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Microsoft's Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or "rented" from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service. That's right -- the media that Microsoft promised would Play For Sure doesn't even play on Microsoft's own device. Buried in footnote 4 of its press release, Microsoft clearly states that "Zune software can import audio files in unprotected WMA, MP3, AAC; photos in JPEG; and videos in WMV, MPEG-4, H.264" -- protected WMA and WMV (not to mention iTunes DRMed AAC) are conspicuously absent. This is a stark example of DRM under the DMCA giving customers a raw deal. Buying DRMed media means you're locked into the limited array of devices that vendors say you can use. You have to rebuy your preexisting DRMed media collection if you want to use it on the Zune. And you'll have to do that over and over again whenever a new, incompatible device with innovative features blows existing players out of the water. Access to MP3s and non-DRMed formats creates the only bridge between these isolated islands of limited devices.

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"With this complement of instruments, hopefully we'll be able to tie the physics down so that we understand how magnetic fields and high-temperature plasmas interact," says John Davis of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US. Mission scientists hope that Solar-B will also help crack the mystery of how the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, or corona, gets heated to millions of degrees Celsius. That is far hotter than the Sun's visible surface, or photosphere, which makes up the lowest layer of its atmosphere and reaches only a few thousand degrees.

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The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers' homes. Home DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and refuse to play discs which are copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region, the companies behind the technology expect. "This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation.

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Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has signed a deal for digital rights management software to protect its confidential documents from unauthorized access. The software, from U.S. vendor Liquid Machines, allows the bank to encrypt documents so it can control access regardless of where the data travels. Document authors can define what users can and cannot do with the information, providing protection against loss, theft or modification.

A Goldman Sachs employee could control who might open, read, forward or print a file irrespective of the user or file's location. For example, an employee could see if someone was attempting to open the document from home. Authorized users are still able to cut, copy or paste data to other applications, with the data remaining protected. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Goldman Sachs is an investor in the privately held company.

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The court also barred Spamhaus from causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be "blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway" and ordered Spamhaus to publish an apology for that states that Linhardt and his company are not spammers, according to a copy of the order. "This ruling confirms e360insight's position that Spamhaus.org is a fanatical, vigilante organization that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for U.S. law," Linhardt wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com on Thursday. But Spamhaus is unfazed by the ruling. In a statement on its Web site, it dismissed the judgment as invalid and charges that the court was "bamboozled by spammers." Spamhaus didn't mount a defense in the case; the ruling was a default judgment in absence of counterarguments. "Default judgments obtained in US county, state or federal courts have no validity in the UK and can not be enforced under the British legal system," Spamhaus said on its Web site. "As spamming is illegal in the UK, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to UK law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place."

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It's being marketed as a device for "compute-intensive" operations, which confirms expectations that Cell would be introduced on the high end, and touted for its number-crunching ability. Each QS20 blade will feature a pair of Cells, each of which is what the STI coalition -- Sony, Toshiba, and IBM -- describes as a "multi-element" processor, rather than "multicore."

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Sony is the principal supplier of blue laser diodes, not only for its own Blu-ray Disc players and PS3 consoles, but also for other BD manufacturers as well, including player makers Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips. Sony also supplies diodes for Blu-ray burners. Two months ago, Taiwan BD burner maker Lite-on IT, which also produces drives under the BenQ brand, voiced its concern in Taiwan's Commercial Times that Sony may have earmarked so many blue laser diodes for its own PS3 that it could not fill orders for other customers.

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* Redefines surveillance so that only programs that catch the substance of a communication need oversight. Any government surveillance that captures, analyzes and stores patterns of communications such as phone records, or e-mail and website addresses, is no longer considered surveillance.
* Expands the section of law that allows the attorney general to authorize spying on foreign embassies, so long as there's no "substantial likelihood" that an American's communication would be captured.
* Repeals the provision of federal law that allows the government unfettered wiretapping and physical searches without warrants or notification for 15 days after a declaration of war. The lack of any congressional restraint on the president's wartime powers arguably puts the president at the height, rather than the ebb, of his powers in any time of war, even an undeclared one.
* Repeals the provision of federal law that limits the government's wartime powers to conduct warrantless wiretapping and physical searches to a period of 15 days after a declaration of war.
* Repeals the provision of federal law that puts a time limit on the government's wartime powers to conduct warrantless wiretapping and physical searches against Americans. Under current law, the president has that power for only 15 days following a declaration of war.
* Allows the attorney general, or anyone he or she designates, to authorize widespread domestic spying, such as monitoring all instant-messaging systems in the country, so long as the government promises to delete anything not terrorism-related.
* Moves all court challenges to the NSA surveillance program to a secretive court in Washington, D.C., comprised of judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Only government lawyers would be allowed in the courtroom.
* Allows the government to get warrants for surveillance programs as a whole, instead of having to describe to a judge the particular persons to be monitored and the methods to be used.

