Cody Taylor

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA’s requested inspection of the defendant’s hard drive, in order to protect the defendant’s privacy. The order (PDF) provides that the hard drive will be turned over to a computer forensics expert of the RIAA’s choosing, for mirror imaging, but that only the forensics expert — and not the plaintiffs or their attorneys — will be able to examine the mirror image. The forensics expert will then issue a report which will describe (a) any music files found on the drive, (b) any file-sharing information associated with each file, and any other records of file-sharing activity, and (c) any evidence that the hard-drive has been ‘wiped’ or erased since the initiation of the litigation. The expert will be precluded from examining ‘any non-relevant files or data, including … emails, word-processing documents, PDF documents, spreadsheet documents, image files, video files, or stored web-pages.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

harmonise writes “OpenOffice 3.1 has been released. According to the release announcement, this update received ‘The biggest single change (half a million lines of code!) and the most visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics.’ See the OpenOffice 3.1 New Features page for a full list of changes.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Advertisers have finally picked up on what we’ve known all along: nerds are the modern day rock stars.

It’s OK to copy music from CDs, for example, and place it in an iPod. Yet, it’s illegal to do the same with a DVD. When it comes to the DVD, there’s not even a question of fair use.How can the DVD and CD be treated so differently? Answer: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects the DVD but not the CD.

The event hasn’t yet started, but just as with the Kindle 2, Amazon’s web monkeys have jumped the gun and posted the Kindle DX product page live a little early. 9, are they serious?

MJackson writes “Europe has rejected plans to allow ISPs to disconnect users suspected of involvement with illegal file-sharing. In its final vote, the European Parliament chose to retain amendment 46 (138) of the new Telecoms Package by a majority of 407 to 57. Amendment 46 states that restrictions to the fundamental rights and freedoms of Internet users can only be put in place after a decision by judicial authorities. However, network neutrality remains unprotected.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes “The ‘hobbits’, dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures’ small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures’ energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. “”It could be that H. floresiensis’ skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,” says palaeontologist Dr Eleanor Weston. “Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.” Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognised in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.