While the idea behind a vacation is to "get away from it all", some people use the opportunity of peace and quiet to catch up on some important business. Unfortunately, in the process of catching up on important business, the businessmen ruined the beach experience for the natives and true vacationers. And so, to keep the vacation experience vacation-y, Palm Island is banning all mobile devices within a half-mile of the beach. Resort owner Rob Barret is a full supporter of this legislation, and backed up the ban. "There is nothing worse than lying back in your double hammock, sipping on your strawberry daiquiri and hearing the Motorola jingle in the background. (Vacationers should) switch off their mobiles and enjoy the sound of the lapping waves."

While California certainly wouldn't be the first state to enact such legislature, it would be the first to take it to such a degree. If a proposed bill passes through California legislature, any teenager (under 18) found driving with a cell phone, or any mobile device, for that matter (PDA, laptop, etc.) will be fined. California gets $20 richer the first time a teenager is caught text-messaging on the road and $50 for every subsequent offense. There is no word as to whether or not this ban would extend to all California motorists, and not just the junior ones.

Iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com), was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).

After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops.

Well, it looks like another pirate has been convicted and thrown in jail. However, Scott McCausland, ex-administrator of the Elite Torrents Bit Torrent tracker, has a rather peculiar sentence to serve. After pleading guilty to 'conspiracy to commit copyright infringement' and 'criminal copyright infringement', the court gave him five months in jail and five months house arrest. Under the condition that he follows his parole officer's orders, of course. Those orders were simple: McCausland must let the FBI watch his every online move. In order for that to happen, McCausland must dump Linux for Windows in order for that to happen. McCausland claims that this is cruel and unusual punishment, as it means he will have to buy expensive software while he is unemployed.

As some of you know, the source of the recent leaked PS3 price drops is the message board CheapAssGamer (CAG). Unfortunately, Circuit City doesn't like the idea of their fliers getting leaked before their due time. And so, they are giving CheapAssGamer a subpoena to investigate these shenanigans. They want the full identification and IP address of a certain CAG member known as "Speedy1961". CheapAssGamer's CEO David "CheapyD" Adams declined to give any of this information to Circuit City, and will be hiring a legal consult to "deal with the situation".

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, is a pioneer in video game legislature. He recently proposed a bill to ban the selling of M rated games (games meant for people 17 or older, based on the ESRB rating system) to minors (anyone under the age of 18). However, a court recently ruled that such a ban would inhibit free speech, and would hence be unconstitutional. Schwarzenegger vowed to appeal this decision.

I signed this important measure to ensure that parents are involved in determining which video games are appropriate for their children," he said in a statement. "Many of these games are made for adults, and choosing games that are appropriate for kids should be a decision made by their parents.

Games Workshop, the maker of several famous miniature-based games such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Lord Of The Rings, has just forbid fans to make movies based on it's games. This comes as very unfortunate news to the makers of Damnatus, who have been working since 2003 to make a spectacular Warhammer 40,000 based film. Games Workshop has revised it's IP policy to show it's new stance on fan-made films. In the case of Damnatus, it is not clear if Games Workshop can get away with stopping the film, considering that the makers of Damnatus already got approval from Games Workshop. This move is surprising, considering that the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises both benefit from such classic user generated content as "Space Balls".

In a campaign to eliminate child pornography on the internet, the Swedish Police have been working with Swedish ISP's to find and block the sites that host child pornography. Swedish patrons of The Pirate Bay got a nasty surprise one day when they tried to access The Pirate Bay and got nothing more than an error message. Infuriated webmasters of the infamous website have tried to get the Swedish Police to unblock them. The Swedish standpoint is simple. The Pirate Bay can either eliminate all child pornography from their website by Tuesday, or accept that nobody using a Swedish ISP can access The Pirate Bay.

Or, to be specific, the EC is investigating why movie studios chose to back either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. This investigation is to ensure that there are no monopolies or any other shenanigans going on with either format.

HD-DVD is mainly being promoted by Toshiba, with help from movie studios Universal, Warner and Paramount. The last two also support Blu-Ray. Sony and 20th Century Fox only release HD content via Blu-Ray, and several other studios support Blu-Ray. There is no clear winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war at this point.

