Fizzlefist writes "For the past 2 weeks there has been an uproar on the Sims 2 forums concerning the inclusion of Sony's SecuROM DRM software in the latest expansion pack, Bon Voyage. It seems paid customers have been having problems since day one of release, but EA is only now, 5 weeks later, issuing an official statement on the matter. A lot of what's in the statement is outright fiction with proven reports of issues with disabling of disc burning software, optical disc drives, printers, cameras, system slowdown and even system crashes. Fan responses have been cold to say the least. Interestingly enough, the expansion pack was cracked and up on the internet less than 24 hours after it's release."

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Three years ago, scientists were able to successfully teleport the quantum state of an atom without any physical link. Since first understanding quantum entanglement nearly six years ago, how much closer are we now to human teleportation? It sounds like we're not that much closer. Scientists have been focusing more on transferring the atomic state of one atom to another in a different physical location. However, since the process of transmission destroys the original atom, multiple copies of the atom are not being created. That said, Star Trek style teleportation may not even require complete transmission of the quantum state. Charles Bennett, of IBM Research, believes that in principle, human teleportation would be possible by scanning the bio-molecular structure. He states that the "teleported person would end up slightly different, but not in a biologically important way." However, we are still clearly quite a ways away from even attempting such a feat to be truly concerned about the ramifications yet -- we are made up of approximately 10²⁸ atoms, so the technology to scan and reproduce at such a scale is not even remotely possible yet. So, while theoretically possible, scientists are pessimistic about teleportation's realistic feasibility. For now, it looks like the only teleportation we'll be seeing is on television -- but then again, never underestimate the ingenuity of inventors and entrepreneurs.

Golden Gael writes "The FCC got rid of mandatory line sharing in the US a few years ago, but it's alive and kicking in Canada, and an interesting article at Ars Technica looks at what can happen when there's vibrant broadband competition. 'Wireless Nomad does things a little differently. The company is subscriber-owned, volunteer-run, and open-source friendly. It offers a neutral Internet connection with no bandwidth caps or throttling, and it makes a point of creating wireless access points at the end of each DSL connection that can be used, for free, by the public. Bell Canada this is not.' The ISP has some ambitious plans for the future, including getting involved in WiMAX."

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I have to admit that I never understood the purpose behind Snocap, Shawn Fanning's "second act" after Napster. The idea was that it would help artists sell music... by wrapping it up in DRM. As we pointed out when it launched, any business model based on DRM is doomed from the start. So, just as many bands start rushing to free their music from shackles, it should come as no surprise that Snocap is laying off 60% of its workforce and trying to sell itself. It may find someone out there willing to buy the company, but it's a sucker's bet. The very core of the company's business model is based on limiting what customers can do -- just as bands are figuring out how to provide more value to customers by not limiting them.

Click the pic to read about the man behind Uncov.

The Vatican has published a slew of centuries-old documents about the Knights Templar, a Christian military order that operated in the Middle Ages and remains a source of endless fascination for conspiracy theorists, Holy Grail seekers, occultists, and Dan Brown readers. The documents are collected in a 300 page book published by Scrinium. The cover price is $8,377 and only 300 were printed. Tomorrow is the 700th anniversary of the day that King Philip IV ordered the Order's members in France to be rounded up, charged with heresy, tortured, and burned at the stake. Philip later insisted that Pope Clement V arrest all remaining members of the Order, take their money, kill many of them, and disband the group. From the Associated Press:

The publishing house said the new book includes the "Parchment of Chinon," a 1308 decision by (Pope) Clement (V) to save the Templars and their order. The document was misplaced for centuries in the archives and found again by researchers in 2001.

According to the Vatican archives Web site, the parchment shows that Clement absolved the Templar leaders of the heresy charge, though he did recognize they were guilty of immorality, and he planned to reform the order.

However, pressured by Philip, Clement later reversed his decision and suppressed the order in 1312.

