A World for the Indecisive

Tim Elliott is taking this week to run an experiment and read only Scoble's link blog and Techmeme.  He wants to compare the two, and see how they stack up to each other.  I think that this is an interesting idea, but fairly pointless.  While there was a time when you had to decide choosing between two sources of information, that world is quickly leaving.  You no longer have to sacrifice one thing in order to obtain another.  Today you can get a whole multitude of sources of information all for free and all very quickly.  Thanks to RSS and feed readers you don't even have to go to different places to find all your news.  If you find a source that has good information, just subscribe to it.  Today the only thing that you need to invest is time.  While that may seem like an evermore valuable resource, the truth is that it doesn't take much time to increase the volume of what you look at.  When you have a "river of news," as Scoble calls it, you can quickly scan over a ton of stuff.  When you see something that catches your fancy you read it, otherwise you just keep going.  Without having to take the time to click through to different pages, or different sites, you can consume an incredible amount of information.  This means that it really doesn't matter which provider might have marginally better news than the next guy.  As long as they have something that is worthwhile, you can just throw them in with the rest. 

Just to clarify, I do think that there is an importance on the quality of information you get.  You just don't need to be as picky when it comes to having multiple quality sources.  Instead of having to decide which great publication gets your subscription dollars, you can just get them all.  By this means, you can cover a broad range of topics and sources, and get a better overall picture.  It does not mean that you should just read everything, or apply no filters at all, because there is a lot of crap out there.

Good News Everybody

I guess that I might have spoke too soon yesterday when I said it look really bad for net radio. In an announcement that I assume was made lat yesterday/last night, SoundExchange said that they would not enforce the increased fees on Monday, as they originally were going to do. While this is no save for everyone, it is definitely a good thing to hear, if for no other reason that it giving people more time to try to fight the new fees. I haven’t had time to look into this a lot today, so I’m not sure if there was a reason given for why SoundExchange did this, but I’ll be sure to post once I find out.

Not Pouncing on Pownce

Kevin Rose announced yesterday his new venture. It's called Pownce, and is an application for sending files, photos, and messages to others. It is built on the Adobe AIR platform, so it can be used either as a web app, or downloaded and run from the desktop. Kevin's two previous endeavours have been quite successful. Digg has recently surpassed Facebook in daily visitors, which given Facebook's success shows just how popular the social news site is. His other business is Revision3, which does online media. It is just like a television channel, but with on-demand, online service. The most popular show on it is, expected, Diggnation.

This new undertaking, though, is a bit different than his previous things. The space he's entering is already fairly crowded. Also, it doesn't seem to provide anything that is terribly different than what you can do with other services. It seems to be a combination of email and Twitter, almost. I'm not really sure why you would use this instead of just shooting people an email. Here's one example they give of how you could use the service.

You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you're
hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you
entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.

Hmm, sounds an awful lot like email to me. If I want to send a message to multiple people, there are countless services already for this. I can do it on Facebook. I can IM them. I can email them. Why should I use this new service? On top of that, they will all need to be on this service too. So now I have to convince them all to sign up for yet another thing.

The other thing is that this is an ad supported service, which you can pay to upgrade. Once again, where's the benefit here? Why do I want to use something with ads when I can get the same functionality out of other things without them?

Given the amount of Digg fanboys, I'm guessing that this service will at least get a good amount of buzz, and probably a few die hard fans. However, I personally don't see how this is going to set itself apart from other services out there, and why I should use it instead of something I already have.

Excuse My Tardiness

So apparently I am really behind the times here. I posted something this morning about the AMA wanting to classify video game addiction as a mental disorder. Well, I guess I was a bit late on that, as I've seen multiple things today that tell me the AMA has backtracked and said that they don't believe this should be labeled as an addiction. According to one Dr. Stuart Gitlow of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, "There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn't get to have the word addiction attached to it." So, uh, my bad. I don't take back what I said, though. Bad parenting and lack of self-control lead to spending too much time playing games. That's all there is to it.

Good Data Doesn't Support Your View? Use the Bad!

