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Wow. I'd swear that's Mark Mothersbaugh doing the music. Is it true? I'm still angry that I can't buy a Crash Bandicoot soundtrack-- say what you will about the series but the music was great.

Maybe I ought to ask the biggest DEVO fan in the universe-- he ought to know.

How ironic that www.boingboint.net... I think you meant BoingBoinG.

So will movie piracy. Star Wars III is already out. The linked article makes some good points.

I think the reason why people became "pro-patent in this case" is that the CSIRO actually use patents the way they were intended to be used. They invent something, then re-invest the money back into current research. They have been quietly doing this under various names since 1916 and have a very impressive record of practical innovation and basic research.

"...the ideas there such as OFDM and FEC, etc. are actually not all that ingenious." - CSIRO developed and patented the idea a decade ago, hindsight is always 20/20. As you say, anyone with a "deep understanding" could have thought of the idea but the fact remains that nobody did.

"I oppose anyone who wants to use them offensively" - The corporations that are now whinning about paying $4 per chip are the same ones that pushed hard for US IP laws to be adopted under the recently signed free trade agreement. To me, (an Aussie), it is poetic justice when a "non-profit" can screw a cartel of the largest "for-profits" with thier own rules. Before the 1980's corporations used to buy CSIRO patents for a pitance and the Australian public would watch as Agri-corps and Drug-pushing-corps turned govt funded research into a private cash cow. The use of licenses to make "for-profits" pay for basic research is one of CSIRO's greatest innovations.

Some examples of IP idiocy in Australia, patent for the wheel, Ugg boots.

and as I see they even managed to write up something interesting about it. And look! A screenshot of that kha-nyou thingie...

Even boing boing (boing boing!) reported that hours ago.

Slashdot is getting really really lame. That's not news anymore, that's old crap one has been reading on any other blog thousand times.

FYI, the only reason why I visit slashdot is to read the trolls and the funny comments, all the other stuff was reported everywhere else long time before slashdot.

Or as some know it the DMCA.

Cory Doctorow has some comments on this at http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/13/broadcast_fla g_back_.html/

That's the thing, though...with DRM you can only *hope* that you can listen to what you want, when you want. You have agreed to let someone else have control over that decision. Boing-boing post explaining why that is, generally, a bad thing...and pointedly about preventing competition, not preventing piracy.

-Ted

• Given away as part of a premium service (think Yahoo Mail Plus) much like you can get a 'free' mobile phone in the US today
• School districts can buy and distribute a system to all students instead of leasing as they do today.
• Direct sales: buy one at the airport when you drop your Thinkpad at the security check-in. They're selling iPods from vending machines, why not a notebook.

Trying to infect Prius with a Symbian "virus" is like trying to infect a tree with a choc chip cookie . Hey I can come up with a better one - it's like trying to infect shampoo with a book on eating disorders (now go picture that in your head for a second). But this is so sweet - it takes one dumb kid with too much time on their hands and one even dumber kid to moderate at voila! you get slashdot "news".

Whenever thousands of Prius owners and millions of concerned drivers hear a rumor about some virus that can infect cars, it is always cause for concern. I had heard about this before, and was actually relieved (not that much, but still) when I read this story. And, even if I had read the post you referenced, I would still be glad that a statement made by ArrayIndexOutOfBound on a tech news site was validated by F-Secure, a company that _knows_ viruses.

Still, I (a reasonably intelligent and informed /. user) personally have no knowledge of how the bluetooth virus everyone has been talking about works. I know nothing of what OS the Prius uses and how it compares with certain cell phones. I thought this was news.

Lighten up, jerk.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/27/jailed_for_us ing_a_n.html

I've also seen some creative use for these notes that probably were not part of the original ideas either :-)

From BoingBoing:

Right wing blogs go ape over George Lucas article in Wired
Steve Silberman's excellent story about George Lucas in the current issue of Wired is inciting a good deal of mouth foaming and carpet chewing on conservative blogs. Says Steve: "My Lucas story has blown up on right-wing blogs like Instapundit and the National Review Online, after being referenced on a conservative forum about film called Libertas. What's strange is that -- with the exception of Libertas -- Lucas' 'statements,' particularly re: Fahrenheit 9/11, are being condemned with no link to the story or the online QA, as if Lucas' supposed opinions are just in the air somewhere. And while Lucas critiqued F911 in the interview, the wingers are characterizing him as a 'Moore-loving liberal.'" Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:51:45 AM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post

Not to mention at least one company that thinks careful, well-informed customers are devils.