Link to AP article, Link to the Knights Templar entry on Wikipedia

Every time people point out how woefully behind the US is in both broadband penetration and competition, people would point to FCC data suggesting that there's plenty of competition and penetration in broadband. There was just one minor problem. The FCC's numbers were not accurate. That's because the methodology used by the FCC was to simply look at an entire zip code, and if a single house in that zip code was offered broadband access by a company, that entire zip code was judged to have broadband access from that company. In some areas this might be pretty accurate -- but in many others it wasn't accurate at all. For example, where I used to live, in the heart of Silicon Valley, AT&T told me that I was too far from the CO to get DSL access. Yet, according to the FCC, I had plenty of competition for broadband because DSL was available to me. Last year, the GAO explained all this, but the FCC hasn't changed its methodology, despite the GAO slamming it a second time for the inaccurate numbers. Back in May a Senator proposed that the FCC be required to accurately count broadband numbers, and now a House subcommittee has approved a similar plan. That's all good, but at what point does someone point out how ridiculous it is that our lawmakers need to spend their time passing laws to tell the FCC to actually count broadband numbers rather than using clearly misleading and inaccurate data? Shouldn't the FCC want to do that on its own? As for the FCC, perhaps instead of writing editorials for the Wall Street Journal about how competitive US broadband is, maybe they should actually be working on figuring out of that's true.

ThinSkin writes "Meet the fit-PC, a tiny 4.7 x 4.5 x 1.5-inch PC that only draws 5-watts, consuming in a day less power than a traditional PC consumes in one hour. By today's standards, the fit-PC has very little horsepower, which makes it apt for web browsing and light applications; today's games need not apply. Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech reviews the fit-PC and puts it through its paces, noting that performance is not this PC's strength, but rather its small size and price tag of $285."

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andy1307 writes to tell us that according to the Mercury News, Oracle has made an unsolicited bid to buy BEA Systems for about $6.7 billion. BEA confirmed that it rejected the $17 a share bid as too low. "BEA told Phillips that its board of directors believes BEA 'is worth substantially more to Oracle, to others and, importantly, to our shareholders than the price indicated in your letter.' Oracle's aggressive bid may be an attempt to pre-empt an acquisition by others, Finley said. Those named in the past as potential suitors include IBM, the German software company SAP AG and Hewlett-Packard. Trip Chowdhry of Global Equity Research said he expects a counterbid from SAP, which he said needs BEA to survive. 'If they don't get BEA, probably in two years SAP will be on the block to sell itself,' Chowdhry predicted. Oracle needs to keep BEA out of competitors' hands, he said. Chowdhry said the offer currently 'is not right. Probably at $21 the deal will get done.'"

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TorrentSpy and the MPAA have been involved in a legal fight for quite some time. TorrentSpy is basically a search engine for files that are offered for download via BitTorrent. However, because the MPAA views such BitTorrent as a tool for unauthorized use, it's trying to sue the search engine, rather than go after those who are actually responsible for sharing unauthorized content. There was a slightly troublesome ruling earlier this year, where a judge ordered TorrentSpy to spy on its users -- violating TorrentSpy's own privacy policy. Rather than do so, TorrentSpy decided to block access to US users. Now, you would think this would make the MPAA happy. After all, the site they were so worried about was no longer an issue for the entire US market. Instead, the MPAA is back in court claiming that this action is merely another illegal move by the company. Apparently, the MPAA would rather have TorrentSpy keep operating, but spy on its users, than block access. That doesn't make much sense if TorrentSpy is really such a huge problem. Unless, of course, the MPAA doesn't have any real evidence that TorrentSpy is doing anything wrong -- and this is about the only way it hopes to prove its case.

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has up a behind the scenes look at NVIDIA's Santa Clara HQ. In addition to the usual shots of the server farm, they spend several pages talking about the Silicon Failure Analysis Lab which is the secret to NVIDIA's success as a fabless semiconductor company. They also have shots of NVIDIA's thermal analysis lab where they run the GPUs at 40 deg C and 0 deg C, and the Performance analysis labs."

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In response to yesterday's casting news about Chris Pine possibly taking the captain's chair for the new Star Trek movie, apparently Simon Pegg will be playing the role of Scotty. Simon Pegg is known for his role as Sean in Sean of the dead and more recently for his leading role in Hot Fuzz. "Pegg joins Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, John Cho as Sulu and Zachary Quinto as Spock in the film which reportedly, and logically, 'chronicles the early days of the Enterprise crew.' Leonard Nimoy will also put in an appearance, while Eric Bana signed up this week as the movie's villain, Nero."