This is just awesome. Ars reports that a Parliamentary committee in Canada may be supporting the industry to create a Canadian version of the DMCA. What's so great about it, is that rather than use up to date, legitimate data, the industry lobbyist used a ten year old report with figures that are noted as being not based on hard facts. The OECD, which is the source they cited, says that it regrets having the figures constantly attributed to it. OECD actually got the figure form another industry source, which stated it was shaky as well. So one group came up with a number from thin air, another group says that this figure was given, but wasn't based on anything, and then lobbyists come along and cite it as truth. Good going guys. The best part is that it seems like the Canucks bought it. You know, if the Canadians want to create horrible laws, they should at least be trying to do it based on real information. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the OECD has put out another report (PDF) with recent, more accurate data. This report puts the number significantly lower than the one being presented.

Addicted to Video Games? Then You're a Moron

I just read an article saying that the AMA wants to classify video game addiction as an official psychiatric disorder. This is a load of BS. Seriously, people, come on. Kids that spend all day playing video games, and forgoing other things don't suffer from a psychological problem. They suffer from a lack of self control, and parents that probably don't discipline them. If the kid learns that he or she can play games instead of doing homework, and the consequences aren't that bad, he's just going to keep doing it. The other thing is that these kids are getting some social interaction, just not in the traditional sense. Sure they aren't meeting up with people in real life, but if they're logging eight hours a day on WoW, then that's eight hours that they're talking and interacting with others. Don't get me wrong, they still need to have some real life socializing or else they'll be weirdos, but you can't claim that they're being reclusive if they're playing an MMO. Obviously, if they just play single player things it's a different story. Also, people need to understand the video game culture. A lot of people that spend a lot of time playing games are good people. Just because there are some that don't know the meaning of the word moderation doesn't mean that this is some sort of illness.
Parents these days are pansies when it comes to making their kids obey them. And kids these days are filled with the notion that adults aren't meant to be obeyed. There are quite a few clips out there of some 12 year old yelling at his mom and calling her all sorts of horrible things cause she's trying to get him to stop playing a game. And she does nothing! Instead of unplugging the computer and smacking the crap out of the kid as she should, she just takes it. It's no wonder kids are "addicted" to games.

Again, You Can't Copy That DVD

I am too tired and not in the mood to write a full post, but I did want to share this. To it, I say "That sucks." First, people are going to find a way around this anyway. Second, if you have a few hundred DVDs, having to find the one you want every time instead of just having your library stored on a computer is a real pain.

Movie Piracy Killed My Brother and Raped My Mother

Apparently piracy is way more damaging than other, more pathetic crimes because it causes something like infinity billion dollars in damage. Ars reports that NBC/Universal's Rick Cotton claims that law enforcement wastes too much time on things like bank robberies when they should be focusing on piracy.

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you
add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from
theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16
billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of
dollars] a year."

What Cotton seems to forget, as Ars points out, violence associated with things like burglary is pretty bad, whereas you don't really see anyone getting shot while downloading a movie. On top of this, the claim that intellectual property crime runs in the "hundreds of billions" is completely ludicrous. If that were true, it would mean that piracy costs the entertainment industry more than its total revenue for 2006. I wholly believe that there is some lost revenue by people downloading stuff instead of buying it, but the vast majority of pirated content would have never been purchased and can't really be counted as lost revenue. However, even if you did count it as lost revenue, I don't know if you would come up with hundreds of billions a year. This just goes to show that the industry is seriously out of touch with reality. Maybe we'll start breaking into their homes, but stop downloading movies. After all, based on their numbers they'd be doing better off if we did that.

Thank You for Choosing ATT, How May I Screw You Today?

First it was the NSA, and now AT&T is going to start working with the RIAA and MPAA by turning over customer information. They are going to try to help track down pirates, and make sure that they get punished. Now, if you're an AT&T customer, even if you're not a pirate, I'd strongly encourage you to get off their network ASAP. If this is any indication, they are on a slippery slope downwards to having no regard to their customers' privacy. By actively helping to track down customers that are pirating things, AT&T demonstrates just what kind of company it is. If this was some sort of move to track down child molesters or something I could see where they might have a defense, but as it is they are basically just telling their customers that they don't care what they want. Even that would be a bit questionable. Duncan Riley is correct.

There's something very, very wrong when a company starts conspiring against
its users.

What's next? Are they going to start sending letters to spouses if it looks like their partner is cheating? How much monitoring are customers going to allow before they jump ship?

