| Good News: Jammie Thomas’ File-Sharing Verdict Is Reduced By 97% |
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Bad news: it’s still more money than she can afford — $54,000. (But it’s better than $2 million.) Anyway, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said in his ruling: “The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages.” Thomas, always ready to provide us with a good soundbite — back in June she talked about squeezing blood from a turnip — said she appreciates the effort but still can’t pay: “It’s not like I have a money tree in the backyard.” Link via Wired. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (0)January 19, 2010
| New York Times to Start Charging Soon? [UPDATED] |
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New York Magazine reports that the NY Times “appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.” The decision wasn’t an easy one: “After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall [Dan interjects: it's $100/year] and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles [Dan interrupts again: 10 articles/30 days] before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.” I’m saddened by this. As I said previously, I rely on The Christian Science Monitor, the NY Times, and Wall Street Journal (which I’d pay for even if Jenkins didn’t have a sub) for my serious news.” I can afford maybe one online newspaper subscription, but I can’t hack two. Having said that, I totally understand why they have to start charging. If they don’t they’ll disappear eventually. Columnist Thomas Friedman sums it up well: “My own feeling is, we have to do anything we can to raise money. At some point we gotta charge for our product … We’re in a megatransition. It hasn’t ever felt like anyone has the answer. My macro feeling is that I’m glad I had this job at this time. It was great working at the paper when it was on dead trees and could pay for itself.” UPDATE, January 20: Here’s the announcement from the Times. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Eight Days and Counting |
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Apple’s invited all the tech elite — apparently, I didn’t make the cut — to a special event on January 27 to “Come see our latest creation”. Most likely they’re referring to the iSlate (or whatever they decide to call it). Stay tuned. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Skype Now Has Double-Digit Share of International Phone Traffic |
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Skype accounted for 12% of international calling minutes in 2009. That’s 54 *billion* minutes of yakety-yack, folks. I bet Skype’s new owners are happy about that. Link via TechCrunch. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 15, 2010
| McDonald’s Offers Free Wifi Starting Today |
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Just thought you’d like to know. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| China Hack Was “Highly Sophisticated” |
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Wired reports that the intrusion of Google (and others) by Chinese hackers exploited a previously-undiscovered flaw in (what else?) Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8. Microsoft has issued an advisory; here’s their take on the matter: “At this time, we are aware of limited, active attacks attempting to use this vulnerability against Internet Explorer 6. We have not seen attacks against other affected versions of Internet Explorer. We will continue to monitor the threat environment and update this advisory if this situation changes. On completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.” Or, as Wired puts it: “There is no existing patch for the memory-corruption flaw that causes the browser to internally misfire in a way that allows the hacker to inject malware onto the user’s computer.” I have a suggestion: drive a stake through Jason Voorhees’ heart and switch to Google Chrome. (Eight months later, my Chrome-only netbook is still virus-free.) Do it now. Seriously. Or use Firefox, if you prefer. Anything but IE. According to another Wired article, the hackers who exploited that there hole provided by Microsoft weren’t yer typical script kiddies: “According to [Dmitri] Alperovitch, [a researcher at McAfee anti-virus], the attackers used nearly a dozen pieces of malware and several levels of encryption to burrow deeply into the bowels of company networks and obscure their activity. ‘The encryption was highly successful in obfuscating the attack and avoiding common detection methods,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen encryption at this level. It was highly sophisticated.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 14, 2010
| Google Docs Will Now Take Anything You Throw At It |
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In a few weeks, you’ll be able to upload any type of file onto Google Docs: “Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.” Those of you who read Douglas Rushkoff’s comments in my “Google Calls Out China” post will realize what a double-edged sword this really is. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 11, 2010
| This is for Zhora … And This is for Pris |
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As I blogged last month, Google has released the Nexus One. I could link to a bazillion articles about it, but the NY Times has a handy roundup of the media coverage. Oh, and the estate of Philip K. Dick wants Google to pony up some bucks, since the replicants in Blade Runner were designated as Nexus models. Unfortunately, the author never trademarked the term. However his daughter says it’s not about the money: “People don’t get it. It’s the principle of it.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| The “Dumbest Idea”, 10 Years Later |
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The NY Times has a retrospective on the tenth anniversary of the failed AOL-Time Warner merger. According to the Times: “The trail of despair in subsequent years included countless job losses, the decimation of retirement accounts, investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, and countless executive upheavals. Today, the combined values of the companies, which have been separated, is about one-seventh of their worth on the day of the merger.” A note about that last sentence. In the last 6 months, Aol’s valuation has dropped from $5 billion (July 2009) to $3.5 billion (November) to under $3 billion (December). Anyway, the article’s worth reading; here are my favorite quotes:
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Would You QUEue Up To Pay 800 Bucks For An eReader? |
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Last week Plastic Logic announced the availability of its previously-introduced eReader, the QUE proReader. It’s a cool-looking device, but I’m a liberrian, so price tends to be the bottom-line with me: “The price for QUE will range from $649.00 for the 4GB QUE model with WiFi that holds up to 35,000 documents, to $799.00 for the 8GB QUE model with WiFi and 3G that holds up to 75,000 documents.” Oy. Have I mentioned that my netbook set me back only $279? In the end, though, it may not matter what they want to charge if Apple unveils the iSlate at the end of the month. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Amazon’s offices when that happens. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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