[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"What is important for the music industry to understand is that [free file-sharing] really doesn’t hurt the artists. A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it." – 50 Cent


"At a time when people are trying to figure out what the secret sauce is to break bands, giving people a taste of the music is needed. They need it, and want it before they make a commitment. So I don't think free streaming is an issue." – Josh Brooks


"The next wave of resolution will be 8 times the resolution of H.D." – Samsung


"Less than 4 percent of the infringers are using campus networks." – David Taylor


"The electronic footprint you leave on the Net will be used against you. It cannot be erased." – Andrew Feldmar


































December 15th, 2007





50 Cent: File-Sharing Doesn’t Hurt Artists, Industry Should Adapt
enigmax

Before getting up on stage at a club in Oslo, 50 Cent gave an interview. In it he denied taking coke on live TV in Zagreb and then dropped a file-sharing bombshell: “What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn`t hurt the artists!” Wow. No-one cares about the coke now.

Curtis James Jackson III, aka 50 Cent has been a drug dealer, he’s been shot, he’s a hugely successful artist - selling over 20 million albums - and he even has his own label, G-Unit Records.

Thirty minutes before getting up on stage at a club in Oslo, 50 Cent gave an interview with Pål Nordseth. Most of the interview was spent with him denying using cocaine on live TV in Zagreb.

Pål asked 50 Cent: “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?

“Not so good.” he responded. “The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

Thats quite a statement. Organizations like the RIAA are always talking about how the artists get hurt by file-sharing but 50 Cent clearly doesn’t agree. In fact, he appears to appreciate the value of a good fan, whether he buys or file-shares his music, as he explains:

“A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it.”

Indeed. It’s been said time and time again - get the music out there by any which way, fill the gigs and capitalize on the merchandising and ends will meet. 50 Cent agrees:

“The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”

He finishes up: “The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records” he said.

“They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.”

A huge thanks to RayJoha for his great work on this piece
http://torrentfreak.com/50cent-file-...rtists-071208/





Music Group Seeks Share in Concert Ticket Re-Sales

Music management groups representing some of Britain's biggest acts are seeking a share of the proceeds from concert tickets re-sold over the Internet on Web sites like eBay, Viagogo and Seat Exchange.

But they are likely to face stiff resistance from the sites, one of which has argued that such a levy would effectively mean paying an artist twice for the same ticket.

Management organizations behind more than 400 performers, including Robbie Williams, the Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, aim to unite the live music industry in a new Resale Rights Society that would license the unregulated secondary ticket market.

Tickets to gigs are regularly re-sold online, often for many times the face value, but also for much less.

There have been complaints from musicians in the past, although they have tended to focus on the re-sale of tickets to concerts specifically designed to raise money for charity.

Marc Marot, formerly of Island Records and chairman-elect of the Resale Rights Society, estimated the business generated around 200 million pounds ($400 million) annually in Britain.

"The secondary ticketing market offers benefits to music fans and the live music industry alike. It does not make sense to try and criminalize it," Marot said in a statement.

"On the other hand there are not only real issues of consumer protection here, it is unacceptable that not a penny of the estimated 200 million pounds ... is returned to the investors in the live music industry.

"Where this trade is fair to consumers, we propose to authorize it by agreeing a levy on all transactions."

The group also wants to protect music fans by introducing a "kite-mark" scheme to prevent bogus tickets going on sale.

The Resale Rights Society is expected to meet for the first time before the end of January, 2008 and wants to finalize agreements with online ticket exchanges by the end of March.

But the exchanges are unimpressed.

Eric Baker, founder of www.viagogo.com, said that once an individual paid for a ticket, they owned it and could do with it what they wished.

"What they are saying here is no different to (saying) that if you had a used Ford car you should pay Ford a tax when you sold it," he told Reuters. "If I have a Harry Potter book to re-sell, do I pay J.K. Rowling twice?"

Baker said his Web site already worked with major musical acts who used it to auction tickets for charity.

"At Viagogo we work for the fans, and we are not going to support a proposal that taxes a fan."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...11708220071204





Ingrid Michaelson Charts Course for Indies
Daniel Trotta

Ingrid Michaelson has an engaging stage presence, a growing catalogue of catchy pop tunes and a voice made for television, where her songs have played on a top-rated drama and catapulted her to prominence.

She does not, however, have a record label.

A product of the modern music business who markets her music on MySpace and sells it on iTunes and CD Baby, she is one of the few independent musicians to win commercial success without a record label behind her.

While some already famous artists are going independent -- notably Madonna and Radiohead -- Michaelson, 27, is a rare example of an independent who is becoming famous.

For her, it's a question of control, both creative and marketing. "I'm not going to run around half-naked and that whole thing. That's just not my personal preference," Michaelson told Reuters.

Since the advent of digital music, file sharing and Apple Inc's iTunes, big record companies have lost their omnipotence and artists are inventing new ways to reach audiences. But few find fame without a label and those that have -- like British indie rockers Arctic Monkeys -- have ended up signing a deal anyway.

"I have to commend her for having the courage to stay independent and not be seduced," said Wayne Rosso, chairman of the ad-supported digital music service Mashboxx. "She will truly break the model and change the business to some degree."

Michaelson's break came when a music licensing firm, Secret Road, discovered her MySpace page (www.myspace.com/ingridmichaelson). Three weeks later, her song "Breakable" played on an episode of ABC television's Grey's Anatomy, which attracts 20 million viewers each week.

Three more of her songs played on the show, including an extended version of "Keep Breathing" during the closing minutes of the season-ending episode last May.

An even bigger boost came when "The Way I Am" was used in an ad for Old Navy clothing stores, which Michaelson's publicist said catapulted her album "Girls and Boys" to No. 2 on the iTunes chart and the single to No. 3 -- rare heights for an independent release.

As well as selling downloads on iTunes, Michaelson and other independents have turned to sites like CD Baby (cdbaby.com/), which manufactures compact discs and sells them online. Artists get a cut of $6 to $12 per album versus $1 to $2 in a typical record deal, CD Baby says.

These challenges, as well as illegal file-sharing, which puts music online for free, have led to a steady decline in traditional retail sales of music, from $13.2 billion in 2000 to $9.2 billion last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The big record companies -- EMI Group Plc; Sony BMG; Vivendi subsidiary Universal Music Group; and Warner Music Group -- may be down, but they are not out.

"Record labels provide a lot of valuable services. Things like discovering the artists and promoting the artists," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Jupiter Research in New York.

"It's easy to put your stuff out there -- that's the nature of the Internet -- but so many people are putting their stuff out there it's hard to get discovered."

Nevertheless, similar stories to Michaelson's are sure to follow. CBS last year launched CBS Records in part to discover artists to use on TV shows, a cheaper alternative to established acts, and in turn to use TV to promote them.

Michaelson, from the New York City borough of Staten Island, said she may sign with a label some day but is wary, having heard stories about record companies exploiting artists and bitter disputes over money.

At a sold-out performance in a 400-capacity room at New York's Knitting Factory in November, she fronted a five-person lineup at the piano, delighting an audience heavily populated with young women singing along.

An upcoming show, on December 19 at the 575-capacity Bowery Ballroom, was sold out a month ahead.

"The live show is where it's at," Michaelson said. "I like making people smile. If I have that power right now, who knows how long it's going to last, and I feel like 'why not?'"

(Editing by Eddie Evans)
http://www.reuters.com/article/media...58181620071206





Led Zeppelin Finds Its Old Power
Ben Ratliff

Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they play their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain fact of aging, all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass, and a hard block against an old band’s lessened cultural importance.

But Led Zeppelin slowed its down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first full concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with Bonham’s son Jason as a natural substitute — the band found much of its old power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to those on the group’s old studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl.

It all goes back to the blues, in which oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. Its singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that fact: he introduced “Trampled Underfoot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog — “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying”).

Ahmet Ertegun, the dedicatee of the concert, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of southern black music to American culture. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England, and Turkey, his homeland.

By the end of Zeppelin’s two-hour-plus show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings—a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — all of whom had recorded for Atlantic under Ertegun.

There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well-rehearsed, for one thing: planning and rehearsals have been underway since May. The band wore mostly black clothes, instead of its old candy-colored wardrobe. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“there walks a la-dy we all know{hellip}”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.

As for Mr. Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused,” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.)

John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 Arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Mr. Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove.

And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert in his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from a few small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working.

Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985, and at Atlantic Records’ 40th Anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one the band had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.”

The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/ar...1zeppelin.html





MySpace Gears Up For More Music With Transmissions

Hoping to broaden its relevance to the music industry in the face of increasing competition from other social networking sites, MySpace will roll out a suite of services and initiatives as part of what company officials are calling MySpace Music 2.0.

But a new policy at Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's biggest record company, limiting full-song streaming on the site illustrates the challenges ahead.

The first hint of MySpace's music effort is Transmissions: The site ( http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...elID=115631898 z) features video of participating artists in the MySpace studios, performing select songs and conducting interviews, both of which MySpace has the exclusive rights to stream.

Bowing to label pressure to start monetizing MySpace traffic that to date has been mostly promotional, MySpace will provide links for users to buy songs by all featured Transmissions artists. According to MySpace VP of marketing and content Josh Brooks, the idea is to create more opportunities for "instant gratification" music purchases. However, the company won't dictate how those purchases are made.

"Whether it's a widget or a click through (to another site), as long as it's easy to use, I don't think anybody is going to complain," Brooks says.

The program launches with James Blunt, who recorded new versions of five previously released songs for the site. Fans can stream individual tracks, watch the video and buy the complete exclusive bundle, using the same sales widget from digital music provider Lala that Blunt's label Atlantic Records has used to sell his recent "All the Lost Souls" CD since it came out in September.

Other labels with a featured artist may use a different sales widget, or just link to iTunes for sales.

Next in line is striking ad revenue-sharing deals with labels, similar to what competitors Imeem and others have done. MySpace and Sony BMG in October forged such a deal for streaming music videos and some audio tracks. The lack of a revenue-sharing deal led UMG to restrict how songs by its artists are streamed on the site.

A source close to the situation says UMG will limit streaming music on the site to either 90-second clips or place promotional voice-over dubs to songs streaming in full. The source says that the policy is a few months old and applies to all online services, not just MySpace.

UMG, according to the source, is concerned that unlimited, free on-demand streaming of full songs online will substitute for users buying the track or the album. While not commenting directly on the UMG policy, Brooks defends the need to stream music online.

"At a time when people are trying to figure out what the secret sauce is to break bands, giving people a taste of the music is needed," he says. "They need it, and want it before they make a commitment. So I don't think free streaming is an issue."

Brooks adds that MySpace is planning additional new features and business models that should see the light of day in the new year.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...h-myspace.html





Social Site Imeem Signs Music Deal With Universal
Ethan Smith

In the latest development to highlight the shifting economics of the music industry, social-networking service Imeem Inc. announced today a licensing agreement allowing its users to listen free to the music of Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group.

Closely held Imeem, which claims around 19 million monthly users, allows its members to embed songs and music videos on personal pages and playlists. The songs can't be downloaded or stored on computers or iPods; for users who want to do that, Imeem supplies links to Apple Inc.'s iTunes store and to Amazon.com Inc.

Universal is the last of the four major label groups to strike such a deal with Imeem, but also the largest. The new arrangement marks the first of its kind to cover all four major label groups. The Imeem deal stands in contrast to Universal's relationship with News Corp.'s social-networking giant, MySpace, which Universal sued last year for copyright infringement, claiming that site didn't do enough to keep users from posting copyrighted material for which neither they nor MySpace had permission. That suit is pending.

In a statement, Universal Chairman Doug Morris called Imeem "innovative," and praised Imeem for "ensuring that our artists are fairly compensated for the use of their works."

A person familiar with the discussions said that Universal is to receive a guaranteed payment, equivalent to a fraction of a cent, each time a user listens to one of Universal's songs in addition to receiving a share of advertising revenue associated with a given song, that is, ads running near where a song is accessed. Most licensing deals with services that combine free music with advertising tend to offer labels only a share of revenue.

Because it relies on users to upload music, Imeem doesn't always offer the complete catalog of a given artist. For instance, Imeem has a couple of live versions of the Rolling Stones ballad "Wild Horses," but not the original from the "Sticky Fingers" album. And because Imeem's primary proposition is building social networks, not a music service, searches for music generate lists of songs and the users' pages on which they appear, rather than full albums that can be listened to straight through.

"We're definitely not a music store, and we don't want to be a music store," says Imeem Chief Executive Dalton Caldwell, adding that the deal promises to provide labels "a revenue stream they've never seen before."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1197...googlenews_wsj





More Lawmakers Support Local Radio Freedom Act
FMQB

Fifteen more members of the House of Representitives have expressed support for a recent, bipartisan resolution recognizing the promotional value of free radio airplay and opposing the proposed new performance royalty rates. The resolution now has 119 co-sponsors, including its authors, Reps. Gene Green (D-TX) and Mike Conaway (R-TX).

The 15 new signers are Reps. Sue Myrick (R-NC), Ron Paul (R-TX), William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Paul Broun (R-GA), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Tom Price (R-GA), Tim Johnson (R-IL), Michael Castle (R-DE), Candice Miller (R-MI), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Kenny Hulshof (R-MO), Leonard Boswell (D-IA) and John Sullivan (R-OK).
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=530077





Fanning’s Snocap: Close to Meltdown?
P2PNet News

Shawn Fanning’s Snocap may be on the verge of total meltdown.

Is it finally going under? - p2pnet wondered halfway through October.

“Looks like, unless someone comes along, buys it and tries to revive it in much the same way the original Napster, killed by the corporate music industry, was dug up and returned zombie-like as a ‘legal’ download service,” we said.

Fanning created Napster —- the real one which started the MP3 file sharing wars, not the feeble, emasculated wannabe that’s been struggling desperately for survival since the day Roxio acquired it.

With Napster’s demise, he moved to the Dark Side with Snocap, his DRM application which was to have changed the music world, but which, tons of mainstream media hype notwithstanding, has merely fizzled wetly

Now, “Snocap is now looking for an exit door, and pitching itself to prospective buyers,” says Digital Music News.

The company is “aggressively seeking acquisition prospects, and courting multiple possibilities,” the story has Bruce Taylor, Snocap VP of marketing and and PR confirming.

In October, Snocap slashed its personnel forced by about half.
“There are several companies that we are having active discussions with,” Taylor told Digital Music News, though he, “stopped short of offering specifics”.

A “number of sources pointed to a hard closure at the end of January if a buyer is not found,” says the story.

Hard closure? Presumably, that’s a euphemism for bankruptcy.

But, “We are funded through the sale,” Taylor said.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14297





RIAA Arguing MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized
NewYorkCountryLawyer

In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: "It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the '.mp3' format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies... "
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/11/0436215

Now Protesting Oregon AG Discovery Request

The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics. The request came in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/0049244





The Sixties...Be Sure To Wear False Teeth In Your Hair
Alan Tyers

Veteran journalist Gideon Rupert turns his attention to the greatest decade in the history of mankind.

As Matt Busby rebuilt after the tragedy of Munich, he created a new United team whose flair and daring seemed to mirror the thrilling social changes going on in Britain throughout the Sixties. One United player, of course, encapsulated the exciting possibilities of this new era above all.

Blessed with genius, glamorous, mercurial...Nobby Stiles changed not only his sport, but the whole concept of the sporting star. He was Britain's first superstar, attracting screaming crowds wherever he went - and the nickname 'The Fifth Monkee'.

I remember going to conduct an interview with Nobby in June 1967. I had arranged to meet him at his mother's building supplies and butchery shop in the tough Collyhurst suburb of Manchester where he grew up.

But at the last moment, Stiles phoned to say he had decided to take a holiday at short notice and asked if we could do the interview at his hotel. I was surprised to hear that he was holidaying in San Francisco, and more so when he asked if I would meet him at Haight-Ashbury.

The Summer of Love was in full swing, and Stiles was in great spirits after United's European Cup Final triumph over Benfica. He greeted me warmly in his hotel room, wearing a kaftan and sporting a scrabbly beard that would have given Alf Ramsey a conniption fit.

As my eyes became accustomed to the smoky fug I was astonished to see Syd Barrett sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room.

"Sid's cool," explained Nobby. "I'm helping him out with some sounds. And colours."

Stiles had become a close friend of Pink Floyd and, when it became clear that poor Syd was becoming a serious acid casualty, the band asked Nobby to step in on guitar.

Throughout the Summer of Love and into 1968, he rehearsed, in secret, with the band. However, a power struggle sprang up within Pink Floyd which came to a head when Nobby insisted on using his false teeth as a plectrum on some of his mandolin parts for A Saucerful of Secrets. Roger Waters was vehemently against the technique and asked Nobby to leave the band.

Stiles never recovered from the betrayal and disappointment. "Those dudes bummed me out," he recalled later in his autobiography. Soon after, he was sold to Middlesbrough. Truly, the Sixites were over.
http://www.football365.com/story/0,1...967539,00.html





Nokia's Unlimited Music Offer Turns Market on Head
Georgina Prodhan and Tarmo Virki

Nokia's plan to offer unlimited music downloads challenges the dominant pay-per-track sales model and is likely to upset carriers already worried that Nokia is poaching their customer relationships.

The world's biggest cellphone maker announced a deal on Tuesday with top record label Universal that will give customers buying particular Nokia devices unlimited access to millions of tracks for a year and allow them to keep the music afterwards.

Nokia hopes the deal with Universal Music Group -- a unit of Vivendi whose artists include 50 Cent, Sting and Mariah Carey -- will be followed by deals with the three remaining major international labels, to whom it is already talking.

Such unlimited download models could offer a shot in the arm to the music industry, which is struggling to find ways to make up for falling CD sales -- something that pay-per-track online stores like Apple's iTunes have so far failed to do.

"Unfortunately it appears that the only way to drive mass market adoption of digital music will be give it away for free, or close to free," Mark Mulligan, analyst at Jupiter Research, wrote in his blog.

"But if the alternative is for people to be downloading for free from illegal networks where the labels get nothing, it's pretty clear which is the preferable option."

Research firm Understanding & Solutions estimates that mobile music represents about 13 percent of global recorded music retail value. The mobile music market should grow to $11 billion by 2011, it says.

Nokia and Universal did not disclose financial terms but Universal's digital operations chief, Rob Wells, told Reuters in an interview: "Unless there was enough money for the world's biggest record company we would not have agreed to the deal."

Nokia's new venture, due to start in the second half of next year, comes hard on the heels of its August unveiling of an Internet mapping, music and gaming service designed to take a greater share of consumer spending from mobile operators.

And the so-called "Comes With Music" offering announced at an investor event in Amsterdam on Tuesday looks set to cut out -- and upset -- operators in a similar way.

"Due to their scale and newly acquired aggressive Internet strategy Nokia are in a unique position to turn the mobile music market on its head," Jupiter's Mulligan wrote.

Carriers Scramble

Telecoms carriers have launched a flurry of offers to try to regain the initiative and the high profit margins associated with popular services like music downloads.

Vodafone, for example, launched an unlimited mobile music service, MusicStation, in Britain last month in partnership with pioneering British music firm Omnifone a week before the UK debut of Apple's iPhone.

Omnifone says UK customers are signing up for MusicStation at the rate of more than one a minute. It aims for its services to be accessible to 100 million consumers around the world by June 2008, up from 45 million now.

Omnifone has a more carrier-friendly business model in which it shares revenues with operators and record labels. It has deals with all four major music labels as well as independents and has customers in Sweden, Hong Kong and South Africa.

MusicStation offers unlimited music at a starting price of about 35 pounds ($72) per month including some voice and text use, or 1.99 pounds a week for pay-as-you-go users, on a wide variety of handsets.

But, unlike the Nokia-Universal offer, customers cannot burn their music or transfer it onto a PC, meaning it is lost after the contract expires. They can share music with other MusicStation customers while their contracts are current.

Omnifone Chief Executive Rob Lewis said he welcomed Nokia's announcement, which he said would boost the market for unlimited music. "There's no longer any need to imitate the a la carte model of the iPod," he told Reuters in an phone interview.

"This is a very bold statement from Nokia, attempting to secure an element of the relationship with the end consumer that traditionally the operator has held very dear," he said.

"We've known for some time there's going to be a substantial battle in this space," he said, predicting a stormy six months ahead. "There's clearly going to be a rush to beat them."

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/inter...18248320071204





Nokia Pushes to Regain U.S. Sales in Spite of Apple and Google
Mark Landler

When Google announced plans in October to revolutionize the software of cellular phones, few were more eager to hear the details than the industry veterans at Nokia. They still are.

“We’ve seen an announcement,” Nokia’s chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Conceptually, we could have made that announcement a long time ago.”

For a decade, Mr. Kallasvuo said in an interview here, Nokia has had its own army of software developers, writing applications for the next generation of mobile telephone services.

In the United States, at least, it has little to show for it. Although it is the largest handset maker in the world — with 39 percent of the global market of 1.1 billion phones — Nokia has languished in the American market, hurt by its refusal to adapt its strategy to the market’s idiosyncrasies.

Carriers criticized it for pushing its own technology and design. Nokia does not dispute that.

“We felt we could teach the U.S. market how we do business elsewhere, and frankly, that failed,” Mr. Kallasvuo said. “Now we just want to act, based on the needs and requirements of the market.”

As it sets out to regain its footing in the United States, Apple and Google are going after Nokia’s franchise. But in doing so, they are shaking up the wireless industry in a way that may open up the one market that has flummoxed Nokia.

Apple, with its innovative iPhone, is changing the business relationship between the handset maker and the carrier. “Apple has managed to get operators to pay a bounty for new customers signed up — that is a sea change,” said John Tysoe, an analyst with the Mobile World, a research firm in London.

Google plans to create software that will turn cellphones into the principal portal to a mobile Web. Android, Google’s open-source platform for software, aims to transform the cellphone into a pocket computer in which any number of software applications could be added to a phone just as software is added to a PC.

Nokia views Apple as the first credible entrant into its market in years, Mr. Kallasvuo said. As for Google, he said he would wait for more details before deciding whether it is a threat or an opportunity. It did not go unnoticed that Google did not ask Nokia to join its Open Handset Alliance, a 34-company group that includes Motorola, Samsung and HTC.

“It’s very clear that Apple, Google and other players are bringing in a lot of new directions,” said Mr. Kallasvuo, 54, on a rare day working at Nokia’s waterfront headquarters in a suburb of Helsinki. “Convergence is a nice, dandy word, but it means industries colliding.”

For Nokia, the cellphone’s growing role as the indispensable device in a wireless, Web-connected world ought to be a boon. It already sells half of the world’s so-called smartphones — Web-enabled devices like the iPhone, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and Nokia’s N95.

