bblboy54 - Slashdot User

Comment Not really $179 (Score 1) 546

by bblboy54 on Tuesday September 23, 2008 @04:17PM (#25126515) Attached to: Google Unveils First Android Phone

I just ordered mine and they charged me $299 for the phone because I am currently still in a contract. Why bother telling us about the $179 price since they push new phones on you when your contract is up in order to keep you in a contract. If only a very small percentage of your user base is not locked in a contract then its some pretty shady trickery to shove the $179 price down our throats. At least if I pay $299 don't make me still enter an additional 2 year contract. There are various places on the net reporting this, including Android's Forums.

RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio 458

Posted by Zonk on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:22AM from the isn't-that-called-stealing dept.

ISurfTooMuch writes "With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"

Does the RIAA Fear Counterclaims? 245

Posted by kdawson on Sunday November 19, 2006 @05:58PM from the deploy-driftnets dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes, "The RIAA seems to have a fear of counterclaims. In Elektra v. Schwartz, a case against a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, the RIAA is protesting on technical grounds Ms. Schwartz's inclusion of a counterclaim against them for attorneys fees. This counterclaim includes as an exhibit the ACLU, EFF, Public Citizen brief in Capitol v. Foster, which decried the RIAA's tactics as a 'driftnet.' In prior email correspondence between the lawyers Ms. Schwartz's attorney had offered to withdraw the counterclaim if the RIAA's lawyer could show him legal authority that its assertion was impermissible, saying 'I wouldn't want to get into motion practice over a mere formality.' The RIAA lawyer's response was 'I will let you know.'"

Swimsuit Design Uses Supercomputing 253

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday July 09, 2006 @09:35PM from the go-with-the-flow dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "These days, most competitive swimmers wear some type of body suit to reduce high skin-friction drag from water. And makers of swimwear are already busy working on new models for the Olympics 2008. According to Textile & Apparel, Speedo is even using a supercomputer to refine its designs. Its engineers run Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program on an SGI Altix system."

IL School District to Monitor Student Blogs 438

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday May 25, 2006 @07:48PM from the teaching-grammar-and-ethics dept.

tinkertim writes "According to a Yahoo article, a school district in Libertyville, IL will be holding students accountable for illegal actions discussed in their MySpace blogs even if such actions in no way involved the school or another student. A spokesperson for the school district was quoted as saying: 'The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,' he said. 'It is called the World Wide Web.' Supposedly, no direct monitoring or snooping will be done unless the school receives a report from a concerned parent, community member or other student."

Windows Media Player 11 and Urge 488

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday May 21, 2006 @11:15PM from the toggling-the-new-toys dept.

j0e_average writes "The Washington Post is running a review of Microsoft's next version of Media Player, and its integration with MTV's new music service Urge. According to reviewer, Rob Pegoraro, 'Not only does this new, Windows XP-only software promote Urge to the exclusion of other retailers, you can't shop at this store-- or even just play your Urge downloads -- in any earlier version of Windows Media Player.' The Microsoft/Urge subscription model contains a new twist as well: 'Urge also lets you rent songs: $9.95 a month (or $99 a year) lets you download all the tracks you want to a computer, while $14.95 ($149 a year) lets you transfer those downloads to most newer Windows Media-compatible players. These rented songs can't be burned to CD and go silent if you stop paying the fees.'"

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