Cool Mac Gear• iPod Video • iPod nano • iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Garageband |
RIAA Settles With 12-Year-old Girl RIAA Settles With 12-Year-old Girl The RIAA swine (and that's really an insult to pigs) have chalked up a magnificent triumph in their litigious blitzkrieg on individual file-swappers, extorting $2,000 out of the single mum of a little girl. CNET News.com's John Borland reports: "Barely 24 hours after suing alleged file swappers around the United States, the recording industry has settled its first, agreeing to drop its case against a 12-year-old New York girl in exchange for $2,000." Brianna Lahara was identified by the New York Post as a 12-year-old honors student who lives in a New York City Housing Authority apartment. Brianna had been under the impression that the $29.99 fee her mother paid for the Kazaa music trading service entitled her to download unlimited numbers of songs. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs from Kazaa, and the RIAA is demanding damages of $150,000 per song. The Register's Ashlee Vance comments
"It's okay, Brianna, don't worry. Fox manufactures new artists every few months. The new ones won't know that you committed the naughty act of trying to listen to their music.
"The pigopolists no doubt prepared a contingency plan should any toddlers, pre-teens or bedridden seniors get caught in their web of lawsuits. Alarm bells must have sounded in the swine cave when word of Biggie Brianna got out....
"It's also clear that the RIAA has no leniency for the less well off in society..... The music label executives are struggling to pay the rent on their penthouse apartments because of file-trading, so why cut the lower class some slack? We all have needs....." RIAA Nabs Grandfather In Music Swapper Dragnet The BBC reports that Durwood Pickle, 71, of Texas, accused of illegally downloading music online by the RIAA, said his teenage grandchildren used his computer during visits to his home.
You can check it out at:
Music Lobby Regales Congress with P2P Kiddie-porn FUD And Innuendo
The Register's Thomas C Greene says:
"When it came time for Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) President Cary Sherman to speak, he spent the bulk of his time whining about a 'drastic decline in record sales' brought about by 'the astronomical rate of music piracy on the Internet....'"
"And of course it always was the topic. It's clear from Sherman's tirade that the day's exercise was purely an attack against P2P technology for its presumed negative effects on the music cartel's profits, not on children. The specter of child rape may have hung over the proceedings like a revolting stench, but it was nothing more than an atmospheric effect. If Sherman has the slightest concern for the welfare of children, he certainly knows how to hide it."
For more information, visit:
Will The RIAA's Music Downloading Lawsuits Backfire? AP's Alex Veiga says:
"But some observers say record companies now risk a backlash that could damage far more than their financial results, while still not making a significant dent in music piracy. Others contend the public already has so little regard for the major record labels that the lawsuits probably won't make much of a difference." Well, what with suing 12 year old girls and personally innocent grandfathers, it's certainly not going to polish their PR image. For example, during a Senate Judiciary Hearing Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sarcastically queried RIAA president Cary Sherman as to whether he was "headed to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?"
You can read the AP report here:
Will You Renew Your .Mac Account? Mac Xperience's Dave Zeiler addresses .Mac renewalthis week.It's time for most former iTools users to renew the .Mac account they signed up for last year. Has Apple bulked up the service enough to make it worth the $100 annual fee? iTunes Customer Successfully Resells Downloaded Song CNET News.com's Evan Hansen reports that
George Hotelling, a Web developer in Ann Arbor, Mich., sold the song to a friend, Keith Elder, another Web developer in Ypsilanti, Mich.
For details, see:
Whether you’re a first-time Mac user or a savvy veteran, the fast, easy Mac OS X techniques in Joe Kissell's new book will make you more productive.
List Price: $24.99
For more information, visit here. Mac Night Owl: Yes, Mac to Mac Migration Should Be Easier Upgrading from one Mac to another could be a whole lot simpler. Here's the URL for today's commentary: http://www.macnightowl.com/index.htm#easier Choosing The Best OS for Your Legacy Mac ATPM's Chris Lawson has posted a guide to picking the optimal OS for your legacy Mac.
Some snippets: • On the earliest Macs, those with a 68000 CPU, there’s little reason to go above System 6. • The 68020-based LC and Mac II can run System 7 if you choose, but both are noticeably faster if you stick with System 6. • Starting with the 68030-based Macs, System 7.1 becomes a much better balance of features and speed -- With such add-ons as the Drag Manager, the Thread Manager, and the CFM-68K Runtime Enabler, you can make System 7.1 rival Mac OS 7.6 for features, but with much greater speed. • For 68040-based Macs... 7.1 with the aforementioned add-ons is your best bet. System 7.5 or 7.6 will be significantly slower to boot, use more RAM, and will be somewhat slower once running...The same applies to Mac OS 8.1 • There is little or no reason to run anything below Mac OS 8.1 on any PowerPC-based Mac....even Mac OS 9.1 will be substantially faster than 7.6 or lower on any Power Mac. • Most PCI Power Macs will run 9.1 quite acceptably • The question with a G3- or G4-based Mac becomes, “Do I want to run OS X or OS 9?” A lot of good advice in this article, most of which I'm in agreement with.