Updated: No, really, I can spell.

Could We Extradite Paris to Iran?

Yesterday, the Iran parliament voted for a bill that could conceivably mean the death penalty to those involved with adult entertainment. This means that the producers, directors, actors, and camera operators could all find themselves in a world of trouble if caught. They already can face problems in the country, but the bill would move to label them as "corrupter of the world," which is one of the worst possible offences under the Quran.
Now, I'm all for some morality, and not letting society go down the crapper, but I don't think executing the people involved with porn is really the right way to go. Except, perhaps, for Joe Francis or Paris Hilton.

The Sad Irony

Perhaps I am a horrible person for not immediately thinking how sad this is, but rather having the thought, "I guess he failed the exercise." The story is that a soldier at Ft. Hood was taking part in a solo training exercise to test map reading and navigation skills. He had been missing for four days before his body was found. While it's very unfortunate that this guy died, I can't help but find the irony that it was because he got lost during a test to see if he could avoid getting lost.

Another Confirmation of the Reality Distortion Field

There were a couple of announcements that came out of WWDC yesterday. One is that the Safari web browser is now available for Windows, and the other is that the iPhone has an "innovative" way of allowing third-party development. You would probably think that these two announcements should be more unrelated than they are, and you'd probably be right. This innovative solution is nothing more than running a web ap via Safari on the iPhone. This means that developers can make AJAX apps for the phone. I think this pretty much fails to even come close to a comparison of being able to properly develop applications. Jobs calls this solution "new" and "sweet." I call it "stupid" and "lacking." This is yet another example of why so many people bash on Apple. They keep such a closed system that it limits what anyone can do with their devices. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but don't claim to allow outside delevopment via a web browser. Just come right out and say that you are not going to allow third-party apps and leave it at that. Telling people that this is a "sweet solution" is just insulting our intelligence. Worse, though, is that people are buying it! Alex Hung claims that making a proper SDK is "hard," and that Nokia and Sony Ericcson are exaomples of this. I'm sorry, but last time I checked neither of those companies are in the business of software. Apple may say that they are a hardware company, but they are heavily involved in the software side of things. The reason they didn't release an SDK is not because it is hard, it is because they don't want to open up their device to the potential of being unstable. By allowing outside development, they allow the possibility of someone making an application that could cause problems on the phone. This would create the perception that there is something wrong with the phone, which Apple wants to avoid. Hey, I don't blame them. Like I said, I just think they should be honest about it. A better take on this, in my opinion, comes from Ed Burnette at ZDNet.com. I think he sums it up nicely with this.

“You can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps!” Thanks Steve, we’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.

Yeah, allowing Web 2.0 apps on a web browser: Genius! Oh yeah, and don't forget that any Flash app is out of the question. Maybe that "fully functional" web browser on a phone isn't so full after all.

Chalk up One for the Good Guys

If you haven't heard, the RIAA decided that it didn't want to risk fighting a case in court, and the case of Atlantic v. Andersen (PDF) has been dropped. Both sides agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice. This is a great victory for everyone that has been falsely targeted in the RIAA's carpet bombing approach of filing lawsuits. Ars makes a good point.

What's unusual is that the RIAA has stipulated to a dismissal with prejudice,
completely exonerating Andersen. Next to a negative verdict, an exonerated
defendant is the last thing the RIAA wants. When faced with an undesirable outcome, the RIAA's tactic has been to move to dismiss without prejudice, a "no harm, no foul" strategy that puts an end to a lawsuit without declaring a winner and a loser. Dismissing a case with prejudice opens the RIAA up to an attorneys' fee
award, which happened in the case of another woman caught in the
music industry's driftnet, Debbie Foster.

This is especially great news when you consider that. It is close to the RIAA admiding that they were wrong. True, not exactly the same thing, but it still exonerates the defendant, which is wonderful. I hope that Andersen is able to fully recover all of the fees taht she's had to pay during this two year legal battle. I also hope that she can serve as inspiration to others to stand up against the RIAA when they knew that they've done nothing wrong.

