Comment Re:This will be really interesting (Score 2) 245
To be fair, anyone that wants to be a politician should probably be banned from voting (among other things)
Comment Re:'Never forwarded that information' (Score 1) 179
Who knows, but at least the prosecutor did the right thing and dropped the charges instead of dragging it on and on and on (and so forth).
Comment Re:doesn't make sense (Score 1) 642
Please tell me why you think you need a passport to leave the USA ??
A passport is simply a note from the US state department documenting that you are a USA citizen. Some countries may require you to have one to enter it ( the other country ) But you sure do not need one to LEAVE the usa
Actually, I've had my passport checked by ICE as I was leaving the US by car. The Sweetwater border crossing in MT requires you to have your passport checked by ICE before you get to the Canadian border. They pulled the car in front of my off to the side and searched it.
And yes, I have see this multiple times at that crossing.
*ICE = Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Comment Re:Is this legal? (Score 1) 148
There is no good reason the CBC cannot approach the copyright holders of Creative Commons works the same way they approach the copyright holders of commercial works. In fact the CBC is much more likely to obtain permission without having to spend money in the case of CC-licensed works. There's no good reason why they would have to completely avoid this option.
There's no good reason but there is a reason. There is a lot of money and political clout behind the monied copyright interests. This maneuver benefits them, satisfying "que bono?". The question is whether you think that's a complete and total coincidence caused by a completely free, unprompted, un-coerced, un-pressured decision on the part of CBC. Anyone who wants to believe that so badly that they'll dismiss all other notions as "conspiracy theory, get a perspective" is either naive or deluded.
I've got another reason for you. Time and money. Consider this.
Negotiation for license rights = 50/hr (numbers pulled out of my ass. This includes the negotiations, contract signing, accounting to cut any cheque for payment, time for the legal dept to review the contract, etc)
So, to license from a library of works = 4 hours of work.
To license from 750 different license holders = 3000 hours of work.
Hmm....$200 in labour for a blanket license, or $150,000 to license 3 songs / podcast (5 shows a week + 2 weeks vacation/reruns in a year. Add in the costs of researching and maintaining records of each license agreement....). As long as the cost of the exclusive library license is less then the cost of negotiating all those individual license agreements, CBC will go exclusive.
Could they go and use CC music? Yeah, no reason not too other then the cost.
Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope
the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new
Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under
disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source
projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."
Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What? 258
The Opposable Thumbs blog is running an interesting article contrasting everything Activision did "wrong" in creating and marketing Modern Warfare 2 with the game's unqualified success. Despite price hikes, somewhat shady review practices, exploit frustrations, and the dedicated server fiasco, the game has raked in over a billion dollars in sales.
"There was only one way to review Modern Warfare 2: on the Xbox 360, in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision. Accepting the paid trip, along with room and board, was the only way you were going to get a review before launch. Joystiq noted that this broke their ethics policy, but they went anyway. Who can say no to a review destined to bring in traffic? Shacknews refused to call their coverage a 'review' because of the ethical issues inherent in the situation, but that stance was unique. The vast majority of news outlets didn't disclose how the review was conducted, or added a disclaimer after the nature of the review was made public. This proved to Activision that if you're big enough, you can dictate the exact terms of any review, and no ethics policy will make news outlets turn you down."
Comment Simple answer perhaps? (Score 1) 964
Maybe they just didn't have distribution rights for that models images outside of North America? Always possible that is what happened, and it didn't get caught until late enough that it was cheaper to photoshop then reshoot.
I know, I know, how dare I give them benefit of the doubt.
US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490
theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."
Submission + - Windows Vista restricts GNU GCC apps to 32 MB
Dave Coffin writes: "In Windows Vista, applications that don't link the Win32 API cannot use more than 32 MB of RAM. This affects all executables generated by GNU compilers. No such limit exists in earlier versions of Windows, and no work-around has yet been found. See http://www.trnicely.net/misc/vista.html for details."
Feed Nokia Siemens Network struggles out the gate (com.com)
Joint venture between Nokia and Siemens gets off the ground--but it's already warning profits won't grow much in 2007.
Canadian Broadcasters Seek New Internet Regulation 171
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist's weekly Toronto Star column reports that the Canadian broadcasting community, including broadcasters, copyright collectives, and actor labor unions, are all calling on Canada's broadcast regulator to increase its regulation of the Internet. Some groups want sites such as YouTube to be subject to Canadian content requirements, while the broadcasters want to stop U.S. broadcasters from streaming television shows online into
Canada."
Feed Google updates maps after Katrina 'airbrushing' incident (com.com)
Under fire for replacing post-storm images with older, higher-res shots, search giant installs 2006 aerial photographs of Gulf Coast region.
Feed Blog refuseniks facing the sack? (theregister.com)
Sony BMG UK adds blogging to the job description
We've all heard about employees being sacked for blogging. But as the fad begins to wane, will staff soon be sacked for failing to blog?
Submission + - Oracle Linux adopters labelled 'idiots'
atbarboz writes: "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat.
Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.
Does it behove the linux community to act like fanatics and fanboys?"
Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.
Does it behove the linux community to act like fanatics and fanboys?"
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