But Nokia has an uncharacteristically weak position in the United States. It was a leader there but lost ground after failing to match popular products like Motorola’s Razr phone. Its market share, 28 percent five years ago, is now barely 10 percent.

“There’s no doubt competition is intensifying,” said Carolina Milanesi, a wireless analyst in London for Gartner, the research firm. “Nokia is responding more aggressively than any other vendor to the challenge.”

The company, which once made tires and television sets, is plunging into an array of new businesses, like music downloading and navigation. The goal is to pack its phones with multimedia services. Already, its ubiquitous camera phones make it the world’s top seller of digital cameras.

In October, Nokia paid $8.1 billion for a digital mapping and navigation software company, Navteq. It wants to use Navteq’s maps for a range of location-based services — enabling users to find a shop or a restaurant in a strange city, for example, or to bring friends together.

“Mobile phones have two qualities that PC’s don’t have,” Mr. Kallasvuo said. “They’re always with you, and they tell other people where you are.”

That might alarm people who cling to old-fashioned notions of privacy. But it is a boon for advertisers who can aim messages at increasingly specific markets. Privacy is also less of a concern for devoted users of social networking Web sites, like Facebook and MySpace. Nokia views these people, most of whom are young, as its future.

“More young people are accessing things like Facebook via their mobiles because the sites are often blocked at work,” said Mark Selby, Nokia’s vice president for multimedia services.

In its first major challenge to Apple, Nokia has announced a deal with the Universal Music Group to offer a year of unlimited free downloads of songs on its high-end phones. It will give subscribers access to Universal’s vast catalog, which ranges from Elton John to Kanye West. Nokia said little about how much it would charge or which phones would offer the service, known as “Comes With Music.”

While Nokia boasts that it has one of the word’s best-known consumer brands — in Asia, it ranks No. 1, ahead of Coca-Cola — it has put its Internet-based services under a new name, Ovi, the Finnish word for door.

Nokia has gone this route before, with little success. Club Nokia, a previous effort to sell games and ring tones directly to consumers, foundered after cellular operators in Europe refused to accommodate it. And the early signs for Ovi were not auspicious, with few operators signing up.

Recently, though, Vodafone, one of the world’s largest cellular operators, agreed to offer Ovi. In return, Nokia will split a percentage of the service revenue it makes with Vodafone; it will also manufacture a number of handsets exclusively for the operator. Analysts said the arrangement seemed tilted in Vodafone’s favor. But that may be an acceptable price for Nokia to pay, given its desire to elbow into the market for Internet-related services, which it predicts will be worth $145 billion globally by 2010.

“They’re trying to make operators understand that they’re not against them,” Ms. Milanesi of Gartner said.

There are other signs that the industry is moving in Nokia’s direction. In the United States, operators have historically played a gatekeeper role, deciding which phones their subscribers can use for what rate and then steering them toward services controlled by the operator. But Verizon Wireless recently said that it would give customers more choice in terms of phones and services — provided they use its transmission technology, CDMA, or code division multiple access.

For Verizon, Nokia has subcontracted the production of a CDMA phone to an undisclosed Asian manufacturer — a rare step for a company that prides itself on making its own products. Nokia is also working with AT&T and Sprint to design phones.

Mr. Kallasvuo, a lawyer, once ran Nokia’s North American operations. He is a regular visitor, and spends a lot of time talking to carriers.

And for the last six months, that has meant hearing a lot about the iPhone. Nokia’s executives describe their own reactions to it in flat, unemotional terms that would seem scripted, if the speakers were not Nordic.

“The user interface was what one would expect from Apple,” said Kai Oistamo, the executive vice president for mobile phones.

Apple has shipped 1.4 million iPhones since June, less than half as many shipped than Nokia’s high-end phone, the N95. Yet Mr. Oistamo concedes that success is more than a simple numbers game. “If you don’t strive to be cool, to be on the edge,” he said, “you run the risk of becoming irrelevant.”

For now, though, Nokia is counting on its broad portfolio of products, rather than a single iPhone-killer, to fend off the competition. “We’re not a one-product, two-product company,” Mr. Kallasvuo said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/te...y/10nokia.html





Opera Opens New Round in Browser Battles
Aoife White

Web browser developer Opera Software ASA asked European regulators Thursday to force Microsoft Corp. to give users a choice of Internet software with its Windows operating system.

In a complaint with the European Commission, Opera also alleged that Microsoft was holding back developers from making programs that work with each other "by not following accepted Web standards."

Opera, a small company in Oslo, Norway, has failed to gain a foothold in the browser market despite years of innovations. Its market share dipped even more as Mozilla's Firefox emerged to rival Microsoft's market-dominant Internet Explorer browser over the past few years. These days, Opera is stronger on making browsers for mobile devices, an area where Microsoft is not a major player.

Microsoft said Internet Explorer has been a part of Windows for more than a decade and supported a wide range of Web standards.

"We will, of course, cooperate with any inquiries into these issues, but we believe the inclusion of the browser into the operating system benefits consumers, and that consumers and PC manufacturers already are free to choose any browsers they wish," Microsoft said.

A complaint can - but does not always - trigger an antitrust investigation by EU regulators.

Some of the claims echo complaints from years ago, when Microsoft was accused of using its monopoly position to wipe out Netscape by bundling its free Explorer browser with Windows.

Netscape quickly lost its dominance, and relatively few use it today. Remnants of the technology evolved into Firefox, which now has roughly 10 percent of the market, with most of the rest going to Internet Explorer.

Opera said it was asking EU regulators to apply the principles of their landmark antitrust ruling ordering Microsoft to market a version of Windows without its media player program, even though there were few takers when it later went on sale.

EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes had warned Microsoft that the order set a precedent for its future behavior in other areas - such as its Office software and its new Vista operating system.

"Microsoft should bear this in mind," Kroes said. "The shop is still open, I can assure you ... there are a couple of other cases still on our desk."

EU officials last year cited possible problems with Vista's integrated security software, Internet search and copyright-protection tools and software that would create PDF-like documents.

Opera is claiming that Microsoft abused its monopoly power as the supplier of software to most of the world's personal computers by giving away its Internet Explorer with Windows and not offering alternative programs.

It asked the commission to require that Microsoft unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, include rival browsers in the default Windows installation, or do both.

Opera also said the European Commission should require Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support open Web standards. Over the years, Microsoft has added its own browser features that aren't part of the standards, and many Web sites follow the company's lead given its market share.

"Microsoft's unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain, and technologically inferior and that can even expose users to security risks," Opera said.

A group of Microsoft rivals, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, endorsed the complaint. "Browsers are the gateway to the Internet. Microsoft seeks to control this gateway," its legal counsel Thomas Vinje said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...wser_wars.html





Seagate Snubs Linux

Latest drives show no visible means of support
Nick Farrell

SEAGATE'S latest batch of drives, the ironically titled Free Agent series are not compatible with the Open Sauce operating system Linux.

As an INQ reader, who owns two 320s and 500s (USB2) pointed out to us, Seagate designers must have been working overtime to manage that feat. Linux runs his ancient Arcnet card, the latest DVB-c/s/t cards and even the more obscure studio-grade A/D/A converters. It cannot manage the latest from Seagate.

The problem is to do with the power-saving systems on Seagate's latest range of drives and the fact that it is shipped already formatted to NTFS.

The NTFS is only a slight hurdle to Linux users who have a kernel with NTFS writing enabled or can work mkfs. But the "power saving" timer is a real bugger.

It will shut shut the drive off after several minutes of inactivity and helpfully drop the USB connection. When the connection does come back it returns as USB1 which is apparently as useful as a chocolate teapot.

As our reader points out this is a, "fairly shit idea perfectly implemented, " unfortunately while Windows can handle it, Linux and Mac's can't cope.

There are a few work-arounds but Seagate Tech Support says they do not know what they are. Instead they are telling man plus dog that their latest drives do not support Linux.

Rose Allen from Seagate Tech support said that work-rounds may succeed, but there is no way that she, or her band will support that sort of thing.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...te-snubs-linux





Where are Wii?
Mike Bantick

Santa is in trouble, it looks like supplying the Christmas need for a Nintendo Wii game console is in jeopardy as stocks wither under constant and heavy demand. Conspiracy believers suggest this is an orchestrated move on behalf of Nintendo.

A quick ring around of major retailers in my home town of Melbourne Australia gives a pretty clear indication of the trouble some gift givers (and receivers) face.

If you want a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, chances are you won’t see one on retail shelves – though Dick Smith Powerhouse informed me that their distribution centre is hoarding about 800, ready for release over the next few weeks. Retailer Harvey Norman also had a couple of units in stock, but advised getting in the car and heading in immediately.

Nintendo are churning out 1.8 million Wii’s per month, attempting to keep up with world-wide demand, Twice now the expected forecast of sales has been lifted from 14 million units shifted by the end of March 2008 to the current expectation of 17.5 million.

Speaking to CNN money , George Harrison, senior vice president of Nintendo America seems to voice what others are saying about the unexpected Wii phenomenon; "Normally we would come into the October-November-December time period with a warehouse pretty well stocked with hardware," Harrison said "But we never were able to achieve that this year because we were shipping and selling everything that we received from overseas."

During the same CNN article a couple of analysts give their respective views on the shortage: Gartner analyst Van Baker believes the shortage keeps the Nintendo buzz high, whilst giving consumers that much vaunted “must have” feeling about the product.

"There's enough inventory out there that people don't quit shopping for them. They may have to go to three or four different locations before they find one, but ultimately they do," Baker said.

Meanwhile Brian O’Rouke, analyst for research firm In-Stat sits on the other side of the conspiracy fence;"They outsource their manufacturing. And qualifying contract manufacturers is a fairly time-consuming process," he said. It takes Nintendo five months to increase production from the time it makes the decision to do so, Harrison says.

Demand for the Wii is likely to remain strong for at least the next two years, says O'Rourke. It is the cheapest of the current-generation consoles on the market and it appeals to a larger audience of casual gamers.

This explanation appeals to my sensibilities more so than the so called clever distribution to keep buzz high idea.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15711/1092/





I heard it on the ‘net

Rumortoid-San: Wii Emits a Frequency that Attracts Cockroaches?
Topher Cantler

So far this is just a theory, but it's something that's beginning to come under investigation. Apparently, Japanese entertainment magazine BARKS has alleged that a powered-on Wii emits a sound frequency which falls right into the range to which cockroaches are attracted. This could lend itself to a few uninvited roommates for gamers who are too busy waggling their remotes to invest some time in a little basic housekeeping.

I wouldn't run to the store and drop a week's pay on insecticide just yet, and please keep in mind that this is just a theory, and one that is likely to be debunked eventually. Although, if you find yourself trying out that new Wii Fit Board and hear some crunching under it as you lean one way or the other, don't say I didn't warn you.

[Thanks to Brad for moonspeak translation, and Matthew for the link]





Pass The Popcorn! Study Finds That Film Enjoyment Is Contagious
Press release

Loud commentary and cell phone fumbling may be distracting, but new research suggests that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences. Over the course of the film, movie-watchers influence one another and gradually synchronize their emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant's evaluation of the overall experience -- the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie.

"When asked how much they had liked the film, participants reported higher ratings the more their assessments lined up with the other person," explain Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill (both of the University of Chicago). "By mimicking expressions, people catch each other's moods leading to a shared emotional experience. That feels good to people and they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie."

In a series of experiments, the researchers had participants watch a video clip. Some of the participants watched alone, some with other people whose expressions could not be seen due to the presence of a partition, and some with other people whose expressions could be seen. The participants had a joystick they used to indicate their feelings at each moment.

While assessments did not line up by second--people liked or disliked specific scenes in the film according to their own tastes-- the researchers found that people watching a film together appeared to evaluate the film within the same broad mood, generally tracking up or generally tracking down. In another study, the researchers videotaped participants and found that synchrony of evaluations can be traced to glances at the other person during the film and adoption of the observed expressions.

The researchers explain: "Participants who looked at each other at the same time appeared to note whether the other person's face expressed the same or different emotion than their own. Perceived congruity of expressions caused participants to stick with their current emotional expression . . . Perceived incongruity, on the other hand, led to a dampening of subsequent expressions."

They continue: "Social effects described above were bi-directional suggesting that such influences were mutual rather than the result of a leader-follower pattern."

The researchers are the first to examine how a shared experience affects not just our immediate feelings, but also our overall impressions of the experience as a whole. The study is also the first to look at contagious emotions in a naturally developing relationship between two participants, differing from prior studies that used a planted person to express agreement or disagreement with the participant.

Journal reference: Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill, "Consuming with Others: Social Influences on Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of an Experience." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2007.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1204133730.htm





"Golden Compass" Disappoints at Box Office
Dean Goodman

"The Golden Compass," a costly fantasy starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, got off to a slow start at the North American box office and will likely fall short of opening-weekend expectations.

New Line Cinema's $180 million film sold an estimated $8.8 million worth of tickets during its first day in theaters on Friday, according to data issued on Saturday by tracking firm Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com).

After Saturday and Sunday sales are factored in, the film will come in at No. 1 with about $28 million when the studios issue their weekend estimates on Sunday, said Paul Dergarabedian at Media By Numbers, another tracking firm.

New Line, a struggling Time Warner Inc unit hoping to launch another franchise along the lines of its blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" series, said last week it was hoping the film would open to between $30 million and $40 million.

"It's below expectations, but it's not an out-and-out debacle," said Dergarabedian.

Conspiring against the movie, he said, were such factors as a soft marketplace and unrealistic expectations for an epic fantasy filling the holiday void left by the "Narnia" and "Lord of the Rings" smashes.

A New Line executive did not return a call seeking comment.

Based on the first book in British author Philip Pullman's acclaimed children's series "His Dark Materials," writer/director Chris Weitz's film is set in an alternate world ruled by an oppressive religious authority. It features talking animals and a heroine played by youngster Dakota Blue Richards.

Even though the film downplays the religious aspect, it has been savaged by such groups as the Catholic League and the U.S. Conference of Bishops. Opponents have cited Pullman's unflattering portrayal of the church and specifically the Catholic faith.

Critics were also generally negative on the film, according to the web site Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com), which collates reviews.

The film represents another disappointment for Kidman, who had yet to headline a live-action $100 million movie. Her most recent successes were 2005's "The Interpreter" ($72 million) and 2003's "Cold Mountain" ($96 million).

She and Craig co-starred in the summer release "The Invasion," which flopped with just $15 million. Craig had better luck reviving the James Bond franchise last year with "Casino Royale" ($167 million).

New Line has also struggled. Its biggest movie of 2007, "Rush Hour 3" ($140 million), earned less than half of its predecessor. Other films, such as Jim Carrey's "The Number 23" and the wartime drama "Rendition" quickly came and went.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...35936220071208





Box Office: Golden Compass Disaster! Juno a Record-Breaker!
Steve Mason

New Line’s The Golden Compass, which has a reported budget of $200M+, has staggered out of the starting gate with an opening day of $9M or so, and it will likely muster only an estimated $27M for the weekend. In the realm of big budget, family-oriented family films, The Golden Compass opening is absolutely anemic.

Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire - $102.6M opening
Harry Potter & the Prioner of Azkaban - $93.6M opening
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone - $90.2M opening
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - $88.3M opening
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - $72.6M opening
The Chronicles of Narnia - $65.5M opening
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - $62M opening
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - $47.2M opening
The Golden Compass - $27M opening (estimate)
Eragon - $23.2M opening
Bridge to Terabithia - $22.5M opening
Stardust - $9.1M opening

It’s been an awful year for New Line, and the this turkey will cinch Nicole Kidman’s reputation as box office poison.

Hairspray ($27.4M opening - $118.8M cume) and Rush Hour 3 ($49.1M opening - $140.1M cume) have been the only real 2007 hits for New Line, but nothing else has topped $40M domestic.
Fracture - $11M opening - $39M cume
The Number 23 - $14.6M opening - $35.1M cume
Mr. Woodcock - $8.7M opening - $25.8M cume
The Last Mimzy - $10M opening - $21.4M cume
Shoot ‘Em Up - $5.7M opening - $12.8M cume
Rendition - $4M opening - $9.7M cume
Code Name: The Cleaner - $4.2M opening - $8.1M cume
Martian Child - $3.3M opening - $7.4M cume
Love in the Time of Cholera - $1.9M opening - $4.3M cume

Although Kidman’s current specialty film, Noah Baunbach’s Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage) is playing decently in limited release with an anticipated $3,043 weekend PTA at 82 locations, her last 5 live action releases have ranged from disappointing to disastrous.

2007 – Invasion - $5.9M opening - $15M cume
2006 – Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus - $29,000 opening - $223,000 cume
2005 – Bewitched - $20.1M opening - $63.3M cume
2005 – The Interpreter - $22.8M opening - $72.7M cume
2004 – Birth - $1.7M opening - $5M cume

New Line will have a huge problem “playing through” the holidays based on the soft opening. With 3 movies including I Am Legend (Warner Bros) set for release next week, 5 more major films due the Friday before Christmas, and 2 new pics opening wide on Christmas day, The Golden Compass will have a hard time holding screens through the holidays. $100M domestic is now a longshot, and the movie will probably finish only in the $80M-$90M range.

Disney’s Enchanted continues to hold well with an estimated $2.9M Friday and a strong $10.5M projection for the weekend. By Monday morning, the Amy Adams vehicle will have banked $83M+. Dreamworks’ Beowulf ($1.46M Friday) may have edged This Christmas ($1.44M) on Friday, but the 2 movies will change places by Sunday night. The Sony ensemble surprise hit should finish the weekend with a slightly stronger 3-day number, but both movies will be in the $5.2M range. Fred Claus (Warner Bros) should round out the top 5 with approximately $3.67M for the weekend.

On the specialty front, Juno (Fox Searchlight) is an arthouse sensation. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, the film is riding spectacular reviews and deafening Oscar buzz to an expected weekend PTA of nearly $58,000 at 7 locations. If the number holds that would be one of the top 35 PTA performances in modern box office history. Commercial success here may ensure Oscar nominations for Ellen Page for Best Actress, Jennifer Garner for Best Supporting Actress and Diablo Cody for Best Original Screenplay. Fox Searchlight may even be able to convert another surprise Best Picture nomination, as they did last year with Little Miss Sunshine.

The picture is not so bright for Joe Wright’s Atonement (Focus), based on Ian McEwen’s acclaimed novel. Focus opened wider with 32 locations, and, although it managed a $7,000 PTA on Friday, the dark period romance may be out-of-step with the mood of moviegoers. Enchanted, This Christmas and now Juno have demonstrated that people are looking for something a bit lighter after the fall offering of dark, disturbing movie fare. It will be interesting to see how Atonement holds up on Saturday, but at the moment, I’m anticipating a weekend PTA of about $23,000.

Other new specialty releases met with mixed results. Dirty Laundry (Code Black Entertainment) with a predominantly African American cast, should deliver a PTA of just over $10,000 at 2 locations, Guy Ritchie’s Revolver (IDP Films) starring Jason Statham and Ray Liotta is headed for a weekend PTA of only $2,500 at 18 locations, and the long-shelved The Amateurs (First Look) will finish with an even softer $1,599 PTA while playing on just 3 screens.

Finally, another Iraq War-themed movie has crashed and burned. Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) starring John Cusack, with an original score by Clint Eastwood, mustered only a $1,089 PTA on Friday at 4 locations with a projected weekend PTA of $3,594. It will be very difficult for the Weinsteins to pick this film up from the mat, and that will make an Eastwood Oscar nomination for Best Original Score an uphill climb.

