feed on feeds - 2013/01/12 - items 0 to 15

An anonymous reader writes "Amazon just debuted a new service called Autorip, which grants you MP3 copies of music when you purchase the CD version. This is a technology people have been trying to introduce since 1999, but only recently have the record labels — and the courts — seen fit to allow it. 'Robertson's first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called "Beam-It" that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. ... Licensed services like iTunes were still years in the future, largely because labels were skittish about selling music online. But Robertson believed he didn't need a license because the service was permitted by copyright's fair use doctrine. If a user can rip his legally purchased CD to his computer, why can't he also store a copy of it online? ... the labels simply weren't interested in Robertson's vision of convenient and flexible music lockers. So MP3.com was driven into bankruptcy, and the "buy a CD, get an MP3" concept fell by the wayside.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Polis i Azerbajdzjan grep på lördagen ett antal oppositionella aktivister som i huvudstaden Baku demonstrerat mot våld inom militären.

Okända angripare kastade bensinbomber mot tält som demonstranter satt upp kring det egyptiska presidentpalatset i Kairo.

Jan Mosander minns natten i livbåten.

Militär källa: Städar upp islamisternas sista motståndsfickor.

Qedward writes "The Norwegian Ministry of Finance seems to be taking a bit of stick at the moment. It wants all the existing cash registers in the country thrown out and replaced with new ones. Not surprisingly, this massive upgrade is not popular. But it is apparently being pushed through in an attempt to prevent cash registers' figures being massaged downwards in use so as to reduce tax. The Norwegian association of tax auditors said: 'The source code must be opened.' 'Without source code it is not possible to determine whether or "hidden" functionality exists or not. Just knowing that the tax authorities have access to the source code of the application, will reduce the effort to implement hidden functionality in the software.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Simple base module to implement almost every RESTful API with just a few lines of configuration

Never install pure Perl modules again

Perl API for manipulating with nfdump files

Frankrike är en tickande bomb

I heard an unconfirmed report last night that Aaron Swartz had committed suicide — and I hoped it was a prank. I couldn’t find anything about it on the web. I went to bed thinking that somebody somewhere was being a jerk and that Aaron was well. But it was no prank, and he wasn’t well.

Though Aaron and I have been in different circles for the past few years, he was a huge help to me in the early days of NetNewsWire. He hosted the beta testers mailing list at notabug.com (love the domain name). He wrote the code that NetNewsWire uses to show differences between two versions of the same post. (If you look inside the Mac package, you’ll find htmldiff.py inside the Resources folder.)

But all that was little stuff, though a big help to me, and we haven’t talked in a while.

He’d gone on to do cool things — and make some mistakes, and get in trouble for them. But I knew he was extraordinary, and I expected him to grow up to become an American hero. I was happy to watch that happen.

Now I won’t get to. This world is poorer.

My condolences to all his family and friends.

***

Here’s Cory Doctorow writing about his friend Aaron. And Lawrence Lessig. And Mark Bernstein.

The NSNorth conference sounds good. I can’t make it — but I wish I could. Our man Gus is speaking.