There's a lot of incentive to buying online if you have your wits about you. Sites like Fatwallet and Slickdeals are a conscientious shopper's dream come true. I think there's less of an urgency amid online shoppers, primarily because they are habituated to the idea that by buying this now, that means I'll have it in a few days, whereas B&M stores allow immediate access to the product you purchased. This instills a bit of patience and self-control into the online customer. The "I want it now" crowd is down in the stores, drooling over some huge HD-TV with some kid upselling his morals away.

Once someone gets used to this model, buying with a 15% off coupon and getting free shipping isn't a delightful one-time thing, it's expected. Therefore, that person will hold off on the purchase, browse sites like Fatwallet and Slickdeals, and wait until they've got it for less than the cost of the gas it'd have taken to get to the B&M store.

Obviously, this isn't everybody, but it does hint at the mindset. As someone who's been around these deal sites for a while, there's nothing I'll buy that isn't food that I haven't considered for some time. I buy less after having the knowledge than I did before, mainly because I 1) realise the [sometimes significant] difference in price between B&M and online stores, 2) hate dealing with anyone looking to sell me something and 3) know that, should I really want to buy something, I can always with little effort find it cheaper online and have the satisfaction that I made a purchase that I truly desired, as opposed to erratic, who cares about this month's rent purchases.

You might want to check your facts. If you check the same link over at Boing Boing you'll find that the refferal ID is 'source=1447', indicating that multiple sites are infact making money off these "News" posts. Interestingly enough, Boingboing is not as friendly as Slashdot in their post, but they've still got the referral.

You might want to check your facts. If you check the same link over at Boing Boing you'll find that the refferal ID is 'source=1447', indicating that multiple sites are infact making money off these "News" posts. Interestingly enough, Boingboing is not as friendly as Slashdot in their post, but they've still got the referral.

From Boing Boing

Just you and Cory Doctorow

Seriously though, just painting the side of a standard case is such a cop-out. I demand an ultra high-end gamer system shaped like the Death Star or Chewbacca's head. The optical drive could be his mouth, and he could even roar every time I inserted a disc.

according to what I read, some dude from space.com seems to know all about it and says nasa isn't doing any other space launches and the satellite launch is the only thing it could be.

according to what I read, some dude from space.com seems to know all about it and says nasa isn't doing any other space launches and the satellite launch is the only thing it could be.

Well, it's not a particularly good parody perhaps. If I were doing it, I'd subtly change the images for amusement value.

My latest favorite parody is Boring Boring, a parody of Boing Boing.

How about we just give him a C+ for his school assignment and keep the lawyers out of it?

Since mr. GW Bush is a known pirate, I suggest the DOJ investigate him first. Any other course of action would make a mockery of the supposed blindness of lady justice.

I have certainly seen the number of attacks rising on our academic computing resources as well as my blog. Tracking IPs leads to lots of cable modems from Comcast and such which could be zombies, but given the lack of sophistication from those IPs, I have to wonder. Most of the attacks from these cable modem IPs are scripts directed at Windows vulnerabilities and buffer overflow attacks, but a few coming from Taiwan and Korea as well as some in the Balkans are fairly sophisticated that sometimes appear to come via compromised computers from other universities for example. Depending upon how sophisticated they are, I have reported some of them to Federal authorities who have the resources to subpoena logs and go after folks intruding into Federal resources. Interestingly others have also recently reported intrusions followed by blackmail which are likely not the domain of script kiddies. Certainly, comedy aside, one wonders if many of these kids have any idea of what they could actually be dealing with. Back in 1982 (we were 12), all that happened to us after hacking into government computers was my friend Lance getting his Apple ][+ confiscated followed by a job offer 9 years later from the same folks who confiscated his computer back in 1982. Now however, hacking into even an educational system could net you serious Federal penalties depending upon the system one hacks into. One admin friend of mine at a certain government lab is absolutely militant about this stuff. It has become her all consuming hobby to track these folks down and allocate whatever government resources she can muster to prosecute intruders into her systems. Woe be unto those that intrude into one of Melissa's systems.

