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Comment Re:The word "limited" (Score 1) 442

In addition to what other responders have said, the entire life of the author (not to mention so many years beyond it) is arguably "unlimited" -- at least, I find it hard to believe that whoever wrote "limited Times" would have thought that the rest of the author's life could somehow fit into its definition...

Comment Re:guilty eh? (Score 1) 964

by Jeremiah Stoddard (#35933028) Attached to: Bizarre Porn Raid Underscores Wi-Fi Privacy Risks

Either way, when the police look at your computer and find no traces of illegal activity, they'll let you go, just like they did with the guy in the story.

I wish I had your confidence that the police are always good enough to do that. It must be quite pleasant to be able to ignore all the news reports of police misconduct...

Comment Re:Easy (Score 1) 195

by Jeremiah Stoddard (#21414609) Attached to: The Fine Line Between Security and Usability
Why should I pay more for what any reasonable person ought to be able to expect? If I pay for something, it's my right to expect a functional and safe product in return. Hell, Free/Open Source software gives me that for free, and yet some profit-making enterprise can't afford to do it?

And it doesn't cost the vendor anything more to release the source of an outdated piece of software -- they don't have to use an open source license, just allow me to fix what I paid for.
Music

Submission + - Virgin Digital To Close - DRM Strikes Back Again (last100.com)

Submitted by mrspin
mrspin writes: It's a gamble we all take when we sign up for a digital music service: Will it still be around in a year or two? The latest digital music store to go belly up is Virgin Digital, which its owner, Virgin, is in the process of shutting down in the US and UK. Once the store goes dark Oct. 19, customers will not be able to play the music they've bought, due to digital rights management (DRM) limitations.

SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival 142

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the welcoming-various-overlords dept.
PacoCheezdom writes "Intelligent Life has short summary of a demonstration by MIT professor James McLurkin of his new group-minded robots, which run an operating system called 'Swarm OS'. The robots are able to work together as a group not by communicating with all members of the group at once, but by talking only to their neighbors, and model other similar behaviors performed by bees and ants. "
The Courts

Submission + - Has RIAA Abandoned "Making Available"?

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA's standard complaint (pdf) was thrown out last month by a federal judge in California as so much "conclusory" "boilerplate" "speculation" in Interscope v. Rodriguez. Interestingly, the RIAA's amended complaint (pdf), filed six (6) days later, abandoned altogether the RIAA's "making available" argument, which it first formulated in defending the dismissal motion in Elektra v. Barker. This raises a number of questions, including (a) whether the RIAA is going to stick to this new form of complaint in future cases, (b) whether it is going to get into a different kind of trouble for some of its new allegations, such as its contention that the investigator "detected an individual" (contradicting the testimony of the RIAA's own expert witness) and the allegation that the defendant should be held liable because he or she is "the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time", a phrase which would appear to be meaningless in a copyright infringement context, and (c) what tack defendants' lawyers should take (this was one lawyer's suggestion)."
Handhelds

Submission + - Apple and the RIAA, ringtones

Submitted by pilsner.urquell
pilsner.urquell writes: Apples own interests to defend the rights of consumer has cost them a lot of grief in the ringtone market.

Ask Not For Whom the Ring Tones.
Writing about Apples iTunes ringtones, John Gruber of the Daring Fireball cited Engadget, which reported that the RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so (surprised?), and it won a decision last year before the Copyright Office saying that ringtones werent derivative works, meaning they didnt infringe on the copyright of the songwriter.
Just a continuation of just how evil that RIAA really is.
Windows

Submission + - Black screen of darkness to haunt Vista pirates (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Microsoft's Reduced Functionality mode was explained in an email to OEMs as the consequence of Vista piracy. It includes a black screen after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop. Using fear as a motivator, the email warns resellers to 'make sure your customers always get genuine Windows Vista preinstalled.'
Media

HD VMD Shows Up Late For the Format War 280

Posted by kdawson from the other-guys-will-kill-each-other-off-see dept.
Fishead writes "As the fight heats up between HD DVD and Blu-ray, and as consumers seem to care less and less, a new contender has entered the fray. Next month, New Medium Enterprises will be selling a 1080p player through Amazon and stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150 — half what the cheapest HD DVD player costs, and a quarter the cost of a low-end Blu-ray. The difference this new HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format brings is that the discs are created with the same (cheap) red laser as DVDs. From the article: 'HD VMD discs, which hold up to 30GB on a single side, are encoded with a maximum bit rate of 40 megabits per second... between HD DVD's 36 Mpbs and Blu-ray's 48 Mbps. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future.'"

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