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The Courts

Will Obama's DOJ Intervene To Help RIAA? 546

Posted by kdawson from the jury-is-out dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, a Pennsylvania case in which the RIAA's statutory damages theory — seeking from 2,200 to 450,000 times the amount of actual damages — is being tested, the US Department of Justice has just filed papers indicating that it is considering intervening in the case to defend the constitutionality of such awards, and requesting an extension of time (PDF) in which to decide whether such intervention 'is appropriate.' This is an early test of whether President Obama will make good on his promises (a) not to allow industry insiders to participate in cases affecting the industry they represented (the 2nd and 3rd highest DOJ officials are RIAA lawyers) and (b) to look out for ordinary citizens rather than big corporations."
OS X

Submission + - Mac OS X 10.5.3 to fix over 200 bugs, coming soon (macscoop.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MacScoop reports that "Apple has seeded several builds of its Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.3 update to developers during the past few weeks and just seeded yet another one numbered "9D34" earlier today." The update fixes over two hundred bugs, weights almost half a gigabyte and should be available soon.
Software

Norman & Spolsky - Simplicity is Out 381

Posted by Zonk from the knobs-and-buttons-for-the-weee dept.
guanxi writes ""As simple as possible, and no simpler", you might have heard a few time, or KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). No more! The new hot trend is complexity: '[I]f you think simplicity means ... "does one thing and does it well," then I applaud your integrity but you can't go that far' says Joel Spolsky. 'Why are Yahoo! and MSN such complex-looking places? Because their systems are easier to use [than Google]' explains Donald Norman, who also also tells us that Simplicity Is Highly Overrated. Are they trying to make a subtler point, are they just consultants making a splash, or complexity the Next Big Thing in design?" From the 'highly overrated' article: "After touring the store my two friendly guides and I stopped outside to where two new automobiles were on display: two brand new Korean SUVs. Complexity again. I'm old enough to remember when a steering wheel was just a steering wheel, the rear view mirror just a mirror. These steering wheels were also complex control structures with multiple buttons and controls including two sets of loudness controls, one for music and one for the telephone (and I'm not even mentioning the multiple stalks on the steering column). The rear view mirror had two controls, one to illuminate the compass the other simply labeled "mirror," which lit a small red light when depressed. A rear view mirror with an on-off switch? The salesperson didn't know what it did either."

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I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson

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