An End to File Sharing?

Talk about the goods and bads on file sharing, here's one current news I got:

"The court has finally issued a verdict in The Pirate Bay Trial: GUILTY – as in guilty of “assisting in making copyright content available”. The court issued a 1 year behind bars verdict for all four defendants (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and dot com millionaire Carl Lundström) and fines totaling 30 million Swedish kroner (more than $3,600,000).

Here is a breakdown of the court’s decision:
Peter “brokep” Sunde: 1 year in prison, $905,000 in damages.
Fredrik “TiAMO” Neij: 1 year in prison, $905,000 in damages.
Gottfrid “Anakata” Svartholm: 1 year in prison, $905,000 in damages.
Carl Lundström: 1 year in prison, $905,000 in damages.

As you can see, all four defendants were treated as a team, which is quite unusual according to Gottfrid Svartholm’s lawyer, Ola Salomonsson. As a team, the four have to divide the 30 million Swedish kroner fine amongst themselves – the amount may seem quit large, but keep in mind that the prosecution, made up of 17 companies (Warner Bros Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision, to name but a few), asked for a lot more than that – it asked for 117 million Swedish kroner.

“The trial of the operators of The Pirate Bay was about defending the rights of creators, confirming the illegality of the service and creating a fair environment for legal music services that respects the rights of the creative community. This is good news for everyone, in Sweden and internationally, who is making a living or a business from creative activity, and who needs to know their rights will protected by law,” IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) chairman and chief executive John Kennedy said.

Petr Sunde twittered the following: “Stay calm. Nothing will happen to [The Pirate Bay], us personally or file-sharing whatsoever. This is just a theatre for the media.”

The truth of the matter is that this is not the end of the trial; there will be an appeal (both sides have 3 weeks to file an appeal), there will be other court proceedings, and a final decision may still be years away. Still, losing this first round it is not a good sign for broadband development, for torrent sites and for file sharing. Why isn’t it good for broadband development? Consider this: if The Pirate Bay was found guilty of assisting in copyright infringement, then ISPs (internet service providers) can be taken to court over the same charges as well.

Please note that the court’s decision has no bearing on The Pirate Bay site, only on the 3 co-founders (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm) and the dot com millionaire that supported the torrent tracker (Carl Lundström). The Pirate Bay site will go on, Peter Sunde declared. "

I read through enormous comments and feedbacks in forum. Well, the point here is that the judgement above is gonna hold, that would possibly an end to file sharing sites, file sharing softwares, torrents, limewire, bearshare, mp3rocket, morpheus, etc. etc. Looks like big problem for the millions of people out there who have been used to these stuff. On the other hand, it would be considered a big win for those copyright holders and software companies who have been striving to come up with good software (some a bit too expensive though. ;) ), only to find out their software can now be downloaded in some file sharing portal. That would also mean that ISPs and search engine companies would have to change their internal algorithms in order to remove these sites and to detect/prevent other sites from getting into their engine's search index, less they would also be hold accountable for the zillions of legal software only out for free grabs.

I heard the trial is still a long reach from finality, as there would definitely be appeals and more hearings to come, I'll try to get some more developments on this one....

Geek Reviews: wittypedia

If you're not the very serious type of person when surfing the net (many people are too serious they think it's the end of the world if they don't find what they need. ;-)    ), or maybe if you need a break from absorbing too much information from wikipedia, how about a site that presents the funny side of the man's made world?

Enter http://www.wittypedia.com, where you find funny yet interesting articles. 

Here's a glimpse of the links that you can find when you go to that site: 

"Ready to browse? Just use the links on the left menu to;

• Search for articles with Witty Search (top left of the page).

• Click on Funny Articles for a page of finely crafted comedy masterworks... and be annoyed that it was replaced before you got there with a page of our favourite articles.

• Select Random Funny to pick a random page of mirth.

• Ask Witty - want a funny article about something but prefer someone else to dig for the comedy gold lodged in the coal mine within their brains? Then suggest it here.

• Wittypedia - if you're unlucky enough to come across one of the few funny articles that isn't, erm, funny, then you may need to escape quick! Click Wittypedia and be magically returned to the safety of this front page."

They do have frequent updates and a lot of tidbits and "do you know that..." stuff that's gonna make web browsing a lot "funnier". There's even "Ask Witty", that allows visitors to post curious questions. And yes, just like wikipedia, you can create and post your own articles as well (no serious articles allowed!).

