Sylvania has created the “Sylvania g netbook MESO”. This means that it may be coming to Walmart.

Sylvania, one of the TV brands featured at Wal-Mart, just announced that it will be entering the netbook market with the webcam-enabled 8.9″ LED-backlit “Sylvania g netbook MESO.” .The rest of the specs seem in line with what we’ve seen from other entrants — 1.6 GHz Intel Atom, 2.2 lbs, multi-card reader. It will be available with an 80 GB hard drive running XP Home or Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The MESO will follow the VIA C7-based Sylvania g that the company has offered. with gOS.

In addition to the onyx picture colored, it will be available in snow, solar and blossom, known to the less marketing-oriented as white, yellow and pink. Sylvania’s entry is but one of a number of these products that we’ll be seeing from nontraditional PC companies in the coming months. In addition to technology, it looks like distribution will be a key differentiation point for these products. But even at $299, the market dynamics will be much different than they were for companies hoping to repeat the success of digital picture frames this holiday season.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper for you if you just got rid of the Windows option?

UPDATE: Sorry for the hasty post, and not getting facts straight. Just because Sylvania is making it, doesn’t mean that Walmart will be selling it.

• Ross Rubin
• Boing Boing Gadgets

Last week, the Senate introduced the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008.

Last week, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced the “Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008,” a bill that proposes a number of alarming changes to copyright law. The bill is the Senate’s gift to big content owners, creating new and powerful tools — many of which will be paid for by your tax dollars — for the entertainment industry to go after infringers. But it doesn’t offer a lick of protection for legitimate innovators and technology users that may be buried by the copyright juggernaut.

One of the bill’s most disturbing changes would give the Attorney General new powers to sue individuals on behalf of rightsholders like the MPAA and the RIAA. Bill proponents claim that these new powers, which would allow the AG to bring “milder” civil as well as criminal actions, are necessary because some offenses don’t rise to the level of criminal conduct. This justification just doesn’t make sense. If it’s a low-level offense, why should our top cops pursue it? Traditionally, those types of offenses can and will be pursued by the parties who believe they have actually been harmed, namely the copyright owners. The real “problem” may be that some so-called “offenses” can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for any crime. This new provision would allow the AG to sidestep that high burden of proof — a burden that gives the average citizen an important measure of protection from the overwhelming power of the government.

• EFF

After legal threats from Hasbro, the scrabulous facebook app is no more.

Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday. It is one of the 10 most used applications on the website. People can also play the game at www.scrabulous.com.

…Although there are authorized Scrabble games online, Scrabulous has gained popularity because it’s free, fun to play with friends and easy to access on Facebook.

The game was developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Kolkata, India. The Agarwallas say on the website that they created it after being unable to find an online version of Scrabble they liked.

…

Hasbro is urging Scrabulous fans to switch to legal Scrabble websites.

The game is ancient.  Copyright should not last this long.

• LA Times
• PC World
• Mashable

Ted Stevens (the senator famous for opposing net neutrality because the internet is like a bunch of “tubes”) has been charged with a series of felonies for taking bribes.

Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaskan powerhouse Republican senator, was indicted Tuesday on seven counts of not disclosing hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovation work done on his home by a private oil services company.

The alleged free work on his Alaskan vacation home included plumbing.

It’s not clear yet if Stevens’ defense will be that the alleged gifts weren’t a big bribe, they were just a series of tubes.

Welcome to another episode of Free Culture Tabloid.

• Wired

It’s been buzzing around all day.  Microsoft has joined the Apache Foundation, giving them $100,000 anually for their platinum membership.

I spoke with Apache Software Foundation (ASF) president Justin Erenkrantz, who views Microsoft’s sponsorship of Apache as a step forward for interoperability. He believes that this move is based on a legitimate desire by Microsoft to foster collaborative development of Apache technologies that implement Microsoft standards. In particular, he points out an ASF project called Apache POI which offers native Java libraries for reading and writing Microsoft Office file formats.

They have submitted LGPL licensed patches for PHP.  Yes, that’s right.  Microsoft used an FSF license.

• Ars Technica
• ZDNet

Atheros has released a free ath9k driver.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — 28, July, 2008 — Atheros Communications has announced the release of free software wireless drivers for ath9k. The ath9k driver requires no proprietary binary blobs and works on several chipsets and over a dozen wireless devices.

“This increased support of wireless drivers by Atheros is a major step toward our vision of a laptop that runs only free software and that boots on top of a free BIOS,” says Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF.

The release of the ath9k driver comes shortly after Atheros hired Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen, two important developers in the free software wireless driver community. The ath9k are now seeking inclusion in the Linux kernel. For more information on supported devices and chipsets visit http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html#ath9k.

Can someone tell me the real implications of this? How any of Atheros’ cards does this cover?

• FSF

Yahoo has stated that they will reimburse customers for their DRM’d music purchases. Exactly how they will reimburse them is a detail that has not yet been revealed.

“You’ll be compensated for whatever you paid for the music,” Davis told InformationWeek. “We haven’t said exactly what we will do, but we will take care of our customers.”

The company planned to reimburse customers on a case-by-case basis, and has posted an FAQ page that includes a “contact customer care” button at the bottom for former Yahoo Music Store customers. Davis said customers could be reimbursed in several ways, including getting back the money they paid for the music or receiving MP3 versions without DRM technology, which means they can be imported into any music playing software.

Perhaps they will pay them back in carpet.

• Information Week
• Engadget

Yahoo is planning on killing it’s DRM Servers on Sept. 30.  Another blow to DRM, but it means that everyone who bought their DRM’d music will no longer be able to use it in ways that they could before.

Once the Yahoo store goes down and the key servers go offline, existing tracks cannot be authorized to play on new computers. Instead, Yahoo recommends the old, lame, and lossy workaround of burning the files to CD, then reripping them onto the computer. Sure, you’ll lose a bunch of blank CDs, sound quality, and all the metadata, but that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being able to listen to that music you lawfully acquired. Good thing you didn’t download it illegally or just buy it on CD!

Sorry that I’ve been lax with the updates lately.  Hopefully you will be seeing more here soon.

• Ars Technica
• Slashdot
• LA Times
• Boing Boing

Students for Free Culture Conference 2008
October 11 and 12
Berkeley, CA

They are currently raising money to fly out as many students as possible.
Any ideas for funding sources are deeply appreciated!

URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/07/24/save-the-date-oct-11-12-sffc-conference/

More details coming soon…

MySpace has decided to join the OpenID coalition.

Because MySpace users now log on with their e-mail addresses, MySpace users wishing to log on at another OpenID site will use their unique Web address — either an assigned number or a name chosen by the user.

MySpace did not say whether it will be accepting OpenID accounts from elsewhere in lieu of its normal registration.

Facebook, the No. 2 online hangout behind News Corp.’s MySpace, has yet to announce OpenID support. Typically, Facebook has favored developing its own systems, while MySpace has been apt to join coalitions.

Can any supply details on whether they let you skip normal registration, or just let you use OpenID after you register?

• CNN
• Slashdot