RealPlayer problem solved

"Additionally, they [sony] are making a hell of a lot more money from their film and entertainments branch than from their consumer electronics."

Have you got anything to back that up? I always understood that it was the other way around.

That is at least what Cory Doctorow suggests in Sony's entertainment business is killing its electronics business.

Photos of the shuttle from boingboing.net's article on it.

Maybe we can see more instances like the Shanghai Stabbing that went down nearly a month ago.

Aside from the fact that Boing Boing should have been "Boing Boing" or "boingboing", as both are used here, yes, it is English. In fact, it'd more correct than your post! :)

Have a nice day.

"And when she's found guilty of downloading music...."

Do you really believe they want to sue her? What if they lose?

And prosecution is completely out of the question, since president Bush has been found out to be a filthy pirate (RIAA's words, not mine). If they prosecute her, he must be prosecuted too.

... how often Slashdot is a good 12-24 hours behind Boingboing? They posted this yesterday at 3pm, adn Slashdot is just getting around to it now.

I wonder how many of the editors of Slashdot are reading the better blogs now, and just duping articles into it. THe percentage of "Boingboing... then Slashdot" articles is alarmingly high.

...and trying to make a device for playing content at the same time in this day and age is that you're always at odds with yourself. Your right hand is dueling with your left hand; the content division won't let the hardware division make something that could aid in (gasp, shudder) copyright infringement, so of necessity whatever you come out with is going to be a compromise.

Not just in music, either. Let's not forget the Librié ebook device and its fabulous expiring bookware...

The more I hear about stuff like this, the more it occurs to me that Sony's just no longer relevant in the personal audio world.

Of course...on the other hand, come to think of it, the company that is the most relevant in the personal audio world these days doesn't make it easy for you to transfer your music back off of their pocket music device, either.

I knew /. tended to be slightly slower in posting stories than many of the the smaller, more agile blogs out there, but a year and a month late is just a bit much.

Yes, she's still alive and is rumored to have a nipple fetish.

Clearly this should be taken with a grain of salt. But it would appear that given the profit margins on DVDs that they can well afford not to bother one with ads and still make money hand over fist.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/02/mgm_offers_co rporate.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/30/sony_psp_star s_in_so.html

...nothing to do with why I'm posting of course...

...<cough>.

• Always pick a player that plays music in a format that restricts your rights as much as possible. That says "I'm not a communist."

Boing Boing reports that File Sharing has a statistically negligable effect on CD sales.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/record_sales_ up_p2p_.html

if you read the serious academic study http://http//www.p2pnet.net/zero/FileSharing_March 2004.pdf (i.e. facts and figures not industry lies and bleating) you see that it CLEARLY demonstrates that filesharing doesn't harm Music Sales
and
for very popular music it may even benefit those sales.

Seriously though how is it any different from Radio Play which also doesn't pay the Record companies but the original composers of the songs not the recording artists.

Radio boosts sales and directs entertainment $ or £ to CD sales.

So does File Sharing.

The only difference is Radio has a sensible compulsory liscensing scheme in place and they **AA have invested heavily in controlling Radio Playlists to exclude non Big-5 Label Music.

In the UK File sharing is widely attributed with revitalising the CD Single market and keeping CD sales high.

If anyone is to blame for poor sales it is likely the lack of a competitive market - without P2P to liven things up the Industry Bosses would have sat on their Monopoloistic Cartel Asses and killed music and their own markets dead.

Monopolistic Cartels ALWAYS lead to stagnation, that is what happened.

C'mon all you piracy is theft trolls, get real, the labels abuse their market leverage to not pay artists, to control artists output, to keep prices artificially high, to restrict the variety of music available.

Do they encourage young bands with funding, resources, college courses, mentoring? NO - they do not plant trees, they just fell timber.

Sharing is naturally intuitively good.
Any industry that wants to be a success in the future will do well to leverage community support.

The nature of publishing is changing - if society can avoid kneejerk cash grabs then maybe the industry of culture flourish.

Here is an excellent text which has many examples of how incumbent industries destroy their very lifeblood in a luddite fashion.
http://kembrew.com/books/
E.G. how exhorbitant liscense fees for tiny samples cripple Modern Music.
It is clear from such that a lot of music hasn't been made and has been diminished by greed.

