Gizmodo Japan has shots of the AU Star Wars Posters. Their captions amuse me.

I was busy all day today trying to ensue we are all set to close on our new house next Tuesday (and still get actual work done) so I didn’t get a change to make any posts, but there were a few things that I wanted to note. I’m going to cheat and list them all here.

• Starting tomorrow, the NYPD is going to be conducting random searches of people bags on the subway. They are circumventing the whole illegal search thing by letting you leave the station if you refuse to submit to the search. This really pisses me off, and is most certainly a step WAY to far. More bomb sniffing dogs and equipment would do more to prevent incidents like London and still not trample all over the constitution and our liberty. [via The NYT]

• Engadget has a good article detailing a possible scenario with the DVIMAGIC which highlights the flaws in HDCP. Hey Industry! DRM as a concept is fundamentally flawed! You can’t force behavior with legislation and technical limitations. Perhaps one day the right people will realize that and work to change their business to provide quality content in a format and at a price point people want. Until then we’re going to have to fight them every inch of the way.

• In the same vein, it seems the IFPI is tooting thier own horn and claiming that an observed trippling of legal music downloads is because of a “fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realization that many networks could damage your home PC”. As Caesar points out, that’s bullshit. Maybe sales have trippled because the number of available outlets have tripled? Nah… [via Ars]

• Finally a lighter note, CNet published a list to the Top 10 online fads. While I don’t necessarily agree with all the rankings the list and the others in the Ars thread were good for some great “OMG, I remember that! That was awesome!” chuckles.

Ad skipping illegal in Japan? This is the second time I’ve run across this story. I didn’t say anything the last time because something seemed fishy, but now apparently the original article from Yahoo Japan has gone missing as well. I’m going to ask some of our more geeky Osaka friends if they know anything about what’ going on. I’ll report back with what I find out (if anything).

Update: Comments on the PVRBlog article have provided a link to a copy of the original story and another translation of the quote in question. In short the original article translated “might” as “would”. We’re way beyond my Japanese here, but I had Sue take a look and “might” is correct. So it looks like some broadcaster was trying to scare people into not skipping commercials and he got mistranslated into an even stronger statement. Additionally, there is a link to a followup article where apparently he gets ripped to shreds. I’ll see if I can get Sue to provide a translation. Oh, and everyone I asked (who would care) hadn’t heard a thing, so it’s only us westerners getting worked up.