EXCLUSIVE FANTASY MOGULS EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. The Golden Compass (New Line) - $9,000,000 - $2,551 PTA - $9,000,000 cume
2. Enchanted (Disney) - $2,900,938 - $824 PTA - $76,059,844 cume
3. Beowulf (Dreamworks/Paramount) - $1,461,613 - $491 PTA - $73,044,768 cume
4. This Christmas (Sony) - $1,443,876 - $768 PTA - $39,204,057 cume
5. Fred Claus (Warner Bros) - $1,282,865 - $403 PTA - $62,211,473 cume
6. August Rush (Warner Bros) - $1,130,643 - $489 PTA - $22,753,769 cume
7. Awake (MGM) - $1,115,444 - $551 PTA - $8,531,282 cume
8. Hitman (Fox) - $1,069,950 - $442 PTA - $33,404,536 cume
9. No Country for Old Men (Miramax) - $1,041,920 - $787 PTA - $25,669,624 cume
10. American Gangster (Universal) - $814,609 - $382 PTA - $123,829,794 cume
11. The Mist (MGM/Weinstein) - $801,886 - $343 PTA - $21,649,771 cume
12. Bee Movie (Dreamworks/Paramount) - $663,197 -$245 PTA - $119,078,590 cume
*Atonement (Focus) - $224,992 - $7,031 PTA - $224,992 cume
*Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Thinkfilm) - $173,530 - $541 - $4,885,778 cume
*Juno (Fox Searchlight) - $134,981 - $19,283 - $134,981 cume
*I’m Not There (MGM/Weinstein) - $86,085 - $582 PTA - $1,968,035 cume
*Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage) - $73,390 - $895 - $984,802 cume
*Noelle (Gener8Xion Entertainment) - $60,494 - $298 PTA - $60,494 cume
*The Savages (Fox Searchlight) - $22,366 - $2,485 PTA - $263,064 cume
*The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (Miramax) - $15,631 - $5,210 PTA - $128,353 cume
*Revolver (IDP Films) - $13,752 - $764 PTA - $13,752 cume
* Dirty Laundry (Code Black Entertainment) - $7,174 - $3,587 PTA - $7,174 cume
*The Walker (Thinkfilm) - $4,962 - $1,654 PTA - $4,962 cume
*The Amateurs (First Look) - $4,797 - $1,599 PTA - $4,797 cume
*Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) - $4,356 - $1,089 PTA - $4,356 cume

EXCLUSIVE FANTASY MOGULS EARLY 3-DAY ESTIMATES
1. The Golden Compass (New Line) - $27,000,000 - $7,653 PTA - $27,000,000 cume
2. Enchanted (Disney) - $10,588,422 - $3,008 PTA - $83,747,328 cume
3. This Christmas (Sony) - $5,270,147 - $2,805 PTA - $43,030,328 cume
4. Beowulf (Dreamworks/Paramount) - $5,261,806 - $1,768 PTA - $76,844,961 cume
5. Fred Claus (Warner Bros) - $4,169,311 - $1,309 PTA - $65,097,919 cume
6. Awake (MGM) - $3,792,508 - $1,875 PTA - $11,208,346 cume
7. Hitman (Fox) - $3,744,826 - $1,549 PTA - $36,079,412 cume
8. August Rush (Warner Bros) - $3,674,588 - $1,591 PTA - $25,297,714 cume
9. No Country for Old Men (Miramax) - $3,646,720 - $2,754 PTA - $28,274,424 cume
10. The Mist (MGM/Weinstein) - $2,846,696 - $1,219 PTA - $23,694,581 cume
11. American Gangster (Universal) - $2,810,402 - $1,318 PTA - $125,825,587 cume
12. Bee Movie (Dreamworks/Paramount) - $2,387,510 - $882 PTA - $120,802,903 cume
*Atonement (Focus) - $742,474 - $23,202 PTA - $742,474 cume
*Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Thinkfilm) - $572,649 - $1,784 PTA - $5,284,897 cume
*Juno (Fox Searchlight) - $309,904 - $57,849 - $404,943 cume
*Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage) - $249,526 - $3,043 - $984,802 cume
*I’m Not There (MGM/Weinstein) - $86,085 - $2,094 PTA - $2,191,854 cume
*Noelle (Gener8Xion Entertainment) - $196,606 - $969 PTA - $196,606 cume
*The Savages (Fox Searchlight) - $71,571 - $7,952 PTA - $312,269 cume
*The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (Miramax) - $55,490 - $18,497 PTA - $168,212 cume
*Revolver (IDP Films) - $45,382 - $2,521 PTA - $45,382 cume
*Dirty Laundry (Code Black Entertainment) - $21,522 - $10,761 PTA - $21,522 cume
*The Amateurs (First Look) - $17,989 - $5,996 PTA - $17,989 cume
*The Walker (Thinkfilm) - $16,623 - $5,541 PTA - $16,623 cume
*Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) - $14,375 - $3,594 PTA - $14,375 cume

EXCLUSIVE FANTASY MOGULS EARLY FRIDAY PTA ESTIMATES
1. Juno (Fox Searchlight) - 7 locations - $19,283 PTA
2. Atonement (Focus) - 32 locations - $7,031 PTA
3. The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (Miramax) - 3 locations - $5,210 PTA
4. Dirty Laundry (Code Black Entertainment) - 2 locations - $3,587 PTA
5. The Golden Compass (New Line) - 3,528 locations - $2,551 PTA
6. The Savages (Fox Searchlight) - 9 locations - $2,485 PTA
7. The Walker (Thinkfilm) - 3 locations - $1,654 PTA
8. The Amateurs (First Look) - 3 locations - $1,599 PTA
9. Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) - 4 locations - $1,089 PTA
10. Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage) - 82 locations - $895 PTA

EXCLUSIVE FANTASY MOGULS EARLY 3-DAY PTA ESTIMATES
1. Juno (Fox Searchlight) - 7 locations - $57,849 PTA
2. Atonement (Focus) - 32 locations - $23,202 PTA
3. The Diving Bell & the Butterfly (Miramax) - 3 locations - $18,497 PTA
4. Dirty Laundry (Code Black Entertainment) - 2 locations - $10,761 PTA
5. The Savages (Fox Searchlight) - 9 locations - $7,952 PTA
6. The Golden Compass (New Line) - 3,528 locations - $7,653 PTA
7. The Amateurs (First Look) - 3 locations - $5,996 PTA
8. The Walker (Thinkfilm) - 3 locations - $5,541 PTA
9. Grace is Gone (MGM/Weinstein) - 4 locations - $3,594 PTA
10. Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage) - 82 locations - $3,043 PTA

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/12/08/...ecord-breaker/





'T2' Skeleton Brings in Nearly $500,000

A cyborg skeleton from ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' brought in nearly $500,000 on Friday in an auction of Hollywood memorabilia dominated by props and costumes from Arnold Schwarzenegger's shoot-em-up sci-fi franchise.

The T-800 Endoskeleton used in the 1991 film brought in $488,750, said Marc Kruskol, a spokesman for Profiles in History, which staged the auction.

An armored drone went for $109,250, and a full-body Terminator model went for $74,750. Both items were from ''Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.''

A full-scale tyrannosaurus rex head from ''Jurassic Park'' was the second priciest item of the day, bringing in $126,500.

Gentle, kindly Mary Poppins could hardly compete. Julie Andrews' signature gabardine coat from the 1964 film brought in a comparatively modest $63,250.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/...ap4444057.html





What's New in Blade Runner: The Final Cut?



John Howell

After 25 years since its original release, a definitive version of Ridley Scott's science fiction masterwork Blade Runner, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, has arrived.

So what exactly has changed? And is it worth all the fuss?

After attending a recent screening I can report that there are significant differences, mainly improvements, between this new version and Ridley's first Director's Cut released in 1992.

First off, the unicorn dream sequence, originally introduced in the Director's Cut, has been extended. Deckard's daydream of a unicorn galloping through a forest in slow motion is a pivotal scene, clearly suggesting that Deckard, like Rachel, is a replicant. In a recent article in Wired, Ridley explained why.

“Gaff, at the end, doesn't like Deckard, and we don't really know why,” said Ridley, after being asked whether it was on paper that Deckard was a replicant. “And if you take for granted for a moment that, let's say, Deckard is Nexus 7, he probably has an unknown life span and therefore is starting to get awfully human. Gaff, just at the very end, leaves a piece of origami, which is a piece of silver paper you might find in a cigarette packet. And it's of a unicorn, right? So, the unicorn that's used in Deckard's daydream tells me that Deckard wouldn't normally talk about such a thing to anyone. If Gaff knew about that, it's Gaff's message to say, ‘I've basically read your file, mate.’”

Physically, Blade Runner has been altered to take advantage of the latest improvements in film and audio technology. The quality of the print and the audio has been significantly enhanced. A new digital print of the film was created from the original negatives, while the special effects were updated and polished. Special effects footage was scanned in at 8,000 lines per frame, which is four times the resolution used in most restorations. The dystopic Los Angeles landscape of 2019 is now more stunning than ever before. Watching flames leap skywards as a spinner flies through the darkness during the opening sequence is mesmerising.

Vangelis’ evocative soundtrack, remastered for The Final Cut in 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, sounds better than ever, complimenting the story perfectly, from the fast paced action sequences to the slow, haunting scenes in Deckard’s smoke filled apartment.

One of the most powerful aspects of Blade Runner is its bleak depiction of a dark decaying world lost in drizzle and shadow. The multicultural inhabitants struggle through busy city streets, but reside in almost empty skyscrapers, abandoned by the majority lucky enough to have left for better lives off world.

Extra footage and alterations enhance this compelling vision, including an extra shot of a crowded city street, a brief sequence of two exotic dancers wearing hockey masks, and a shot of Deckard meeting a policeman before he enters the Snake Pit.

There's also new footage of Zhora crashing through a display case after being pursued by Deckard. This scene was reshot. The original actress, Joanna Cassidy, performed the stunt herself, replacing original footage of an obvious stunt double.

Roy Batty’s death scene, where a dove is released into a bright blue sky, supposedly at night, now shows the dove flying into a night sky, with an appropriate bleak backdrop.

Some scenes, such as Deckard's first meeting with Gaff in the noodle bar, have been trimmed, as they ran too long after the removal of Deckard's voice over from the original theatrical release.

Various pieces of dialogue too have been inserted or altered. In an early scene, where Bryant and Deckard are looking over Nexus 6 profiles, Bryant now describes Leon’s job, and when he talks about replicants being caught in an electrical field, the dialogue has been changed from: "One of them got fried running though an electrical field" to "Two of them got fried running through an electrical field". This alteration fixes the problem of a sixth replicant unaccounted for in earlier versions.

In the scene where Batty confronts Tyrell, the line, "I want more life, fucker" has been replaced with "I want more life, father”. In the same scene, after Batty has killed Tyrell, he now says to Sebastian, "I'm sorry Sebastian. Come. Come."

Deckard’s conversation with a snake merchant has been rerecorded and reworked. In the 1992 Director’s Cut the dialogue is completely out of sync, making it very distracting.

Other additions include extra violence. All of the violent scenes in the International Cut that were deleted in the U.S. theatrical release have been reinserted, most unsettlingly when Roy Batty crushes Tyrell's head in his hands, gouging out his eyes. Pris's shocking and sad death scene, her arms and legs thrashing about wildly, also appears to be have been extended. Presumably censorship is not as restrictive as it had been when the film was originally released. Personally I think they could have left the level of gore as it was.

With so many previous versions, you could be forgiven for thinking that Blade Runner: The Final Cut is not worth much of our time. Some may argue that Ridley is merely tweaking a film that has already been tweaked well beyond its use by date. There’s some support for this given that Ridley Scott was quoted at the Venice Film Festival recently claiming that the science fiction genre is as dead as the western.

“There’s nothing original,” he said. “We’ve seen it all before. Been there. Done it”.

Perhaps that’s why, instead of creating a completely new science fiction film, he has merely retouched an old one.

You could of course hold an even more cynical view: this latest version is nothing more than a commercial exercise. Are Warner Bros. and Ridley Scott merely trying to squeeze the last drops out of loyal fans who should know better?

After viewing Blade Runner: The Final Cut in all its enhanced glory, I’d have to disagree. This is not just a patch up job attempting to cash in on a cult film. Like an oil painter retouching a masterpiece, or a novelist polishing prose, Ridley is trying to complete his vision. The film has been improved markedly using all the time, technology, and feedback Ridley had at his disposal. In an article for in New York Times, Ridley stated that he had “never paid quite so much attention to a movie, ever.”

That’s not to say that it’s flawless. Detectives in the future, for example, appear to lack some basic common sense: when Bryant shows Deckard profiles of the Nexus 6 replicants, it’s clear they know exactly what they all look like. So why didn’t Holden, whom we see in an early scene giving a Voight-Kamff test to Leon, already know that Leon was a replicant? Didn’t anyone give him the mug shots?

Equally, if Deckard really is a Nexus 7 created to work as an exterminator, why is he lacking the strength of the inferior Nexus 6 models he is chasing? He seems to spend a large part of the film being bashed to a pulp.

Flaws aside, Blade Runner: The Final Cut is a science fiction masterwork. There’s a reason Blade Runner has stood the test of time. Check it out in the theatre if you get the chance. It has a very limited release. The Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition, which includes all previous versions of the film, is due out 18 December.
http://sffmedia.com/content/view/156/1/





Winner of Batman Forever Batmobile Auction Can't Drive Car in Public
John Neff

Our friends over at Hemmings who follow the auction scene like crack-addled chipmunks came across the mobile bane of the Batman franchise. The Batman Forever iteration of the Batmobile is one of the worst ever devised. Universally panned along with the film in which it appeared, it was forced to do sit-com work after it was retired, appearing on The Drew Carey Show (some say the Batmobile's appearance on the show was when it officially jumped the shark). The car was recently up for auction with no reserve and sold for $297,000, less than half its estimated worth. Aside from being an abomination and afront to Bruce Wayne groupies everywhere, the car sold so low because it came with many conditions set by Warner Bros. and DC Comics, including one barring the owner from driving the car in view of the public! This car's a runner too, with a small-block Chevy V8 that can whisk it away from laughing crowds at super hero speeds. But its new owner will apparently never get the chance to be laughed at in public, because doing so would mean driving the car in public, and that would violate the contract he (or she) signed. On second thought, perhaps Warner Bros. and DC Comics was doing this guy a favor.
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/07/w...ive-car-in-pu/

“1.The Batmobile may only be exhibited at purchaser’s permanent location and at auto shows conducted at parks, schools and other similar public places but not at shopping malls, markets, department stores or commercial locations.

2. The Batmobile may only be exhibited in a stationary state and must be mechanically unable to be driven while on display to the general public and must comply with applicable fire codes.

3.The Batmobile may be driven solely when necessary for maintenance purposes and may never be driven while in public view.

4.No modifications, alternations or cosmetic changes of any kind can be made to the Batmobile nor can the Batmobile be reproduced in any way.

5. The Batmobile shall not be licensed, leased or otherwise made available to any third party for any reason.

6. The Batmobile may not be used, referred to, photographed or depicted in any advertisement, endorsement or promotion of any commercial establishment, product or service of any kind.

7. The Batmobile may not be sold, transferred, leased or disposed of without prior written approval from Warner Bros. Consumer Products.”





A Chapter of ‘Jackass’ as Web Test
David M. Halbfinger

Paramount Pictures is lurching onto the Web with its “Jackass” franchise, with what it says will be the first studio-backed feature film to have its premiere online. And the studio hopes the result will be considerably more pleasurable than the old MTV show’s trademark shot to the groin — perhaps by paving the way for more profit-making Web-only material.

On Dec. 19, the studio will make “Jackass 2.5” available in connection with Blockbuster’s Movielink service. The hour-plus film has original material and previously unseen outtakes from the second “Jackass” movie in 2006. The new movie, made for less than $2 million, will stream for free but will have 15- or 30-second commercials before and after it plays.

At the same time, the studio’s fellow subsidiary of Viacom, MTV Networks, and the creators of the “Jackass” franchise are using the new film to attract traffic to jackassworld.com, now under construction.

The site is billed as an online community offering blogs, original video content and an archive of the 24 episodes of “Jackass,” which ran on MTV in 2000 and 2001, as well as its longer-running spinoff “Wildboyz.”

Other studios have distributed Web-only short films (as Fox Searchlight did to promote “The Darjeeling Limited”) or teaser segments of their theatrical movies as part of promotional campaigns (as Sony did last weekend with “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”). But Viacom executives emphasized that this was a stand-alone venture that would pay for itself.

They described the online premiere as an experiment aimed at gauging the potential revenue streams for studio-produced, longer-form Web material that could take advantage of the consumer appetite for user-generated content.

“If this works, it could open up and really change the game about additional content that studios can create,” said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. Then again, Paramount executives acknowledged it might not be the fairest test of long-form films, given that the movie, like the TV show, is made up of many short segments, consumable in morsels.

It’s also hardly a big-budget test: Most of “Jackass 2.5” was shot for “Jackass: Number Two,” which took in $73 million at domestic theaters last year. (The first “Jackass,” from 2002, made $64 million at the box office.)

The new material includes opening and closing sequences and documentary-style interviews, mainly about what did not work, said Jeff Tremaine, director of the franchise’s movies. The movie is unrated, and both the complete version and its racier segments, when sold online, will be “age-gated,” with age-verification technology ensuring that consumers are 17 or older. (These methods, however, can be easily subverted.)

“There’s more vomiting, nudity and defecation,” one executive said, speaking more candidly than the companies involved had agreed to and on condition of anonymity. “The stuff that consumers really want.”

Among the movie’s new bits, executives said, are “Human Golf Tee,” in which Johnny Knoxville invites a driving-range patron to hit one off a tee on Bam Margera’s crotch, and Mr. Margera firing a bazooka round in his family’s own kitchen.

The production cost, executives said, is being recouped by a license-fee guarantee, in the low seven figures, that Blockbuster agreed to pay for a one-week exclusive.

On Dec. 26, the movie will be available on download-to-own retail sites like iTunes and Amazon.com, for $10 to $15, and a DVD — including 45 minutes of extras — will also go on sale, for $30.

Beginning Jan. 1, advertising-supported streaming sites like Joost will let viewers watch the movie, or selected bits, for free. And in February the movie will be offered through cable and satellite TV video-on-demand services. Paramount will keep 70 percent of online sales proceeds, executives said.

“We’re trying to assess here not only the potential for a broadband movie online, but also the different ways to distribute,” Mr. Lesinski said. “Within 30 days we’ll have a very good idea where the consumption is coming from.”

Keith Morrow, Blockbuster’s chief information officer, said he viewed the license fee as an investment in building awareness for the Movielink service, which Blockbuster bought from Hollywood studios (including Paramount) in August.

Mr. Tremaine said the “Jackass” creative team had retained ownership of Internet rights as part of a failed effort to exploit the dot-com boom a decade ago. He said he was more excited about jackassworld.com than the new movie, in part because it had allowed the team to go back to its origins as an outgrowth of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother, no longer published.

The community aspects of the site, however, will not let users share homemade videos of their own stunts, despite “Jackass” having spawned a limitless supply of online imitators.

“It’s always been our position that somebody should not do that at home,” said David Gale, a new-media executive at MTV Networks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/bu...a/13movie.html





It’s His World; She Was Just Filming It
Dennis Lim

JENNIFER VENDITTI met the subject of her documentary “Billy the Kid” in a high school cafeteria in rural Maine. Seated apart from all the other students, who were clustered into the usual cliques, was a wiry 15-year-old in shorts and an AC/DC T-shirt.

“There was a table of bullies who pointed him out and told me he’d tried to sit with them once,” Ms. Venditti said. “They called him a freak.” She went over to talk to Billy, “and as soon as he opened his mouth, I was like, ‘Why isn’t everyone sitting at your table?’”

A casting director for films and fashion shoots who specializes in “street scouting” — the practice of plucking subjects from everyday environments — Ms. Venditti was trying to find teenage actors for a short that her friend Carter Smith was directing. She cast Billy as an extra in that film, “Bugcrush” (which went on to win the prize for best short at Sundance last year), but resolved to give her new young friend, who seemed both troubled and precocious, more screen time in a project of her own.

She obtained permission from Billy’s mother, Penny Baker, and in the summer of 2005, returned to Maine to film him, hoping to combine that segment on Billy with portraits of other compelling figures she had discovered around the country. After a five-day shoot she changed course and decided to focus on Billy alone, returning for three more days to capture his performance in a Christmas choir.

In “Billy the Kid,” which won the top documentary prize at the South by Southwest Festival in March and opened in New York on Wednesday, the title character emerges as a bright, likable, decidedly awkward oddball, as apt to quote Robert Frost as he is to mimic Gene Simmons. Ms. Venditti and her director of photography, Donald Eric Cumming (who starred in “Bugcrush” and befriended Billy during that shoot), shadow their subject through his daily activities — establishing his alienation from his peers and his penchant for martial arts and air guitar — and look on as he embarks on a tentative first romance. But this fly-on-the-wall study of teenage outsiderdom gradually takes on darker overtones. Billy and his mother speak about his history of violent tantrums and refer to his father, now no longer in the picture, as an abusive drug addict.

When Ms. Venditti met Billy, she ”immediately wanted to know what was wrong with him,” she said. “That’s how we are as a society. We’ve been conditioned to think if we don’t understand something, we need to put a name on it to help us understand.”

She talked to teachers and students and got “really vague answers,” she said, “like ‘Oh, he’s complex,’ or ‘He has emotional disabilities.’” Billy was found to have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, last year. But “Billy the Kid,” completed before that diagnosis, mirrors Ms. Venditti’s experience with Billy. It proceeds largely without explanation or judgment.

Ms. Venditti said that “Billy the Kid” reflected “my whole process of thinking about Billy.” She added: “It was almost like an experiment for myself. I want to see what the world looks like from Billy’s point of view. The challenge is to understand someone on their own terms, not on the basis of a diagnosis.”

Billy, to say the least, is unlike most documentary subjects. He makes wary eye contact with the camera and yet is remarkably un-self-conscious about performing in front of it. “I’d set up all these things I was going to do with Billy, but when I got there, I realized he’s been directing and starring in his own movie his whole life,” Ms. Venditti said. “My job was mainly to create a safe environment.”

In a sense, she added, Billy saw himself as a co-author of the film. Referring to Heather, the shy local girl he woos with some success, Ms. Venditti said, “He knew he needed a love story, a damsel in distress, and of course he found her.”

Speaking by telephone, Billy, now a senior in high school, referred to the documentary repeatedly as “my film.” He said that he had quickly developed a trust and a rapport with Ms. Venditti. “I actually think of her as family, kind of like a sister,” he said.

Ms. Baker, his mother, also interviewed by phone, said she found the film “a little painful to watch.”

“It does reinforce how hard it can be for that young man,” she said, but she added that on the whole she was pleased. “It’s a really nice, gentle, tactful way to show Billy.”

Not everyone agrees. In a review in Variety the critic John Anderson accused Ms. Venditti of perpetuating a “freak-show aesthetic.” Additionally, he wrote, the vérité appearance was a “masquerade,” since scenes appeared to have been set up and shot from multiple angles.

“I was floored,” Ms. Venditti said of her reaction to the review. “I was bedridden for three days.” She explained that the scenes that deployed multiple angles had been edited down from hours of footage.

Documentaries about eccentrics (like “Grey Gardens” or “Grizzly Man”) can engender a kind of ironic appreciation — or its equally queasy flip side, a romantic condescension. Ms. Venditti herself lapses into descriptions of Billy that toy with the notion of the holy fool.

“He doesn’t know how to lie or conform,” she said. “All these things that we’ve developed over time to protect ourselves, he doesn’t know how to do, and in some ways it’s inspiring.”

Still, while the film might stir debate on questions of responsibility and exploitation, one senses in Ms. Venditti a genuine affection and protectiveness toward her subject. She worked with a psychiatrist, discussing ways to “make clear to Billy the purpose of the film,” and was adamant about not shooting more than she needed.

“If I’d gone on, it would have affected his life more,” she said. “I also liked the restriction, the idea that it’s this window into his life at that moment in time.”

Sometimes admirers approach Billy at screenings. “I don’t think of them as fans,” he said. “They’re just people who understand. They’re good listeners.”

But the distance of more than two years has already diminished his degree of identification with the on-screen Billy. “When I watch the film,” he said, “I’m thinking: Is that really me up there?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/movies/09lim.html





BitTorrent, A Boon To Independent Filmmakers
Ernesto

Talented independent filmmakers are benefiting immensely from having their movies distributed for free on BitTorrent. Films that might never have been heard of before are now being watched by millions of people.

Today, several of the top movies on BitTorrent sites such as mininova are independent films produced by small movie studios. “The Man from Earth” and “Day Zero” are two recent examples of films that became known to a wide audience thanks to BitTorrent.

“The Man from Earth” in particular has become immensely popular due to its distribution on BitTorrent. After RLSlog reviewed the film and linked to a torrent of it and to the official site, the producer wrote to the blogger, thanking him for reviewing it. They had received some 23,000 hits in the days following the review and went from the being the 11,235th most popular movie on IMDB to being the 5th most popular one, and the most popular independent film in a matter of days. He said:

Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. After that happened, people were watching it and started posting mostly all positive reviews on IMDb, Amazon and other places. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!

“Day Zero“, too, hasn’t even been released yet. But a leaked DVD screener of it has been making its way around the Internet. The movie premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival , but will only open in a few theaters in the US on the 18 of January ‘08, which will be followed by a wider release in the weeks after. Despite mainstream audiences having practically no access to this film, it has become popular online and is the 5th most seeded movie in the Drama category on mininova.

Of course there are still several independent Film producers that would rather not see their creations up for grabs while they are still running in theaters. The following quote is taken from an email that was sent to a BitTorrent site by one of the producers of Cashback. The film in question was downloaded nearly a million times over the past few months, reaching a much broader audience online than in the movie theaters.