It would have been helpful if the scientists had provided a hypothesis on the preservation of the tissues.

Maybe they didn't want to sound stupid.

(via Boing Boing)

This is a solar furnace, of which there are many in use today. The biggest one in the world is the Odeillo Solar Furnace located in Odeillo, France. The top 3 in use in the United States are at Sandia National Labs, Georgia Tech and the White Sands Missile Test Range. Awesome stuff!

One amusing side note is that Frank Gehry's popular postmodern buildings have been noted to act as solar collectors, effectively frying people passing by on the sidewalk.

Oh, I do understand, that's the problem. Sorry to point this out to you, but Jesus has never visited North America, nor is he ever likely to. I doubt the saviour would choose the land of corruption and intolerance as the place for the second coming. Unless he plans to have his work cut out for him! And the Native American thing? Sorry, they have Oriental heritage, it's obvious to anyone!!

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against Mormons, I despise most religions equally.

Not that I'm saying there isn't a god. That would be naive! But not as naive as believing the words (word for word) in a book that are clearly wrong on so many levels. Sure, you can talk about how the 7 days wasn't seven Earth days, but the fact of the matter is that you are just trying to mould your dogma into reality. These books were created by man, written by man, edited by man and reproduced by man. Anyone that bases their whole religion around a clearly fallible book is an idiot, sorry but that's the way I see it. On the other hand, studying all of the relevant texts and making up your own mind is much better. However, The Church is the entirely opposite thing; the we are right, everyone else is wrong approach. You could not be any more closed-minded. If there is a god, these people are going to burn, just as GWB will for starting a war for profit. Irony, gotta love it!

There are some sticky issues involved with regulation of behavior in a networked world, which need to be resolved in order to have the internet continue as a viable medium for communication and commerce.

But they can't be solved, that's the problem. It's hard enough to pass laws in one country, let alone the planet. Countries that embrace freedom, such as most European ones would not accept another country telling them what they can and cannot look at! The only alternative would be to switch of the internet and replace it with "Internet 2.0". However, many have drawn parallels to this with AOL 1.0, where you could not email non AOL members and you could not access non AOL webpages. See this speach. If you want to kill freedom and inovation on the net, feel free to create your own, but most of us won't follow you.

Yeah, I agree that tools should be available to allow parents control. However, this is not the right way to do it technologically speaking. It's weak, does very little to solve the problem, and more importantly provides false security, which is the worst kind. It's like the idiots that called for ID cards post-911. It wouldn't have made a bit of difference, if anything security might have been even lower due to the false confidence in the system.

I don't mean to go offtopic, but is Slashdot regularly slower than other tech sites? Are Boingboing and news.com usually so fast (at ~100 minutes)?

You obviously haven't seen top blogs like Boingboing.net or Engadget.com .

But remember, the GPL itself is not specifically "tested", per se, because GPL software developers assert them rights granted to them via copyright on an individual basis. This makes it a sometimes long and arduous process to assert rights and/or prove infringement, but hopefully more precedent will help.

Since the provisions of the GPL have been upheld in a case in Germany as well, maybe PearPC will be able to more easily defend itself against CherryOS, which has blatantly taken GPL code, without release of source code or attribution, from PearPC and several other GPL projects:

eWeek has a general overview of the situation:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775386,00.as p

Below is a comprehensive collection of evidence, which runs the gamut from CherryOS including original PearPC graphics, extremely unique strings and error messages, debug code from PearPC, the same unique MAC address as PearPC's default network adapter, shared specific functionality, including bugs, and so on:

http://www.ht-technology.com/cherryos-pearpc/cherr yos-pearpc.html

http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0501.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0503.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0504.html
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0507.html

http://starport.dnsalias.net/index.php?show=articl e&id=348

http://forums.pearpc.net/viewtopic.php?p=16178#161 78
http://www.tliquest.net/ryan/cherryos/
http://dhost.info/kourge/en/projects/frauds/cherry os.php

Additionally, PearPC project authors are already asserting their rights under the GPL:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg _id=11116974

And a general compilation of some of the evidence so far against CherryOS:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg _id=11125509

I'm not entirely convinced that legality is the issue (home-taping/burning and modification by the purchased user, if AFAIK "fair-use"). It is more the fear (and in some respects rightly so) of the RIAA and Apple of the said purchased media being deseminated.

