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Say It Ain’t So |
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Bloomberg financial newswire updated its obituary for Steve Jobs today and — oops! — went ahead and published it. It was retracted very soon thereafter, but was spotted by some folks. I know that major news outlets update their collections of obituaries regularly. This was a slip-up. But it attracted some attention because of the concerns people have had recently with the state of Jobs’ health. He *did* look a bit frail back in June. He says he’s just fine, so stay out of his bidness, you stupid @$#%^%#$. Like any of us, Steve isn’t going to go on forever. Apple needs to be planning for the future, so they don’t take a 20 mil hit. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Squeezing Every Last Penny |
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“More Artists Steer Clear of iTunes: Apple’s Online Music Store Sells Lots of Singles, But Labels Seek Higher Profits of Full Album Sales”, so says The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) in an article posted today. Let me try to summarize the positions of the 3 opposing groups in this mess:
All of this makes me glad I just stick with WXPN. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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A Little Sanity Breaks Out in the Copyright Wars |
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Yesterday U.S. District Court Justice Harold R. Lloyd issued a summary judgement in the case of Io Group v. Veoh, deciding that Veoh qualifies for “Safe Harbor” under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This case may have an impact on an even bigger one: Viacom v. YouTube. Io Group, which produces and distributes adult videos, sued video-sharing site Veoh over some copyrighted material uploaded to Veoh’s Web site. Judge Lloyd neatly summed up its case against Veoh: “[P]laintiff contends that, if Veoh cannot prevent infringement on its site given the current volume of its business, then Veoh should be required to either hire more employees or to decrease its operations and limit its business to a manageable number of users (whatever that number might be). Its not-so-subtle suggestion is that, if Veoh cannot prevent infringement from ever occurring, then it should not be allowed to exist.” Judge Lloyd made a disctinction between Veoh, which actively discourages sharing copyrighted material, and other, less-reputable services: “Veoh is distinct from Napster in at least one significant respect. Napster existed solely to provide the site and facilities for copyright infringement, and its control over its system was directly intertwined with its ability to control infringing activity … In fact, as virtually every interested college student knew — and as the program’s creator expressly admitted — the sole purpose of the Napster program was to provide a forum for easy copyright infringement.” He went on to say that, “this court finds that no reasonable juror could conclude that a comprehensive review of every file [uploaded to Veoh] would be feasible.” (Thanks for giving us some credit, judge!) Finally, Judge Lloyd makes a statement that Google could also claim for YouTube: “[T]he record presented shows that Veoh has taken down blatantly infringing content, promptly responds to infringement notices, terminates infringing content on its system and its users’ hard drives (and prevents that same content from being uploaded again), and terminates the accounts of repeat offenders … Once content has been identified as infringing, Veoh’s digital fingerprint technology also prevents the same infringing content from ever being uploaded again. All of this indicates that Veoh has taken steps to reduce, not foster, the incidence of copyright infringement on its website.” Compare this common-sense approach with that of the judge presiding over Viacom v. YouTube. Google certainly was paying attention to this ruling. It will certainly help their case. However, Justice Lloyd did include a qualifier of sorts at the end of his decision: “[T]he decision rendered here is confined to the particular combination of facts in this case and is not intended to push the bounds of the safe harbor so wide that less than scrupulous service providers may claim its protection.” For more commentary by a real lawyer, including the text of the summary judgment, visit TechCrunch. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Sheesh … Another Browser Post [UPDATED] |
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Today Steve Lohr of the NY times reports on the release of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2. As I’ve blogged previously, there’s a browser war going on, reminiscent of the Microsoft-Netscape war of the 1990s. Why bother downloading IE8? In a word, don’t. At least not right now. It’s a beta release, so it’s going to be buggy. But it appears to offer some interesting features:
There’s a lot more new functionality I’m not covering here. But like I said, I’m gonna wait. For my sanity’s sake. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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My Top 3 Firefox Annoyances |
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There are people who have drunk the Firefox Kool-Aid, just like there’s a Cult of Apple. I’ve been using Firefox at work for about a year now. (And much longer at home, on my Mac.) While I agree it’s superior to Internet Explorer, and eminently customizable as well, it’s not perfect, viz.:
The upshot of all this is that I have to use three different browsers to get through the day. If I had to pick one, right now I’d choose … Safari. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Will the Kindle Become Amazon’s iPhone? |