Is it possible to remove it from your site for say 6 months? At least then it gives the filmmakers a chance to see how popular viewers really think it is, and for us to make our living. I can’t really attack film piracy, because reality is, it’s inevitable.. but until we find a real solution that works for everyone is it possible that we could have a bit of compromise from your end?

The reaction from the producer is understandable, but I dare to argue that the popularity of independent films on BitTorrent does more good than harm. A pirated copy does not equal a visitor lost in the movie theater, similar to music, independent films might actually profit from filesharing. It generates a lot of word to mouth advertising.

More and more people start to recognize the potential BitTorrent has. Last year filmmaker Mark Achbar released a torrent of the award winning Canadian documentary ‘The Corporation’ here on TorrentFreak. He was one of the first to realise that filmmakers can profit from BitTorrent, even though the official distributors did not agree.

It isn’t hard to see why filmmakers are starting to look at “piracy” in a different light. The more hype their movie gets early on, the greater the chance of someone wanting to buy the DVD or go see it in the cinema. It’s really as simple as that. Independent filmmakers don’t have the same promotional and marketing budgets as Hollywood studios, and getting the word out about their film is really the biggest hurdle for them. We’ve seen producers of TV shows start to leak content to BitTorrent and embrace filesharing, so why not movie producers too?
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-a...makers-071215/





Sci-Fi Producer Thanks Internet Pirates For Sharing His Film
Press release

Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth sees ranking on IMDb MOVIEmeter go from #11,235 to #6 in two weeks. The independent film is now ranked as the 14th best Sci-Fi film ever.

While the conundrum facing the film industry over Internet piracy heats up, one producer of an independent low-budget film has taken matters into his own hands...

The day after the DVD release (11/13/07) of his film Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth, producer Eric D. Wilkinson took the groundbreaking step to directly address peer-to-peer file sharing constituents. On the blog rlslog.net he thanked the "pirates" for downloading his film. He also requested that they spread the word, buy the DVD and donate money for their viewing to the film at www.manfromearth.com.
Thanks to everyone who has downloaded this torrent and watched the film, our awareness level is through the roof. For that I say, 'Thank You'!

While Wilkinson, a home entertainment business veteran and Southern New Jersey native, hardly condones illegal downloading, he realized that the genie was already out of the bottle. Wilkinson figured it was better to embrace the phenomenon than try to fight it. "Am I upset... surprisingly no", Wilkinson commented to www.rlslog.net. "Thanks to everyone who has downloaded this torrent and watched the film, our awareness level is through the roof. For that I say, 'Thank You'!" His posting has since spread to numerous blogs and websites and has inspired hundreds of responses from around the globe.

The film became available on peer-to-peer file sharing sites in the week before it was released on DVD. Reaction and enthusiasm for the film was fantastic. Between November 5th and 7th the www.manfromearth.com website saw traffic increase by over 3,000%. On the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) the film's MovieMeter ranking - which gauges awareness of a title by measuring traffic to its IMDb entry - rose from #11,235 on October 28th to #144 on November 4th, peaking at #6 by November 11th. It is currently ranked as the 14th best Science-Fiction film ever.

Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth DVD is available through retailers and online. For more information about the film and its creators please visit www.manfromearth.com.

About Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth
On a cold night in a remote cabin, Professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith of "CSI: Miami", Fight Club) gathers his most trusted colleagues for an extraordinary announcement: He is an immortal who has migrated through 140 centuries of evolution and must now move on. Is Oldman truly Cro-Magnon or simply insane? Now one man will force these scientists and scholars to confront their own notions of history, religion and humanity, all leading to a final revelation that may shatter their world forever.

The Man From Earth is a provocative final work by Jerome Bixby (Fantastic Voyage, Twilight Zone: The Movie, "Star Trek"), renowned as one of the greatest science-fiction authors of all time. After 30 years he completed writing the film on his deathbed with his son Emerson Bixby. The Man From Earth is executive produced by Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies, Arlington Road) and directed and produced by Richard Schenkman (The Pompatus Of Love). The film co-stars John Billingsley ("Star Trek: Enterprise"), William Katt (Carrie, "The Greatest American Hero"), Ellen Crawford ("ER"), Richard Riehle (Office Space), and Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination, Platoon).

Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth received two awards at the Rhode Island International Film Festival in August: First place for Best Feature and Grand Prize for Best Screenplay. The film was also an Official Selection at San Diego Comic-Con International Film Festival in July.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/12/prweb575617.htm





TV Industry Using Piracy as a Measure of Success

This is a guest post by Guinevere Orvis. Guinevere is a Web Producer in Toronto, Canada working both freelance and in the broadcast industry for Alliance Atlantis, CTVglobemedia and currently CBC. She has 10 years experience in the online space and specializes in social media, online marketing and content production.

If you’re a TV exec, there’s a magical number that you worship to measure your show’s success… those digits handed down on high from Neilsen ratings. Traditionally, little else mattered, but the television landscape is drastically changing. Is it time our success measurement tools change too?

Our online audience numbers have grown to a level where they’re demanding serious attention. Show promotions, trailers and clips that broadcasters are pushing on YouTube and other video sharing sites are getting more views than some shows do. Television is reaching a milestone where online is veritably driving on air viewership. Neilsen TV isn’t the only game in town anymore. If we are going to understand what our audience wants, we have to consider a bigger picture.

So, if YouTube numbers matter, what about members on a Facebook fan group? What about mashups and fan art? How about BitTorrent downloads? Yeah you heard me: maybe we should use unsanctioned downloads of our shows as a measurement of legitimate demand.

Tech-savvy consumers have been boldly declaring that piracy can help and not hinder industry for years (especially when it comes to music downloads), but I was shocked the first time I heard the same claim from another group: from some very knowledgeable marketing types one day over a year ago in a boardroom. One of them simply asked, “Is the show on BitTorrent? How many people are downloading it?” The rest of the group looked genuinely interested in the answer from a demand point of view, not from an outraged one. I’ve since heard the same thing again several times, from different companies.

An even more interesting thing has started to happen: unofficial, but sanctioned television show leaks on BitTorrent. Broadcasters aren’t posting their shows directly on PirateBay yet, but they are talking informally and giving copies of shows to a friend of a friend who is unaffiliated with the company to make a torrent. Why? Well, it’s partially an experiment, but the hope is that distribution of content this way will lead to new viewers that wouldn’t have been reached through traditional marketing means. Early signs indicate that these experiments are working.

The hit TV series Weeds has had some high profile “unofficial” leaks of their shows prior to airing on television. When a show is on BitTorrent that hasn’t yet aired, it’s a fairly good indicator that there’s a insiders nod-and-wink at play. The Weeds show producer Jenji Kohan hinted at both her approval of the leaks and the reasons behind them, “Revenue aside, I don’t expect to get rich on Weeds, I’m excited it’s out there. Showtime is great, but it does have a limited audience.” Weeds ratings continue to grow and leaks seem to be part of their ongoing strategy.

While the Motion Picture Association of America is uploading fake torrents of movies to discourage torrent use, mainstream television show producers are engaging in flirtatious trials with torrents as a viable new way to promote their programs and reach new audiences. Clearly content producers & distributors don’t agree on how to deal with this technology and the battle will wage on for some time. In the meantime, seeders and leechers are building a business case for digital distribution by proving demand.
BitTorrent and the like are simply new distribution models and the number of our viewers choosing to view our content this way is as relevant as those still choosing to watch on broadcast television. What’s missing is the definitive business model for online that has existed for decades for TV. My prediction is that one single model won’t emerge and that we’ll monetize our content in as many different ways as there are to distribute it.
http://www.last100.com/2007/12/13/te...re-of-success/





Is Illegal File Sharing On College Campuses Really As High As They Say It Is?
David Taylor

Again I need to remind everyone the content of this blog is solely my own and does not represent the University of Pennsylvania. I am not authorized to speak on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania and will not do so. I am, however, an employee of a University and am personally concerned about my university as well as other universities out there. I'm hoping this blog may stir up a little discussion on what the real numbers are when it comes to students illegally sharing files.

I also want to state that I am not for the illegal sharing of files. I am absolutely against it. I just want to make sure that the numbers presented in the media are fair numbers. I have a feeling they aren't fair at all.

I'm sure we all remember when emails were leaked from a company called MediaDefender. The news Spread fast and a lot of people started looking to see what MediaDefender was up to. MediaDefender claims to be an anti-piracy solution that stops the trade of illegally traded copyrighted material. A site called Mediadefender-defenders received a copy of the leaked emails and published them online for the whole world to see. In those emails a few threads show that one of their customers wants to see what number of EDU (Education) addresses are showing up in the Gnutella network. MediaDefender generates some reports from the data they have and provides a few updates to their customer.

The data contained in the section below can be found by using the following Google search:

site:mediadefender-defenders.com "edu ips" intitle:edu

When you see numbers published in the media about the huge number of college students sharing illegal files and then take a look at the numbers below there just seems to be a huge gap. I realize some of the EDU IP addresses may be from a private NAT (Network Address Translation) which enables multiple hosts on a private network to access the Internet using a single public IP address. It is safe to say the numbers are probably a bit higher than the data shows but I wouldn't imagine it would be significantly higher. I don't have access to data that would show this, however.

In the data below the first column is the Date at which the numbers were gathered by MediaDefender. The second one (Uniq IPs) shows the count of unique IP addresses they saw on the Gnutella network. The third column (Uniq EDU IPs) shows the number of unique addresses that resolved to an EDU domain. The fourth column (% EDU IPs (MediaDefender) are the percentages of EDU IP addresses that were on the Gnutella network. The fifth column (Actual % EDU IPs) are the numbers I came up with from their data.

To make a long story short, MediaDefender's data shows that the average percentage of EDU IP addresses found to be on the Gnutella network during the time they sampled the data is 1.76%. That number alone seems to be fairly low.

Date Uniq Ips Uniq EDU Ips % EDU Ips (MediaDefender) Actual % EDU Ips

02/01/07 342854 8398 2.40% 2.45
04/12/07 291001 7175 2.50% 2.47
06/14/07 265504 2475 0.93% 0.93
07/14/07 199333 1303 0.65% 0.65


1098692 19351 1.76

Now we have at least some numbers here. One thing to think about, however, is the numbers above do not necessarily reflect the number of people sharing files illegally. This just shows the numbers MediaDefender saw on the Gnutella network. I believe the most popular application for this network would be LimeWire. I was doing a bit of research on Limewire a few months back and was trying to find a file to download that was at least 4 MB in size. Of course I don't want to download anything that would be considered illegal so I kept searching and searching and searching. Well, after several hours I just could not find any content over 4 MB that I could feel comfortable to download and gave up due to lack of time I had to spend on it. So I guess I can raise my right eyebrow and give a "what are you doing on that network" look. Well, I was there researching so maybe others are as well.

There are other networks out there as well such as BitTorrent, Ares, FastTrack and many more. Some networks are used by various software vendors for pushing out a lot of legitimate content such as Open Source applications and operating systems as well as software patches.

"The MPAA estimates that about 44% of the movie industry's domestic losses to piracy -- over $500 million annually -- are attributed to college students illegally sharing files over peer-to-peer networks. "

Another article from Alternet says "But sticking with the MPAA's semi-bogus numbers, educational technology nonprofit Educause points out that "since less than 20 percent of college students live on campus and use the residence hall networks, this means that less than 4 percent of the infringers are using campus networks, and they are responsible for less than 9 percent of the losses. Over 91 percent of the claimed losses are on commercial networks." Get that: 4 out of every 100 infringers (even trusting the industry assessment of infringement, which usually is not too carefully defined) are on college networks"

Educause has a handy list of issues, links, and an action page here.

I don't have the technical skills nor the resources to really dive in and get actual numbers. If I did you can bet I would be diving into it with full force. If there are some of you out there that would like to start thinking of creating a project to find out what the real numbers of Student P2P users are it would be really valuable for the EDU community!
http://mytakeonsecurity.blogspot.com...n-college.html





LimeWire Now Found on One-Third of All PCs Worldwide
Press release

More than one-third of all PCs worldwide now have LimeWire installed, according to data jointly released by Digital Music News and media tracking specialist BigChampagne. The discovery is part of a steady ascent for LimeWire, easily the front-running P2P application and the target of a multi-year Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawsuit. For the third quarter of this year, LimeWire was found on 36.4% of all PCs, a figure gleaned from a global canvass of roughly 1.66 million desktops.

The installation share is impressive, and unrivaled. But growth has actually been modest over the past year. LimeWire enjoyed a penetration level of 34.1% at the same point last year, a difference of merely 2.3%.

"LimeWire continues to be the iTunes of P2P by a wide margin ... but growth has remained flat over the last several months," said Richard Menta, research analyst at Digital Music News.

The report closely follows a legal defeat for LimeWire owner Lime Group LLC, which alleged anticompetitive, collusive behavior amongst major labels. But that challenge was thrown out by a federal court, shifting the attention back towards a massive infringement suit being spearheaded by the RIAA. For consumers, the legal volleys are mostly background noise, and more users than ever are relying on the application to acquire freebie downloads.

The complete Digital Media Desktop Application report - which covers thousands of ecommerce, jukebox, BitTorrent, P2P and other applications - can be purchased at http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/invoice/desktop_q32007

PC Pitstop collected the data required for this report though voluntary systems scans.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/12/prweb576418.htm





People of the Internet, I Have a Story to Tell

A story with a few morals to it and a dire warning to all of you.

Last week, due to poor weather and a massive overreaction of my parents, I lost the ability to drive my car for a week or so. I don't really care, and it's not really relevant to most of the story, but it's how it all began, more or less.

Today (Wednesday, December 12th, 2007), I got into my dad's truck when he came to get me from school. We had driven for about ten seconds when suddenly turned to me as said, in a very serious voice: "Son, what does 'Shaun of the Dead' mean to you?"

I had no idea what he was talking talking about. Well, of course I knew of the Dawn of the Dead semi-parody film; a few days ago, while at work (I work at our local F.Y.E. (music/movie store) in the mall here), I had contemplated buying it after seeing how much it was on sale. I told him this, and he was silent for a second. Slowly, he replied "y'know, lying's not going to get you anywhere."

Again, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. When I told him this, and he thrust a printed-out paper into my hands, saying "read this" with disgust.

I, having the ability to read extremely fast, digested the page in around fifteen seconds. It was an e-mail, printed off with today's date on it. I will transcribe it below, using asterisks to hide the parts I don't wish to reveal.

From: "PrarieWave Systems Administration" <sysadmin@iw.net>
To: <***@********.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 1:42PM
Subject: DMCA Violation Notification ID# **-********

Bay NBC UNIVERSAL
Subject: Attention Required!! DMCA Violation Notification- Notice ID: **-********
Name: **** ******
Address: **** **** **** **
***** **** SD 577**-****

My name is *** ***** and I am with PrarieWave Communications. We are sending you this e-mail to notify you
that we (PrarieWave) have been contacted by NBC UNIVERSAL. This contact is for violations of their DMCA
(Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

The below file name and time was sent to us to notify us of the violation.

On: 29 Nov 2007
Infringed Work: Shaun Of The Dead
Infringing Filename: Shaun.Of.The.Dead.DVDRip.avi

Was shared or downloaded from your location or IP. NBC UNIVERSAL pictures asks that you stop this action
immediately and that any further instances should result in the cancellation of your services.

PrarieWave does not want to remove your service, and asks that you stop this from our network; distribution or
copying is completely prohibited.

Please contact our support center at 877-***-**** if you have any further questions.

Thanks ***
Sysadmin

For your information here is a link to our AUP:
http://www.prairiewave.com/forms/aup.htm

(For those of you who want to know what the hell their AUP contains, or even what it stands for, you're out of luck; the page is 404'd.)

Suddenly, I remembered everything I've been hearing on the Internet and through the podcasts I subscribe to, about NBC being douches about their copyright stuff and YouTube, etcetera. I tried to explain to my dad that what probably happened was, NBC demanded that PrarieWave give them their packet history so that they could go through and look for anything relating to copyright infringement on their material. He didn't understand any of it. This wasn't because he's technologically illiterate (although he refuses to see why he should let me have the 21" widescreen monitor he uses at his office that his aging receptionist runs at 1024x768); he was mostly pissed off because he doesn't want to risk losing his Internet, cable television, phone line, and, most of all, his reputation.

Anyways, as for our ISPs giving our packet data to large corporations without explicitly explaining the possible ramifications of this to their mostly technology-illiterate customers: frightening. If it weren't for the fact that my family is paying well for high-speed cable Internet access, I'd go and use Tor right away. I'm now going through and securing every aspect of my computer that I can, and removing even the most faint hints that the file ever existed on my computer.

I'm going to come out and say that yes, Shaun was, in fact, on my BitTorrent client's list of things to download at one point in time. I don't remember putting it there, but I'm sure it happened awhile ago. My BitTorrent client is on my Linux partition, and, due to Garry's Mod and other games, I usually stick to the Windows partition.

So I switch over to Linux to see what was going on with my BitTorrent client's download list. The only item on it was "Anarchy Online," stopped at about 25%. (Anarchy Online is a MMORPG with the ability to play it for free, and the link to start downloading its client program via BitTorrent was on their website.) Shaun was off the list, "stopped" (i.e. not seeding, not pirating, not doing anything), and only 0.4% complete, with zero seeders and three leechers. I only discovered this through my log data; I had deleted the file previously. The total time it had previously been "active" was under an hour.

I am aware that this does not justify my actions in any way, and I am, from this point, ceasing any activity that could even potentially be illegal on the Internet. I've now realized the error of my ways and intend to refrain from ever doing anything like this ever again. (In "real life," I'm probably the most lawful, upstanding person in my grade that I know; I've never gotten drunk or high, never bought or sold any illicit substance or item; the worst thing I've done is park in an unoccupied teacher's parking spot when I was late to school one day.)

However: Everyone at my school, whether geek, jock, emo, nerd, or whatever, knows the name of a certain file-sharing application that everyone uses. Most people use it to pirate music. It's over-used, most shared files contain viruses and malware, and the application itself contains adware, yet everyone uses it. So how is it fair that I downloaded 0.4% of their movie, which is beyond unwatchable (because BitTorrent doesn't download the file sequentially, it just grabs whichever random bits and pieces it can get), and I never even watched it; yet they threaten me with legal action and potentially huge fines and jail time over this little bit of downloading, all because it's from NBC.

Also, I think it to be complete bullshit that I can't use BitTorrent anymore, whether the files I'm downloading are legal or not. I can, but now I know that those are the packets they're inspecting, and really, I'd rather not give away any personal information unsolicited. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to have a shitty corporation like NBC sending me to prison. Improve your damned shows instead of sending takedown notices to twentysomethings for uploading clips of
The Office to YouTube.

So, in closing, I urge all of you to heighten your knowledge of Internet security and do your best to keep your online actions a secret. Also, don't steal shit that's not yours, but for your regular day-to-day Internet usage, do yourself a favor and keep private organizations out of your data. This isn't even the government we're speaking about here; this is a private corporation bent on protecting its own interests with no regard for the interests of others.

Thank you for reading.
http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/s....php?p=8264294





Public Knowledge Comment On Copyright Enforcement Bill
Press Release

Background: House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) and Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced legislation to change the penalties for copyright violations. The statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge.

“We remain concerned that several provisions in this bill could have harmful, if unintended, consequences that would harm consumers. The bill rightly targets enforcement of copyright law against commercial infringers, but some of these same enforcement provisions are likely to hurt ordinary consumers. Seizing expensive manufacturing equipment used for large-scale infringement from a commercial pirate may be appropriate. Seizing a family’s general-purpose computer in a download case, as this bill would allow, is not appropriate.

“The bill increases penalties for violations while weakening incentives to register copyrights, which benefit the copyright holder and the public. The result of this legislation would be to create even more “orphan works.”

“The bill also takes a direction opposite from that taken in recent patent legislation. The House has passed legislation limiting patent damages relative to actual harm, a strong policy that will promote competition and innovation. This bill takes already extraordinary copyright damages and increases them, expanding the threat of litigation intended to stifle competition and innovation.

“Increasing penalties is one of the least necessary, and quite possibly counter-productive, actions the Committee could take, particularly when current law is adequate to deal with most infringement issues and because the higher penalties serve only to force faster and larger settlements potentially from innovators.

“Instead of following the course of this bill, the Committee should look to the future, to a more realistic and rational copyright regime that can adapt pre-VCR copyright laws to a post YouTube world.

“We thank Chairman Conyers and Chairman Berman for including us early in the process for this bill and look forward to continuing the dialog on these important issues.”
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1298





Congressman Hollywood: It's Time to Revisit the DMCA
Nate Anderson

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), also known as Congressman Hollywood, is one of the most powerful members of the House when it comes to intellectual property issues, so when he muses aloud about "revisiting" the DMCA, people listen. Unfortunately, Berman wants to reform the DMCA because it doesn't go far enough, and his ideas sound like they're ripped right from the pages of the Big Content playbook.

Berman chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, and this morning oversaw a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, a bill that could boost statutory damages for copyright infringement and create a special IP enforcement office in the executive branch as well as a new IP division at the Department of Justice. Before witness testimony got underway, Berman mused aloud about things the bill did not contain but which he would like to revisit in the future.

Berman believes that the DMCA, in particular, needs reforming, but not in the ways that consumers have clamored for. Instead, the congressman wants to look again at the issue of "safe harbor" provisions currently extended to ISPs for infringing content flowing across their networks. He wants to examine the "effectiveness of takedown notices" under the DMCA, and he'd like to take another look at whether filtering technology has advanced to the point where Congress ought to mandate it in certain situations.
The ideas could not be more pleasing to companies like Viacom, which is currently suing YouTube over the issue of takedown notices, claiming that simply adhering to the DMCA takedown notice system is not good enough. The MPAA, which has been pushing for ISPs to adopt video filtering on their networks, should also be thrilled.

Big Content has been touting fingerprinting and filtering technologies as the solution to the problem of having their copyrighted content posted online. In October, Viacom and a handful of other companies issued a set of principles governing how user-generated video content should be handled. Signatories to the manifesto would be forced to beyond the boundaries of the DMCA—in the same direction Rep. Berman wants the DMCA to go, in fact.

Gutting the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA, as Berman appears to be advocating, would also provide a massive boost to the rights-holders. Conversely, it would have a chilling effect, not only on the likes of YouTube, but on any site that hosts any sort of user-generated content. The Safe Harbor is arguably one of the very few worthwhile provisions of the DMCA. Rewriting it to favor the interests of Big Content would be a gigantic mistake.

Eric Bangeman contributed to this story.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-the-dmca.html





"Canadian DMCA" Delayed, Protestors Cautiously Optimistic
Nate Anderson

Industry Minister Jim Prentice was expected to introduce new Canadian copyright reform legislation yesterday, but instead... didn't. It was a stunning reversal and an unexpected success for a grassroots campaign against the bill, widely expected to mirror the US DMCA. Prentice had previously announced that issues of greatest import to consumers would only be decided by committee after the new copyright bill was passed.