Careful, Your Stuff Might Have Your Name on It

In case for some reason you haven’t heard yet, Apple is now offering iTunes Plus, which has the EMI music catalog DRM-free. This is definitely a good thing. The DRM-free part, that is. Granted, you’ve been able to get unprotected tracks from a variety of other sources for quite a while now. The difference is that iTunes has the following of the masses. I don’t want to talk about the fact that there are DRM-free tracks now, though, it is the reaction that people are having to them. More specifically, the reaction to what these tracks contain. Embedded in the music files are the name and email address of the person that bought them. This makes people uneasy, and they are all upset that this information is in there. Now, two things. First, this is not something that is unique to the iTunes Plus tracks; it is in every track you buy on iTunes. Second, this information can only be seen if you have access to the file. Now, in theory, shouldn’t the only person that has access to your music on your computer supposed to be you? Are you worried that you aren’t going to be able to share these files with everyone because they have your info in them? I could be wrong, but isn’t distributing music out to a bunch of strangers still a no-no? Don’t get me wrong here, I’m a firm believer that the idea that illegal music sharing creates horrible things is complete BS. I’m just saying that I don’t see why you should be upset that these tracks contain your info. Is this really different than the file properties on a Word doc you make that have your name in the created by item (assuming you’ve registered with your name)? It is just pretty stupid to be upset about having your personal information in something that is, for all intents and purposes, private.

I’m in Your City Photographing Your Buildings

I’m sure you know what I think about the people upset over Google’s new Street View. The stupidity is not just contained at an individual level, though. The U.S. government is shaking in their booties too. They are trying to tell us that terrorists can use services such as Google’s or Microsoft’s to plot out future escapades. My question is, do they really need these tools to plan attacks? Terrorists don’t seem to have any problems getting into our country. Why is it that they can’t just run down to the gas station, buy a map, and then drive around town with a camera? Then they could send this information to their friends back home and they would have exactly the same information that is available to the rest of us. This would even allow for a more specific look at things than the current services offer. I mean, do I think that terrorists can’t use these services, or won’t consider using them? Of course not. I just think that these services aren’t giving them anything they couldn’t already get.

The Google Van. Quick, Hide the Cat!

I can't say I always agree with Scoble, but I think he's on the right track with this one. People have been making a huge fuss about the privacy concerns due to Google's new Street View on their maps. If you aren't familiar with it, you should definitely check it out. Head to New York, NY for an example. The feature allows you to look around the streets with a pretty decent amount of detail. Anyhow, a lady raised a big ruckus because you can see her cat sitting in her window, and she felt like this was somehow a major breach in her privacy. What she, and all these fearmongers that are jumping on board with it, seem to forget is that it is perfectly legal to photograph things that are visible while just driving down the street. It is amazing how many times people rise up to defend photographers that get told they can't take pictures of people in public, yet fail to see how this is the same thing. Do a little research next time, OK?

On a side-note, Scoble talks about not wanting marketing firms to have all this info on him and what he buys. Personally, if an advertiser knows all about me and will start sending me coupons about things I need or like instead of just getting spam, I'd be all for it.

Drink Coke? Stop Saying There's Genocide in Dafur

When I first heard that Sudan had threatened to cut off the world's supply of Coca-Cola I thought it must be some kind of joke. Sadly, it doesn't look like that's the case. The ambassador, John Ukec Lueth Ukec, spent an hour denying the killing that is going on in Dafur. He claims that there is nothing wrong going on, and that his country is actually building the world's best democracy. Johnny said that the U.S. is the only country in the world that claims there is genocide happening, and that the sanctions imposed must stop. His threat if the U.S. doesn't back off? Sudan will stop the export of gum arabic, which is required in the production of Coca-Cola. His country accounts for 80% of the world's supply. I guess that they have us beat. How can we survive without our Coke?

Want to Meet a Nice Girl? Sue!

Apparently when you find a business that doesn’t sell what you want, you sue them. At least, that’s the thought process of Linda Carlson. She is suing the online dating site eHarmony because they don’t offer Man seeking Man or Woman seeking Woman options. She sees this as discrimination against gays and bisexuals. She and her lawyer are hoping to get this as a class action suit and seek damages for all those who were denied the service of the site because they were gay. To all of this, I say, “What?” Does this not strike you as absurd? The site caters to a niche market of heterosexual daters. How is this different than sites that cater to gay daters? What about racial specific dating sites? Should all us honkies sue Asian Friend Finder too? The ridiculousness of people today just makes me mad and sad at the same time. Why is it that today everyone sees litigation as the first and best option?