So who says an encyclopedia has to be for geeks only?  :-)

Famous People on Google Logo

Since 2002, Google has honored 25 historical people with custom-made versions of the Google logo, displayed for one day on the Google homepage. Judging by the people Google have selected so far, don’t expect any WWF wrestling stars to show up anytime soon. It’s an elite collection of highly influential scientists, artist and architects who have made their mark on human history and culture. Here they are, all 25 of them, in reverse chronological order. René Magritte: (1898 - 1967) Belgian surrealist artist, famous for his often witty and amusing images. Marc Chagall: (1887 - 1985) Russian Jewish modernist artist. He was a pioneer of modernism and one of the most successful artists of the twentieth century. Diego Velázquez: (1599 - 1660) Spanish painter and portrait artist, many of his famous paintings depicting scenes of historical and cultural significance, royalty and notable European figures of the time. Walter Gropius: (1883 - 1969) German architect, founder of Bauhaus and a pioneer of modern architecture. Alexander Graham Bell: (1847 - 1922) Scientist and inventor famous for, among other things, inventing the telephone. Luciano Pavarotti: (1935 - 2007) Italian opera singer, part of “The Three Tenors” and one of the world’s most famous vocal artists. Yuri Gagarin : (1934 - 1968) Soviet cosmonaut who was the first man in space and the first to orbit Earth. Edvard Munch: (1863 - 1944) Norwegian symbolist painter, known for his expressionistic art. His painting The Scream is one of the most recognizable in all art (and indeed the one Google used as basis for the themed logo). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: (1859 - 1930) British author mostly known for his novels about Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous fictional characters of all time. Percival Lowell: (1855 - 1916) American astronomer (among other things) famous for his study of Mars and founder of the Lowell Observatory, which after his death discovered Pluto. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: (1756 - 1791) Austrian musical prodigy and one of the most popular classical composers of all time. Martin Luther King Jr.: (1929 - 1968) African American minister, probably most famous for his work against racial segregation and discrimination, which also earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Louis Braille: (1809 - 1852) The inventor of braille, a widely used reading and writing system for the blind and visually impaired (he was blind himself). Frank Lloyd Wright: (1867 - 1959) American architect and interior designer. The American Institute of Architecture has named him “the greatest American architect of all time”. Leonardo da Vinci: (1452 - 1519) Italian polymath, doing groundbreaking work as a scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter and more. Often described the archetypal Renaissance man and one of the most widely talented people of all time. Vincent van Gogh: (1853 - 1890) Dutch Post-Impressionist artist and a pioneer of Expressionism. And yes, he’s the one who cut off part of his own ear. Ray Charles: (1930 - 2004) American pianist and soul singer. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him as number two on its list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. Gaston Julia: (1893 - 1978) French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set, common for generating fractals. Alfred Hitchcock: (1899 - 1980) British film director and producer, a pioneer of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He is one of the best-known filmmakers of all time. M. C. Escher: (1898 - 1972) Dutch graphic artist, famous for his mathematically inspired images of impossible constructions and geometric figures. Albert Einstein: (1879 - 1955) German theoretical physicist, best known for his theory of relativity but contributed greatly to multiple fields within physics, for which he also received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is regarded as one of the most influential people in human history. Michelangelo: (1475 - 1564) Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. Together with Leonardo da Vinci, he is often cited as the archetypal Renaissance man. Pablo Picasso: 1881 - 1973) Andalusian-Spanish painter and sculptor. Famous for (among other things) founding the Cubist movement. He also has one of the longest full names we’ve ever seen. Andy Warhol: (1928 - 1987) American artist and illustrator and a well-known figure in the Pop Art movement. In addition to his many works of art, he is also famous for being the originator of the concept of “15 minutes of fame”. Piet Mondrian: (1872 - 1944) Dutch painter and an important contributor to the abstract De Stijl art movement.

I was browsing for some needed info, when I got hyperlinked to a forum with this thread title: "Microsoft VS General Motors". Out of curiosity (thinking it's some legal case, though I'm sure I haven't heard of some a case in the news), I "flipped" over that page and saw this content:

Microsoft vs. General Motors

At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
   
   
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
   
   
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
   
   
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
   
   
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.
   
   
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.
   
   
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
   
   
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
   
   
9. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
   
   
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

Turns out, if you google that title, it was a joke posted in many sites several years ago. ;)

Wet Cellphones (or mobile phones)

I'm sure anyone would feel disgusted when their cellphones drops into something wet, because the chances of making it work again would seem close to impossible. But I came across this news that's quite amazing. Imagine loosing your phone, after a week someone calls you to say he got your phone recovered from... a FISH! Two things that made this story truly interesting: for one, to think your cellphone went inside a fish belly and got back, and... yes, was still usable (the caller manage to use the same cellphone after he got it dried); and second, it's hard to find honest people who would bother returning something that's been long considered forgotten or abandoned.

To read more, get to this link:

Plus, some good tips on saving your wet cellphone: "How to revive a wet cellphone"

Hope these articles would give you something to ponder about cellphones, wet or dry. :)