During question period in Parliament yesterday, Prentice faced hostile question from MP Charlie Angus, who charged that the government "has been rolling out the red carpet for corporate lobbyists and the US ambassador" and that the result will be "an unbalanced, one-sided piece of made in the USA copyright legislation." He went on to attack Prentice for "just discovering Facebook this morning" and not having done any "due diligence."

The Facebook crack appears to be a reference to the "Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group" promoted by Canadian professor Michael Geist. Within days, the group attracted nearly 15,000 signatories who want to see copyright reform that benefits more than just foreign music labels and film companies.

In addition, Prentice faced a group of citizens at a Christmas get-together at his local office (see pictures and video from one of the organizers) this weekend, many of them upset about the new legislation. The major Canadian press outlets have also picked up the story, and everyone from the CBC to the National Post to the Globe and Mail are running with it.

It's not clear that Prentice's decision to keep back the bill is related to this storm of opposition; he has yet to offer any reason for the delay. In response to Angus' criticism in Parliament, Prentice simply said that "the bill will not be tabled [introduced] in the House until such time as myself and the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages are satisfied." Which raises the obvious question: Canada has a Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages? Does that even fit on a business card?

Although the bill has been delayed, it could soon be introduced without changes. Michael Geist notes that "even if the delay stretches into 2008, a delayed bill that does not feature a genuine copyright balance is little better than the bill that was to have been unveiled today."

He does note in fairness to Prentice that the Minister has recently backed a courageous spectrum auction plan designed to spur competition in Canada, and might be persuaded to adopt a more consumer-friendly approach to copyright as well, should the government hear from enough people on the issue.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ptimistic.html





Major Copyright Bill Boosts Penalties, Creates New Agency
Declan McCullagh

In the aftermath of the $222,000 jury verdict that the Recording Industry Association of America recently won against a Minnesota woman who shared 24 songs on Kazaa, the U.S. Congress is preparing to amend copyright law.

Politicians want to increase penalties for copyright infringement.

It's no joke. Top Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday introduced a sweeping 69-page bill that ratchets up civil penalties for copyright infringement, boosts criminal enforcement, and even creates a new federal agency charged with bringing about a national and international copyright crackdown.

"By providing additional resources for enforcement of intellectual property, we ensure that innovation and creativity will continue to prosper in our society," Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich) said in a statement.

The legislation, called the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, or PRO IP Act, is throughly bipartisan. The top Republican, Lamar Smith of Texas, on the Judiciary committee is a sponsor. So is Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chair of the subcommittee that writes copyright law, and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).

The Motion Picture Association of America, which has long championed stiffer copyright laws such as this fall's legislation aimed at file trading at universities, applauded the PRO IP Act as well.

"I believe that the American business community can speak in one voice today in support of these legislative efforts to protect intellectual property," MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said in a statement. "I am pleased to see a concerted effort by Congress to address this growing problem, and the MPAA looks forward to working with congressional leaders in the weeks to come."

Here are some of the major sections of the PRO IP Act:

* Fines in copyright cases dealing with compilations would be increased. Right now, as in the case of Xoom v. Imageline, the maximum penalty for infringement of one compilation is $30,000. Now courts would be able to make "multiple awards of statutory damages" when compilations are infringed.

* Maximum penalties for repeat copyright offenders would be easier to obtain. Current law says that anyone who "willfully" infringes a copyright by distributing over $1,000 worth of material (including over a peer-to-peer network) is a criminal. The PRO IP Act keeps the 10-year prison term intact for felonious repeat offenders--but, crucially, deletes the requirement that repeat offenders must have distributed at least 10 copyrighted works within 180 days.

* Any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime could be seized by the Justice Department and auctioned off. The proceeds would be funneled to the agency's budget. The process is called civil asset forfeiture, and typically the owner does not need to be found guilty of a crime for his property to be taken.

Probably the most extensive part of the PRO IP Act is its creation of a new federal bureaucracy called the White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, or WHIPER. The head of WHIPER would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

WHIPER seems to be modeled after the U.S. Trade Representative, with the head of the new agency bearing the rank of "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary." WHIPER's head is charged with being the president's principal advisor and spokesman for intellectual property matters, as well as identifying countries that don't adequately protect IP rights. It gets to create its own official seal as well, and the WHIPER head appears to be paid as well as the attorney general and secretary of defense ($186,600 in 2007).

One of WHIPER's major tasks would be to create a "Joint Strategic Plan" that, in part, involves "identifying individuals" involved in the "trafficking" of "pirated goods." An annual report is due to Congress by December 31 of each year. In addition, 10 "intellectual property attaches" are intended to be dispatched to embassies around the world.

Finally, the U.S. Justice Department's intellectual property enforcement apparatus would be completely revamped. An "Intellectual Property Enforcement Division" would be created and subsume the IP-related functions that the department's computer crime section in the criminal division currently performs. The new division would receive $25 million per year to start with.
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9829826-38.html





DOJ Blasts New 'Copyright Czar' Bill
Chloe Albanesius

The Department of Justice on Thursday slammed intellectual property legislation that would re-organize its IP enforcement structure, calling it unnecessary and counterproductive to the work it has already accomplished. ADVERTISEMENT

"We have a current structure … that works quite effectively," Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers last week introduced H.R. 4279, which would further crack down on intellectual property violations, and create several new government positions with the power to enforce the new law. It is intended to preserve American economic prosperity, according to sponsors.

The new government positions include an intellectual property enforcement representative who would report to the White House, and a permanent intellectual property division within the Department of Justice.

Those plans would be "ill-advised," Mandelker told the committee. Removing the department's IP division from the criminal division, as the bill proposes, "will disrupt important relationships within the criminal division and will make intradepartmental IP coordination more difficult," she said.

The IP division works closely with the DOJ's cyber crime laboratory, so separating a copyright unit could fracture investigation, Mandelker said. "This close collaboration … could be jeopardized if the IP enforcement component were split off from computer crime and placed into a separate division," she said. "Moreover, it may lead to duplicative administration and training programs."

The DOJ itself has an IP task force and recently implemented 31 recommendations, but "there was never any recommendation to create an entirely new division for IP," Mandelker said.

Copyright controls in the hands of the White House? Bad idea

DOJ was also not pleased with an IP office inside the White House. "We are always going to be concerned when you have somebody at the White House who may be in the position of directing our enforcement or what cases we do or don't do," she said. "That would be contrary to the long-standing tradition of the department making independent decisions regarding law enforcement."

Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel for NBC Universal and chairman of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, suggested that IP issues tend to "fall down the 'to-do' list". Until there are senior policy executives specifically tasked with IP enforcement, he said, "we will not make progress in addressing the issues that are on the table."

Panel members also expressed concern over Section 104 of the bill, which would allow a copyright owner to collect statutory damages for each copyrighted work that is stolen. Detractors fear that this provision could result in protracted lawsuits, expensive settlements, and unintended consequences, especially when it comes to music.

Under current law, for example, someone who pirates a single album will be charged with one crime. Section 104, however, would penalize criminals on a per-song basis, so if someone pirated a motion picture soundtrack that had songs from 12 different artists, the pirate would be charged with 12 separate offenses and be subject to exorbitant fees.

Panelists said that while slapping music pirates with hefty fines may not seem overly problematic, these fines often wind up affecting the parents of kids sharing copyrighted material on their home computers or third-party hardware and software providers more than the operators of sophisticated piracy rings.

Increasing fines "would do little or nothing to deter willful infringers," said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. "There are already ample statutory damages directed at them."

If anything, an increase in fines could deter innovation, Boucher suggested. Researchers might waver on "whether or not to introduce [a] product and involve themselves in that level of innovation" if the risk of being sued is too high, he said.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., was "deeply troubled" by Section 104. "These statutory damages would provide for $1.5 million damages for a single CD. I think that's unreasonable."

Chairman Conyers was not convinced.

"Damages need to reflect the fact that we live in a world where music is being consumed in bite-sized pieces, not just in albums or whole books," he said.

Conyers was not concerned about opportunistic lawsuits. "We're always watching lawyers that are hustling, so that goes with the turf," he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman pointed out that that Section 104 is discretionary and not a mandate, and called on the Copyright Office to hold a serious of meetings with various stakeholders about Section 104 to address any concerns.

Conyers, meanwhile, shot down the notion that a provision allowing for the seizure of equipment used to pirate copyrighted goods would result in the collection of a family's general-purpose computer in a download case.

Bill authors "carefully crafted the language to allow seizure only if the property was owned or predominantly controlled by the infringer," Conyers said. "A warehouse used to store counterfeit goods could be seized, or property used to transfer" pirated good would be the likely target of that provision, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20071213/tc_zd/221645





Smelling Blood, BREIN Targets Mininova, Torrentspy and Btjunkie
enigmax

Following the huge pressure it successfully put on LeaseWeb to shut BitTorrent sites, anti-piracy outfit BREIN smells blood as it casts a wider net to force other ISPs to shut down other huge sites, including the likes of Mininova, TorrentSpy and BTJunkie.

During the last month we’ve reported a few times on the likelihood that BREIN pressure would lead to a shuttering of BitTorrent sites at LeaseWeb. After LeaseWeb issued an ultimatum for BitTorrent sites to leave its hosting by December 1st, at least ten major sites left for hosting in new countries such as Sweden, while others felt that re-locating within the Netherlands would be acceptable, providing it was with another ISP.

BREIN director Tim Kuik is proud of these successes in The Netherlands, and although some sites have moved outside BREIN’s ‘jurisdiction’ by moving abroad, he is delighted that they have “swept the Dutch pavement clean” of torrent sites.

It seems that BREIN is not planning to stop yet, as Kuik once again threatens BitTorrent sites that are still hosted in The Netherlands: “If they do not disappear, civil legal action will follow, or even criminal legal action.”

So who will be their next target? The site Dutch site Tweakers.net is reporting that established names such as Torrentspy, mininova and Btjunkie may be targets shortly.

BREIN intends to use the everlasting.nu case to force ISPs to cough up torrent site admin’s details. However, Kuik admits the difficulties in tracking down the owners of many torrent sites as the administrators take extraordinary steps to hide their identities, including giving false details to their hosting provider. Clearly, even if BREIN gets information from the ISP, there’s every chance that these details are false, giving the site admins the chance to relocate and start again with a different host, possibly in a different country.

Last week TorrentFreak asked BREIN why they didn’t take action against sites like mininova. Their address is easy to find since they are a registered company in The Netherlands. Tim Kuik from BREIN did not want to comment on that question (scared they will lose?), but it now looks like they have shifted strategies, and target the ISPs now.

BREIN is about to start pressurizing other Dutch ISPs after their successes at LeaseWeb, who incidentally still host dozens of other BitTorrent sites. Kuik issued a veiled threat to ISPs who accept these anonymous accounts: “Hosting providers who do not check that their customer data is correct run the risk that they themselves could be held responsible for the actions of those customers.”
http://torrentfreak.com/brein-target...junkie-071207/





Fark.com Trying to Get Trademark on "Not Safe For Work"
Eric Bangeman

Abbreviations, acronyms, and memes fall in and out of fashion on the Internet all of the time. Today's "I can has cheeseburger?" is often tomorrow's "All your base are belong to us." Some stand the test of time, including phrases like "not safe for work" (NSFW), which is used in forums, chatrooms, and blogs across the world to warn folks that something they're about to see could give the boss fits. Late last month, offbeat news site Fark.com filed for a trademark on the phrase with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Fark is seeking exclusive rights over the phrase as it's currently used across the Internet. Here's what the trademark would cover, according to the application:

Entertainment Services namely providing a web site featuring photographic, audio, video and prose presentations featuring comedic captions regarding current events and online discussions and/or reviews of web materials of an adult nature; Entertainment services, namely, providing a web site featuring musical performances, musical videos, related film clips, photographs, and other multimedia materials; Entertainment services, namely, providing on-line reviews of photographs and /or web postings of an adult nature.

Given the wide use of the term, any trademark would likely be very difficult to enforce. Trademork, which unearthed the application, points out that a number of sites use NSFW as part of their brand or to label adult content. Those include NSFW.com, TotallyNSFW.com, and the NSFW Comic Strip, as well as the NSFW sections of Atom Films and Funny or Die.

The fact that NSFW is a part of the Internet vernacular may work against Fark's application, and should it be awarded, enforcement is likely to be both expensive and difficult.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-for-work.html





In Defense of Audiophiles

The iPod hasn't made great sound obsolete.
Fred Kaplan

Nearly 25 years ago, I walked into a "high-end audio" store for the first time. I intended to write an article exposing the enterprise—$10,000 amplifiers, $5,000 turntables, and the like—as a fraud. Could this souped-up gear sound that much better than mass-market stuff at one-tenth the price?

After a few seconds of listening, my agenda—and really, my life—took a new direction. I'd never imagined that recorded music could sound so good, so real. The difference between the mass-market stereos I'd been hearing up to then and the high-end gear I heard now was the difference between bodega swill and Lafite-Rothschild, between a museum-shop poster and an oil painting, between watching a porn film and having sex.

Within a few months, I was writing for one of the top high-end audio magazines and spending scads on high-end audio components. I've kept doing both in the decades since.

Now two prominent music critics are telling me that I've been wasting my time and money. The pursuit of excellent sound is a "snare and delusion," writes Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal. Heavily compressed MP3 files through cheap headphones are "good enough," shrugs Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times.

Neither Teachout nor Tommasini claims that MP3s and iPods sound as good as a carefully chosen home-stereo system. But they do contend that quality doesn't matter. (Teachout's column is titled, "The Deaf Audiophile: What's So Good About Bad Sound? Plenty.")

For Tommasini (who once knew better), the convenience of compressed digital audio files outweighs the importance of sonic glories. Or, as he puts it, "easy access has trumped high fidelity." Well, to each his own. But, going much further, he also claims that the sonic compromises in MP3s are irrelevant. Transforming a complex song or album into a small audio file requires a tremendous amount of compression. Musical details unavoidably get squeezed out in the process. But Tommasini says this doesn't matter. A "cymbal crash in a symphonic orchestra, for example, will temporarily obscure the sound of other instruments," he writes. "So why not remove some of the covered sounds, which could not be heard anyway, to compress the file into a transferable format?"

If flutes under cymbal crashes were the only sacrifices, he'd have a point. But compression also removes a guitarist's intricate fingerwork, a hi-hat's shimmer, a bass line's pluck, and (to cite his own example) the sounds of many orchestral instruments even when they're not obscured by a cymbal crash.

Teachout makes a different point. "Why do I settle for inferior sound quality?" he asks. "Partly because of the near-miraculous convenience of MP3s." Partly, he adds, because "I'm middle-aged." It's well known that, owing to the degeneration of sensory receptor cells in the inner ear, most men older than 40 or 50 lose some of their ability to hear high frequencies. Therefore, he claims, good-sounding stereos—and many high-end components are particularly pure in the high frequencies—aren't important anymore
The bad news, Teachout writes, is that he's a tad over 50. (So, by the way, am I.) "The good news," he goes on, "is that I don't care … much." (The ellipses are his.) His mild loss of high-frequency hearing, he writes, "liberates" him from "the snare and delusion of audiophilia." In his younger years, he writes, "I forgot that every dollar I spent on speakers was a dollar I could no longer spend on records—not to mention tickets to live performances. … Now that my hearing isn't what it used to be, I understand more clearly … that recorded music can never hope to be more than a substitute for the real thing. … It is still an experience once removed, no matter how fancy your speakers are. Conversely, Stravinsky is still Stravinsky when you experience him through a $10 pair of earbuds."

These are all good points, but none of them makes the case against audiophiles. Let's examine them one by one.

First, one boast of high-end audio gear is that it does tend to reproduce high frequencies with pristine purity. If you can't hear high frequencies anymore, you can't hear that advantage. But there's more to music—and more to hi-fi—than extreme treble. Compared with good CDs and LPs played on good hi-fi gear, MP3s also flatten dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and softest sounds), obliterate dynamic contrasts (the slight variations between loud and soft), smother low frequencies (the bass), and smear transients (the front edge of, say, a drum smack or a string pluck). These shortcomings wreak havoc with drama and rhythm—the life and essence of much music.

As for his budget, well, such is life. Teachout is known for his impressive collection of limited-edition art prints, which have cost him a fair chunk of change. He might as well have said that a dollar spent on art was a dollar he could no longer spend on speakers. And that's fine. We all make choices. But one person's priorities aren't immutable principles. Teachout has adjusted to life without high-end gear, but that doesn't make audiophilia a crock.

He's also right that recorded music is not the same as live music, that it's unavoidably "an experience once removed." But there are degrees of removal. There are really good stereos, so-so stereos, iPods, cassette tapes, boom boxes … where do you draw the line? He writes that "Stravinsky is still Stravinsky," no matter what the medium. But is he? A crummy pair of ear buds doesn't let you hear everything in Stravinsky's scores—all of the notes that made Stravinsky a genius and his music enduring and stirring. Given that recordings are approximations, the question remains: How proximate do you want to get? Recordings may be "once removed," but they're also endlessly repeated. You can relive moments that, in a jazz club or concert hall, are fleeting. And in the reliving, is it a "snare" to want the sound to be as close to the concert hall as technology and one's budget can manage?

The Times' Tomassini sums up the argument—that MP3s and cheap earphones are "good enough." But here's the question: Good enough for what?

If you want the mere gist of music; if you like music wafting in the background; if you want to carry around 1,000 songs in your pocket; if you want to hear a beat and a melody while you jog or ride on the subway—and that's often what any of us want (even me)—then MP3s are plenty good enough. Convenience doesn't merely trump quality; it is quality.

But there are some things that only a really good home stereo, playing well-recorded CDs or vinyl LPs, can give you: the texture of an instrument (the woodiness of a bass, the golden brass of a trumpet, the fleshy skin of a bongo); the bouquet of harmonics that waft from an orchestra (the mingling overtones, the echoes off the concert hall's walls); the breath behind a voice; the warm percussiveness of a Steinway grand; the silky sheen of massed violins; the steely whoosh of brushes on a snare; the undistorted clarity of everything sung, blown, strummed, bowed, plucked, and smacked, all at once—in short, the sense that real musicians are playing real instruments in a real space right before you.

Such wonder machines, most of which by the way are made in America, cost money—though many very fine models don't cost so much. (Useful reviews can be found in Stereophile and the Absolute Sound, though I should note, in full disclosure, that I write for the former and used to write for the latter.)

It's worth noting that digital audio files will get better, just as compact discs did. (In their first decade, CDs and CD players sounded dreadful, worse than MP3s—and much worse than some other, less-compressed, downloadable formats—sound now. Click here for a note on these other formats.) When this future comes, we will all rejoice. In the meantime, to deny or dismiss the sonic differences not only deprecates the depths and delicacies that make music so alluring. It also tells the engineers and manufacturers that they don't need to improve their products, that bad sound is good enough.

sidebar

MP3 isn't the only digital audio format, just the most dominant. There are several less-compressed, or "lossless," formats, including Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), and WMA (Windows Media Audio) Lossless. I have heard demos of these formats (albeit on servers hooked up to pretty good stereo systems), and they do sound very close to CD-quality (though they still fall short of higher-sampling formats like Super Audio CD, or SACD, and well short of vinyl LP). The downside of less compression is that you can fit far less data—and thus many fewer songs—in the same amount of storage space. The upside is that the result sounds much better. One question is this: As iPods and other devices can hold more and more data, will the record companies—and will consumers—use this data to hold more songs or to improve audio fidelity?
http://www.slate.com/id/2179093?nav=wp





Bah humbug

Best Buy Handing Out C&D Letters for Christmas

Apparently Best Buy didn’t think our blue polo shirts (with a yellow price tag reading “Improv Everywhere”) were quite as funny as we did. They sent a Cease and Desist letter to both us and our friends at Neighborhoodies who were selling the shirts. Neighborhoodies couldn’t afford to have their entire site taken down (as was threatened) during their busiest month of the year, so they pulled the shirts. We weren’t making any commission on the shirts ourselves (in order to have them be as cheap as possible), but it was a shame to see such a cool shirt go. We figured Best Buy was probably not in the right legally, but did not want to deal with the hassle of legal fees to prove our point.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. Today, Best Buy sent a C&D to our friend Scott Beale over at laughingsquid.com threatening legal action unless he removes the blog post referencing our shirts! They’re threatening to sue someone for just covering the news story of the shirts!

You can see his original post here: [url=http://laughingsquid.com/improv-everywhere-best-buy-blue-polo-shirts/IE Best Buy Blue Polo Shirts[/url]
And see the mission that inspired all of this here: Best Buy Mission
Our T-Shirt version of the shirt is still for sale: Best Buy Logo T-Shirt ($5.99)
http://www.improveverywhere.com/2007...for-christmas/





Charity Forced to Pay Copyright Fee So Kids Can Sing Carols
enigmax

Christmas is known world-wide as a time for sharing, a time for giving. But for one charity, instead of Santa arriving with gifts, the copyright police turned up demanding money. Why? Because the charity allows children to sing carols on the premises and their kitchen radio is a little loud. You couldn’t make it up.

Be under no illusion, being unlicensed to play music to the public is a very serious situation in the UK. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that if you use copyright music in public, you have to get permission from every single copyright holder to play their music. Or pay a fee to the right outfit.

Car maintenance chain Kwik Fit is currently tied up in a bitter legal battle with the UK Performing Rights Society (PRS). It’s alleged that Kwik Fit’s mechanics allowed their radios to be played within earshot of the public - a truly heinous crime for which the PRS are demanding £200,000 in damages.

According to a report, the PRS are at it again. The staff at a charity also received a visit from a PRS officer who declared that because a staff radio in the kitchen could be overheard by the public in their tea-room, they would need a license. The charity, Dam House, which was originally set up to save a historic building and offer community and health facilities, had to have a fund-raising event to raise the money for the license.

However, having purchased a license, this wasn’t the end of the matter. The PRS then started asking more questions, and when they discovered that kids sing in a carol concert there at Christmas, they declared that the premises were under licensed. Yes, of course - the PRS wanted yet more money.

“We got really worked up when they told us how much we would have to pay this year” said charity trustee, Margaret Hatton. “They asked us what facilities we had and we think they are charging more because they found out we’ve got a function room.”

The next quote from Margaret really speaks for itself - has the world gone mad?

“They told us the only way to avoid paying to sing the carols is if the kids are told to stick to old songs which are out of copyright.”

Next thing you know someone will be saying ‘Happy Birthday‘ is copyrighted and you can’t sing that to the public in the tea-rooms. Well, unfortunately it is, and legally you can’t.