A Face Only a Google Could Love

Google has grabbed my attention twice this week, and It's only Wednesday. They earlier announced the new feature of street level views in Google Maps, and today Ars Technica talks about their new image search ability that lets you just search for images with faces in them. You can see the difference yourself by looking here and then here. The way that you can try this feature out for yourself is simply stick "&imgtype=face" on the end of the search URL. As Ars points out, this is likely a feature they've gained through their acquisition of Neven, which I've brought up in the past. This just goes to show the truly awesome things that are posisble with technology out there. I'm looking forward to the day that I can click a button to have my webcam take a picture of me, and then search the net for all photos with me in them. Well, all two of them, that is.

Four Percent of People Admit to Being Idiots

Ars has the scoop on the results of a recent Pew survey that says spam is actually increasing, but more people are saying they aren't bothered by it. Some interesting numbers:

4% of US email users admit to ordering stuff from it
18% say that spam is a "big problem"
52% say they have received porn spam
Work emails are the least affected by spam

Snakes Almost on a Plane!

The humor of this is just too good to pass up. I do feel a bit bad, though, at such an obvious joke.

No New Taxes, Please

As if the amount of money we spend on the internet isn't bad enough compared to some other places, some people are wanting to make it even higher. States and local governments are lobbying Congress to not renew a ban on taxing internet access. This is in addition to them wanting to start charging sales tax for online purchases even in states that the retailer has no presence. ZDNet has the story.

Radio Reeling at Royalties

It isn't very often when I think that the RIAA does something semi-sensible (I'm not actually sure this has ever happened), but their desire to charge terrestrial radio royalties makes sense. It makes sense in that it would lend credence to their charging royalties to other forms of radio. Whether or not any of these should have to pay royalties is another issue. Personally I think they all should, though not a very large amount. Radio's argument is that they provide a valuable service to musicians by promoting their music. This is true, they do promote musicians, but only those that they chose to. Rather, only those that they are told to promote by the people that line their pockets. The entire format that currently exists is incredibly corrupt, and the people getting screwed are the artists. Enter satellite and internet radio. Both of these pay royalty fees that do actually go to the musician (albeit not directly). In addition, they provide a wider range of artists the ability to be heard. Especially those that are simply independents.

Life's Not Fair

Marybeth Peters is the Register of Copyrights at the U.S. Copyright office. She’s held the post since 1994 so she has seen a lot in terms of the current copyright issues. She recently talked to Ars Technica about the issue of fair use. Consumer groups are always citing fair use and the Sony Betamax case as reasoning for wanting to be able to copy DVDs. Particularly, every three years when there is a review hearing for the DMCA to examine if any exemptions should be allowed. Every three years it’s the same story, too. The EFF asks for the exemption, and the panel says no. Their reasoning is that based on the “true meaning” of fair use, an exemption is not required for DVD copying. They say that since the content is available through other means (such as VHS tapes) that there is not a legitimate reason for ripping a DVD. Also, they say that the Sony case was limited to time-shifting content from free broadcasts. She says that ripping DVDs is place-shifting, and that it is done for a convenience factor. Neither of those is covered under fair use.All of this means that consumer rights groups are going to need a different strategy when trying to get the right to rip DVDs. I’d love to see them use the argument of being fair and nice to the consumer is in the best interests of the media companies. That is not likely to happen, though. Mostly because the media companies don’t see it that way. After all, there is a reason that you have to sit through those stupid anti-piracy ads at the beginning of DVDs you legally bought. The reality of the situation is that if they made it legal for you to rip DVDs piracy would not suddenly flourish. All it takes is one person to break the encryption, rip something, and then upload it. Now that one thing has just rendered all copy protection on discs useless. I can assure you that there is at least one person that rips just about every movie out there and uploads it. On top of this, ripping something isn’t exactly hard. I can find and download programs that allow me to do so in less than five minutes. All that the media companies are doing is making it an inconvenience. If I download a ripping program, rip my DVD, and stick that on my media server to watch throughout my house, how does that hurt them? Why is it that I technically have to break the law to do that? Why is it that having a copy on my hard drive so I don’t have to go find the disc so scary to them? They say that it is to combat piracy, but piracy is rampant already. If piracy is already so widespread, do they seriously think that it will be more so if they allow ripping?

