.

suraj.sun sends in an update from TechCrunch on a story that generated a lot of controversy a few months back, "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?" "Now we've located another source for the story, someone who's very close to Last.fm. And it turns out Last.fm was telling the truth, sorta... Last.fm didn't hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. Here's what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for 'internal use only.' It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA. We believe CBS lied to us when they denied sending the data to the RIAA, and that they subsequently asked us to attribute the quote to Last.fm to make the statement defensible. Last.fm's denials were strictly speaking correct, but they ignored the underlying truth of the situation, that their parent company supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users."

Last.fm To Start Charging International Users 329

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @04:07AM from the hard-chargin' dept.

tdobson writes "The popular online radio service Last.fm has announced that users outside of the UK, USA and Germany will need to start paying 3 Euros (about $4.40 USD/£2.80 GBP) per month to continue streaming music on their service. Last.fm doesn't offer much of a reason as to the change, other than writing on their blog that '[t]here will be a 30 track free trial, and we hope this will convince people to subscribe and keep listening to the radio.' Already, there appears to be quite a backlash in responses so far, amongst subscribers and non-subscribers of all nationalities — has this killed Last.fm's appeal, globally?"

Comment Re:I'm Excited (Score 1) 408

by Faterson on Wednesday May 11, 2005 @03:02PM (#12501848) Attached to: Due Next Year: Dell's 19-inch Laptop

The biggest reason i haven't ever gotten a laptop is the keyboard layout. i've been using a standard qwerty keyboard for so long that i always get flustered whenever i try to find a control key on a laptop.

My no doubt lowest-end notebook Acer Aspire 1353LC sports a full-size keyboard, though it's just a 15" machine. Apart from the missing numeric keypad, every key is perfectly placed. You're right it's rare to find decent keyboard layouts; beside the Acer I've only seen a few HP notebook keyboard layouts that were tolerable. Even Acer's own parallel Travelmate line is deficient in this regard.

The two tell-tale signs for determining whether a laptop offers full-size keyboard: there must be three (not just two) keys to the right of the L key, and there must two keys (to the right and to the left), not just one key, below the A key. Most laptop keyboards (and even many standalone keyboards) fail this test.

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