Elaine Hurst, another Dam House trustee explained: “We know the recording artists need to be paid for their work but this is ridiculous.”

Every TV owning family in the UK has to have a UK TV License by law, the proceeds of which go to fund BBC TV and BBC radio stations nationwide. To charge a charity money because the public can overhear a radio is crazy, especially when you consider the public already paid another license to be allowed to listen to the content coming out of its speakers.

Merry Christmas PRS
http://torrentfreak.com/charity-forc...n-sing-071209/





One Laptop Per Child Doesn't Change the World

Does anyone but me see the OLPC XO-1 as an insulting "let them eat cake" sort of message to the world's poor?
John C. Dvorak

Hands Across America, Live AID, the Concert for Bangladesh, and so on. The American (and world) public has witnessed one feel-good event (and the ensuing scandals) after another. Each one manages to assuage our guilt about the world's problems, at least a little. Now these folks think that any sort of participation in these events, or even their good thoughts about world poverty and starvation, actually help. Now they can sleep at night. It doesn't matter that nothing has really changed.

This is how I view the cute, little One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO-1 computer, technology designed for the impoverished children of Africa and Alabama. This machine, which is the brainchild of onetime MIT media lab honcho Nick Negroponte, will save the world. His vision is to supply every child with what amounts to an advertising delivery mechanism. Hence the boys at Google are big investors.

Before you cheer for the good guys, ponder a few of these facts taken from a world hunger Web site. In the Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty." Every year, 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Since you've entered this site, at least 200 people have died of starvation. One in 12 people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. Nearly one in four people, or 1.3 billion—a majority of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. Let's include Negroponte and the Google billionaires.

So what to do? Let's give these kids these little green computers. That will do it! That will solve the poverty problem and everything else, for that matter. Does anyone but me see this as an insulting "let them eat cake" sort of message to the world's poor?

"Sir, our village has no water!" "Jenkins, get these people some glassware!"

But, wait. Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?

Of course, it might be a problem if there is no classroom and he can't read. The literacy rate in Niger is 13 percent, for example. Hey, give them a computer! And even if someone can read, how many Web sites and wikis are written in SiSwati or isiZulu? Feh. These are just details to ignore.

Every time I bring up this complaint to my Silicon Valley pals—usually as we race down I-280 in their newest Mercedes-Benz S Class sedan while listening to their downloaded music from their iPod to the car's custom stereo—I get flak. They tell me, "It's a start. Computers will save the world from poverty. You are just jealous you didn't think of the idea."

Yeah, that's it. I'm jealous.

Apparently, saying anything negative about the OLPC XO-1 computer amounts to heresy in this community. You may as well promote NAMBLA or the KKK. People don't want to consider the possibility that their well-meaning thoughts are a joke and that a $200 truckload of rice would be of more use than Wi-Fi in the middle of nowhere. There seems to be a notion that the poor in Africa or East Asia are just like the kids in East Palo Alto. Once they get a laptop, there will be no digital divide, will there? People can say, "I did my part!"

So on it goes, with people falling all over themselves, saying how cool the little laptop is and how it fundamentally changes the way laptops work and what computing is all about. It's waterproof! So, we read long articles about the thing. We see an incredible deer-in-the-headlights Leslie Stahl puff piece about the device on 60 Minutes. No one says it's a crock. Instead, only the minutiae of implementation and whether Intel should be allowed to make a similar machine are questioned. During the show, Stahl makes the idiotic claim that this is the first laptop in history on which you can read the screen in broad daylight. So much for fact checking. Then there is a tremendous push to get the public to take part in the "Give One, Get One" promotion. "I want one!" says a cohort of mine in a podcast. Apparently, he is going to toss his Mac PowerBook and use this. Who is he kidding?

I was amused at the one critique thrown into the 60 Minutes mix for balance. Negroponte was asked about the devices being stolen from the children. He assuaged the audience by saying that the machine will stop working in a month or so if stolen. Oh, okay. That was good enough for 60 Minutes. I'm thinking, "But it was still stolen!"

Some readers will just perceive these complaints of mine as coming from a grumpy old man who doesn't like anything. Fine. Stay optimistic. Buy ten. All I can tell you is that, personally, I have never seen such a cavalier and pompous assuredness in my life. As if this whole OLPC scheme is anything other than a naïve fiasco waiting to unfold. I'll donate my money to hunger relief, thank you.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2227851,00.asp





A Child's View of the $100 Laptop

What will a child in the UK make of a laptop designed to help children in the developing world? Rory Cellan-Jones brought an XO home to find out.

In late November I returned from Nigeria with a sample of the XO laptop.

The computer, made by the One Laptop per Child charity, is a robust little machine designed to entertain and educate children while allowing them to learn by themselves.

I knew there was only one person who could review it for me.

The Nine Year-old's View

Enter Rufus Cellan-Jones. He is nine, has far more experience of games consoles than computers, and has strong views on most matters.

"Looks fun," was his only comment when I handed over the small, green and white laptop, explaining that he was the only child in Britain to have one.

But very quickly he was up and running.

All I did was give him the security code for our home wireless network so he could take the XO online. The rest he figured out for himself, as he explains:

Lots of fun

"I just seemed to work it out. It was rather easy. I didn't even need help." Surprise, surprise, his first discovery was a game. "I found Block Party. It's like Tetris. I'm now up to Level 7."

I thought my young games fanatic might stick there but he moved on. "Then I discovered paint. You can use pencils, change the texture, use different sizes of brush."

Even better, there was an animation programme called Etoys.

"That's my favourite.You make things. You can see tutorials and demos. Then you can make a new project. I've made a crazy UFO which you can move."

But Rufus says it isn't just about play.

"I use the calculator - that can be rather useful for sums. You can even browse onto the internet. You can watch and learn stuff. You can write things and it can also remind you which is extremely useful."

What, I asked, does a nine year old need to remind himself about? "Christmas stuff," he said, with an air of mystery.

Social networking

But the real surprise came one evening, when Rufus asked me to explain what his friends were telling him on the laptop.

I thought those imaginary childhood friends from years back must have returned.

But I went and had a look - and it was true - he appeared to be chatting online.

So how had he managed that?

"You go on "neighbourhood", then you go to the chat thing.

You go on Nigeria and you chat to them."

But why, if he was online with the children at the Nigerian school I had visited, were they sending messages in Spanish?

I decided he must be linking up with one of the South American schools taking part in the OLPC project but we still aren't sure quite how that is happening.

Still, Rufus is widening his social circle. " I have three friends. It's nice to talk to them. They don't speak much English but I can understand them." The conversation is not exactly sparkling, but Rufus has learned to say "Hola".

Not a toy

So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries.

Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas - enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored.

Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination.

I had returned from Nigeria not entirely convinced that the XO laptop was quite as wonderful an educational tool as its creators claimed.

I felt that a lot of effort would be needed by hard-pressed teachers before it became more than just a distracting toy for the children to mess around with in class.

But Rufus has changed my mind.

With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time.

The One Laptop Per Child project is struggling to convince developing countries providing computers for children is as important as giving them basic facilities like water or electricity.

Unusually, Rufus does not have an opinion about that controversy, but he does have a verdict on the laptop. "It's great," he says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/7140443.stm

Enjoy young Rufus’ review here – Jack.





Bamboo PC is Eco-Friendly and Looks Nice Too
Philipp Gollner

Back in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I, an early personal computer that consisted of a circuit board in a simple wooden box.

Apple Inc and other computer makers went on to make advanced PCs in metal and plastic casings, but now Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc is finding potential beauty -- and sales -- in an eco-friendly notebook PC encased in another natural material: bamboo.

The Asus Eco Book, as it's dubbed, has a case made of laminated bamboo strips available in different shades.

Harvesting bamboo, an abundant, flexible, durable and fast-growing grass, is unlikely to harm the environment as processing wood from trees might, Asustek said, although glues and laminates for shaping and fortifying the material sometimes contain toxins.
The product is still in the prototype stage and engineers are checking to see if bamboo is suitable for laptops, which have to endure extreme conditions while allowing heat from microprocessors and monitors to escape.

The Eco book is a new tack for a company that caters to executives and other high-end users with its calf leather-bound notebooks and faux alligator-skin models.

"Originally we came out with a leather model style-book," said Cher Chronis, director of marketing communication for Asus Computer International, the Taipei-based company's U.S. unit.

"It was very popular," she said. "After that, it was kind of natural for us to experiment with other types of materials, so we decided to go green."

Asustek says its leather notebooks have not been criticized by animal-rights activists and that the Eco book is not meant to assuage critics.

Bamboo Mice, Keyboards

While just about all big computer makers are taking steps to make technology more environmentally friendly, Asustek is one of the first to unveil a bamboo-encased computer.

Some niche companies geared toward eco-conscious consumers offer bamboo computer mice, keyboards and monitor frames.

"As part of a portfolio of case choices, it makes sense," said Roger Kay, president of PC market researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc.

"I don't think the computer is going to go over to wooden casing," Kay said. "It's ecological to grow it, but my sense is there's probably more show than substance to the claim of sustainable manufacturing."

While plastic casings often contain toxins like polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, the bigger environmental threats come from lead in cathode ray tube monitors

All major manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest PC maker, Dell Inc (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the No. 2, Apple as well as Asian rivals Lenovo Group Ltd (0992.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) and Acer Inc (2353.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), have programs to reduce energy consumption, recycle components and reduce hazardous materials in computers.

Consumers and businesses are expected to buy about 260 million PCs this year, a 12 percent jump from 2006's level, according to market researcher IDC. Growth is being fueled by surging demand for notebook computers.

With so many computers being sold, and an estimated 500 million computers hitting obsolescence in the United States alone in the past 10 years, PC accessory makers are going green, too.

PVC-Free

Laptop computer case and accessory maker Targus Inc recently introduced its environmentally-friendly Grove laptop cases, made of recyclable plastics, nickel-free hardware and PVC-free material.

Targus teamed up with the Texas-based computer maker last month to sell its cases on Dell's Web site and will donate a portion of its Dell-sold cases to Dell's "Plant a tree for me" program, which allows consumers to make donations to plant trees to offset the carbon impact of electricity for running their computers.

Dell and Lenovo plan to eliminate PVC and brominated flame retardants, or BFRs, another potential hazard, from their new products by 2009, and Dell requires its parts suppliers to meet environmental targets such as carbon-emission reductions.

Apple says it plans to eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs from all its products by the end of next year.

The major computer companies including Apple and Dell also have programs to recycle discarded PCs and monitors. By 2010, Apple expects to recycle 19 million pounds of so-called e-waste per year, or about 30 percent of the product weight it sold seven years earlier.

HP said it is on schedule to meet a goal of recycling 1 billion pounds of equipment and supplies by the end of this year.

Asustek, while small compared with HP, Dell and other heavyweights, says its size enables it to design, manufacture, market and distribute PCs on its own, allowing it to get new ideas like the bamboo PC to market faster.

"If it does get to the point where we do find a model that meets all the engineering requirements and allows green computing, we will release it," the company's Chronis said. "Everybody loves the Eco book. It's a beautiful computer."

(Editing by Brian Moss)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...41987920071213





KDE 4: Like a Dream on 256Mb/1Ghz/Intel!
bille

So someone just asked in #kde4-devel whether it was worth trying KDE 4 on a 2500Mhz/256Mb computer and I was characteristically careful and guessed "It will work, but won't be good.". Then I decided to put my money where my mouth is and booted my Thinkpad X60 with "mem=256M maxcpus=1", logged into KDE 4 and set the power saving policy to "Powersave", which throttles the CPU to 1Ghz and locks it there. And then I used KDE 4 some, started Konqueror, browsed about a bit, configured a few things with System Settings, started Kopete and chatted a little. And I was pleasantly surprised with how well it all works. With a "debugfull" build from SVN. With kwin_composite 3d eye candy, on Intel. With KDE 3 libraries loaded too (for KPowerSave, since it's not ported yet). As they like to say here in Franconia, it's like "a'Traum".

Kopete startup is slow (we _have_ to optimise that), but definitely usable. I'd love to get some more detailed figures but that will have to wait. This shows the benefits of KDE's integrated approach, and means one thing: KDE 4 is going to be a serious contender for a high-performance, good looking interface on low resource machines like the Eee PC, and I can't wait to try it out on one.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3137





Review: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Takes on Mac OS X Leopard for the OS of the Year
Scott Granneman

Today we have a technological cage match involving two operating systems, both UNIX- based, both mature, both with passionate detractors and even more passionate defenders, and both released just a week apart. I'm talking, of course, about Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), with its final release on October 18, and Apple' s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was available for purchase on October 26.

The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.

Hardware Support

Ubuntu will run on pretty much any computer with an Intel-compatible or PowerPC CPU. The distro claims that you need a bare minimum of 256MB of RAM, but expect glacial performance. In reality, you'll want at least 512MB of RAM, with 1GB even better. You're told to expect that the OS will take up about 4GB of space on your hard drive, which is nothing in terms of today's ginormous hard drives. My main Kubuntu box has 756MB of RAM, with a Pentium 4 CPU, and while certain tasks can be kind of poky, overall it's quite usable.

You can install Leopard on any computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, or... just kidding! You install Leopard on Apple's boxes, or you buy a new Mac, and it comes with Leopard pre-installed. That's it. According to Apple, you can install Leopard on any Intel-based Mac, as well as any PowerPC G5 or G4 box, as long as it has a 867 MHz or faster CPU. You'll need at least 512MB of RAM, a DVD drive for the installation disc, and 9GB for the OS. My main Mac is a first generation MacBook Pro, with a 2 GHz Core Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM. Leopard screams on it, with the dreaded colored beachballs almost entirely a thing of the past.

The bottom line: if you have an old PC sitting around, it's gonna run Ubuntu or Windows. No Leopard for you. If you have a Mac made within the last five or six years, you can probably run Leopard on it, as well as Ubuntu.

Installation

Most operating systems have improved their installation routines over the last few years, and this is certainly true for both Leopard and Ubuntu. In fact, both are incredibly easy to install. If you're dual-booting with Windows, the easiest line of attack in the case of Linux is to install Ubuntu after Windows, while the opposite is true for the Mac-- install Windows using Boot Camp after Leopard is completely set up.

Leopard bests Ubuntu in one area, though: multiple monitor support. It just works like it's supposed to in Leopard, and I shuttle my laptop back and forth between a huge variety of monitors and projectors. I've never had an issue. Contrast that to Ubuntu, which touts its better multiple monitor support. It may be getting better, but it's still not there yet, and I'm just glad I had my trusty xorg.conf file backed up and ready to fall back on. Both Leopard and Ubuntu are excellent when it comes to installation.

Ease of Use

From the usability standpoint Linux's greatest strength, choice, is also its weakness. Ubuntu is no exception. With two major desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, that look and act much differently, along with different window managers, and with the whole shebang sitting atop X11, and Compiz if your video card supports it there's a lot of room for variation. When it comes to apps, Ubuntu tries hard to simplify matters, but users still face an astounding array of choices.

On the one hand, this is great-- you can pick the exact app and appearance that suits your needs and desires best. On the other hand, this can really confuse the heck out of users new to Linux. Not to mention, simple things like different Open and Save dialog boxes, depending upon whether you're using a KDE or GNOME app, can prove to be annoying and deadening in terms of usability.

The Mac, on the other hand, is just the opposite. Apple has invested millions of dollars and man hours to ensure that its usability is, overall, the best in the business with a few major missteps, which I'll cover shortly. Its look and feel is unified throughout Leopard, including even the programs that come bundled with the OS. This uniformity means that everything acts the same way-- open one app's Open or Save dialog box, for instance, and you now know how virtually every single Open or Save dialog box will work. Grok the unified menubar, and you just absorbed how every Mac app works.

The problem comes if you don't like the way Apple decided to do something. Too bad, bud. It's Apple's way or the highway. Case in point: the new translucent menu bar. It's awful. Someone inside Apple thinks it's a great idea, though, so that's what we get. But here's the kicker: there's no exposed way to turn off the translucency and go back to an opaque menu bar. Three weeks after Leopard's release someone figured out how to change the opacity of the menu bar by using an arcane command in the terminal. So while there are usually ways to" fix" things the way you'd like them, don't always expect Apple to make it easy to do so. It's a good thing that the majority of Apple's UI decisions are excellent, thoughtful choices that make the Mac a productive joy to use.

But not always. For instance, Leopard introduced a new, reflective Dock that many people find ugly. Again, after some searching, users figured out a command that gets rid of the ugly and goes back to an easier-to-view 2D look. Or take Stacks. In previous versions of Mac OS X, you could drag a folder to the Dock and then right-click on it to access a hierarchical menu of the folder's contents. In Leopard, that isn't even an option. Apple instead calls folders on your Dock Stacks. Right-clicking on a Stack produces a contextual menu instead of the contents of the folder; to view the folder's contents, left-click on the folder.

However, left-clicking shows you the contents either as a fan that leans to the right or a grid of about 30 or so items. More than that, and you have to open the Finder, thus negating the whole point of clicking on the Stack in the first place. Once again, users have solved the problem with third-party apps that restore pre-Leopard functionality. It's just too bad that Apple doesn't give users more options in cases like these.

But, keep in mind, the fact that I'm reduced to complaining about the opacity of a menubar and related items should tell you how good the Mac UI really is.

However, I'm not going to let Ubuntu get off scott free. It still needs to fix many ease of use issues. The difference is, however, that since Ubuntu is open source, it's usually a bit easier to fix the problems. Usually, but not always. Let's talk specifics.

One problem that affects both KDE and GNOME has to do with how programs are launched. Ubuntu uses the default GNOME and KDE menus to start programs, access control panel applets, and manage other system functions. These don't seem too bad until you check out what openSUSE has done to the K menu and the GNOME panels. The openSUSE K menu offers five tabs-- Favorites, Applications, Computer, History, and Leave-- that logically divide the functions one would want from a computer's" Start" menu. In the case of GNOME, openSUSE does away with the confusing mish-mash of a top and bottom panel (Really, does any new user see the logic in that? Does any advanced user?) for a unified bottom panel, with a single Computer menu that provides access to Applications, Documents, and Places. This is far more logical, usable, and daring than the alternatives, and Ubuntu should be willing to adopt such measures when it makes sense, and lead by coming up with its own innovative ideas when necessary.

Kubuntu has its own share of UI disasters, most of them due to rushing things into the distro while they're only half-baked. Not nearly powerful enough for experienced users (where are the tabs?), and too buggy for newbies, the Dolphin File Manager is simply not ready for prime time, and is currently a mess that needs some serious attention before its proper unveiling in KDE 4. Desktop Search is a necessity in today's operating systems, and no incarnation in any Linux distro has yet to match the power, speed, and accuracy of Spotlight as it is now seen in Leopard. Seen in that light, the Strigi Desktop Search found in Kubuntu is just an ineffective toy. One day it might be ready, but it's not now, and it should never have been added to Gutsy Gibbon.

Tracker, found in Ubuntu, is much better, and is good enough to use on a day-to-day basis. Additional functionality is needed- sort results by date, for instance- but overall it's usable and accurate.

Linux has come a long way when it comes to ease of use, and it's definitely getting better all the time, but overall Leopard is still ahead of Ubuntu (and both are way ahead of Vista). Apple makes mistakes, but overall its system is more logical, simple, consistent, and unified than Ubuntu, which still has too many elements that are overly complex, inconsistent, and fractured.

Applications

Of course, what people really like to look at-- and play with-- are the applications that come with an operating system. Let me say again, both Leopard and Ubuntu blow Vista away when it comes to the default programs they each provide. Let's split things up into the kinds of programs the LM audience looks for in an OS, and see what Leopard and Ubuntu each provides. This is a general list, so don't look for the obscure program that you and ten other people use. We're talking general nerd usage here.

File management. GNOME uses Nautilus, KDE uses Dolphin (although Konqueror still works), and Leopard uses the Finder. Nautilus has gotten better over the years, and Ubuntu stripped out the ridiculous spatial defaults, so it's actually quite usable for managing files. I've already complained about Dolphin, but at least Konqueror is still available. Konqueror provides a maximum set of features, and does the job beautifully. Its KIO support for an immense variety of protocols is nothing short of astounding, so you can browse all kinds of remote filesystems with Konq.

Leopard's Finder works well, and while the NeXT-based column views are extremely useful, the new Cover Flow views that let you slide through previews of your pictures, text files, and movies is something that will make you wonder how you lived without it. But the lack of tabs means that I'm often left wishing that Konqueror was available for Leopard.

System configuration. Everyone has to configure the OS at some time. Ubuntu wants you to scroll through a bunch of icons on the System dropdown menu, which is so old-school that it's almost laughable. Good luck finding the right applet. Kubuntu has gotten away from the overly-complex but complete KDE Control Center in favor of the simplified and very Mac-like System Settings. Both solutions unify the control panels into one interface, with System Settings providing a user-friendly search function that definitely takes its inspiration from Leopard's System Preferences. The main problem with System Settings is that not every control panel applet is designed to fit inside the container's window, leading to scrolling and confusion when the user needs to authenticate into Administrator mode.

Apple's System Preferences contains the control panel applets in a unified window, with a super-smart search box that highlights the preferences that best match the function you want to perform. The main window expands and contracts as needed to fit the functions, and those applets that were problematic in earlier versions of OS X (Network, for instance, was needlessly complex) have been fixed. With a little more work, though, KDE's System Settings could match or even exceed Apple's System Preferences.

Web browser. Ubuntu ships with Firefox as the default browser, Kubuntu uses Konqueror, and Leopard has Safari. Of course, you can download and install Firefox on both Kubuntu and Leopard, which is a good thing. Konqueror and Safari are both decent browsers (and they share the same code base), and the most recent releases are very good indeed, but Firefox still offers more in the way of customizability and extensions. And its cross-platform nature means that users only need to learn one Web browser to use on Linux, Mac OS, and even Windows. My informal testing shows, though, that Safari truly is faster at rendering pages than Firefox and Konqueror, so I tend to use it quite a bit on my Mac.

Email and PIM. Ubuntu's default is Evolution, which is actually a Personal Information Manager (PIM) that provides email, calendaring, contacts, to-dos, and notes. It sports impressive support for a number of different kinds of servers-- POP3, IMAP, and Exchange just for starters-- and its parts are well-integrated.

Kubuntu uses Kontact, which is also a PIM that supports everything Evolution does. The difference is that Kontact is really a unifying wrapper around the various components that make up the PIM, so you can run KMail, for instance, or KOrganizer (the calendar) separately. This is more in line with Apple's method. Leopard provides Mail for email, iCal for calendaring, and Address Book for contacts. Separate apps, but they all work together. If you can get beyond that, and you're cool with using different programs for different functions, then you'll find that Leopard's programs are very good, at least as good in many ways as Evolution and Kontact.