Ronny has a Point

I have not really paid a lot of attention to the current debates and goings on of the presidential race. The main reason for this is that the 2008 election is basically going to be picking who sucks the least instead of who is the best. It is a little like the tagline for that horrible Alien vs. Predator movie, "Whoever wins....we lose." That really isn't the point of this post, though. If you have been paying much attention to the internet over the last few days, you'll have noticed that there are a lot of people out there that support Ron Paul. I don't know a ton about the guy yet, but apparently he said some things that upset people. Namely, in the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, he said that part the reason for the Sept. 11 attacks was a backlash against our involvement in the Middle East. Giuliani did not like this one bit, and shot Paul down saying that it was absurd, and that he had never heard of anything like that being suggested. This made the audiance roar and cheer for Rudy. That is pretty funny, when you consider that bin Laden himself has said that's why they did it.
CNN's Roland Martin writes today that Ron Paul's point deserves some debate. Personally, I don't think that it is his point that needs to be debated, but rather, what can we do to prevent pissing people off further, and defending ourselves if we do piss them off. That's right, just cause we wrong someone doesn't mean that I'm all for them coming over and killing us. The same way that I don't think they're too keen on the reversal. In the end, this is all some fairly interesting stuff that you definitely need to educate yourself on if you want to make an informed decision about the future.

Redefining Broadband

The House is currently looking at just how messed up the current data the FCC has is. In a hearing that opened today, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) stated that he'd like to see the US be able to get closer to countries like Japan that are aple to offer significantly faster speeds for the same amount of money. Ars Techica reports on the issue in more detail.
One of the ideas proposed is to reclassify broadband as being anything above 2 Mbps instead of the current 200 Kbps. This would make a significant number of broadband offerings (most notably the majority of DSL) no longer broadband. The thought is that this would incentivize the providers to boost speeds in order to still be able to call their service broadband. Some providers argue, though, that in certain areas they are not able to provide speeds that high, and this would be unfair. Personally, I just say too bad.
Another thing is that the FCC currently counts a ZIP code as having broadband even if there is only one person in the entire ZIP that has it. This is something that I've been wishing they'd change for a long time. It makes no sense to say that a whole area has broadband based on just one person. If we're going to start using this kind of system, lets start just looking at one person to determine everything about a ZIP code. That makes sense, right? Idiots.

Speaking of Corky...

I've seen parents fake a kid's kidnapping, and I've seen where people fake a kid's death, but this might be the first time I've seen someone fake their kids' mental retardation. Yes, that kids is plural. This lady trained her children to pretend to be mentally retarded so that she could collect benefits on it. This isn't something that only lasted a short time, either. This went on for over 20 years. She was finally found out when her son went to contest a traffic ticket. She got three years in prison, and will have to pay $288k in restitution. Her son also got 13 months in the slammer for his role. There is also a daughter she did this with, but she can't be found. How screwed up is this? Whatever happened to just popping out more babies to get welfare; when did we turn to faking serious condiditons?

Ah, the Ol' Fake Email to Short a Stock Trick

I was going to write about this earlier, but I had important business to attend to.

For those of you keeping up, Engadget reported today that there would be a delay on shipping the iPhone and Leopard. While it is too early to say anything definitive about the origins of this (my joking title aside), the affects are clear. TechCrunch has a post outlining the basics. Allegedly, what happened is that Engadget received what it perceived to be legitimate information, and proceeded to report that. After this initial report, their stock fell about 3%, or about $3.25 a share. This loss, however, was fairly shortlived as the stock bounced back up to $107.29 after a short time. At the end of the day, AAPL closed 18 cents lower, compared to a loss of $1.84 the day before. What might have happened is that the stock initially started to fall and then a lot of preset selling was triggered, which then just made it fall even further. After people realized what was happening, and that the email claiming the delays was a fake, the stock recovered and didn't take a major hit for the day.
According to Engadget, the original email was verified as coming from the internal Apple email system. Apple was then the one sent out a legit email notifying everyone that the first email was a fake. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, if anything. I'm assuming that the original fake email was either done as a prank (albeit a fairly difficult one that would yield little compared to the risk) or as an attempt to manipulate things. We will have to wait and see. One thing is certain, though, and that is that the power of online media was reaffirmed by this incident, be it for good or bad.

