Wall-Mart Puts the Muscle on Warner and BMG to Ditch DRM

You all know those stories we hear about the E-v-i-l Wal-Mart muscling the poor manufacturers and distributors to lower prices. Well this time Wally World is using its power for the forces of Good!

A Tipping Point For MP3s
(waaaay down the article we find this little nugget of good news)
… mass merchant Wal-Mart [is] alerting [...]

LG DVD Drive: 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-ROM 16X CD-R 16X CD-RW 32X CD-ROM CD, DVD: 2MB BD, HD: 4MB Cache SATA Super Multi Blue BD Burner and HD DVD Reader

Really! Thats the name of the LG Model GGW-H10NI DVD Burner.

What an absolute joke. Not the LG Product, (it’s a nice drive although a little pricey) but this whole Optical Media standards war that has been ongoing for the last ten years or so.
Which technology can use this alphabet soup idiocy to actually win [...]

Profile: America’s worst president

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?.

Profile in Incompetence; A Ten Part Series on the worst President in American History.
In this exclusive 10-part series, Investors Business Daily takes a hard look at Jimmy Carter’s administration and compares it to that of George W. Bush, which Carter has called the worst ever.
Installments [...]

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”

Via Oikeuden edessä and slashdot:

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”. [...]

09 f9: A Legal Primer … or … What is the AACS-LA’s Legal argument?

The AACS-LA made some news yesterday. Read about some of it here, here, and here, as well as the following from the EFF Deep Links section:
What is the AACS-LA’s argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA’s ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person [...]

Net Neutrality

save the internet

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Launched

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. Read more here. Via: /. & BoingBoing.

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

On June 16, 2006, Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at the Center for American Progress entitled “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net.” This talk was the second in a series of three. The first talk [...]

Exposed: HD DVD and Blu-ray Processiong Keys for All HD Titles

I was following this discussion on Doom9 yesterday, where arnezami claims to have found the “processing key” used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc films.
It looks like this is the real McCoy and the news is starting to get around…
arnezami claims to have found it by simply watching his [...]

Microsoft Cripples Vista Upgrade

The Inquirer calls this policy “Preinstall to Reinstall”. Microsoft calls it “Closing a Loophole”. Ars Technica says that it’s indicative of Microsoft’s ‘per device’ obsession.
PoliTech calls it one more reason to consider moving to Open Source alltogether.

Vista “upgrade” drops compliance checking, requires old OS to install

Microsoft’s quest to closely control the way Windows Vista [...]

Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy

50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood
As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or “camcording,” is taking place in Montreal movie [...]

One quarter of all computers are internet zombies

What does this mean to you? That one in four of you are reading this on a computer that you think you own and control, but that is really an infected zombie (and Typhoid Mary) controlled by a black hat “Bot-Herder”.

Vint Cerf: one quarter of all computers part of a botnet

Cerf told his listeners that [...]

This tech boom has legs…will probably last many years.

For several reasons - especially growing demand in developing countries - tech’s run most probably will last many years.

The tech boom now underway is profoundly different from any that has come before. It is broader and probably longer-lasting in its impact on tech companies, and more transformative macroeconomically. There are two reasons. First, everybody wants [...]

Digg This: Talking to Gen Y

Digg.com CEO Jay Adelson’s tips for communicating with the younger generation in your workplace.

According to research compiled by RainmakerThinking and quoted in USA Today, Gen Y—the millennium generation—has high expectations for itself and its employers, seeking highly engaged managers to help them grow and develop their professional skills.
read The whole thing…
Hat Tip: digg
Image HatTip: [...]

GooTube

This is just too funny to pass up, Gizmodo has named the YouTube / Google deal…

Google buys YouTube: GooTube.
Apparently the rumor that Google was buying YouTube was less of a rumor than someone on the inside letting it slip out to the entire world. But now that Google’s paid $1.65 billion in an all-stock acquisition—which [...]

DefectiveByDesign.org Takes Another Bite at the Apple

Taking another bite at the Apple

With 100,000 DRM warning labels now distributed, it’s time to start the action. Join one. Start one.

Join us in New York and London.

On Saturday, September 30th, hazmat suited DefectiveByDesign members will gather at the flagship Apple stores in New York and London, These high profile events will kick-off awareness for [...]

“Information Tech” Tops List of Most Stressful Jobs

Top 10 Most Stressful Professions
Work Stresses and Colleague Irritations, Defined

IT experts are more likely to suffer from stress than any other professional, according to the survey.

