The modern day pirate doesn’t sport a patch or walk with a limp. His weapon of choice is an unassuming pizza-sized satellite dish that can literally harpoon signals from space – and provide lucrative and illicit profit.
Avram Piltch writes “Last week, LAPTOP reported that Office Depot employees were routinely lying to customers about notebook inventory, telling them that systems were out of stock if they didn’t want to buy extended warranties or tech services. Now LAPTOP has spoken to more Office Depot associates, one of whom goes by the name Alex and reports widespread altering of prices in his region. He says he even Photoshops higher price tags on clearance notebooks so that associates can tell customers that they’re getting a free warranty or tech service, when the price has been raised to cover it. LAPTOP also talked to a representative from the FTC, who would not comment on Office Depot specifically, but said that the sales practices described by LAPTOP clearly violate federal law.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “BoingBoing Gadgets has updated their story from yesterday on DRM contained in the new iPod Shuffle. (We also discussed this rumor last week.) It’s a false alarm. There is a chip in the headphone controls but it is just an encoder chip. There is no DRM and no reason to believe that third party headphones wouldn’t work with the new Shuffle. (Apple would still prefer you to license the encoder under the Made for iPod program, but with no DRM, there is no DMCA risk to a manufacturer reverse engineering it.) The money quote: ‘For the record, we do not believe that the new iPod headphones with in-line remote use DRM that affects audio playback in any way.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A new retail store called Sony StyleComcast Labs will be added to the Comcast Center, a brand new skyscraper in Philadelphia which also serves as the headquarters for Comcast, the nation’s single largest cable operator. The store will focus on new technologies and interactive product available from Comcast and Sony.
This year is an important one for the three largest BitTorrent sites. In common with The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, Mininova is also heading to court in a dispute with the entertainment industry. This May, the court will decide if the BitTorrent indexer has to actively filter content from the site.
In an ironic twist of fate Kevin Mitnick, a social engineering master who went to jail for impersonating others to get information to access computer networks without authorization, couldn’t access his own Facebook account for weeks because administrators at the social networking site didn’t believe he was who he said he was.
An anonymous reader writes “BoingBoing Gadgets has updated their story from yesterday on DRM contained in the new iPod Shuffle. (We also discussed this rumor last week.) It’s a false alarm. There is a chip in the headphone controls but it is just an encoder chip. There is no DRM and no reason to believe that third party headphones wouldn’t work with the new Shuffle. (Apple would still prefer you to license the encoder under the Made for iPod program, but with no DRM, there is no DCMA risk to a manufacturer reverse engineering it.) The money quote: ‘For the record, we do not believe that the new iPod headphones with in-line remote use DRM that affects audio playback in any way.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “Remember all those undersea cables breaking? PopSci.com introduces John Rennie, who “… has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by UK-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie — a congenial, 6’4″, 57-year-old Scotsman — patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables.’ The article goes on to outline the physical infrastructure of the Internet, including some of its points of vulnerability.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The wiki may have a silly name, but it’s a useful technology for collaborating with customers and employees.
Apple this weekend was hit with a media assault after reports suggested that a mysterious authentication chip in the third-generation iPod shuffle, responsible for supporting the player’s new headphone-integrated playback controls, signaled a rogue attempt on the company’s part to block third parties from developing their own replacement headphones
