File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, according to a bill that President Bush signed into law on Wednesday.

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, approved by the House of Representatives last Tuesday, represents the entertainment industry’s latest attempt to thwart rampant piracy on file-swapping networks. Movies such as “Star Wars: Episode II,” “Tomb Raider” and “The Hulk,” have been spotted online before their theatrical releases.

The law had drawn some controversy because it broadly says that anyone who has even one copy of an unreleased film, software program or music file in a shared folder could be subjected to prison terms and fines of up to three years. Penalties would apply regardless of whether that file was downloaded or not.

In a statement, Motion Picture Association of America president Dan Glickman said he wanted to “thank the congressional sponsors of this legislation for their strong advocacy for intellectual property rights.”

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act also includes sections criminalizing the use of camcorders to record a movie in a theater, and authorizing the use of technologies that can delete offensive content from a film.

Source: News.com

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates slammed the federal government’s strict limits on temporary visas for technology workers, saying that if he had his way, the system would be scrapped entirely.

“The theory behind the H-1B (visa)–that too many smart people are coming–that’s what’s questionable,” Gates said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Library of Congress. “It’s very dangerous. You can get this idea that the world is very scary; let’s cut back on travel…let’s cut back on visas.”

Federal quotas on H-1B visas, capped at 65,000 last year, have long been a sore spot for Microsoft and other technology companies. But, Gates said, the increased caliber of research institutions in China and India means that curbs on immigration and guest-workers will pose a greater threat to America’s competitiveness than ever before.

Gates’ comments verged on sarcastic. He said that “it’s almost an issue of a centrally-controlled economy versus” and then trailed off. “I’d certainly get rid of the H-1B visa caps,” he added when asked what he would do if he could write U.S. laws. “That’s one of the easiest decisions.”

Source: News.com

NASA has just released Java PathFinder, a Java Virtual Machine that uses states to check all the possible ways a Java program can be executed, finding possible errors (NPEs or deadlocks, for example) in your code.

It then reports the entire execution path that leads to a defect. It’s especially suited to find hard-to-test concurrency defects in multithreaded programs.

Currently, the software is limited to check for thread locks and uncaught exceptions, but it can be extended to check for other things, like race conditions. However, there is no support currently for java.awt, java.net and some of java.io.

Source: TheServerSide.com

A federal magistrate has ruled that two North Carolina universities do not have to reveal the identities of two students accused to sharing copyrighted music on the Internet.

The music industry trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, filed subpoenas in November 2003 asking for help identifying a North Carolina State University student who used the name “CadillacMan” and a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student who used the name “hulk.” The students allegedly file-swapped songs using the universities’ computer systems.

An attorney representing “Jane Doe,” the University of North Carolina student, said he was not concerned about allegations of music piracy but whether identifying her would violate privacy rights.

Source: AP

Apple today unveiled the fastest, most powerful Power Mac(R) G5 desktop line ever, featuring dual 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors running up to 2.7 GHz and including Mac OS(R) X version 10.4 “Tiger”.

The new Power Mac G5 line delivers higher performance graphics options with more memory and built-in support for Apple’s 30-inch Cinema HD Display on the 2.7 GHz model. The new line also includes larger hard drives, a faster 16X SuperDrive(TM) with double-layer support and 512MB of memory across the line.

Powered by dual 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors, the Power Mac G5 provides a 128-bit memory architecture, delivers expansion of up to 8GB of fast 400 MHz DDR SDRAM and supports graphics cards with up to 256MB of video memory. The top model features two 2.7 GHz processors, each with an independent 1.35 GHz front-side bus for an amazing bandwidth of up to 21.6 GBps.

All new Power Mac G5 models come standard with dual-display support with either the ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card with 128MB of video memory or the ATI Radeon 9650 with 256MB of video memory. The new Power Mac G5 line gives users new graphics options to drive Apple’s gorgeous 30-inch Cinema HD Display. The dual processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5 features built-in support to drive Apple’s breakthrough 30-inch Cinema HD Display right out of the box. Available as a build-to-order option on every model, the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL high-performance graphics card can drive up to two 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays.

