Episode30

Robocode competition

Interviewees:
- Imelda Morton (former competitor and student)
- Peter Benilov (creator of one of the pitbots)
- Louise Crowe and Aoife Clohessy, (2nd level students)
- Niall Donnelly (member of the WIT team which made it to the semi-finals)
- John Barrett (member of the DIT team which came second with their bot Spinning-Banana)
- Andrew Adams and Alan Morey (the winning team members from CIT with their bot Chuck Norris.)
Assisted with lights and camera: Mike Kiely.
Special Thanks To: Bernie Goldbach
Music: John Fleagle - Doon da Rooth (Available from Magnatunes), DJ Wurz - Irregulator (Available from CCMixer), Le Tigre - Fake French, Marc Kaschke - Remember the Name, DJ Dolores - Oslodum 2004, Wadealin - No Meaning No (Gold Teeth), Chuck B - Visciouslemurer

A New Law passed by the French Parliament will force any music purchased in an online store to be playable on hardware from a variety of manufacturers [1]
The legal change would legalise cracking DRM, and break apples holy marraige of iPod & iTunes
Leander Kahney writing on wired news [2] likens this strategy to Microsofts Embrace Extend Extinguish strategy of incompatibility and nonstandard flakey interfaces
If passed the law would be a huge victory for consumers
- but likely also result in Apple dropping out of the French market
- and labels refusing to lisence music for online distrobution
Only time will tell if the French parliament will follow through a force labels to distribute DRM free music online
As Wired point out such a law would have far reaching consequences
- ideally preventing the sort of monopolistic behaviour that has allow Sky to build a monopoly in Ireland
- and is leading cable companies to delete or restrict the recording of old shows from the clients PVRs

Rowan Nairn has developed an ultra impressive feed grazer
His OPod software - the first of its kind - points the way to a new method of browsing the web as feed
Links:
- Gareth's article on OPML & the future of the Web
- Rowan Nairn's Opod

Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS) launch a

licensing scheme for music podcasters in the UK [3]

The terms of the liscence are onerous to say the least
- 10 seconds at start and end of the song must be obscured
- music must not represent more than 80% of a programme
- avoid revealing a cast's musical content in metadata
Songs are charged at 1.5p per song per download or 12% of gross income - whichever is larger

Judge has taken a mother's child from her after seeing photos of a SubGenius event.
Subgenius are an ironic Web religion dedicated to parodying and mocking actual religion
The judge in this trial was a strict catholic
Not only was the woman's child taken - but the judge ordered (verbally) that she abstain from communicating about the case on the internet
The firm who defended Larry Flint on obscenity charges are defending her maternity rights
The culture wars have a new front line
Links: