Sasha writes "The Australian designed robotic clarinet beat out Dutch and Finnish entries this year at the robotic orchestra competition. The researchers don't expect to replace human musicians, but are instead interested in what makes the difference between playing music well and playing music poorly. There is also a video available of the performance."

David W. White writes "Wired mag's Danger Room carried an article today that highlighted how desperate the US Military's DARPA has become in its attempts to bring in additional brain power. The tactics include filmed testimonials, folders and even playing cards all screaming join DARPA! Where are all the Einsteins who want to be on the cutting edge for the Government?"

stoolpigeon writes "Hackerteen Volume 1: Internet Blackout is an interesting new project, a graphic novel being published by O'Reilly. What makes it interesting is not just that this is a rather new direction for O'Reilly but that this is, to my knowledge, a rather unique publication in that it seeks to educate teenage youth about an array of issues ranging from privacy, free software, security and the impact of politics on personal freedom as it relates to the use of technology. Making topics like that exciting, and understandable to a young person may sound like a tall order, and I think it is." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton has written in with a tale of media rippers and corporate giants "In 2001 RealNetworks sued and blocked Streambox from distributing the Ripper, a program that let users rip and save RealAudio and RealVideo streams even if the stream contained a proprietary "do not copy" flag. Then one year ago this month, RealNetworks caused a stir by releasing a beta of RealPlayer 11 that similarly let the user record and save streams from sites like YouTube and Pandora. YouTube rippers and the like had existed before, but this was the first time a major company had included a stream ripper in its media player. And while RealPlayer 11 didn't explicitly ignore any copy protection flags, the release still provoked legal rumblings: in a Variety article by Scott Kirsner, an anonymous network exec said accused RealNetworks of 'aiding and abetting piracy' and said that they would 'more likely than not' take action against RealNetworks. But now that the feature has stayed in RealPlayer for a year, its real impact will be not on piracy but on the perceived legitimacy of ripping programs. The corporate behemoth, raked over the coals in the past for privacy violations and nuisance-ware, strikes a blow for free-culture hackers." The rest of Bennett's essay is available by following that magical link right below these words.

litui writes "Michael Geist assesses the problems with new copyright legislation presented today. In short, it looks like unless it's heavily contested, Canadians are in for a worse piece of law than the DMCA." CBC News' story quotes one critic, Scott Brison, who warns that enforcing the anti-circumvention clauses of this legislation would turn Canada into a police state — which, considering the pervasive eavesdropping it would take to make sure that people aren't enjoying their rights to fair use (or "fair dealing") of hardware or media, seems like a fair prediction.

A four-month-long drug trial that cost over $1 million has been aborted after it was found that jurors were playing the puzzle game sudoku while evidence was being given. Sydney District Court Judge Peter Zahra stopped the trial after the jury foreperson told him that four to five jurors were playing up to half the time the trial had been going on. Everyone knows that if you get bored on a jury you should watch a movie on your iPod, take a nap or work on your manifesto.

Massively is reporting that there may be an unintended (according to FunCom) bug in the new MMO Age of Conan that would cause female characters to do significantly less damage over time. It seems that as the initial "shiny factor" wears off for the new darling MMO, the bugs and complaints just continue to pile up resulting in a fair bit of buyer's remorse. "In the meantime, some ingenious players have provided fixes along the lines of the 'unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed' trick. Poster Dnotice even provides evidence that variation in listed attack speed may be down to the gender of the first character you log in when starting AoC, and not the gender of the character you may be playing at the time. Curiouser and curiouser: although the listed speed can be altered by changing the first character's gender, the actual animation speed apparently can't."

WoW Insider is reporting that Blizzard has announced the next season of Arena PvP combat, set to launch on June 24th. "As usual, teams will be allowed to keep any accumulated points, but all team and personal ratings will reset to 1500, and all titles from Season 2 will be removed. Also, the top rated teams from Season 3 will receive their titles, and for the very top, Armored Netherdrakes. It is also worth noting that this season will herald new Arena ratings requirements on most Season 4 gear, including many of the new honor rewards. In addition, Season 3's shoulder and weapon Arena rating requirements will drop slightly, all season 3 gear will cost fewer arena points, and the Season 2 gear will be purchasable for Honor."

In January we discussed a blog entry revealing that Apple had "crippled" its DTrace port. As the author notes in a followup post, to say that DTrace had been "crippled" was at least overstated: "Unfortunately, most reactions seized on a headline paraphrasing a line of the post — albeit with the critical negation omitted." In an updated entry, the poster notes that Apple has made good (so we have too): "One issue was that timer based probes wouldn't fire if certain applications were actively executing (e.g. iTunes). This was evident both by counting periodic probe firings, and by the absence of certain applications when profiling. The good news is that Apple has (quietly) fixed the problem in Mac OS X 10.5.3."

Kotaku has the merest hint of a rumor about a possible achievement system coming with Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. "You know what World of Warcraft players really need? Another reason not to get up out of their chair, and Blizzard might be giving that to them in the form of in-game achievements in the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. According to DeathKnight.info, players in the Wrath of the Lich King alpha can type /achievement to bring up a screen like the one above, which shows various achievements that can be performed for points, which will more than likely then go towards buying gear and such."

World of Warcraft Community Forums. Class, Technical, Professions, Mods and more ... Maticus Moderator: Warrior, Raids & Battlegrounds Forums Registered: June 2007

World of Warcraft Community Forums. Class, Technical, Professions, Mods and more

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