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Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer, confirmed the attorney general is looking into whether pretexting was used. It's unclear exactly how the private investigators used pretexting. Pretexters could call a phone company and falsely represent themselves as a legitimate customer to obtain logs of numbers called and received at home and on cell phones. Although pretexting "was not generally unlawful" at the time of Hewlett-Packard's investigation, the company's outside legal counsel couldn't confirm the tactics used by investigators "complied in all respects with applicable law," the filing said.

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In a move that may allow Nintendo of Japan to take advantage of stumbles by its main rival, the company plans to announce today that it will release its new Wii video-game console in North and South America on Nov. 19, just as the holiday shopping season begins, and that the machine will cost $250 in the United States. Nintendo will start selling its new console on Dec. 2 in Japan, President Satoru Iwata announced today at a news conference in Chiba prefecture, next to Tokyo. Nintendo executives said this week that the company also would announce today that more than 25 new games would be available for its video-game machine this year, a substantial portfolio from several genres that is intended to help the company broaden the appeal of its console. The company plans to ship 4 million of the Wii consoles worldwide this year.

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The borohydride solution releases its hydrogen as it flows over a catalyst made of ruthenium. The hydrogen passes through a membrane and combines with oxygen in the fuel cell, generating electricity and waste water. Theoretically, this could achieve an energy density up to about 2200 watt-hours per litre Gervasio says, compared to 200 watt-hours per litre for a lithium polymer battery.

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Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification ("Covered Implementation"), subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation of the same Covered Specification made or used by you. To clarify,"Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification. "Covered Specifications" are listed below.

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The long-awaited product will be $800 and available in mid-September, the company said. Subscription fees for the TiVo service are separate. The TiVo Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder has a 250-gigabyte hard drive - enough to store about 32 hours of high-definition programming or up to 300 hours of standard programming. It also sports two tuners, which will allow subscribers to record two different shows in HD at the same time while watching a third pre-recorded show.

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In a statement, Hurd said, "I am taking action to ensure that inappropriate investigative techniques will not be employed again. They have no place in HP."

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In addition, GPLv3-based software will be completely off the table for medical devices. Government safety and efficacy testing is rigorous and very specific. A device must be tested in the exact configuration it will operate in, and regulators won't take, "Well, we hope it will be this one" as an answer. More importantly, the lawyers would have a field day with "open" devices. Perhaps most ignored, however, is the effect this policy would have on software where privacy protection is important. For example, the government document creation and management market is a key target for the open-source community. Yet the definition of DRM in the new license would cover key-based access control for tools that create documents as well as music and movies.

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Add to that a revolt by close to one million Facebook members over a controversial new feature added to the site last week, and the inclusion of yet another feature that may prove just as unsettling to a slew of Facebook users. The dust was barely settling on last week's brouhaha about the site's "news feed" feature, which collects any changes to your profile and broadcasts it to your friends every time they log on. Despite the fact that it was information your pals could already track down, it didn't sit well with privacy-minded users. Zuckerberg largely quelled those concerns with a contrite open letter and tighter controls over what is shared with others.

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Nethercomm, a San Diego-area start-up, says it has developed technology to send lightning-fast broadband and TV services via wireless signals through the pipes that deliver the fuel used to heat homes and fire up stoves. Gas pipes serve 62% of U.S. households, says the American Gas Association. Broadband in Gas, or BIG, could give consumers a third high-speed option at low costs and speeds that far surpass today's phone and cable offerings. It also could bring fast Internet to unserved rural areas. But, so far, the idea has been met with both excitement and skepticism.

