[H]ardNews

Shame on P2P:

The government and the old men in charge seemingly once again get it wrong when it comes to technology.

A draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing.

I think the laws are already in place for people stealing copyrighted material. And while this looks fairly innocuous on the surface, I just tend to believe it is one of those things that can be bastardized and used for purposes never thought of. Hmm, DMCA comes to mind.

If the draft becomes law, anyone sharing 2,500 or more pieces of content, such as songs or movies, could be fined or thrown in jail. In addition, anyone who distributes content that hasn't been released in wide distribution (for example, pre-release copies of an upcoming movie) also would face the penalties. Even a single file, determined by a judge to be worth more than $10,000, would land the file sharer in prison.

Stompfest:

LAN Party fun is covered over at Pimprig.

Government Mods:

Fredrik Elmqvist lets us know about a government sponsored mod exhibition in Europe.

Tekniska Museet in Stockholm / Sweden is hosting an exhibition of modded computers and cases. According to the homepage they want to shine a light over a fenomena that can be compared to what is done to cars i.e. HotRods and LowRiders. The focus is kept on modifications done with big artistic and creative skills. This is probably the first of it's kind in the world where a goverment funded museum goes in and runs an exhibition about modding computers.

HD Tech:

Yahoo News discusses the thought of Intel getting into the HDTV biz and making it affordable for the masses. I am sure NVIDIA and ATI are going to love to hear that.

SpatiaLight says it's a year or more ahead of Intel. But so far, it has made only enough chips for TV makers' test products.

The Dark Arts:

An interesting read in the forums at Pimprig.