Pure and simple, distributing copyrighted material (whether you burn CDs using iTMS tunes or you break the DRM) is illegal. However, what you do with your purchased music in private (e.g. for yourself, on your own computer) is your business, so long as you are not deseminating it to those who didn't buy it, or you are not using the said copyrighted material for public performance. Electronic media, in terms of copyright, does not disallow personal backups, remixing for fun (no profit), or any sort of arbitrary modification. You own that file, albeit, not the media therein (the music in this case).

In the cases of fair-use, home-taping has been defended (likewise photocopying library books for personal/academic/private use). There are certain rights that extend to the public over what they own.

In the case of DVD Jon and others, what they see that they are doing (and arguably they are) is cleverly extending the capabilities of the end-user in lines of usage. When exploited for desemination, profit, and piracy, it is not the process or tool that is wrong, but the use. The tool does have legitamate, legal uses (playing purchased media on your Linux box, for example).

I personally think PyMusique, Hymn, and the FairPlay mechanisms for VLC are legitimate and can (and should) be used for Fair Use. If exploited, like any other tool, for illegal ends, then the people infringing on copyrights should be prosicuted (albeit the RIAA has been in recent years more proactive is fining grandma and various 12-year olds that busting pirating rings).

I have been using Hymn for months now, for fair-use purposes. I buy from iTMS (when you ride the Boston T every morning and evening, your iPod is your best friend) and I frequently get gift cards from family. I and my fiance think it is great, however, if she buys something and I buy something and we want to make a mix CD for our car when we go on a trip, something that allows extended fair-use would be great.

I personally, and I don't think I am alone, think what DVD Jon is doing is great because it is useful to the consumer (although as a side effect, the pirate). The consumer can better enjoy the beniefits of the purchase.

This will probably be corrected by iTMS with a subsequent version of iTunes and I have no problem with that. Apple is there to make money from their sales (so preventing piracy is a good motive) and they have to protect the fidgety record labels who are still uncomfortable with digital media, although CDs themselves are not secure in any regard. Those (like DVD Jon and myself) who see a need as a consumer to modify their legitamately purchased music to use it on all computers/OS they have, should make an effort to archive their media in forms they can use, with the technology at their disposal, and if the DRM system is changed, keep up or enjoy what they already bought.

Somebody mentioned subscription services, and I don't think that subscription services are only legally de-DRMed if you currently subscribe to the service, e.g. it is blantantly illegal to rip and crack a storehouse of music and continue to use them once you no longer subscribe. However, with these models, fair-use would apply to burning CDs for your car, ripping tracks and making MP3s for your iPod or whatever. It is when the use is exploited and people are not being pais is when you have a problem.

"I'd like to get this story from a source that's not named "Boing Boing" and doesn't use words like "sez" in their articles. Even Fox News would be a better source of information. Maybe."

This seems to get brought up pretty much any time boingboing is mentioned on slashdot. boingboing.net is a blog run by Cory Doctorow, a science-fiction author, journalist, and activist. He's active in the EFF and the Creative Commons movement. He tends to get covered by slashdot a lot.

But you didn't even go to the trouble of linking the term online poker to Wikipedia in your submission? Slashdot has some healthy pagerank, too, ya know.

yeah but will they have one of those robot bear's wired up to do this? take a look at this story about it...

Is slashdot becoming the Stuff That Was Posted On BoingBoing Days Ago site?

Wow, Thomson is totally innumerate. He's asked about a percentage, and he replies with raw numbers about one game ... without giving a total number of games sold! Maybe he's right about the percentage, but he hasn't shown it. Oh, wait, he's wrong about that

Actually, it seems a bit more likely that he's just dishonest.

The federal government found that in the school year 2003, there were 48 school killings. The year before that there were 16, and the year before that 17. Something is going on. I submit that the video game generation is coming of age.
That doesn't match the numbers I've seen. Plus, there's the causation problem. It could just as well be that kids are influenced by the Iraq war.

Not a single law on the books to stop the sale of murder simulators to kids

Sure, because every time they get put on the books, they get struck down (follow the link to the opionion for more cases).