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Jon writes in to let us know that a small patent holding firm, IP Innovation, has sued Red Hat and Novell over patent infringement concerning a ridiculously broad patent. As the Groklaw report outlines, the suing company is actually a subsidiary of Acacia, which is considered to be one of the more egregious firms in using bad patents to squeeze money out of companies. Groklaw also notes that Acacia has recently hired a bunch of execs from Microsoft, leading to the conspiracy theory that Steve Ballmer's recent predictions of patent lawsuits against Red Hat were more than random speculation. I'm not willing to go that far just yet, but as you can see from Ars Technica's breakdown of the patent earlier this year (when the company sued Apple), it describes very broadly the concept of workspaces in a computer user interface. This is yet another example of the worst of our patent system at work. Companies that offer innovative products getting sued using vague, overly broad patents on obvious ideas that never should have been granted in the first place.

Trey says: "The Netherlands are banning the sale of 'magic mushrooms' after a French woman died from jumping off a building after taking them."

(image from www.fullmoonshop.nl) Calls for a re-evaluation of the drug grew after a 17-year-old French girl jumped from a building after eating magic mushrooms during a school trip to Amsterdam in March.

Other incidents involving the drug have included an Icelandic tourist jumping from a balcony and breaking both legs and a Danish tourist driving his car wildly through a camping ground, narrowly missing sleeping campers.

"It's a shame, the media really blew this up into a big issue," said Chloe Collette, owner of the FullMoon shop, which sells magic mushrooms in Amsterdam.

Link

Russia's culture minister, Alexander Sokolov, announced that he is banning a Bansky-inspired photo of two kissing policemen, and 16 other works, from a Paris exhibition of contemporary Russian art.

[Artist Alexander] Shaburov said that he and fellow artist Viacheslav Mizin had created Kissing Policemen as a homage to the celebrated British graffiti artist Banksy. "We were inspired by Banksy's iconic image of two constables kissing. We wanted to do the same but in Russia," Mr Shaburov said.

The image had nothing to do with gay people, he added. Instead, it was an absurdist fantasy about what might happen if everyone showed mercy and tenderness to each other. "Given the fact the state has banned it, we haven't quite reached this point yet," he noted.

Link (Thanks, Partha!)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Many Banksy stories here

Mark Mauer says: "Josh Olson, who wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for A History of Violence tells a bizarre story in LA Weekly about a friend of his who falls in love with someone over the internet who is not what he claims to be. Yeah, yeah - old story, but this one is seriously twisted, goes for almost two years, results in a woman leaving her husband and deciding to move to another state to be with this imaginary man who is a firefighter/cowboy/poet/9-11 survivor. It's a sad, scary yet funny story where Harlan Ellison of all people comes to the rescue."

(Illustration by Ronald Kurniawan) The strange thing about something like this, about an encounter with a genuine monster, is that our minds tend to default to what’s normal, to what we know. We found ourselves talking about the situation as though Audrey had simply made friends with an eccentric person we didn’t like. Surely, it’s Audrey’s business whether or not she wants to be friends with Janna, isn’t it? Then someone would remember that a potentially dangerous lunatic was in the house with our friend.

I called Harlan. He understands people like no one you’ve ever met. We were at dinner once, and he started chatting with two biker dudes at the table next to us for a couple minutes. He asked one guy, “How long have you played chess?” The guy was stunned. Harlan had deduced from the way the guy carried himself in idle banter that he was a chess player. I’m pretty good at figuring out what makes people tick — you have to be to be a decent writer — but Harlan knows. He thought my plan was pretty solid, but offered one variant on it that was brilliant, and completely out of left field.

Link

The British gaming magazine Edge, which has teamed up with the website Next Generation, offers up a piece looking back at the creation of System Shock 2 . The cult classic storytelling horror-themed FPS has survived as a popular and often-referenced game despite the eight years between now and its release. The piece covers the reasons behind that popularity, as well as the 'horror' of an inexperienced team taking on a dauntingly high-profile task: "The original System Shock was one of the games that made Levine want to move into the videogame industry in the first place. What made it so special? 'The feeling of being in a real place,' he raves. 'The feeling of a mystery, of unraveling it - not in an adventure game way, but in the context of an action game. You arrive and... what happened? That's a really good storytelling mechanism.' Austin Grossman and Doug Church's original idea from Shock was something Irrational expanded in its sequel. 'In Shock 1 you were a specific guy, you had a backstory,' Levine notes. 'With Shock 2, I started you out with the classic 'wake up with amnesia'.'"

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