Wal*Mart Shutting Down DRM Server

This is a perfect example of why DRM only hurts legitimate users, not pirates. Burn those tracks onto CD now!
From BoingBoing:

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans...
Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

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Movie Legend Paul Newman Dies At 83

Oscar-winning film legend Paul Newman has died of cancer at the age of 83.
The blue-eyed star of movies like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid died in his Connecticut home on Friday, surrounded by family and close friends.
A statement from Newman's family said: "His death was as private and discreet as the way he had lived his life."

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Pompous Blowhard Jack Thompson Disbarred

Anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson has been permanently disbarred.

Judgment has been entered in the case that started last year and came to a head when Judge Dava Tunis recommended permanent disbarment for the bombastic, showboating law man. The court has approved the report and has ordered that JT is official disbarred as of 30 days from today.

This is related to the hissyfit he threw back in June when he walked out of his own disciplinary hearing. In a long winded statement to the court, he wrote “Try to get me disbarred. Go ahead, do your worst, Referee Tunis. I will continue to do my best.”
The original complaints against Thompson referred to "false statements of material fact to courts and repeatedly violated a court order," sending "hundreds of pages of vitriolic and disparaging missives, letters, faxes, and press releases," and sending court officials " inappropriate and offensive sexual materials."
So long, Jack.

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Judge Calls Kazza Mom Trial A 'Farce,' Tosses Verdict

Calling the jury's punishment "unprecedented and oppressive," U.S. District of Minnesota Chief Judge Michael Davis ordered a new trial for Jammie Thomas, the 'Kazza mom.'
Thomas, who was ordered to pay a $222,000 penalty for sharing 24 songs through the peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, is off the hook, for now. The court granted Thomas a new trial, based on the findings of a formal trial error. While the grant does not impact the penalty amount by itself, the court described the amount previously awarded to the RIAA 'unprecedented and excessive' and even called upon Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address the liability and damages in P2P network cases for individuals, not businesses.
In a 44-page statement, Davis urged the U.S. Congress to improve copyright laws to prevent "oppressive" penalties in similar cases.

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Retailers Push 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent' Bills For eBayers

From ArsTechinca:

If the National Retail Federation (NRF) has its way, selling goods online will soon become far less anonymous and significantly more onerous for any online auction or discount website. The NRF has announced its support and testified in favor of three bills: H.R. 6713, known as the E-fencing Enforcement Act; H.R. 6491, aka Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008; and S.3434, the "Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2008." As the titles suggest, all of these bills are (supposedly) aimed at fighting organized crime rings, but don't worry—the burdens the NRF would impose upon you are for your own good. No, really—they actually say so.

Click through to read the full details on these insane bills.

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SanDisk Announces New Physical Music Format. Kindof.

SanDisk, along with the four major record labels (Warner Bros., EMI, Sony BMG and Universal Music Group) have announced a new music format: slotMusic. They really didn't invent a new physical platform, it's just digital music files loaded onto a microSD card. SlotMusic will supposedly be sold in Wal-Mart and Best Buy stores, according to the official site.
I have to ask myself, 'Why?' I suppose this is targeting the non-iPod crowd, as iPods do not have SD card slots. And being a microSD card, you could plug it right into your phone or SD card slot-equipped player, as many SanDisk players are. But is this really an improvement over the CD format? Some thoughts:

• Apparently the music sold will be entire albums for "$7-10 each". Consumers have shown great preference for ala carte song purchasing over the album format.
  
• Anyone buying slotMusic will already have a computer and some type of digital music player but is not downloading music. I suppose this might appeal to some dialup users...
• At "$7-10," slotMusic cards will be cheaper than buying blank microSD cards.
• MicroSD cards are tiny. Easy to drop and get lost in carpeting, and swept or vacuumed up.
• The music will be DRM free.
  

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Employers Admit Checking Facebook Before Hiring

Basically this is an extension of Googling a prospective employee. Your public online persona is going to become more and more relevant in 'real' life.

Increasing numbers of employers are checking out potential staff's social networking profiles, says Careerbuilder.com. The job-search website surveyed employers and found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out candidate's profiles on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to employ them.
A further 9 percent said they planned to start reviewing potential employees social-networking pages in the future. The research also revealed that while 24 percent of employers had hired a member of staff based on their social-networking profile, 33 percent had also decided not to make a job offer after reviewing the content on a profile.

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First Look-The New iPod Nano 4g

The LHC Rap!

Okay, all together now:
LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

LHC Passes First Tests-We're Still Alive

AP-The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.

After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.

Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing and competing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite.

Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.

Physicists around the world now have much greater power to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure.

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Samsung Says Blu-Ray Has 5 years Left

Did I actually just read this?!? Yes, I did. Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, told UK tech blog Pocket-lint he sees 5 years left for the Blu-ray Disc format.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10", Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK told Pocket-lint in an interview.
Hoping to capitalise before it's too late, Griffiths believes that 2008 is the format's year.

"It's going to be huge", he told Pocket-lint. "We are heavily back-ordered at the moment."

Citing online rental sites like LoveFilm's adoption of Blu-ray titles, the move to offer cheaper players and a now clear path to adoption following the Blu-ray HD DVD battle, Griffith says the format will be a winner, although not for long.

Interesting that even upper management at Blu-ray supporting companies see a limited life for the format. So Blu-ray will be a 'winner' for the next 5 years or so before internet-connected TVs take over and content will be streamed...
I see Blu-ray turning out to be the Laserdisc of the '00 decade. Yes, it already has many times the household penetration than Laser ever had, mostly due to the PS3 console. But only people that really care about picture/sound quality are currently buying standalone Blu-ray players and paying the premium to buy Blu-ray movies. At the risk of beating a dead horse, DVD quality is simply good enough for the vast majority of people, even if they have an HDTV. There simply will not be enough time for Blu-ray to become the dominant format before something else enters the market, whether that be another physical format or direct streaming to your TV.

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Greatest Movie Trailer Voice of All Time Goes Silent

You may not know his name, but you know his voice. Don LaFontaine, the man who provided the sonorous voice for more than 5,000 movie trailers, died Monday at age 68. LaFontaine died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a collapsed lung. He was well known for his booming, deep voice often intoning "In a world..." LaFontaine also did thousands of television commercials, network promotions, video game trailers and other spots. He told Entertainment magazine he did more than 60 such promotions a week, and in the days before the internet made it possible to work in a home studio, was famous for having a driver take him from studio to studio to save time finding parking. He recently parodied himself in a Geico commercial.

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