Selling Dogs for Fun and Profit

Ok, so maybe I'm just a horrible person (I probably am), but I find this story hilarious. Some lady had her dog escape and run off. It went about a block away, where it was rescued (I use the term loosely) by some people having a garage sale. When the dog started to annoy the guy having the sale, he decided to sell the dog to someone for 15 bucks. Now the poor lady is desperately trying to get her dog back. I do feel bad for her, but I still can't help but laugh.

If Corky Decided the News

TechCrunch has an article covering the news venture of MySpace. They lauched it about a month ago, but still have yet to garner much interest. The system works by MySpace gathering stories, and then dividing them out into categories. After they have been divided out, users can visit the different category pages and vote for stories a la Digg. From the sound of the artilce, it doesn't look like they've been able to get any interest at all.

But the front page of MySpace news shows most stories with zero votes. Two
stories have a single vote. None have more than that. Perusing through the
various categories shows the same thing - page after page of stories with no
votes or other evidence that anyone is visiting the site.

I don't know if I should really be all that surprised by this. MySpace consists of two types of users. There are the morons, and the people that are there because their friends are there. The first group is too stupid to even comprehend what important news is, and probably rely on their idiot friends or PerezHilton for world events. The second group, the ones that aren't morons, aren't likely to use MySpace for their place to read the news. More than likely, they are already visiting sites like Google News, Digg, or have an RSS reader for this. To top it all off, to prove just how dumb the admins are MySpace are, they have hardly any advertisement for this new service. According to TechCrunch's article, they don't even have a link for it on their main page (Disclaimer: I can't verify this since I've blocked MySpace). If this service ever does take off, I expect it to be driven by the first category of user so the likelyhood of anything decent showing up is pretty slim.

U.S. Finally Close to Catching Up

Hooray! It looks like cable companies in the U.S. are going to be able to provide improved bandwidth at rates as high as 160 Mbps within the next 3-5 years. I know, the whole 3-5 years thing is always said, and generally repeated every year, but this time it might actually happen. With increasing competition from AT&T's and Verizon's fiber networks, cable companies have a big reason to look at bumping up speeds. The increase comes from upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 from the currently used 1.1. This technology provides a number of other improvements including support for IPv6. Another incentive to cable is that they can roll out the new tech without large infrastructure improvements, especially if they've already laid a mixed fiber/coax network. This is especially good news because it means that there can be a faster deployment. Any sort of major deployment of the new technology is not expected until 2008, and is likely to have slower expansion than telco's fiber networks. While I'd personally choose something like FiOS over this if it was available, I'm guessing that cable may be able to reach certain areas faster than the fiber networks. Fortunately, I don't think that will be the case for me, as FiOS is literally moving up the street in my direction.
From ArsTechnica.

Sure I'll Buy Your CD, I'll Need to See Some ID First

So if you want to sell your used CDs to a store in Florida, you're going to have to turn over finger prints and ID. Florida just joined Utah in having laws that are in place to supposedly stop the sales of counterfeit CDs. Whether or not this is actually a large problem hasn't actually been shown. In addition to having to make their customers feel like criminals, store will also have to hold the CDs they purchase for 30 days before being allowed to resell them. On top of all of this, stores will also be required to secure a $10,000 bond for the right to do all this. How these laws get passed is beyond me. This is just another example of the music industry's greed and desire for power.

New Royalties Delayed!

In a bit of good news about the the whole internet radio thing, the Copyright Royalty Board has issued a two month extension on when the royalties are due, making the new date July 15. This is great for the people fighting to save net radio because now they will actually have some time to talk to Congress. The bill that was introduced in an effort to nullify the ruling was only introduced on the 26th of April. With the new royalties being scheduled to go into effect on May 15, that left very little time for action to take place. Hopefully, with the extra time, the groups lobbying for it will get a chance to show Congress just how important internet radio is. The kicker of it all is that there is no conceivable situation where these royalties will be beneficial to anyone. Sure, there might be an initial big check received, but the number of stations that would be forced to close would create a huge loss of recurring revenue in the future. As any business will tell you, recurring revenue is what you want. In addition, with such incredibly high fees, more people would be tempted to turn to illegals means to acquire music. Right now, you can use services like Pandora to find music that you enjoy, and other music similar to it. If that goes away, it is one more reason to grab a pirated copy a song. On the distribution side, if it is so costly to legally have an internet radio station, people will turn to sending out pirate signals. You would think that these reasons alone would be enough for the entire music industry to try to stop this from happening. Instead, they demonstrate their ignorance, and complete inability to see reality.