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The astronauts will enter the station for the first time about 0755 EDT (1155 GMT), where they will be greeted by its crew. The welcome ceremony with the station's three astronauts will not last long, however. The two crews will quickly begin preparations for the first spacewalk - Tuesday's installation of a 16-tonne truss that will support new solar panels. The crews will use the shuttle's robotic arm to hand the truss to the station's arm. NASA says the 11-day mission to boost the power-generating capacity of the ISS entails the most complex work ever undertaken at the nearly eight-year-old orbiting laboratory.

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IBM has announced that the first 'Broadway' CPUs created for the Nintendo Wii are being shipped from the company's East Fishkill, N.Y., fabrication facility to Nintendo, as the company ramps up for the launch of the next-gen console later this year. Under the terms of the agreement, IBM will produce millions of fully tested, Power Architecture-based chips featuring IBM Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology at 90 nanometers (90 billionths of a meter), based on the specifications of the custom design agreement previously agreed upon by the two companies.

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GNOME 2.16's new icon theme follows the artwork guidelines proposed by the Tango project, thus supporting a more consistent graphical user interface experience for free and open source software. By now also following the Freedesktop icon naming specification, the GNOME icon theme now also works for applications written for other popular desktops, such as KDE or XFce.

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Rutgers' low-cost hand rehabilitation system is based on the commercially available Microsoft Xbox video game and Essential Reality P5 gaming glove that detects finger and wrist motions to manipulate on-screen images. The engineers made minor modifications to the equipment and created software that delivers two types of finger flexing exercises needed to help recover hand functions in stroke patients.

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Custom-engineered soundscape designed specifically to enhance performance and immersion in gaming. This headset was developed and optimized for in-game sound frequencies, which makes in-game sounds like footsteps, alerts and gunfire especially clear. You will be able to hear and pinpoint the location of your opponents, often before they hear you.

Full-size headphones gently fit around the ears and reduce background noise, while providing maximum wearing comfort.

Bringing the headset with you has never been easier or safer. The SteelSound 5H v2 can be easily dismantled into 3 separate parts, which makes transportation a breeze. The pieces will easily fit into a bag or a carrying case.

SteelSound 5H v2 also features a pull-out microphone system. The retractable microphone is practically invisible when not in use. The microphone cord is covered in high quality transparent plastic to ensure long-lasting durability.

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The fastest iMac ever, the 24-inch iMac provides professional performance along with the convenience of an all-in-one design. Like its 17-inch and 20-inch siblings, it features the new 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor with speeds ranging from 1.83GHz to 2.33GHz. The new processor delivers up to 50% more performance than the previous 20-inch iMac. It also doubles the amount of L2 cache, the twin cores sharing 4MB between them. The result? Turbocharged performance, making it easier - and more fun - than ever to work with digital photos, movies, music, and the web.

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But IPv6 is far from being universally used. So, Vista will also support the current IPv4. The side effect, according to Mockapetris, is that a Vista PC will make two DNS requests, one for each IP version, instead of just one. "It is going to try a DNS lookup for the IPv6 address and then a DNS lookup for the IPv4 address," Mockapetris said. "It just uses more DNS, and until we increase the supply, things are going to go slower."

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And unlike GPS, it would also work beyond Earth orbit, Pines says: "This would be for anywhere in the solar system: low-Earth orbit, highly elliptical orbits, interplanetary, or even beyond our solar system." For interplanetary space probes, X-ray navigation would be at least an order of magnitude more accurate than current techniques which rely on tracking from Earth, he says. Tests of prototype sensors are in progress at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Goldsten says. The results will be presented for review in September, when DARPA will decide whether to continue the development of XNAV. The second phase of the project could begin as early as November 2006 and would see an X-ray sensor built for testing in 2009 aboard the International Space Station.

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Malicious hackers typically embed scripts on Web sites and then use social engineering techniques to trick unsuspecting visitors into downloading Trojans, bots, spyware programs and other harmful forms of malware. With BrowserShield, Wang argues, many such attacks could be blocked. BrowserShield can be used as a framework that rewrites HTML pages to deny any attempt at executing harmful code on browsers. "We basically intercept the Web page, inject our logic and transform the page that is eventually rendered on the browser," Wang said. "We're inserting our layer of code at run-time to make the Web page safe for the end user."

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A release candidate is fundamentally different from a beta. With the exception of a very short list of issues we're aware of and working on, we think the product is done. We're looking to enthusiasts, developers, and IT Pros to tell us if this build has any critical, must-fix before we ship issues. The real world is much richer than our test environment and I appreciate the feedback that has helped us make the product better.