Two people fell in love with each other over one of the most addictive MMORPGs ever, World of Warcraft. The couple spent long hours on the phone together, played through countless quests as a couple, and even talked about marriage. There were just two problems with this couple. The groom is 17, and the bride is 31. The two made plans to meet, and the bride flew over from Australia to North Carolina to pick up her dream date on June 12th. Unfortunately for her, anyone under the age of 18 is a minor in the state of North Carolina. After the groom's parents reported him as missing, the police apprehended the couple as they were trying to hitch a ride to Australia on June 26th. The groom is home, almost certainly grounded. However, the bride faired much worse. On July 11th, she goes on trial for the attempted abduction of a minor. If the bride is found guilty, she will get two years behind bars in an American jail. Australian customs is working hard to get the bride set free.

Back in February, a blogger who went by the alias "DigDuality" got fed up with Microsoft's accusations of the open source community. And so, from work, he started a website that challenged Microsoft to find any IP violations *nix was making. May came, May went, and the website became about as active as an exhausted gold mine. Now, a few days into July, "DigDuality" has returned to his blog. He claims that Microsoft traced the website to DD's company, and that Microsoft threatened his company. The company, according to DD, then proceeded to give DD a choice: he could either keep the website running, or keep his job. DD preferred the latter, and so, the website has remained inactive for quite some time. DD refused to name the company that told DD to hold his tongue.

The famous MP3 online store (or rather infamous for not paying the artists) has been shut down by the Russian government. Pressure from the US, RIAA, and refusal to enter the World Trade Organization lead to the site's demise.

Before the shutdown, AllOfMP3.com was a direct competitor to iTunes due to its pay-by-size versus Apple's pay-by-track system. Tracks that were downloaded there were also devoid of all DRM and the user could even choose which bitrate to download.

The New York State Senate has recently been working to make New York minor gamers suffer. Republican bill S.5888 aimed to start an "Advisory Council on Interactive Media and Youth Violence", which basically is a checks-and-balances system on the ESRB. It shot through the legal process with the speed and grace of a greased pig through a high school.

Said minors in New York have a new piece of legislation to worry about: Democrat-sponsored bill A08696. If it gets ratified within 120 days, then anyone who sells/rents "any game which contains 'depraved violence' or 'indecent images'." will have to deal with a class E felony charge.

The conflict continues between software giant Microsoft and the open source community. Lawyers for Microsoft say the Linux kernel violates 42 patents, the Linux GUI another 65 while Open Office infringes upon 68 of its patents. Email programs as well as other various software rounds out a grand total of 235. Microsoft has yet to seek royalties from these alleged infractions and would face tough opposition from the open source community.

In a figurative triple play, the Delaware Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT) is suing three technology giants for large sums of money. They are claiming that they own patents to Lucent technologies, and the right to sue for past infringements. The MPT is suing over patents regarding an "adaptive non-linear quantizer", "optimized scanning of transform coefficients in video coding", and "video coding with optimized low complexity variable length codes". The MPT wants a lot of money to cover damages, costs, and expenses.

We reported 8 days ago that Google is going to buy Doubleclick for $3.1 billion USD. However, this move is causing a lot of worry. The FTC is going to investigate whether this move is really legal. The reason is quite simple: search engines are gaining too much power. And while we're not looking at anything like "Skynet" from the Terminator movies, we may be looking at Google being able to gain too much information about people, what they do, and how they spend their money and free time. Doubleclick claims that their methods of collecting information are non-invasive, and would not let Google (or themselves) be able to track down users and/or truly invade their privacy.

Most people know that Vonage is one of the pioneer Voice over Internet Protocol services, that allows people to use the telephone, running off only the internet. Unfortunately, to make this service happen, Vonage has been using patents owned by Verizon. And Verizon flagged them for this. Verizon wants Vonage to not be able to register any new customers until all patent issues are resolved. And as of the time this case went to court (April 6, 2007), Vonage had no such plans to do so. At this point Vonage has three choices. They can either spend an enormous amount of money re-doing their network so it's all their own, pay Verizon a premium for their technology, or to shut down completely.

We can all agree that the tragic incident that happened at Virginia Tech was horrible. However, now is the time that we have to figure out what caused someone to kill this many peers, and how we can prevent this in the future. Unfortunately, as we've seen in the techPowerUp! Forums, this is something that people do not exactly agree on. Professional lawyers, as well as the highly acclaimed Dr. Phil McGraw, are quick to blame violent video games for the killer's maniacally depressed rampage. Currently, there is no evidence that the killer even had access to a video game console, let alone play violent video games. A much more likely possibility is the way the killer reacted to his anti-depressant medications. Instead of the anti-depressants calming the killer down, like they were supposed to, they made him violent and erratic. And so, this instability could easily have caused him to snap when the killer's girlfriend dumped him.

