| 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
| 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 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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| 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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December 31, 2009
| Be Honest: You’re Still Eating the Peanut Butter From Your Y2K Stash, Right? |
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And drinking the leftover bottled water. And we will not speak of the shotgun you got as a looter-deterrent. Anyway, both Wired and the NY Times have a look back at the Armageddon that never materialized 10 years ago. And for your listening pleasure … (Still can’t get the lyrics right, even after all this time.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 29, 2009
| No Safe Harbor For BitTorrent Search Engine isoHunt |
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Wired reports that Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the U.S. District Court for Central California ruled last week that BitTorrent search engine isoHunt, as well as other torrent sites operated by Gary Fung, violates copyright. (Rick, I’m shocked — shocked! — to find that gambling is going on in here!) Anyway, this is the next step in a story that began with Sweden’s crackdown on The Pirate Bay eight months ago. Judge Wilson has set up a status conference for January 11. We’ll see what happens then. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| City Decides to Buy the Working Bits of Wireless Philadelphia |
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Here’s something I missed 2 weeks ago: the city has agreed to purchase the hardware from the failed Wireless Philadelphia project for $2 million. That’s not a bad price, even considering that EarthLink, the service provider, couldn’t even give it all away. Philly’s not going back into the ISP business, however: “‘Acquiring these assets is a major step forward for the city,’ said Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. ‘With this investment we will have the capability to build a robust public safety and municipal network, enhancing public safety and government operations, at the same time as achieving long-term savings for the taxpayer. This is a win-win for Philadelphia.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 23, 2009
| An Eye For An Eye Makes Microsoft $290M Poorer |
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Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Microsoft must remove the custom XML code from its Office software suite by January 11, 2010 and pay Canadian firm i4i $290 million for infringing on its patents. You may recall that back in early September Microsoft asked the Fed Circuit to stay an injunction handed down in U.S. District Court in Texas. The Fed Circuit heard the case and sided with i4i. Microsoft says that, aside from the money, it’s no real biggie: “With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.” Notice that first sentence, in which Microsoft calls the custom XML a “little-used feature.” Reading that, I immediately thought of Neal Stephenson’s book In The Beginning Was The Command Line — still fresh and relevant, even after 10 years — in which he calls MS Office an “omnibus software package” and compares it to Wal-Mart: “As [graphical user interfaces] get more complex, and impose more and more overhead, this tendency becomes more pervasive, and the software packages grow ever more colossal; after a point they begin to merge with each other, as Microsoft Word and Excel and PowerPoint have merged into Microsoft Office: a stupendous software Wal-Mart sitting on the edge of a town filled with tiny shops that are all boarded up … The most serious drawback to the Wal-Mart approach is that most users only want or need a tiny fraction of what is contained in these giant software packages. The remainder is clutter, dead weight.” What’s the app that I use most at work? Notepad. And at home? TextEdit on the Mac. Keep it simple. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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