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Comment Prosecute or Persecute? (Score 0) 471

by ShrapnelFace (#22704912) Attached to: State Lawmaker Wants To Ban Anonymous Posting Online
Can someone please help us define "bullying"?

If you cant, then there sets the stage for the next Freedom of Speech Act.
What develops when you restrict freedoms using ambiguous wording such as bullying, is a serious violation of your freedom to express.

The only thing that will happen is that they will thoughtfully persecute and then prosecute anyone who posts messages that do not fit into the governing body's ideologies.

Feed Ins and Outs: Is buyshifting the future of television? (part 2) (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed
Jeremy Toeman contributes Ins and Outs, an opinion column on entertainment technology:

Last time on Ins and Outs we introduced the concept of buyshifting -- what it means, what it is, and where it's going. But now it's time to get down to the brass tacks. That's right, we're talking about whether it's viable for the average consumer -- more specifically, where it falls on the cost scale. The results might actually surprise you. So let's dig in, shall we?

For the "standard" HD+DVR package -- your kind of baseline TV-consuming experience -- the monthly bill for San Francisco's Comcast digital cable service is $78. If the average household watches 8 hours of programming per day (yes, it's true), that comes out to about $0.32 per hour. Comcast also charges $0.99 per episode through its VOD service. iTunes, of course, charges $1.99 per episode, or $34.99 per season ($1.59 per episode at an assumed 22 episodes per season). Buying the DVDs on Amazon ranges from about $25-$40 per season ($1.14 to $1.81 per episode).

Since your cable bill is fixed (well, not really, as the cable industry has managed to increase billing at a rate that exceeds inflation for the past 10 consecutive years - big surprise), it comes out to $936 annually. (Side note: for simplicity's sake we'll assume that your average satellite bill is comparable to cable.) So let's see the results on a per-year, per-month, and per-episode basis, assuming one season per year, 22 episodes per season per show.

Continue reading Ins and Outs: Is buyshifting the future of television? (part 2)

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Businesses

Best Buy Accused of Overcharging 301

Posted by Zonk from the maybe-shouldn't-be-quite-so-greedy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has accused Best Buy of overcharging its customers. His accusation is that customers see one price on Best Buy's website, in stores salespeople would show them a different internal site from a kiosk. Best Buy denies the charges. 'Previously, the company confirmed that store employees have access to an internal Web site that looks nearly identical to the public BestBuy.com site, but the company's policy is always to offer customers the lowest quoted price unless it's specifically identified as a deal available only to online shoppers. Jerry Farrell Jr., Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner, said the lawsuit should be a warning to companies to be more transparent in their business practices.'"

Feed Nintendo reportedly making Wiis in Japan unmoddable (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming


Wii modders have already hit (and overcome) a few snags as a result of changes Nintendo has made to the console, but it doesn't look like the company is ready to give up the fight just yet, now reportedly introducing (as rumored) another round of revisions to stop folks from messing with the Wii's innards. According to at least one retailer in Japan, Nintendo has taken the somewhat drastic step of actually snipping some of the pins from the surface-mounted IC on the Wii's motherboard, making the current crop of modchips virtually useless. Currently, the changes only seem to apply to NTSC-J model Wiis sold in Japan, with no word of any NTSC-U model Wiis suffering the same fate -- although we wouldn't bet on them being immune for long. Of course, all this is of little concern for anyone planning on playing by Nintendo's rules, but the rest of ya may want to grab a moddable Wii while the going's still good -- or at least wait for the inevitable workaround to this latest impediment.

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Feed Best Buy sued over shady intranet site (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Tsk, tsk. Looks like Best Buy will indeed be paying up for the misdeeds involving that dodgy intranet we saw a few months back. Connecticut's attorney general announced a lawsuit against the big box retailer and accused it of "deceiving customers with in-store computer kiosks and overcharging them." Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was quoted as saying that the store "gave consumers the worst deal with a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices." The suit seeks "refunds for consumers, civil penalties, court costs, a ban on the practice, and other remedies," and while Best Buy spokespersons are vigorously denying the allegations, Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner even said that there was "certainly an element of deception here." Reportedly, the in-store kiosks were somehow an "alternate way to get information about products," but when that information ends up costing your customers more than they should be paying, we doubt the judge will look kindly upon it.

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Feed Home schooled kid wins national geography competition (com.com)

From feed by cnetfeed
Blog: A home-schooled girl named Caitlin Snaring this week became the second girl to win a national competition, making her the most recent in a string of contests dominated by children who were educated outside state-run schools.
Media

CSS of DVDs Ruled 'Ineffective' by Finnish Courts 222

Posted by Zonk from the rip-away-my-pretties-rip-away dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The CSS protection used in DVDs has been ruled "ineffective" by Helsinki District Court. This means that CSS is not covered by the Finnish copyright law amendment of 2005 (based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001), allowing it to be freely circumvented. Quoting the press release: ' The conclusions of the court can be applied all over Europe since the word effective comes directly from the directive ... A protection measure is no longer effective, when there is widely available end-user software implementing a circumvention method. My understanding is that this is not technology-dependent. The decision can therefore be applied to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as well in the future.'"

Feed Toshiba rolls out automotive HD DVD player, improved LCD panel (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets, HDTV


Toshiba has shown off some auto-related products at the Automotive Engineering Expo 2007, including a mobile HD DVD player and a fresh take on touch panels. The high-definition in-dash player is under co-development with Alpine, and is planned for a 2008 release. The LCD is an improvement on traditional touchscreen technology, with no film coating -- which traditionally reduces contrast ratio and brightness -- to handle the user input, instead bundling optical sensors alongside each pixel. These sensors can then detect the shadow of a press during the day, and the reflection of the backlight at night. Toshiba also plans to upgrade that tech to use infrared instead of day/night sensors. Who cares if you can't see the difference between 1080 and 720 on a 7-inch screen, we just want our mobile touchscreen HD now!

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