Toshiba is attempting to sue 17 companies, mostly Hong Kong and China based, due to alleged infringement regarding some of Toshiba's DVD patents. The company is demanding monetary damages from companies including Daewoo Electronics America, Dongguan GVG and Star Light Electronics claiming that they are illegally selling DVD products in the USA because they do not have any licensing agreements with Toshiba. "The infringement of Toshiba's patents by these companies has damaged Toshiba's DVD-related business, and also caused damage to the legitimate and licensed DVD product manufacturing and distribution and business as a whole," Tokyo-based Toshiba said in a statement. No comments have been made by the companies mentioned above, but Toshiba has also filed a complaint to the US International Trade Commission demanding that the 17 companies accused stop importing their products to the US.

If you judge by the title of this story alone, you might think that the European Commission (EU) is punishing Apple and EMI for getting ready to offer music sans DRM's (Digital Right Management). The EU's complaint is much simpler than that. Apparently, Apple would only be applying these costs in some parts of the iTunes store. So, a song can cost less in one European country than another. This violates a very important article of the EU, and so Apple may incur a 10% fine if they do not change things soon.

For those of you curious about the shenanigans going on between EMI and Apple: The two companies have proudly announced a strategic partnership, and EMI will be sending Apple all their music without DRMs, which is a bold move. It is risky from a business standpoint, but very welcomed from a customer standpoint. Proof that EMI will be pioneering DRM free music can be found here in their press release.

Most of you have probably heard by now the story of Mrs. Jennifer Strange. She participated in a radio contest in an attempt to win a Nintendo Wii for her children. The contest determined a winner based on who could drink the most water. Unfortunately, a few hours after Mrs.Strange participated, she died of water intoxication.

Anyways, there was almost a court case to file criminal charges against the radio station. The would-be prosecution determined that the whole event was one tragic accident, and that there was no way the radio station could have prevented the death of Jennifer Strange. This is because Mrs.Strange did not show any signs of water intoxication at the event. The radio station has fired 10 employees since the tragic incident. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Strange family against the radio station remains in court.

Microsoft is beginning to get a reputation for having its console ads banned, with the latest advertisement being banned because of the image created over dangerous driving. The ad featured a street car chase but has been withdrawn from the air in the UK after a statement by the Advertising Standards Agency. "We were concerned that the ad gave the impression that reckless street car racing was exciting and fun, and considered that was compounded by the congratulations offered to the other driver at the end of the race by the other young men involved," said the ASA, and although Microsoft argued that the ad gave a note at the end informing watchers that the stunts were performed in a controlled environment, this wasn't enough for the ASA. This other banned Xbox ads, including the recent "Jump In" advert for the 360 with the invisible guns, and the "Life is Short" advert for the first Xbox which most people should remember with the flight to the coffin.

Some of you have heard of plans for a .XXX domain name. Like .com, .gov, .org, and .net, .xxx would indicate a certain type of material associated with the domain. Namely, pornography. The .xxx domain name would be wonderful for parents who want to ensure their children aren't scarred for life from pornographic material. And so, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), who manages all the domain names for the internet, had a big debate over what they should do about .xxx. In the end, they decided that making the .xxx domain name would be similar to censoring the internet, which is not what they want to do. Obviously, advocates for this domain will work hard to make ICANN reconsider their decision.

Its clear as crystal which city Take-Two is imitating in Grand Theft Auto IV - New York. The trailers and screenshots of the upcoming sequel don't leave another choice for the setting. There is the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Cyclone in Coney Island, where else could this game take place then?
This preliminary information made it's way to New York's politicians who were, to put it mildly, not very pleased with the whole situation. I quoted some of their sentences out of an article from the New York Daily News:

"Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland," said City Councilman Peter Vallone, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee. ...
"The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers," said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg. ...

Quite a fuss around a video game if you ask me.

One of the PS3's key features is built in access to wireless internet. Unfortunately, upon review by the British home secretary John Reid, this feature isn't as nice as it sounds. If prisoners were to somehow get a PS3 in their hands, they could use the PS3's wireless powers to send messages to other cell-mates, or worse, to the outside world. And so, to avoid new, high-tech, and extremely-high-cost escape plans, Mr. Reid is banning all PS3's (and PSP's, which share the same capability) from prisons in Britain. It is quite possible other countries could see this as a model, and also lock wireless devices from their prisons.