I Can Still Patent Stupid Things, Though, Right?

Today the Supreme Court ruled that patents need to go through a more intense "obvious test" before being issued. The case was that of KSR v. Teleflex that was over a sensor in automobile pedals that would adjust the height of the pedal to fit the driver.
I don't really know a ton when it comes to patent law, but this sounds like a really good thing. There are people that go around patenting just about everything. In many cases, these patents should probably have never been issued. On top of that, the recipient of the patent will sometimes go along and sue someone for patent infringement, when the truth of the matter is that the original patent isn't a very good one to begin with (see Vonage and Verizon).
Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction towards seeing some patent reform. I don't expect anything major to happen overnight (or in the next decade), but this is still a good sign that such things could be coming.

Someone is Going to be Hungry

I thought that this was a decent story and would share it. The governor of Oregon (the state I like to say I'm from) is going to try to live for a week on $21.00, which is the amount a person on food stamps spends on groceries. He says he is doing it in order to raise awareness that people who have to live on food stamps have a harder time than most think. Given that I have first hand experience of what it is like to be on food stamps, I think this is a good idea. Subsisting on a small amount of money is not the easiest thing in the world. When you add kids to the equation, things get exponentially more difficult. However, I also know that it is possible to eat for 20 to 25 dollars a week if you put your mind to it. I'm not saying that allowing someone to live on such a small amount is okay, just that it is possible for a single person. The downside, of course, is that it usually results in a fairly unhealthy diet. While I agree that what he is doing is a good idea, and that there are a lot of people out there that need help, I still will be the first to criticize the welfare system and tell you that there are far too many people that abuse it. I'll save that rant for another time, though.

Exxon Posts More Record Earnings

I'll be the first to tell you that I am a fairly strong believer in capitalism, and allowing companies to make crazy profits if they deserve it. However, when I see that Exxon is once again making record earnings while the price of gas continues to rise, I really have to wonder. From the article, it looks like the main reason that they are able to make such gains is largely due to cost savings. That is all well and good, but if this company is going to tell consumers that the price of gas is rising due to increased cost of oil, and increased demand, why then are they able to post such huge profits? When you look at another large company that is usually hated for making money, Wal-Mart, you see that they are making money hand over fist, but at the same time the price of my groceries is actually getting lower. Sure, you may say that they are able to do that because they treat their workers like crap, or because they get a bunch of freebies from the government, but the fact remains that they are passing those savings on to the consumer, albeit just barely. If Exxon is able to keep such a tight lid on its costs, does it not make sense that it should also be able to keep a lid on the prices it charges? I mean, they essentially say that the cost of production is decreasing, while they are also increasing their prices. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that they should just be giving us the gas for free, but the least they can do is not tell consumers that the price of oil is skyrocketing so they have to increase the price of fuel while at the same time they make record profits. They should at least just honest and say, "Hey, we're charging more for gas because we can, and there is not much you can do about it."

Solid State Drives getting cheap is a good thing

This article over at Engadget talks about how the prices of SSDs are going to continue dropping by quite a bit (no real surprise), but that they are still going to be quite a lot more than HDDs. According to Samsung, who provided the information, solid state drives are currently about five times the cost of mechanical drives. By the year 2010, they expect this to fall to just three times the cost. While this would still translate to a significant premium, when you consider what SSDs offer, it seems like it might be worth the cost. The part that I found to be interesting is that they are using the cost per GB of 1.8 inch hard drives for comparison. This is all well and good given that solid state drives are small, but if what you want is raw storage, 3.5 inch dries are way ahead in terms of cost. You can find these drives for as low as 20 cents a GB right now, which is about seven times cheaper than their little brothers. So when you consider that people are willing to pay seven times the amount just for a smaller form factor, shelling out a bit more money for the benefits of solid state doesn't seem like much of a stretch.