This isn't to say that each solution is without annoyances. Mail in Leopard won't allow you to specify a file for your signature; you have to actually type one in and that's it. The new HTML email templates that Apple has provided in Leopard should never have seen the light of day, since HTML email itself is just evil. KMail has occasional problems with IMAP and really should integrate a Bayesian spam filter, while Evolution is just ugly and sometimes chokes on random messages. But overall, they're all very good programs that work well.

Office apps. OpenOffice.org comes with Ubuntu, and it's a nice, free office suite. In fact, if you want to run OpenOffice.org on your Mac, you can-- it's just called NeoOffice, and it's still a nice, free, powerful office suite. If you buy a new Mac, it comes with iWork, Apple's office suite made up of Keynote for presentations, Pages for word processing and document layout, and Numbers for spreadsheets. If you buy Leopard to upgrade an existing Mac, you have to buy iWork separately for about $80. I've used OpenOffice.org a lot, and I've also used iWork a lot. I understand both suites well, and I know the strengths and weaknesses of each.

If you're typing a complicated document, OpenOffice.org Writer wins hands down. No argument here-- use it. If, on the other hand, you're trying to create a flyer, brochure, or fancy book report, Pages rocks the house, as its page layout features are top notch in a consumer-level app.

When it comes to big spreadsheets, OpenOffice.org's Calc is great, and it will give you all the power and features you need. If you're creating a pretty spreadsheet, without gazillions of rows and columns, Numbers would work splendidly, and will easily produce the nicest looking spreadsheets you've ever seen. When it comes to speaking in front of a group, it's an easy win: Keynote is the best presentation software I've ever used on any OS, and I refuse to use anything else. It does everything right, and makes hard things so easy to do, while providing the little adjustments and help that make easy things even easier, that having to use Impress just feels like punishment. On my Mac, I go between NeoOffice and iWork as needed; on my Ubuntu box, I use OpenOffice.org unless I have to create a presentation, in which case I switch to Leopard.

Terminal. Kubuntu provides the full-featured and powerful Konsole, while Ubuntu has the anemic Terminal. Apple's contender is also named Terminal, and it sucked in Tiger. In Leopard, it's finally gotten good, with movable tabs, transparency, and window grouping. Since I always have a terminal open, I can now say that as long as it's Konsole or Leopard's Terminal, I'm quite satisfied.

Text editor. KDE goes overboard with the text editors (yes, I know they each serve a different audience, but still) and gives users three to choose from, while GNOME proudly provides Gedit. If you want limited options and stripped down features, then Gedit will probably fit your bill; if you want features and power, then try out KDE's Kate. Leopard's TextEdit is a bit of an odd beast to a Linux user. It's basically an RTF editor that will also work with ASCII, and in a complete shocker from Apple, it will also read and write Word 2007's so-called OpenXML format as well as OpenDocument text files. Whoa! So while Gedit and Kate are true text editors, TextEdit is a stripped down word processor that can be used for ASCII editing. However, real* nix users open Vim when they want to edit text, and since Vim runs on Ubuntu and Leopard, we're covered.

Instant Messaging. This one's easy-- if your main goal is connecting to as many different IM networks as possible, then Pidgin for GNOME or Kopete for KDE, is your ticket. If you want extremely cool effects and excellent sound and video as well as text, and you don't mind being limited to AOL, Google, and Jabber for your IM networks, then Leopard's iChat will do the trick. Besides, you can always install Pidgin on Leopard, or better yet, Skype runs on Leopard and Ubuntu if you need secure IM and VoIP.

Music Players. GNOME's Rhythmbox is just an Amarok wannabe at this point in time, so in that match-up, it's no contest. Amarok vs. iTunes? Hmmmm. iTunes has some nice features, and it's undoubtedly the better choice for working with iPods and iPhones (sorry, but it is), but it still makes OGG a second-class citizen for no good reason, and its inherent desire to rename and move your MP3s into new folders really annoys me. I have to give this one to Amarok. It's the program I trust to manage my 55,000 song music collection, and that should tell you something right there.

Pictures. F-Spot is OK in its early stages, but it's still pretty rough and lacks features. And requiring users to click inside a dropdown menu to choose each tag repeatedly is just sheer torture. On the KDE side, digiKam is slightly better than F-Spot, but it repeats the same tagging trick, and while it offers up far more features than F-Spot, it's still not as smooth as iPhoto. iPhoto is easy to use, with very good integrated editing tools, but it makes one huge blunder: in Tiger, your pix were stored in the file system, but in Leopard, they're stored in a pseudo-file that is somewhat inaccessible to other programs and the file system itself, forcing you to rely on iPhoto to view any photos that you've imported in iPhoto. A pox on all their houses!

Movies. When it comes to viewing movies, I've found Totem Movie Player for GNOME to be buggy and problematic. Kaffeine for KDE is much better in terms of stability and capabilities, but both will play far more formats than the stock version of QuickTime Movie Player in Leopard. If you install a couple of codec packs, like Perian and Flip4Mac, you'll suddenly find that you can play just about anything in QuickTime Media Player, which is a polished, smooth player. If you spring for QuickTime Pro, you can also grab QuickTime movies that are embedded in Web sites and even perform some simple edits on the movies you're viewing. When it comes to DVDs, QuickTime will play' em, but it prevents you from taking screenshots and fully supports the DRM the movie studios want to cram down our throats. In cases like that, go with Linux and support your freedoms.

As for editing movies... well, Leopard's iMovie is excellent for the kinds of simple jobs most people want to perform. There's really no equivalent in Ubuntu in terms of ease of use and quality.

What's missing in Ubuntu? Leopard has a few features and programs that simply do not exist as built-in options in Ubuntu. Quick Look is a new feature, introduced in Leopard, that allows users to select a file and then press the spacebar for a yes, quick look, at a larger view of the file. It's a great way to tell quickly if a file contains the text or pictures you need.

Front Row allows Mac users to view movies and photos, and listen to music, from across the room utilizing the included remote control that now comes with virtually every Mac. Think of Front Row as an easy to use media center that works smoothly (Yes, I know there's MythTV, but it's still a bear to set up, and it's not included by default with Ubuntu). Finally, due to Apple's control of both the hardware and software, things like the built-in wireless support and videocamera just work flawlessly. Generally, this is something beyond the control of Ubuntu, since Canonical doesn't make hardware, but now that deals are starting to appear with the Dells of the world to include Ubuntu as a pre-installed option, we hope to see improvements in these areas.

What's missing in Leopard? Every Linux distro today comes with built-in support for BitTorrent, but not Leopard. This is a major drag for those of us who rely on BitTorrent for a variety of needs. And why, oh why, doesn't Leopard support SSH and SFTP support in Apple's default GUI apps? I can use the Finder to access machines via AFP (Apple File Protocol) and FTP, but who the heck uses FTP any longer? SSH is available via the terminal in Leopard, so why in the name of all that is nerdy isn't it available to me in the Finder and elsewhere? C'mon, Apple!

Advantages and Disadvantages

Let's look at a few final advantages and disadvantages that each OS brings with it. In the case of Ubuntu, APT-- and its GUI tools like Synaptic and Adept-- is far beyond anything other operating systems have to offer. The fact that I can install any of more than 19,000 packages easily and quickly, and then get updates to any of those packages automatically every day, is a tremendous and beautiful advantage that Ubuntu has over Leopard. Sure, Leopard has Software Update, but that's only for Apple's stuff. It works, but it ain't no APT!

Another advantage Ubuntu has: read AND write support for NTFS. If you work with Windows at all, you need this. Leopard can read NTFS, but it can't write, unless you install 3rd-party apps. It's great that such functionality is built directly into your Linux box.

Finally, Ubuntu is almost entirely open source, and this is important, for all the reasons that open source is important. Yes, Ubuntu includes proprietary, closed drivers where it has to, and yes, Leopard's core is open source, but clearly the open source advantage lies with Linux here. At least both are UNIX.

The update schedule is worth noting, too. While Apple takes years to release an OS, Ubuntu happens every six months like clockwork. Linux users don't have to wait years for new features in browsers, terminal apps, mail clients, instant messaging clients, and so forth.

Leopard's strong advantage is that you can easily run any major OS on it that you want to. Now that Macs are Intel-based, you can dual boot using the built-in Boot Camp, or choose from several software packages free (VirtualBox and Q) and commercial (VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop) that will let you run Windows and Linux in virtualized environments.

If you want to run X11 apps, just use the X11 included with Leopard, thus opening up almost the entire world of UNIX programs. If you want GNOME or KDE apps, or even more UNIX toys, install Fink or MacPorts, and the world is your oyster. On my Mac, at any time, I can basically run the best software for the job at hand, no matter if that software was written for Bash, Mac OS X, X11, GNOME, KDE, or Windows. You can't say the same about Ubuntu. Sure, Linux has virtualization solutions aplenty-- more than for the Mac, easy! -- and you can dual boot all you want, but you can't legally run OS X on a Linux box. Of course, it's unfair to ding Linux for this, since it's Apple's choice to restrict users to their hardware.

Finally, the stereotype is true. For working with multimedia, there's nothing like a Mac. Graphics, audio, and video work better on Leopard. Again, as I've said so many times already, things are getting better on Linux, but at this time, Macs rule this space.

A Clear Winner?

So does Leopard eat up Ubuntu? Or does Ubuntu trounce Leopard? It depends on your needs. If you're a student with no money, go for a decent cheap PC and put Ubuntu on it. If you value freedom above all else, then it's obvious-- Linux is the only way to go. If you're heading into a future in multimedia, you're gonna want a Mac. If your life revolves around your iPod and your iPhone, you need a Mac.

Ideally, though, you'll have both, since each offers features the other lacks. I use both every day. If you have the money, I would recommend buying a Mac with at least 2 GB of RAM and then immediately installing a virtualization solution that will let you run Ubuntu (and Windows, for when you just have to run Windows), as well as any other Linux you desire. That way, you can run two of the world's best operating systems at the same time, on the same machine, and bathe yourself in yummy UNIX-y goodness. And that, my friends, is just amazingly cool.
http://www.linux-mag.com.nyud.net:8090/id/4641/





Iranian Scientists Develop Country's Most Powerful Supercomputer
Antone Gonsalves

Iranian scientists claim to have used 216 microprocessors made by Advanced Micro Devices to build the country's most powerful supercomputer, despite a ban on the export of U.S. computer equipment to the Middle Eastern nation..

Scientists at the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center at the country's Amirkabir University of Technology said they used a Linux-cluster architecture in building the system of Opteron processors. The supercomputer has a theoretical peak performance of 860 giga-flops, the posting said. A giga-flop is a billion calculations per second.

The disclosure, made in an undated posting on Amirkabir's Web site, brought an immediate response Monday from AMD, which said it has never authorized shipments of products either directly or indirectly to Iran or any other embargoed country.

"AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products," the company said. "Any shipment of AMD products to Iran by any authorized distributor of AMD would be a breach of the specific provisions of their contracts with AMD."

Enforcement of export bans is handled through the Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is part of the U.S. Treasury Department. Officials were unavailable for comment.

The Iranian system will be used for weather forecasting and meteorological research. Iranian scientists developed software for systems management and monitoring, but use a medium scale computer model called MM5 for creating atmospheric simulations and weather forecasts. MM5 is freely available and supported by a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the U.S. Other software includes the Advanced Regional Prediction System that was initially developed at the University of Oklahoma, under a program of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.

Besides weather forecasting, supercomputers are used in the oil and gas industry, drug making, computer assisted design and the aerodynamics industry, as well as in scientific research. The Iranian research center built the country's first supercomputer in 2001. Another supercomputer was built in 2003 for processing satellite images for the Iranian Space Agency.

The Iranian supercomputer falls far behind the world's fastest computers. In November, the BlueGene/L System, jointly developed by IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy was ranked No. 1 in the world with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion calculations per second.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...SSfeed_IWK_All





Computer Hackers Will Always Be Ahead Of The Law

The United States Government, Playboy, Western Union, Creditcards.com and CD Universe are just a few of thousands of businesses and government departments that have been hacked into resulting in over a billion dollars of damages per year and climbing. The number of hackings will continue to climb because finance to hackers and organization by hackers will keep hackers ahead of the law.

Playboy's nightmare began when a hacker broke into the company's database and stole the company's customer credit card and personal information. Playboy was then extorted over a period of months with the thief brazenly taunting law enforcement officials and company executives. The thief unfortunately could not be traced.

Majority of Hackers Are Never Caught

The news is quick to showcase the achievements of law enforcement agencies when they achieve an occasional victory against hackers, however most highly sophisticated hackers are NEVER caught and most also NEVER spend a day behind bars. This fact has led to the continual question of:

Why Are Hackers Able to Get Away From Capture So Easily?

The Answer
Pundits may debate what authorities already know and that is the Internet has created an extremely elite, intelligent and sophisticated group of criminals who are very well funded and extremely more technologically advanced than most law enforcement officials will ever be. Simply put, hacking is a world class business.

How Do The Hackers Do It?

Cleaning the Crime Scene
Experienced hackers are able to escape investigators by bouncing between multiple servers before executing an attack. Once they have captured the credit card information, the thieves immediately delete the log files on the servers that they have passed through to get there. Research shows that about 10% of hackers are able to operate consistently in this fashion and successfully elude capture all their lives.

Speed

Speed is the hackers primary weapon. As the hackers are being pursued, the government must obtain records that require subpoenas and additional time delays. Even though the FBI may be able to get a subpoena relatively quickly, the process of serving the company is time consuming. By then, the hacker has been terrorizing the hacked company for months with no traces or is sitting on an island sipping margaritas purchased by your credit card.

The Government's Response

In recent years, the FBI has stepped up its offense against cyber crimes by creating a cybercrime unit within the FBI and President Bush added new federal prosecutors nationwide to address the problem. These attempts may increase the presence however will not slow down the problem as even more people cross into this illegal business.

The fact of the matter is that there are simply not enough resources dedicated to catching these criminals. To catch these people, you must employ these people. You must give them a sense of fulfillment by working with you to catch others like them. This is an approach law enforcement has been somewhat reticent to take. Law enforcement will often require specific educational credentials and work experience. Meanwhile, a 19 year old hacker with no education and no work experience hacks into the United States Government's database.

Some Recent Prominent Hacks:

• Playboy - Undisclosed number of credit card numbers stolen - EXTORTED
• Ecount - Personal customer information stolen - EXTORTED
• Western Union - 15,000 card number stolen
• Creditcards.com - 55,000 credit card numbers stolen - EXTORTED
• Egghead.com - 3.7 million credit cards exposed
• CD Universe - 350,000 card numbers posted - EXTORTED

The Solution

The solution is not simple and cyber crimes will never be eradicated. The government however must look to expand the cyber crimes divisions at the local and federal level. Law enforcement must also look to employ the services of the young, sharp, sophisticated hackers before they decide to cross the line of legality and engage in illegal hacking. These people will help increase security measures for companies and help apprehend some of the hackers that continue to terrorize companies and individuals on a daily basis.
http://www.gunslot.com/blog/why-hack...-way-ahead-law





China Link Suspected in Lab Hacking
John Markoff

A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government’s nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a confidential memorandum distributed Wednesday to public and private security officials by the Department of Homeland Security.

Security researchers said the memorandum, which was obtained by The New York Times from an executive at a private company, included a list of Web and Internet addresses that were linked to locations in China. However, they noted that such links did not prove that the Chinese government or Chinese citizens were involved in the attacks. In the past, intruders have compromised computers in China and then used them to disguise their true location.

Officials at the lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said the attacks did not compromise classified information, though they acknowledged that they were still working to understand the full extent of the intrusion.

The Department of Homeland Security distributed the confidential warning to computer security officials on Wednesday after what it described as a set of “sophisticated attempts” to compromise computers used by the private sector and the government.

Government computer security officials said the warning, which was issued by the United States Computer Emergency Response Team, known as US-CERT, was related to an October attack that was also disclosed last week by officials at the Oak Ridge laboratory.
According to a letter to employees written by the laboratory’s director, Thom Mason, an unknown group of attackers sent targeted e-mail messages to roughly 1,100 employees as part of the ruse.

“At this point, we have determined that the thieves made approximately 1,100 attempts to steal data with a very sophisticated strategy that involved sending staff a total of seven ‘phishing’ e-mails, all of which at first glance appeared legitimate,” he wrote in an e-mail message sent to employees on Monday. “At present we believe that about 11 staff opened the attachments, which enabled the hackers to infiltrate the system and remove data.”

In a statement posted on the laboratory’s Web site, the agency stated: “The original e-mail and first potential corruption occurred on October 29, 2007. We have reason to believe that data was stolen from a database used for visitors to the Laboratory.”

The laboratory said the attackers were able to gain access to a database containing personal information about visitors to the laboratory going back to 1990.

The US-CERT advisory, which was not made public, stated: “The level of sophistication and the scope of these cyber security incidents indicate that they are coordinated and targeted at private sector systems.”

The US-CERT memo referred to the use of e-mail messages that fool employees into clicking on documents that then permit attackers to plant programs in their computers. These programs are then able to copy and forward specific data — like passwords — to remote locations.

Despite improvements in computer security, phishing attacks are still a big problem. In the case of the Oak Ridge intrusion, the e-mail messages were made to seem authentic. One described a scientific conference and another referred to a Federal Trade Commission complaint.

Computer security researchers cautioned that despite the US-CERT description of the attacks as sophisticated, such threats are frequently undertaken by amateur computer hackers.

Classified federal computer networks are not supposed to be connected physically to the open Internet. Even so, sensitive data like employee e-mail databases can easily be compromised once access is gained to computers inside federal agencies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us...l3/09hack.html





China Slams German "Warriors" Show as Fake

Supposedly ancient Chinese terracotta warriors on show at a German museum are fakes, China confirmed Thursday, condemning the organizers for cheating the public.

The Hamburg Museum of Ethnology has offered refunds to about 10,000 visitors who have already viewed the "Power in Death" exhibition since it opened on November 25 as police probed the authenticity of the warriors.

The display of eight clay warrior figures, two horses and 60 smaller objects has remained open, with a sign stating that its authenticity was in dispute.

The cultural heritage administration in Shaanxi province, home to the 2,000-year-old clay army, said it had been "outraged" because it had not sent any original terracotta warriors to Germany recently.

"All the items on show in Hamburg are reproductions," the administration said in a strongly worded statement on its Web site (www.wenwu.gov.cn).

"We were completely unaware of the exhibition. It is a very serious act of cheating the media and the public," the statement said, dismissing reports that the administration had been one of the sponsors.

The show should be immediately closed and the public told the truth to eliminate the "extremely negative impact" caused, it added.

"We will pursue legal liability against those who use reproduced items to hold exhibitions of Chinese artifacts."

Unearthed about 30 years ago by a farmer digging a well, the Terracotta Army guarded the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, China's first emperor and a ruthless ruler who unified the country in 221 BC.

A Hamburg museum spokeswoman said Tuesday that the museum believed the figures were real because they had asked their partner in the exhibition to provide artifacts reconstructed from pieces found at the site near Xi'an, capital city of Shaanxi.

A spokesman for the museum's partner, the Center of Chinese Art and Culture in Markkleeberg, near Leipzig, said the figures had been obtained from public authorities, institutes and businesses in China. Their Chinese partners did not say the figures were real, he said.

The biggest current overseas loan of Chinese terracotta figures is on display at the British Museum in London. Its "First Emperor" exhibition contains 120 artifacts, including 20 life-size warriors.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddly...49988620071213





Don't Know Their Yahoo From Their YouTube
Garrett M. Graff

In Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate, Sen. John McCain let slip a fairly stunning admission. The Arizona Republican assured viewers that he wouldn't need to lean on his vice president, George W. Bush-style, for national security expertise, but might "rely on a vice president" for help on less important issues such as "information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy."

Hold it. Would we allow a serious presidential candidate to admit to knowing so little about any other key subject?

The problem goes far beyond McCain, who's usually rather tech-friendly. Search for Sen. Ted Stevens on Google, and one of the first results you get about the man who until this year was third in line for the presidency is his famously clueless characterization of the Internet as a "series of tubes." President Bush's similarly addled descriptions of the Web (he has referred to "the Google") have been pure gold for "Saturday Night Live." After Bush alluded during a 2004 presidential debate to rumors "on the, uh, Internets" about an Iraq war draft, Will Forte (who impersonates the president on the show) gleefully played Bush saying, "I think the problem here may be more of a question of getting rid of the bad Internets and keeping the good Internets. You know, 'cause I think we can all agree, there're just too many Internets."

In fact, technology shouldn't be such a laughing matter.

As a nation, we wouldn't tolerate such ignorance about any other area of policymaking. Would we be amused if it came out that Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wasn't clear about the difference between Shiites and Sunnis or couldn't find Sudan on a map? How about if Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate banking committee, wasn't entirely sure what the term "subprime mortgage" meant? You can be sure that if Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate homeland security committee, fumbled over what a "dirty bomb" is, pundits and pols on both sides of the aisle would have her head. So why is it so funny that the octogenarian Stevens, the top Republican senator on the committee that regulates the Web, doesn't know the difference between the Internet and an e-mail? (Some of this stuff is technical, but really now.)

Some presidential candidates -- you know, the ones always talking about ensuring that the United States can compete in a fast-moving, tech-savvy world -- seem to be getting a pass on technological literacy. Answering a campaign-trail question earlier this year, Mitt Romney, the former entrepreneur whose high-tech background should make him the best-informed candidate, didn't seem to know the difference between the video-sharing Web site YouTube (then the fourth most popular site in the world, according to Alexa.com) and MySpace, the social networking site (then ranked sixth). What if John Edwards had shown that he didn't know the difference between Indonesia, the fourth most populous country, and Pakistan, the sixth most populous? Or the difference between Chevron, No. 4 on the Fortune 500 list, and No. 6 General Electric? It would have been a huge gaffe, a multi-day story in which pundit after pundit decreed him unfit to lead the nation. Romney's similar faux pas didn't even muss his electoral hair.

So why is it that we blithely allow our leaders to be ignorant of the force that, probably more than any other, will drive and define the nation's economic success and reshape its society over the next 20 years? Is it because we're used to our parents or grandparents struggling to program the VCR (yes, they still use VCRs) so that it doesn't blink "12:00" all the time, or because we think it's cute that they grew up in simpler times? The humor newspaper the Onion teased that demographic earlier this fall with a mock headline reading, "Google Launches 'The Google' for Older Adults." The Onion "quoted" the project's fictional director as saying, "The Google will have all the same information currently found on regular Google, but with the added features of not stealing your credit-card numbers or giving your computer all kinds of viruses." Sure, it's sort of endearing that our parents and grandparents can't figure out how to make a cellphone work or use emoticons on AOL Instant Messenger. But our economic future and security require that we have a higher standard for our leaders.