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Short answer: no, given that they’ve sold only a quarter-million of them in 10 months (verses 6 million iPhone 3Gs sold in one month.) But TechCrunch poses an interesting idea: license the technology — especially the software — to other manufacturers. In other words, make the Kindle the de facto platform for electronic books. Conventional wisdom is that Apple torpedoed its market share back in the 80s and 90s when it refused to licensed its operating system to other manufacturers. (Despite the iMac buzz, their market share is still in single-digits.) Microsoft-licensed copies of Windows running on a broad range of PCs took over the market. You sure wouldn’t confuse the Kindle with something created by Apple’s design team. It screams “PC” rather than “Mac”. So licensing it to others make sense to me. Hmm … after reading that last paragraph, I’m thinking the title of this post should be “Will the Kindle Become Amazon’s PC?” Or, “Will the Kindle Become Amazon’s Windows?” Well, anyway, you get the idea. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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A Little Too Much Transparency In Government, If You Ask Me |
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On Friday I read this article about how the UK government lost personal data on 4 million subjects in one year alone. That’s about 7% of the population. If you read the article, you’ll note that it contains the phrases “two unencrypted discs”, “two unencrypted CDs”, and “two … unencrypted laptops”. (They seem to lose things in twos over there.) Just a few minutes later, this article came across my RSS reader: a USB drive with data on 84,000 prisoners was lost during the past week or so. Also unencrypted. We can’t make our governments any smarter. We can, however, take responsibility to protect our own data. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Gas … Check. Air Pressure … Check. Wifi Connection … Check. |
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Last night I went for a run with my son. As I crossed an intersection, I was almost run down by a woman in a huge Ford SUV. My son was just staring, goggle-eyed, from across the street. The driver was fiddling with an electronic device — phoning someone, texting, changing the song on her iPod … doesn’t matter. What mattered was that I — the guy in shorts and a t-shirt — had to be the one who prevented a tragedy. The operator of a 3,000 lb. machine was too engrossed with her electronic leash to notice me until it was way past too late. (She did stop, back up, roll down her window, and apologize. I give her credit. No unprintable words were exchanged by either party.) This incident got me thinking about this article I had read the previous day. Chrysler is offering an after-market service called uconnect web, which will make your Chrysler, Dodge, or Jeep vehicle a wifi hotspot: “With uconnect web, all passengers in or near the vehicle are continuously connected to the Internet. They can make dinner reservations, check directions or weather, make online purchases, surf Facebook, MySpace, Disney or Webkinz, watch the latest YouTube videos, upload photos to a Flickr account — all at the same time.” Dear God, no. Given the state of the environment, perhaps Chrysler should have put some effort into increasing their gas mileage. But no. Instead, we get overpriced wifi (around $900 for the first year) that will inevitably lead to more traffic accidents. You wanna be continuously connected to the Internet? Here’s how you do it: (1) Sign up for a broadband wifi account with your cellphone provider. (2) Use it whenever the heck you want to, until you get into your car. (3) Turn your laptop off. Failure to perform step 3 may lead to someone else’s kid staring at the place where his parent used to be. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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“Beta” Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry |
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This appeared to be the typical “Google is losing it” article that publications trot out on slow news days. I started reading it because it was a slow work day. The first half of the piece repeated the typical litany of Google’s woes: it’s starting to charge employees for perks they previously enjoyed for free, employees are leaving in droves, the stock price is down. ZZzzzzzzzzzzzz. By the time the author himself asked, “Even if Google has lost its mojo, why should you care,” I was soooo ready to click off of the article. But I snapped awake when devoted the last 5 paragraphs to a discussion of the quality of Google’s products. Not Web search per se, but the Cloud Computing apps that everyone’s hot for right now: Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. This is a great quote: “And the next time you use Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Docs, take a close look at the service’s logo. You’ll notice the word beta there, even though some of those services have been around for several years; Gmail, for example, was launched in 2004. If Google is really ready for IT prime time, shouldn’t it move its software out of the beta cycle?” If you’re a small business owner or a consultant and you can’t access your Gmal account, “We feel your pain, and we’re sorry” just doesn’t get it done. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Let’s Hear it for the Hearings |
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Trying to locate hearings for the current session of the U.S. Congress? Check the website of the committee that held the hearing. Often you can get transcripts of testimony or even a video webcast. Just take a look at the House of Representative’s Committee on the Judiciary as an example. You’ll find everything from a hearing on Net Neutrality and Free Speech on the Internet to Lessons Learned from the 2004 Presidential Election! |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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