Another devious, young techno-wiz was placed safely behind bars this past Wednesday after authorities say he deftly “hacked into his school’s secure computer network” by guessing the password (his teacher’s last name). The crime? Changing the desktop background to two dudes kissin’. The punishment? Arrest on felony charges. Read more…
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Eighth Grader Charged With Felony for Changing Teacher’s Desktop
Only a few minutes ago, the entire music industry stood on a stage in a collective display of how rich and out of touch they are. They think you are willing to pay up to double the price of other streaming music services to pay for their streaming music service, because they are crazy. Read more…
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The World’s Most Famous Musicians Just Hosted a Bonkers Press Conference
When a franchise is around for four decades, it can get impossibly unwieldy to try and grasp its lore — and Star Wars canon is no exception. Here’s a guide to the origins of Star Wars Canon, the rise and fall of one of the most prominent Expanded Universes in fiction , and where the saga stands with Disney today. Read more…
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A Brief History Of Star Wars Canon, Old And New
Dave Knott (2917251) writes George R.R. Martin’s “The WInds Of Winter”, the fifth book of his bestselling fantasy saga “A Song Of Ice And Fire” (known to television fans as “Game Of Thrones”) will not be published in 2015. Jane Johnson at HarperCollins has confirmed that it is not in this year’s schedule. “I have no information on likely delivery, ” she said. “These are increasingly complex books and require immense amounts of concentration to write. Fans really ought to appreciate that the length of these monsters is equivalent to two or three novels by other writers.”Instead, readers will have to comfort themselves with a collection, illustrated by Gary Gianni, of three previously anthologised novellas set in the world of Westeros. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” takes place nearly a century before the bloody events of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Out in October, it is a compilation of the first three official prequel novellas to the series, The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight, never before collected. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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George R. R. Martin’s "The Winds of Winter" Wiill Not Be Published In 2015
Linux users around the world are scrambling to update their operating systems, as a new flaw known as GHOST has been shown to have the potential to cause “a lot of collateral damage on the Internet.” Read more…
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New Linux Bug Could Cause "a Lot of Collateral Damage on the Internet"
ageoffri writes: When Star Wars fans learned that George Lucas was making the prequels, most were filled with excitement and anticipation. When Episodes 1-3 were actually released, many found them unsatisfying, and became disillusioned with Lucas’s writing. Now, it appears Disney felt the same way. Though they bought Lucasfilm and began production on Episode 7, they weren’t interested in using the scripts Lucas had already worked on. In an interview, he said, “The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens].” After what happened with the prequels, that may be for the best — but others may worry about Episode 7’s plot being entirely in the hands of Disney and JJ Abrams. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Disney Turned Down George Lucas’s Star Wars Scripts
Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1958 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2015, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2054 . Read more…
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What Could Have Entered the Public Domain in 2015?
Here we go again. Just a few days after a former FBI agent argued that the new iOS 8 encryption would cause somebody to die , a Department of Justice boss upped the ante. At a meeting on October 1, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told a room full off Apple executives that iPhone encryption would cause a child to die. A child! Read more…
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DOJ Ups the Ante, Says iPhone Encryption Will Kill a Child
Dave Knott writes Raymond Almiran Montgomery, original publisher and author of the incredibly popular “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series for children, the 4th bestselling children’s series of all time, has died at the age of 78. In 1975, Montgomery founded a small press and when, in 1977, Ed Packard submitted an innovative book for young readers, “Sugarcane Island”, Montgomery immediately saw it for what it was: a role-playing game in book form. He leapt at the chance to publish it, and launched a series, writing the second book, “Journey Under The Sea”, himself. When Montgomery went through a divorce and sold his stake in the press to his ex-wife, he took the series, renamed as “Choose Your Own Adventure”, to Bantam. The books went on to sell more than 250 million copies across 230 titles in 40 languages. Montgomery’s interests also extended to new technology, adapting the series to the Atari console in 1984. He was also responsible for the Comic Creator software on Apple’s Macintosh computers. Montgomery died on November 9th. The cause of death was not disclosed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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R. A. Montgomery, Creator of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" Books, Dead At 78
countach44 writes that (in the words of the below-linked article) “Chicagoans are costing the city tens of millions of dollars — through good behavior.” The City of Chicago recently installed speed cameras near parks and schools as part of the “Children’s Safety Zone Program, ” claiming a desire to decrease traffic-related incidents in those area. The city originally budgeted (with the help of the company providing the system) to have $90M worth of income from the cameras — of which only $40M is now expected. Furthermore, the city has not presented data on whether or not those areas have become safer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Speed Cameras In Chicago Earn $50M Less Than Expected