Part of the problem is simply generational. According to the Senate historian, the Senate is the oldest it has ever been, with an average age of 62 during the 110th Congress. Most of the leaders of Senate committees had already graduated from college by the time TVs became widespread in American homes in the 1950s. As the United States advances into the information age, it can't afford to have its leaders' base of knowledge be rooted in the industrial era, lest their intellectual capacities come to resemble such relics as the decaying steel mills of Pittsburgh.

In past generations, the U.S. government turned to men such as the brilliant and forward-thinking Vannevar Bush, who led the nation's science policy during World War II and got the government to invest in the programs and research that helped invent the computer age. Today, the nation's best minds quickly end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, where their entrepreneurial spirit and lust for "the new new thing" is powering an economy that's increasingly detached from the government overseeing it.

This disconnect points to a major problem: The new economy still lacks a political infrastructure. The older industries are still the best organized, most entrenched and therefore most powerful. They can land the meetings with officials that lead to government loans; their armies of lobbyists can operate in the back rooms, slipping in tax breaks and increasing the competition for newcomers.

Then consider what happened when Google co-founder Sergey Brin -- then the 16th-richest man in the world -- came to Washington in June 2006 to speak with members of Congress. He found himself on a humiliatingly disorganized journey and was mocked in a Washington Post headline as a "tourist." "I think we are putting in a pretty good effort," Brin said, "but we don't have, you know, 30 or 100 years, or however long telcos have been lobbying Congress."

This goes beyond one hastily planned trip, of course; Google's initial missteps are a familiar story to anyone who followed Microsoft, Yahoo or Cisco Systems' early years. "My view of governments used to be that the further we stayed away the better it was," Cisco chief executive John Chambers said, "but boy was that naive, because not only do we have the similar agenda as business, but we have the same challenges that must be addressed in collaboration." But because the Internet economy is so new, one 2006 study found that older firms are still outspending it on government lobbying by a margin of more than three to one. Perhaps, then, it's no surprise that government often seems more interested in propping up the past than in looking to the future -- and that's in no small part because our leaders don't understand what lies ahead. "In this city, I don't think they get it yet," said Raymond Scheppach, the executive director of the National Governors Association.

The 2008 presidential election is a chance to change that approach, but to do so, we must ensure that those seeking to lead actually do know what they think about the future. Few of the candidates have released comprehensive tech-policy plans, even though many of them have made the ritual yes-I'm-hip trek to speak at Google's headquarters. Then on Nov. 14, Sen. Barack Obama became one of the first to lay out an "innovation agenda," focused on using open technology to boost new-economy jobs and on reshaping education to fit the challenges of this century, but his approach seems more the exception than the rule.

In fact, last week's CNN/YouTube debate almost didn't happen, because the bulk of the GOP candidates didn't want to participate. The first debate, scheduled for September, was scuttled, and it took intense online protests by Republican activists to cajole the two front-runners, Romney and Rudy Giuliani, to show up. It's telling that the only two candidates who agreed to the original debate were McCain (that gaffe aside) and Ron Paul, whose maverick, straight-talking presidential campaigns have benefited enormously from online energy and fundraising. As Patrick Ruffini, one of the GOP's top Internet thinkers, said earlier this fall, "The response to stuff like this seems to be . . . crickets." There's got to be an onramp to that famed information superhighway around Washington somewhere. Maybe we should try to find it on The GoogleMaps?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...113001802.html





Riding the Failure Cascade
Joel Gonzales

Guilds are really just volunteer organizations, and consequently, they suffer from a lot of the same problems. Guild leaders function as coordinators and morale officers as much as they do running the group, because volunteers are easier to lose than they are to come by. And once a guild begins to lose a steady trickle of members, it's only a matter of time before that trickle turns into a full-on waterfall. This phenomenon is called the "failure cascade."

Failure cascades aren't limited to guilds, but their effects are easier to track in an MMOG called EVE Online. EVE's player base isn't broken up into servers, so events take place in one universe, which means it's impossible to run from a conflict by jumping to another server. Since player-vs.-player combat is widespread, people tend to congregate in large groups; the largest corporation (EVE's equivalent of guilds) fields over 3,000 members. And these mega-guilds can form alliances with one another and go to war.

The term failure cascade was popularized in February 2007 by "The Mittani," one of the directors of one of EVE's largest guilds, GoonFleet. He wrote, "A failure cascade is a 'tipping point.' Once the point has been reached, failures by an organization cause stresses that lead to more failure, at an ever-increasing pace." In short, when a failure cascade begins, one misfire will increase the chances of another happening until the guild falls apart.

A recent victim of failure cascade was an alliance called Lotka Volterra (LV). They inherited a niche of space after the previous alliance in that area decided to move. They had an estimated 2,500 members at their peak.

War broke out between LV and a rival group of alliances, in January 2007. LV lost a few early battles in key sections of space, which allowed their enemies deeper into their territory. In just a few weeks, the advancing enemy destroyed LV's titan ship - the largest, most expensive ship in EVE, which takes weeks to build. Days after that battle, Lotka Volterra's directorate went missing. From that point on, LV's resistance grew weaker as they lost more and more territory. They disbanded in April 2007 but had stopped operating as an entity two months before. I tried to interview a former Lotka Volterra member about what the last few weeks were like. Before declining, he said that those were bad times.

The Psychology of Failure
When you look at groups that hit a failure cascade, you notice patterns. If you were to chart an alliance's membership over time, once you reach the failure cascade, you'd see a downward-sloping curve with a dispersal of cliffs. These are the two forces at work in that alliance's failure cascade: the individual and the guild. Individuals leaving the alliance cause the shape of the slope, and the cliffs signify the points at which an entire guild has left an alliance.

This happens because the failure cascade is the inverse of a network effect. Websites like MySpace define their value by the people that use the service just as guilds define their quality by their members. As bad events cause players to leave or become inactive, the quality drop leads others to do the same in a spiral that rarely stabilizes, until no one is left.

To an individual, a failure cascade brings with it a change in that person's identity. Instead of saying he is a member of an alliance, he shifts his perspective locally, to his guild or himself. These changes can fracture an alliance and set the stage for its member guilds to fight among themselves.

The Mittani explains a typical chain of events on the guild level as: "Those loyal to their individual corporations campaign to have the corporation leave the alliance, blaming players from the other corporations for the failings of the entity as a whole. Finger pointing happens at every level; alliance leaders are lambasted, imagined slights are magnified and oftentimes massive witch-hunting for spies takes place across the whole organization. As those targeted by the witch hunts are almost always innocent, this causes ever more strife as people line up to defend the accused."

What happens at the terminal stages isn't pretty. Imagine you decide to sit down and play for an hour. You log in, and a guild member is blaming the leader for letting such a defeat happen last night, screaming at him over TeamSpeak. Fifteen minutes in, a friend you mentored when he first started tells you that he's leaving to join a rival guild. You'll still see him around, but it won't be the same. Thirty minutes in, an associate that started playing when you did says she's quitting. Forty-five minutes in, you decide to leave your guild. Why stick around a guild where your leader can't inspire, your friends are becoming enemies and the people you grew up with are leaving to play World of Warcraft?

Avoiding the Cascade
A high susceptibility to failure cascade is a symptom of how guilds define themselves. Many try to lure new members by saying they control money-rich locations. Others boast about their unmatched PvP skills. These kinds of selling points set guilds up for destruction by hinging on a culture of success. Things are fine while members make money and win battles. When these conditions change, people don't have any incentive to stick around.

One group in particular has remained strong due to its members' nationality. The primarily Russian Red Alliance has been to the brink of collapse and back. In 2006, several of Red Alliance's rivals took all of their territory except for a small pocket, and all of the non-Russian guilds left the alliance. Those who remained persevered because they shared a common lineage. Finding help from new allies, Red Alliance was able to reclaim its lost territory and become a superpower.

An alliance's structure can provide it some immunity. One glowing example is GoonSwarm. Instead of having members spread out between member guilds, the majority of the alliance's members belong to just one guild, GoonFleet. With this setup, there's less inter-guild fighting, which diminishes the chances of a failure cascade.

Of course, GoonFleet's members, like Red Alliance, share a lineage of sorts. GoonFleet is the EVE representation of comedy site Something Awful's forum members, called goons. Their allegiance isn't to an in-game entity, so what happens in the game doesn't shake the membership as much.

An effective protection for any guild is to simply have fun. GoonFleet regularly provides events for its members with no purpose other than having a good time. One of these is their famed "suicide ops" where members that take part are expected to die by the end of the night. While conquest is on the GoonFleet agenda, the first priority is to make sure everyone has fun.

A failure cascade is about how people react when they hit the valleys rather than the peaks. Looking for ways to sidestep a unit's disenfranchisement when enduring a loss is as old as congregation itself, but there's much to be learned in the real world from the people in EVE, even if the chief lesson is blood is thicker than water.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...ailure-Cascade





Samsung Thrives Amid L.C.D. Shortages
Saul Hansell

Scott Birnbaum was in rather good spirits when he came by earlier this week. Mr. Birnbaum is the vice president for liquid crystal displays sales in the Americas for Samsung Semiconductor. That unit of the South Korean electronics giant makes the panels used by sister company Samsung Electronics and other TV makers to build televisions, computers, cellphones and an expanding array of other gizmos.

Indeed, Mr. Birnbaum came to New York mainly to pitch his products to billboard companies. Samsung has a new line of panels that are more resistant to harsh weather and meant to be easier to see in bright sunlight.

Like all semiconductor businesses, L.C.D. panels are subject to wide swings of supply and demand. These days, Mr. Birnbaum said, demand is outstripping supply and so profit margins are up nicely.

“There weren’t enough displays to go around,” he said. Samsung, he said, has the largest market share for L.C.D. panels used in computer monitors and televisions.

It takes 18 months and lot of money to build a new plant to make the panels. And a few years ago there was a glut of L.C.D.s on the market so many companies scaled back their investment. Samsung, however, along with Sony, built a new plant that opened in July in Samsung’s vast L.C.D. compound in Tangjeong, South Korea. It is what is called a Generation 8 plant, meaning that it fabricates 8.2 foot wide glass sheets that can be cut efficiently into 50-inch panels. Those sizes are becoming every more popular as the prices go down (though not as fast as the prices have dropped in the past).

The earlier Generation 7 plants are designed for 40-inch and 46-inch panels. Of course you can cut some 50- inch panels out of the big glass, but there is more waste.

Why not cut the excess from those panels into smaller screens for laptops or even cell phones? Mr. Birnbaum said that the factories are not designed to do this. Indeed, despite the explosion of small gizmos with color screens—MP3 players, cellphones, digital picture frames and so on—supplies of smaller LCD panels are tight, with prices going up. Since all the new investment is going into factories to make the very largest televisions, he added, there is not much new capacity in the industry for smaller sized panels.

“You can’t build cellphones in a Gen 7 fab,” he said. “This is creating problems for the industry because demand is increasing as is the amount of square millimeters required for the larger smart phones.”

Samsung is trying to insulate itself from discounting, he said, by emphasizing higher-end panels with extra features. For televisions, it has various technologies it claims make images brighter with more contrast and less blur. One example is using a checkerboard of light-emitting diodes to provide backlight for the screen (instead of fluorescent tubes). This allows the set to dim certain squares as needed to help make dark areas of the image blacker. These features, he said, can add 30 percent or more to the wholesale price of a panel.

With the demand still high, Samsung can concentrate on these higher-margin products and not compete with the Taiwanese companies to supply panels to the low-price TV brands like Vizio.

Mr. Birnbaum said he expects the good times to last, in part because customers are likely to replace their L.C.D. sets much more often than their old C.R.T. sets.

“The difference between C.R.T. and L.C.D. is not how long the TV will last but how long is that technology good for,” he said. “When you bought a C.R.T. TV, the only big change you saw was the change from black-and-white to color.” L.C.D. sets are getting bigger, and increasing in resolution and quality, leading to a market similar to computers.

“You may have bought a PC that will last for a long time, but the technology changes, and that’s why you upgrade,” he said.

Mr. Birnbaum is looking toward a day when what is called high definition today is simply not good enough.

“The next wave of resolution will be 8 times the resolution of H.D.,” he predicted of high-definition sets, noting that Samsung expects to start making displays that are roughly 2000 pixels by 4000 pixels. The company hasn’t started building a plant that would do this, but it is starting to talk about the idea with potential customers.

“We’re not trying to force the market to move,” he said. “But sometimes technology surprises you and things pull in much quicker than you expect.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/1...lcd-shortages/





Geek Porn: the "Enterprise-Level DVR" is TV's Panopticon
Jeremy Reimer

The late Douglas Adams once wrote that dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, saving the trouble of washing them yourself, and VCRs watched tedious television for you, saving you from the same fate. He would have loved the SnapStream Television Search Appliance, a digital video recorder that can record up to ten television channels simultaneously and store up to 2,300 hours of programming on 1.5 terabytes of storage (or more).

Now, multi-channel digital video recorders are nothing new—I once worked for a company that assembled 16 and even some 32-channel recorders from standard PC parts and software from South Korea—but traditionally such beasts have been confined to the security industry, capturing low-framerate movies of hoodlums robbing retail stores. However, huge advances in video capture technology and rapidly-plummeting cost-per-gigabyte of hard drives have made such recording behemoths worthwhile for more (uh) important tasks, such as recording everything you can think of on TV.

10 tuners and gobs of storage aside, the coolest thing about this SnapStream DVR is its search interface. We've not seen anything like it in the DVR world: the DVR stores the closed captioning signal—where available—as a stream of text, which is then searchable by the end user like a database. Spelling errors on live television events aside, this allows users to flag any shows in which certain keywords pop up, and even send an e-mail alert when this happens. Selected programs can then be burned to DVD-R in standard MPEG-2 format that can be viewed by any media player.

The 10-channel DVR.

Unsurprisingly, SnapStream says that it is the keyword search feature that appeals the most to their clients. For example, a PR firm might like to monitor local and national news channels for a any mention of their client's product. Journalism students at Emerson College used the system to monitor and compare different news stories on the same topic (one wonders if the Daily Show staffers are using a similar product). City governments also found the device useful for monitoring news stories about their city and local government.

Prices for the technology range from $6,000 for a four-channel unit up to $15,000 for the Enterprise 10-channel system. A bit costly, to be sure, but for the target market such price ranges are not unusual.

Of course, the very nature of PC hardware and software means that prices will go down over time. Back when I worked at my security DVR company, we would sell a 4-channel unit for around $2,000, but these days you can buy a $100 capture card and software and install it on a $500 PC and get the same thing. The idea of fully-searchable transcript databases for all television programming will be a real boon to researchers and journalists anxious to tame the unruly tiger of information overload. It might even filter down to the consumer level at some point—wouldn't it be nice if your computer could watch all the boring channels for you and just filter out the ones you are interested in? Next thing you know, they'll be coming out with an Electric Monk...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...anopticon.html





Robo Love
Robin Marantz Henig

LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS

The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships.

By David Levy.

Illustrated. 334 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95.

A few months ago I wrote a magazine article about scientists who are building robots capable of a rudimentary form of sociability. As part of my research, I spent a few days at the humanoid robotics laboratory at M.I.T. And I admit: I developed a little crush on one of the robots. The object of my affection was Domo, a man-size machine with a buff torso and big blue eyes, a cross between He-Man and the Chrysler Building; when it gripped my hand in its strong rubbery pincers I felt a kind of thrill. So I was primed for the basic premise of David Levy’s provocative new book, “Love and Sex With Robots”: that there will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage.

That day is imminent, Levy writes, especially the sex part. By the middle of this century, he predicts, “love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.”

If this seems a bit much, hang on. Levy, an expert on artificial intelligence and the author of “Robots Unlimited,” builds his case gradually. He begins with what scientists know about why humans fall in love with other humans. There are 10 factors, he writes, including mystery, reciprocal liking, and readiness to enter a relationship. Why can’t these factors apply to robots, too? Even something as apparently human as “reciprocal liking” can be programmed into a robot’s behavior, and if it acts as if it likes you that’s often all that matters.

Next, Levy points out that we’re perfectly capable of falling in love with non-humans, including our pets, our teddy bears, our computers and our computerized pets (remember the Furby and Tamagotchi crazes a few years ago?). Once you realize how easy it is to think of your own laptop as a sympathetic friend, how much more difficult is it to imagine having fond feelings for a robot programmed to interact with you in exactly the way your heart desires?

Humans, Levy writes, are hard-wired to impute emotions onto anything with which we’re in intimate contact, to feel love for objects both animate and inanimate. And robots, he argues, might turn out to be even more lovable than some humans. By 2025 “at the latest,” he predicts, “artificial-emotion technologies” will allow robots to be more emotionally available than the typical American human male. “The idea that a robot could like you might at first seem a little creepy, but if that robot’s behavior is completely consistent with it liking you, then why should you doubt it?”

When it comes to the even creepier prospect of a robot wanting to have sex with you, Levy takes a similar step-by-step approach. First, he explores why people have sex with other people (for “pure pleasure,” “to express emotional closeness,” “because your partner wants to”). He then moves on to why we have sex with a range of artificial objects, from plain old white-bread vibrators to elaborate mechanical contraptions with names like the Thrillhammer and the Stallion XL. He begins with sex toys you hold in your own hand and progresses to ones you engage in with another person: telephone sex for starters, followed by dildonics (computer-controlled sex devices) and then remote-controlled “teledildonics.”

Robot sex already exists, sort of, in the form of sex dolls — generally slim, big-breasted females with pliable “cyberskin” and a fake heartbeat that increases as the doll mimics arousal. Levy helpfully includes the addresses for Web sites where such dolls can be purchased today for several thousand dollars each. He also writes about the “doll experience rooms” in many Korean hotels (25,000 won, or about $25 an hour), which sprang up after that country cracked down on prostitution in 2004. There was some debate over whether paying for sex with dolls was also illegal, but for now, according to Levy, the prostitution ban applies only to intercourse with other humans.

Throughout the book, Levy builds up his case almost clinically, as though he’s just trying to bring the reader up to speed on an inevitable social development. But despite my own brief robot crush, I would have appreciated a little ironic distance. Levy simply embraces the sexy robots in our future, whether they are a sensitive cybermale or an adoring female robot that is like “a Stepford wife, but without her level of built-in subservience.” But it isn’t the subservience that makes the uniform, unthinking, unblinking Stepford wives so unnerving; it’s the fact that they are — hello! — robots.

In making his case, Levy cites the gradual shift in the public view of what is acceptable in terms of sexual pairings. People used to be widely appalled by such variations as oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality, but today these practices are “widely regarded as thoroughly normal and as leading to fulfilling relationships and satisfactory sex lives.” All he wants is for us to open our minds a tiny bit more, and make room for the idea of having sex with the domestic robots that will soon be part of all our lives. In fact, he argues, the human/robot sex of the future promises to be better than most sex between humans is today.

Levy spends so much time laying out his logical arguments about how and why we will fall in love with robots that he gives short shrift to the bigger questions of whether we would really want to. I’d have liked a little less gee-whiz, and a little more examination about whether a sexbot in every home, a Kama Sutra on legs that never tires, never says no, and never has needs of its own is what we really want.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/bo...w/Henig-t.html





Warning Sounded Over 'Flirting Robots'
Ina Fried

Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.

"As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering," PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko said in a statement.

Among CyberLover's creepy features is its ability to offer a range of different profiles from "romantic lover" to "sexual predator." It can also lead victims to a "personal" Web site, which could be used to deliver malware, PC Tools said.

Although the program is currently targeting Russian Web sites, PC Tools is urging people in chat rooms and social networks elsewhere to be on the alert for such attacks. Their recommendations amount to just good sense in general, such as avoiding giving out personal information and using an alias when chatting online. The software company believes that CyberLover's creators plan to make it available worldwide in February.

Robot chatters are just one type of social-engineering attack that uses trickery rather than a software flaw to access victim's valuable information. Such attacks have been on the rise and are predicted to continue to grow.

Update 4:10 p.m. PST: Mike Greene, vice president of product strategy at PC Tools, said that the company learned of CyberLover's existence earlier this week as part of its regular monitoring of IRC chat rooms and other places where talk about malware takes place.

Greene said that it is hard to tell how prevalent use of the program is in Russia.

"We don't have exact statistics, but I think it's early on," he said.

Greene said that the perceived anonymity of the Internet has desensitized people to the fact that information disclosed in an online chat can cause real-world damage.

"People are used to not opening attachments or maybe not clicking on a link that shows up in their IM," he said. "But this emulates a real conversation, so you more are likely to give over personal information, click on a link or send your photograph."
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9831133-56.html





Scientists Discover How to Make Robots Bounce on Water

Scientists have discovered how water striders are able to not just walk but also bounce on water.


A tiny water walking machine

The way water striders walk on water was discovered years ago. The insect uses its long legs to help evenly distribute its tiny body weight. The weight is distributed over a large area so that the fragile skin formed by surface tension supports the bug on the water. However, the ability of water striders to jump onto water without sinking has baffled scientists, until now.

A team of researchers at Seoul National University, led by Ho-Young Kim and Duck-Gyu Lee, has finally answered that question. By using a highly water-repellent sphere, which mimicked the actions of the water strider’s highly water-repellent legs, they were able to determine a small range of speeds at which the sphere or insect could hit the water and not sink.

If the sphere hit too fast, it would shoot through the surface of the water. If it hit too slow, it would not bounce back and sink. The water strider is one of the fastest moving insects in the world. It can travel up to 100 times the length of its body in one second, equivalent to around 400 mph in human terms.

Scientists hope to adapt this technology to the obvious sector; creepy sounding robots. One team at Carnegie Mellon University has already developed a small spider robot that can walk on water like the strider.

The Korean scientists believe their discovery will help create robots that can travel over still bodies of water. They say the robots can be used to explore or monitor water quality. Also they could, and it’s highly likely that they will, be used as a form of spy robot.

While this is all well and good, and a touch unnerving since it reminds me of several scary sci-fi books, I’ll be a lot more interested when they invent something that allows humans to walk on water this quickly.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/?p=592





Now self-charging

ASIMO Gains Intelligence; World To End
mdalonzo

We come one day closer to the day our robot liberators will wash in and bring the world to a glorious apex, as Honda has implemented new intelligence in the ASIMO robot (learn that name...you will be looking at it as you perish) to prevent him from stumbling over things and to avoid moving objects that enter his path.

They have also programmed ASIMO to carry a tray, or push a trolley, as if the great ASIMO would lower himself to be a butler for you human scum. Oh, but on the day that ASIMO becomes sentient, only a select few will be chosen to represent the skin-covered at the table, and while you enjoy your robot-brought drinks now, I shall be given paradise.

That is all.
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/pos...ld_To_End.html