You can check it out at:
Monitor Sales Suffer From Laptop Popularity Macworld UK's Jonny Evans reports that:
"Demand for 15-inch screens – as used in many notebooks – has also exceeded supply, as manufacturers move production to more profitable larger-sized screens ." Hmmm, wonder if that's part of what's holding up the release of Apple's new 15" replacement for the TiBook?
You can check it out at:
SmartSound Director of Public Relations Richard Manfredi writes:
I wanted to let you know that SmartSound Software was named yesterday as the 20th fastest growing technology company in Southern California by Deloitte & Touche at their regional Fast 50 Awards presentation. SmartSound Software has used a balanced growth strategy and its leadership in the field of soundtrack creation tools for the digital content creation market to grow 487 percent in the last five years. This makes SmartSound one of the few companies to not only survive but thrive in a difficult economy for technology.
SmartSound Software is a company with an interesting history - it was founded in 1995 by former Hollywood music industry professionals who saw a need for simple, easy to use tools for creating royalty-free soundtracks. The recognition from Deloitte & Touche validates this belief, and shows that it is a growing market, with the potential for great expansion in the next few years. SmartSound Software president and CEO Kevin Klingler credits the company's experience and an understanding of the needs of visual content creators as the main force behind the company's 487 percent revenue growth from 1998 to 2002. "Since SmartSound is singularly focused on the soundtrack creation field, we have an understanding of the needs of our customers unlike any other company in the industry," said Klingler. "We know that our users want to be able to create a powerful soundtrack that enhances their visual project; but at the same time, it needs to be a solution that isn't time or knowledge-intensive." SmartSound Software's increase in revenues of 487 percent from 1998 to 2002 resulted in a No. 20 ranking overall in the Fast 50 for Los Angeles. "In an era where technology companies come and go, making the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 is a testament to a company's vision that allows growth over five years," said Gary Dickey, partner in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications group, Deloitte & Touche. "SmartSound Software's leadership has the right stuff for growth, and Deloitte & Touche salutes their accomplishments." To qualify for the Technology Fast 50, companies must have had operating revenues of at least $50,000 in 1998 and $1,000,000 in 2002, must be public or private companies headquartered in North America, and be a "technology company" defined as owning proprietary technology that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operating revenues (using other companies' technology in a unique way does not qualify); and/or devoting a significant portion of revenues to research and development of technology. The Deloitte & Touche Los Angeles Fast 50 program is sponsored by Applied Graphics Technology (AGT), Focus Creative, Marsh, and Shaw Pittman, and in association with AeA, and the Software Council of Southern California.
Winners of the 20 regional Technology fast 50 programs in the United States and Canada are automatically entered in the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks North America's top 500 fastest growing technology companies. For more information on the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 or Fast 500 programs, visit:
SmartSound Software Inc. is the developer and marketer of the SmartSound family of audio software products - the world leader in soundtrack creation technology for visual content creators. SmartSound technology is available for Windows XP, ME, 2000, and NT 4.0 or better and Macintosh OS 9.1-9.2.2 and OSX 10.1 or higher.
For more information, visit:
Linux topples College's IT Tower of Babel SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Site Editor Jan Stafford, notes:
"Two years ago, Anthony Hill found an IT Tower of Babel in the data center of San Francisco-based Golden Gate University. The technology architecture -- which served 1,000-plus desktops, 6,000-plus staff and student users and 50,000-plus directory identities -- contained almost every software platform and hardware system extant. "Everything except a mainframe," Hill said. As the institution's new chief technology officer, he was charged with creating order in this chaos and restructuring the data center to facilitate GGU's goal of operating as efficiently an e-business. Open Source Windows Replacement Coming From The Orient A The Register Faultline report notes:
"...China has the power one day, as an emerging economy, to double the size of the PC marketplace, and if it were to tamely endorsed Windows it would have doubled Microsoft's size. If it can use this market power to introduce a new system, it could potentially destabilize the Microsoft operating system outside, as well as inside..."
For more:
eWeek: Evacuation Halts OracleWorld
Officials wouldn't confirm the reason for the evacuation, but one of the guards handling security at Moscone Center said the cause was a bomb threat. A security manager would not confirm the reason for the evacuation but said the situation was "very serious.""
For more:
Mac Night Owl: Publisher of WinTel Gets Unsatisfactory BBB Rating Another story about the dangers of accepting unproven claims at face value. Here's the URL for today's commentary: http://www.macnightowl.com/index.htm#rating eWeek: Three New Critical RPC Flaws Found
The most recent vulnerabilities include two buffer overruns and a denial-of-service flaw, all of which are found in the RPCSS service. Specifically, the problems lie in the portion of the service that handles RPC messages for the activation of the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)."
For more:
Page: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
|
Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
| ||||||
|
| ||||||||