Four out of five IT consultants feel stressed before they even enter the workplace, in anticipation of another day juggling complaints, pressure from managers and daily targets.

And a quarter of [...]

Perfect Storm Brews for PC Buyers

Users should soon see the best bargains in years for a new desktop thanks to falling prices on the two most expensive components in a PC. A battle between the world’s two biggest processor makers and oversupply in the LCD panel industry have sent prices tumbling.
read more | digg story

YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying ‘user’ worth?

YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying ‘user’ worth?
Kevin Rose questions the propriety of Jason Calacanis putting a price tag on the active contributors at Web 2.0 Social Web properties such as Digg and Netscape (See “Digg vs. Netscape, Kevin vs. Jason, Web 2.0 vs. commercial Internet”)

This cool image is from “Nonprofit & [...]

Microsoft’s WGA: Malware in Sheep’s Clothing

Windows Genuine Annoyance?

Privacy experts and PC users alike blast Microsoft’s antipiracy tool
A Microsoft program designed to thwart software piracy has instead opened a Pandora’s box of privacy concerns. PC users cried foul when Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software frequently phoned home to Microsoft servers and apparently flagged some legitimate copies of the Windows operating [...]

A plane you can print

An unmanned aircraft made from “printed” parts rather than traditional machine-tooled components has been unveiled at the Farnborough Air Show, UK.

A plane you can print
Developed at Lockheed Martin’s top-secret “Skunk Works” research facility in Palmdale, California, US, the Polecat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a 28-metre flying wing, weighing four tonnes. It was designed [...]

Hints of the New Economy: ‘Gold farming’ in games means real income in China

Thanks to Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog for the image!
‘Gold farming’ in games means real income in China
A vast shadow industry has mushroomed in rural China. Savvy entrepreneurs harness teams to play popular online games, gathering magic spells, battle hammers, armor and other virtual assets. They then provide the assets to brokers, who sell them to [...]

The Core 2: Intel Goes for the Jugular

Some links and info:
PC Mag says:
It’s been a long time coming.
Core 2 isn’t just another iteration of the Pentium M. Instead, it steals a little from the old Netburst (Intel’s name for the architecture of the Pentium 4/Pentium D processors) architecture and adds additional enhancements of its own.
The result is a processor with [...]

XBox 360 tops 60% Attach Rate for XBox Live service

Xbox Live Hits 60% Attach As New Details Revealed
With Sony still only talking about what’s going to happen with its PlayStation online service, Microsoft took its opportunity to remind developers just how well Xbox Live is performing
The attach rate for Xbox Live amongst Xbox 360 users - a massive 60 percent, which is a huge [...]

It’s Done! One Red Paperclip Bartered For House.

The town that offered him the key to the city, mayor for a day, etc. has thrown in a house to sweeten the deal. Looks like he’s moving to Kipling, Saskatchewan.
Story here…
Kyle MacDonald’s one red paperclip blog

Congrats!
Previous: Hints of the new economy
read more | digg story

Generate More Than Enough Hydrogen With NanoTech

Nano World: Stabilizing explosive elements
Capsules only nanometers or billionths of a meter wide that stabilize extremely dangerous compounds normally prone to igniting or exploding can safely generate more than enough hydrogen gas to beat U.S. Department of Energy goals for hydrogen production for 2015 just by dropping them in water.
read more | digg story

WinFS Scrapped, Parts Sold For Junk

“we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release. With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering … we are able to get the underlying feature [...]

If Microsoft Marketed the iPod…

Full screen video available here.

Click Fraud Update: How Billions of Bogus Pages Undermined Search Engines

Over the weekend, Monetize, a blog dedicated to tricking search engines, described how a blackhat got Google to index over 5 billion webpages within three weeks.
Yahoo and MSN were fooled, too, though nowhere near as badly. (MSN, for example, indexed just 62 pages before cutting him off.)
The effort seems to have met some success. [...]

CNBC’s amazing clickfraud video

CNBC’s amazing clickfraud video
Google hopes to sweep the entire clickfraud debate under the rug with their bogus class action settlement attempt next Monday. The “settlement” doesn’t give a single penny to people ripped off by Google, and Google doesn’t admit any wrongdoing.
Several articles have called this the most fraudulently contrived settlement in legal [...]