The new dual processor Power Mac G5 models will be available this week through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. The new dual Power Mac G5 models complement the existing 1.8 GHz single processor Power Mac G5, providing customers with an affordable entry-level system priced at just $1,499 (US).

The Power Mac G5, with a suggested retail price of $1,999 (US), includes: Dual 2.0 GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5, 512MB 400 MHz DDR SDRAM (4GB maximum), 160GB Serial ATA 7200 rpm hard drive; AGP 8X Pro graphics slot, ATI Radeon 9600 with 128MB DDR SDRAM, 3 PCI slots (64-bit 33MHz) and 16X SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+/-R/CD-RW).

The Power Mac G5, with a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US), includes: Dual 2.3 GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5, 512MB 400 MHz DDR SDRAM (8GB maximum), 250GB Serial ATA 7200 rpm hard drive, AGP 8X Pro graphics slot, ATI Radeon 9600 with 128MB DDR SDRAM, 3 PCI-X slots (one 64-bit 133 MHz, two 64-bit 100 MHz) and 16X SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+/-R/CD-RW).

The Power Mac G5, with a suggested retail price of $2,999 (US), includes: Dual 2.7 GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5, 512MB 400 MHz DDR SDRAM (8GB maximum), 250GB Serial ATA 7200 rpm hard drive, AGP 8X Pro graphics slot, ATI Radeon 9650 with 256MB DDR SDRAM and support for one 30-inch Apple, Cinema HD Display, 3 PCI-X slots (one 64-bit 133 MHz, two 64-bit 100 MHz) and 16X SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+/-R/CD-RW).

The next version of Windows will include a new document format, code-named “Metro,” to print and share documents, Microsoft said Monday. Metro appears to rival Adobe Systems’s PostScript and PDF (portable document format) technologies.

Metro was demonstrated during Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates’ keynote at the start of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) on Monday in Seattle.

The format, based on XML (extensible markup language), will be licensed royalty free and users will be able to open Metro files without a special client. In the demonstration, a Metro file was opened and printed from Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s Web browser.

Printers and printer drivers can include support for Metro and deliver better and faster printing results than with today’s printing technology, Microsoft said. On stage, a Xerox Corp. printer with Metro built in was used to print a sample slide.

Source: ComputerWorld

Yahoo launched a beta release of its personal search service on Tuesday with a focus on letting users save and share their favorite Web pages.

Called My Web, the new service is an update to Yahoo’s earlier effort in personalized search.

Last year, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company began testing a service named My Yahoo Search, which tackled the ability to store and retrieve past searches and Web pages.

The latest release adds the ability to save the full text of Web pages in a personal archive, search across that archive and share the saved pages through e-mail, Yahoo Messenger and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, said Tim Mayer, director of product management for search at Yahoo Inc.

Source: eWeek

Google is floating a trial balloon of a service that pairs advertisements with blog feeds.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based search company is testing a new variation of its AdSense program for publishers that allows sites to display text or image ads related to their content and get paid by the click.

This week, Google spawned a version of AdSense that allows publishers to send a text or banner advertisement alongside syndicated content using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Atom, Google’s adopted format.

Source: News.com

An unpatched flaw in some versions of the Netscape browser could let an attacker into vulnerable systems, security company Secunia has warned.

The vulnerability is “highly critical,” according to an advisory released by the Danish company late Tuesday. Version 6.2.3 and 7.2 of Netscape are affected and other versions may also be susceptible, the company said.

The flaw could allow a hacker to launch a buffer overflow attack, which could crash the browser or enable the attacker to execute code on the compromised system. A patch has not been created, according to Secunia.

Netscape representatives did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Secunia’s advice for dealing with the issue is to “use another product.”

Source: News.com