Have you ever wondered why you can't download movies and write them to DVDs, the way you can buy songs from iTunes and make CDs from them? The reason why you can't legally burn commercial DVDs is that movie studios, electronics makers and computer makers agreed not to allow it. That has changed this afternoon.

For years, the trade group that administers that agreement, the DVD Copy Control Association, has been talking about amending their deal to allow DVD burning at home. These negotiations they have proved as complex as amending the Constitution, as various groups jockey for advantage. The group announced this change more than a year ago, and it's taken more than a year to get to final approval. A spokesman for the group said the amendment was approved last night.

It will take a while for consumers to see the effect of this change. The first step will likely be services that burn DVDs on demand from store kiosks or from central facilities, such as at Amazon.com. This will enable people to buy lesser known titles from movie and television studios that aren't worth traditional distribution.

As for burning at home, services like Movielink, which was recently bought by Blockbuster, are expected to start selling movies that can be downloaded to DVDs.

As with every intersection between technology and Hollywood, there are more than a few catches. First of all, movies will have to be burned onto special DVDs, which will likely cost more than regular writable DVDs. That is because the disks will be preprinted with codes meant to prevent copying. And there is a royalty payment on the disks that will go to a group, led by Sonic, that helped develop the technology.

Moreover, you can't use it to back up your existing DVDs. Nor can you watch the downloaded version on your computer or on your portable video player. So, like other forms of legal online movie distribution, it's a safe bet that downloading to DVDs will take off slowly. Still every last bit of legal craziness that can be removed will make it easier for people to design the sort of services that people might eventually want to use.

said by shrinkman :

statistics show that 20% of us are crazy... so if you look around and everyone around is normal, then YOUR IT!

said by David :

*looks around*



That means me!!

said by shrinkman :

statistics show that 20% of us are crazy... so if you look around and everyone around is normal, then YOUR IT!

said by shrinkman :

statistics show that 20% of us are crazy... so if you look around and everyone around is normal, then YOUR IT!

said by Jon :



Do you save those as txt file all week just waiting for this thread?

A U.S. Senate subcommittee will hold a hearing next week to look at Google Inc's $3.1 billion acquisition of Web advertising supplier Doubleclick Inc., the panel announced Thursday.

Google's planned purchase of Doubleclick has raised antitrust concerns in the United States, where the Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing the deal. The transaction is also being reviewed by the European Union and Australian authorities.

Testifying for Google will be David Drummond, the company's senior vice president and chief legal officer, a Google spokesman said.

Microsoft and other Google rivals, such as AT&T Inc , have urged antitrust officials to closely examine the deal, saying it could give Google too much control over online advertising.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on antitrust competition policy and consumer rights is scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday, Sept. 27, to look at the deal's impact on competition and privacy.

said by Amadeus :

Sure is you don't here all the cans of beer being opened

Symphony is certain not the only alternative to Microsoft Office, nor even the only free one. OpenOffice.org has its own version; in fact, OpenOffice.org 2.3, featuring big changes to the charting engine and more, just came out yesterday. Symphony is actually based on an earlier version, OpenOffice 1.2, but with ibm additions, mostly focusing on accessibility, compatibility, and user experience. ibm said it would both be contributing code (specifically the accessibility parts) to OpenOffice.org, and using more code from the organization in the future.

said by ramsfansam :

Last Friday, the wife had an 'episode', took my daughter and ran off.
I found out where they were Saturday, and they are safe...and my daughter is now staying at my son & daughter-in-laws home until my wife figures some things out.
Of course, just like so many others who suffer from emotional/mental problems....that may take a very long time.

On February 1st, 2008 Sony will close the ImageStation® online photo service. The closure will happen in phases and most site features such as upload, sharing and shopping will be disabled on November 12th 2007.

We sincerely appreciate your being a Premium ImageStation member and we want to help you find a new home for your images so we've worked with Shutterfly, the award winning photo service-together we've made it easy to transfer your photos to Shutterfly so you can take advantage of their online storage, sharing and award-winning prints and gifts. If Shutterfly isn't for you, that's OK-we've put together several ways to reunite you with your images. Just click on the link below to review all your options.

Mozilla has pushed out a new incremental upgrade to Firefox which addresses a serious vulnerability in the way the browser works with QuickTime media files.

So far the flaw is only reproducible on Windows machines and it's worth noting that the popular NoScript add-on provides protection against this and other, similar attacks.

The flaw is technically in Quicktime and affects the Internet Explorer as well, though Petkov says on his blog that IE's security policies make the flaw less critical.

You can grab the new Firefox 2.0.0.7 (which contains this patch and nothing else new) from Mozilla.

said by astokes :

I like turtles.