Sony's Idea of DRM-Free Music

edmicman writes "Leave it to Sony to mess up DRM-free music downloads. What is the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to go to a retail store to buy them? From the Infoworld article: 'The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM, from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada... The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card's covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears' "Blackout" and Barry Manilow's "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 10:43 am

Professors Slam Java As "Damaging" To Students

jfmiller call to our attention two professors emeritus of computer science at New York University who have penned an article titled Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? in which they berate their university, and others, for not teaching solid languages like C, C++, Lisp, and ADA. The submitter wonders whether any CS students or professors would care to respond. Quoting the article: "The resulting set of skills [from today's educational practices] is insufficient for today's software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals... Java programming courses did not prepare our students for the first course in systems, much less for more advanced ones. Students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 8:18 am

Cricket watering-cans

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: a collection of water-cans for fighting crickets, taken at the huge and often freaky fish-and-cricket market in Shanghai. Link

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:45 am

Roger Wood's latest steampunk assemblage clock

My pal Roger Wood is a mad assemblage sculptor in Toronto who makes gorgeous steampunky kinetic clocks. Every day or two, he sends out a "newsletter" to his friends with a picture of his latest -- check this one out. I already own three of Roger's clocks (and they're among my favorite objects in the whole world), but I'm tempted to get a fourth. He's just brilliant. Link

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:43 am

Midwest airlines to passenger who was screwed over and shouted at: we did nothing wrong and owe you nothing

Dave Greenbaum, a loyal Midwest Airlines customer who lobbied to keep the airline running, had his seat screwed up by a check-in attendant. When he asked to be re-seated after boarding, the flight attendant got a security guy who shouted at him and threatened to kick him off the plane.

Then, when Greenbaum complained, he was given a measly $25 voucher. He tried to complain higher up, but was ignored until he sent email to the whole executive of Midwest.

And that's when they took away his voucher and told him they'd done nothing wrong.

When the flight eventually boarded and I noticed it wasn’t the exit row, I politely told a Flight Attendant that there was a misunderstanding at the ticket counter and I asked for an exit row. She took my boarding pass and said she would see what she could do. I assumed it would be if an exit row seat was available, I’d be first to get it.
Instead a very large man named Roger with a booming and aggressive voice, loudly said “I UNDERSTAND YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS SEAT AND WANT OFF THIS FLIGHT".
He held my boarding pass in his hand while saying this and as I reached for it, he pulled it away. I said “No problem officer” and he handed me my boarding pass. I thought I was going to be removed from the flight! The flight appeared to be held while he chatted with the flight staff. I was 100% convinced I was going to be removed from the flight because I complained about my seat. Passengers were visibly shaken, not sure why I was going to be removed from the flight and cause problems later in the travel

Link (via Consumerist)

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:40 am

From Nazi collaborator to Fortune 500 - companies that got rich on the Reich

Cracked has a list of five Fortune 500 companies that profited greatly by their active collaboration with the Nazis, from IBM (punchcard tabulators to count the concentration camp dead) to Hugo Boss (designed the Nazi uniforms) and others -- check out how incredibly evil Siemens is:

Siemens was the major player in the Nazification of Germany. The company, run by Werner's son, Carl, and then his grandson, Hermann, struggled in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression and had to earn some dough fast. When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, it was the signal for the Siemens executives to start building factories, and nowhere was the real estate better than near the homey neighborhoods of Auschwitz and Buchenwald...
At the height of the Nazi terror during the 1940s, it was not atypical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning and be snuffed out in a Siemens-made gas chamber in the afternoon...
Well, a few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.

Link (via Plastic Bag)

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:33 am

TV star publishes bank details in anti-privacy editorial, gets ripped off

Jeremy Clarkson, a presenter for Top Gear on British TV, wrote a newspaper editorial that accused privacy activists of being hysterical over giant data-leaks (such as the British government repeatedly losing CDs bearing the financial details for 25 million households). To prove that identity theft wasn't a big deal, he included his bank account details in the article.

Whereupon someone promptly began making fraudulent withdrawals from his account.

Clarkson, 47, writing in his column in the Sunday Times, decried the furore last year after CDs disappeared containing the banking details of 7 million families.
The loss led to fears of mass identity theft with people's bank accounts open to internet scams.
At the time he wrote: "I have never known such a palaver about nothing. The fact is we happily hand over cheques to all sorts of unsavoury people all day long without a moment's thought. We have nothing to fear."
However, yesterday he told readers he had opened his bank statement to find a direct debit had been set up in his name and £500 taken out of his account.
"The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again," he said. "I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake."

Link

(Image: crop from Books, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from William Hook's Flickr stream)

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:27 am

Steal This Film II London Premiere, Jan 18

Stuart sez, "London Social/Network group FanboyGeeks are hosting a free screening of the anti-copyright film 'Steal This Film II' on Friday 18 January (the London 'Premier'). As the screening was inspired by reading about it on BoingBoing, 15 free tickets will go to readers emailing mail@fanboygeek.net and quoting 'BoingBoing'."

I wouldn't call this an anti-copyright movie -- more like a documentary about the copyfight and a call for balance in copyright. Link (Thanks, Stuart!)

