The Friday Fleabag
Posted By On January 23, 2004 @ 5:17 pm In Blog | No Comments
Celebrate good times. The Macintosh turns 20 tomorrow.
Bob Keeshan, “Captain Kangaroo,” passed away today.
- Google is taking on Friendster [1]. Yesterday the search giant quietly launched Orkut.com. The site says it’s “online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends.” But membership is by invitation ONLY. So where does the name come from? It’s a personal project by Orkut Buyukkokten, a Stanford CS PhD who does user interface design for Google. Google asks all its engineers to spend one day a week working on personal projects in hopes of generating new businesses.
- What is the world coming to? The DVD Copy Control Association (who?) has dropped charges against a California man [2] who posted the DeCSS code to decrypt DVDs. The DVDCCA says they’re following an “evolving legal strategy.” Looks like the hundreds of pending cases against other web sites who posted DeCSS will be dropped, as well.
- Meanwhile, Macrovision is relaxing its audio CD copy protection [3] to make it more like iTunes. The record companies would be able to set usage rules for each disc, allowing copying, ripping, burning, or not.
- And Winzip and PKWare have zipped and made up. The competing publishers of Zip software have agreed on a single interoperable standard [4] for the zip file format. The format threatened to fragment with incompatible encryption add-ons from both companies.
- A US District judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Sharman Networks, makers of Kazaa, can sue the movie and record companies [5]. Sharman alleges that in their effort to catch people sharing files illegally, the labels and studios used unauthorized and unlicensed versions of Kazaa to monitor users of the network. Interesting tactic. We’ll see if it works.
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Article printed from LOL: The Life of Leo: http://leoville.com
URL to article: http://leoville.com/the_friday_fleabag
URLs in this post:
[1] taking on Friendster: http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5146006.html?tag=nefd_lede
[2] has dropped charges against a California man: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114417,00.asp
[3] relaxing its audio CD copy protection: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5145961.html?tag=nefd_top
[4] single interoperable standard: http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5145491.html
[5] sue the movie and record companies: http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-kazaa23jan23,1,2476555.story?coll=la-headlines-technology
Click here to print.
Story 35 is almost as ironic as suing K Lite, but a much smarter move.
Story #5 is almost as ironic as suing K Lite, but a much smarter move.
Anything to put the RIAA in their place!
Really… At least in Canada we have a legal defense. As long as we don’t share any files, we can download to our heart’s content.
From the Apple website, I just viewed the “1984″ commercial that introduced the Mac. I noticed that the runner w/ the sledgehammer has an iPod attached to waist. Will someone view this and tell me I’m not seeing things. The spot is at http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/
Apple posted a slightly modified version of the original “1984″ commerical, according to one MacNN reader: “In honor of 20 years of Macintosh, Apple has posted the “1984″ ad on its website. The woman embodying the spirit of the nonconformist Macintosh however has been altered to include an iPod placed on her hip and the trademark white earbuds in her ears. It’s a nice touch to illustrate that the 21st century Apple continues to innovate and break down barriers.”