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Comment Re:Industry? (Score 1) 216

Ummmm. I get that for NZL$60 here (well 15gb), with free unmetered off-peak data (1am-7am; which is a pirates wet dream here) on ADSL 2. I also live like 3 houses from the exchange so I get about 11Mbps down. It would cost only NZL$50 if I didn't pay for the 1Mb upstream.

Section 92A would probably have hit my ISP hard though. They are not exactly great service (in fact they usually win worst service award), but they live on the fact that they give unlimited bandwidth to the pirates.

Also trying to compare apples with apples NZL$50 is only US$28.50. So it's not as bad as you make it sound.
Role Playing (Games)

New Champions Online Details 43

Eurogamer sat down with Bill Roper of Cryptic Studios to discuss Champions Online, their superhero MMO due out in a few months. Roper mentioned that the PC version of the game will be coming out well ahead of any console versions, and he provided some insight into the game's Nemesis system. "When you get around the mid-game, you have the ability to create your Nemesis... Then you start going on these separate Nemesis missions — you'll start getting ambushed by the minions of your Nemesis, and eventually one of these minions will kind of break down, and say 'oh no please don't, I'll tell you I'll you,' and you get a clue off him. You go through a whole series of these very Nemesis-specific quests which revolve around the things you put in about your Nemesis, but it's not always the same path that you take, there's multiple story directions that you could be going through." Examiner also spoke briefly with Randy Mosiondz, lead designer for the game, about the questing and the game environment. IGN got a look at Lemuria itself, and Cryptic posted some of the concept art.

Comment Re:Bad Summary (Score 1) 933

Let's change the scenario slightly.

Let's make them cartoons depicting gruesome murders -- but note that as with the kiddie porn, no actual person is harmed. Or at the other end of the scale -- cartoons depicting someone smoking pot, even tho no actual marijuana was grown, harvested, or smoked.

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT??

Under a worst-case interpretation, a cartoon depiction or written description of a crime becomes legally the same as doing the crime itself, and subject to the same penalty as the real thing.

Under worst-case enforcement, that would pretty much empty most libraries, just for starters.

I don't have time to wade through and wrap my brain around all the legalese in the decision, but I do know we definitely do NOT want to go down the road of enforcing real penalties against fantasy depictions of crimes, regardless of what that crime may be.

I would want to go and hide my copies of Grand Theft Auto.

Medicine

Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message 242

Peace Corps Online writes "Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. 'He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,' Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. 'I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,' Nott said."
The Courts

Lawsuit Between Apple and Psystar Moves Toward Settlement 242

An anonymous reader writes "Psystar and Apple have agreed to alternative dispute resolution to keep the public eye away from their disagreements, and to reduce legal costs. This will eliminate any rulings that would set a precedent over Psystar's claim that Apple is violating anti-trust laws by tying Mac OS X to only their hardware and thus creating a monopoly. This could result in a profit for Psystar's business, but eliminate their line of open-computing Mac-compatible PCs. On the other hand, what's to stop a similar company from doing the same thing?"
Privacy

Shopping Centers Track Customers Via Cell Phone Signals 317

oschobero writes "According an article from the Times, customers in shopping centers are having their every move tracked. Using cellphone signals, the system can tell when people enter the center, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation." The particular tracking device described by the article is made by an English company called Path Intelligence.

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