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:20 am

Individual, isloated Sgt Peppers vocal and instrumental tracks

In this little youtube (posted by Beatlepuzzle), the instrumental and vocal tracks off the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are each played individually, having been carefully extracted and polished for your remixing pleasure. The tracks are so well-isolated that I thought it might be a fake, but it's a damned good one if so -- there are little spots where you can barely hear the nearly silent other instruments and so on. Link

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 6:14 am

Vista Shipped On 39% of PCs In 2007

Stony Stevenson writes "Vista is proving far less popular than XP did with new PC buyers during the earlier OS's first year on the market. This conclusion follows from statements by Bill Gates at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Gates boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January. Based on Gates's statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that shipped in 2007. And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only outperformed first-year sales of XP by 10%, according to Gates's numbers, while PC shipments have doubled in the years since XP's release."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 5:53 am

Group Sues To Stop German E-Voting

kRemit writes "The German hacker group Chaos Computer Club today sued the German State of Hessen to prevent the use of electronic voting machines (Google translation) in the upcoming elections on January 27. This comes as a follow-up to the Dutch initiative 'We don't trust voting machines,' which succeeded in banning the same type of voting machines in the Netherlands."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 4:18 am

Boot Record Rootkit Threatens Vista, XP, NT

Paul sends us word on a new exploit seen in the wild that attacks Windows systems completely outside of the control of the OS. "Unfortunately, all the Windows NT family (including Vista) still have the same security flaw — MBR [Master Boot Record] can be modified from usermode. Nevertheless, MS blocked write-access to disk sectors from userland code on VISTA after the pagefile attack, however, the first sectors of disk are still unprotected... At the end of 2007 stealth MBR rootkit was discovered by MR Team members (thanks to Tammy & MJ) and it looks like this way of affecting NT systems could be more common in near future if MBR stays unprotected."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:41 am

Q&A: Author Nicholas Carr on the Terrifying Future of Computing

Why does Nicholas Carr find the future of computing so scary? The former editor of Harvard Business Review talks with Wired about his new book, The Big Switch. Learn how a bunch of bright computer scientists and AI experts in Silicon Valley are dictating the future terms of our culture.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

Wired Video: Flexible PCs, Ultrablack TVs and CES Madness

The Wired News video crew brings you highlights from Day 1 of CES 2008, including Pioneer's TVs with "absolute blacks," Alienware's wrap-around monitor for gamers who want totally immersive play, and some futuristic concepts from Fujitsu. Plus WowWee's Tribot: It spins!

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

Wired Video: Flexible PCs, Ultrablack TVs and CES Madness

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

$500K Prize for Better Hijacker Trap

An airport security company is offering $500,000 to anyone who can figure out how to speed up security lines. Can you build a better screening system?

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

'Shoes' Star Liam Sullivan Turns His Alter Ego, Kelly, Into Full-Time Gig

Infectious viral videos featuring Liam Sullivan's foul-mouthed alter ego, Kelly, bring the comic actor internet fame and then some.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

CES Highlights: Tiny MP3 Players, Massive TVs and Sexy Phones

Overwhelmed by the tsunami of news coming out of CES? Don't worry: We put together this short summary of the highlights from Day 1 of the gadget-lovers' tradeshow.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

Comcast Unveils Fancast Video and Film Finder

Comcast is announcing a new search site that will let users find anything on TV (even if you have a different cable company), on DVD or in the theaters or iTunes.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

Jan. 8, 1942: Birthday of a First-Rate Mind, and a Medical Marvel

Stephen Hawking defies the medical odds by continuing to live with ALS, but it's how he lives that makes the story so compelling.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

'The X-Files' Are Coming Back, But They Never Left

A resurrected X-Files is supposed to start filming this month, but the original show's cast and its paranoid gestalt are already all over the tube.

Source: Wired: Top Stories | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

CES Highlights: Tiny MP3 Players, Massive TVs and Sexy Phones

Overwhelmed by the tsunami of news coming out of CES? Don't worry: We put together this short summary of the highlights from Day 1 of the gadget-lovers' tradeshow.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jan 2008 | 2:00 am

Microsoft Apologizes To Rival

Geoffrey.landis writes "Microsoft apologized to rival software vendor Corel Corp. for saying that Corel's file format posed a security risk, and issued a set of tools to unblock file types that had been blocked by default in the December Office 2003 service pack. In his blog on the Microsoft site, David Leblanc says 'We did a poor job of describing the default format changes.' He goes on to explain, 'We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure — it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure.' As noted by News.com, 'it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure.' Larry Seltzer at pcmag.com also blogs the story."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jan 2008 | 1:12 am

Wigglin Jeff: dancing robotic version of husband

Bonnie converts a dancing Geoffrey the Giraffe into a miniature dancing version of her husband. Both creepy and delightful. Link

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jan 2008 | 12:34 am

NASA Spacecraft Set to Shine Spotlight on Mercury

coondoggie writes to tell us Network World is reporting that NASA will this month see the realization of a mission launched in 2004, sent to explore the planet Mercury. "MESSENGER, launched in 2004, is the first NASA mission sent to orbit Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. But on Jan. 14 it will pass close by the planet and use Mercury's gravity for a critical assist needed to keep the spacecraft on track for its ultimate orbit around the planet three years from now. Still, the spacecraft is also expected to throw back some never-before -seen images, NASA said. The flyby also will gather essential data for planning the overall mission. After flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury, it will start a year-long orbital study of Mercury in March 2011, NASA said. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 7 Jan 2008 | 11:30 pm
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