Microsoft is paying Nokia $1B/year to use WP7. They’re really putting those hard earned android patent trolling dollars to work! Of course that didn’t keep Nokia from running a massive hole.

Most of the EU countries except the ones that count signed into ACTA. This is signature by the unelected Council, it still needs to be made into law by the Parliament so know what to do. Meanwhile the portuguese RIAA is keeping on the great tradition of RIAAs all over and forged artist signatures in a petition supporting the steal-from digital-economy law.

People are upset at FBI for stealing their files. Paramount is starting to sell UltraViolet stuff which is still junky but a step in the right direction. Kudos. Meanwhile Canadian SOPA is pushing along while a EMI person says piracy is a missed oportunity.

Solar Flares. Really.

Ding dong SOPA is dead. But the money you spend on CDs and movies is still paying for ads to kill the internet. And for american elected officials too.

Facebook is sharing your data with Politico. For statistical purposes obviously. I guess that’s why Neelie Kroes wants more privacy regulations in the EU. Which is kind of weird considering the unelected European Commission will try to pass ACTA this month.

This week USA put together an operation to apprehend german citizens in New Zealand and seized assets in USA, Netherlands and Canada. A major terrorist you say ? No, megaupload.com for copyright infringement. It all started a few weeks back when megaupload made a promo video which RIAA got pulled down from youtube via extrajudicial or nonjudicial means, noone really knows. megaupload sued back for loss of business in USA courts. RIAA obviously got upset used the USA law enforcement to arrest everybody and pull down the megaupload domains. Oddly, this is the kind of thing that USA can’t do without SOPA/PIPA. Or so we’re told.

Oh, and Apple launched iBooks 2 and U.

Samsung announces SwipeIt. You can’t make this stuff up. Meanwhile leaked stuff says Apple rolled over for India. Apple says otherwise, Samsung is shipping a crate of files to India. Acer is cloning Samsung cloning Apple.

Both Facebook and Google messed up their stuff.

Netflix is setting up shop in UK and Ireland.

Finland starts blocking Pirate Bay and Holland gets the block too. That happens as we learn a high ranking german law officer used spyware on his daughter. Unlawfull intercept seems to be common in Germany. And get this, RIAA claims an IP address isn’t enough to identify them. Too bad they won’t be able to read this disconnected from the Internets. On more deuchebagery, PL118 is still moving forward in Portugal, the music industry is sueing the Irish Govt for not doing enough and MPAA attacks Ars Technica for defending piracy.

And remember, a UK kid is getting extradited to USA to serve hard time cause he was running a link site. That’s where this has escalated. Is this the world you want your kids to grow up on ?

Hey Hey it’s new year! Jon Ives is the top designer at the 2 top phone and computer manufacturers. Must be hard work!

Belarus, Iran and the USA are World Deniers, trying to pretend there isn’t a world beyond their borders and happy to censor anything. It must be the axis of something.

Spain has a law written by RIAAMPAA going into play after being threatened by the USA. Portugal has a law written by RIAAMPAA being voted and stacked to pass. I don’t think they didn’t even had to threaten us. If that law passes Portugal will be the record holder for storage prices with our RIAA collecting €20 to €60 per TB.

The music industry is so bad music sales are actually rising in the USA, even with MPAA cooking the books. Must be SOPA/PIPA or something. Which is clearly needed cause even the Canadian Parliament is a den of pirates

A Canadian entered USA using a scanned passport on a iPad2. Must be those 3 terrurists a day that go through Niagra.

It’s time we shutoff 2G. Really.

Going to the movies is a crapy overpriced experience. I’m paraphrasing Roger Ebert. I fully agree.

Happy New Year!

Facebook continues it’s road to IPO which means it will be Hi5 in no time. You’ll get ads disguised as friends stories, app trash in your mobile timeline and you’ll find your friends endorsing products they don’t know about.

Apple is continue to integrate and putting the screws on Samsung. This time Apple bought a flash storage company. “Half a bil ? I’ll pay in cash.”

An HIV vaccine is beginning human trials. And for something really awesome artificial retinas that really work and restore vision.

RIAA gave bad grades to Google which means Google is probably doing something right. GoDaddy is a SOPA supporting deuchebag cause they secured an exemption. Meanwhile, in the spirit of SOPA the Taliban had themselves a good old computer bunrning. And those dirty dirty MPAA members continue to pirate. Not as much as the US House though. And I for one encourage the RIAA/MPAA to take on the US Navy.

Print out this cartoon just in case you’re found an enemy combatant. Jonas Brothers, watch out!. But luckily the TSA is keeping america safe one cupcake at a time. Maybe they hired Homer. That would explain the appearance of snow cone machines in DHS.

A truck carrying 5000 BB PlayBooks was stolen. I imagine the thief’s faces when they figured out it wasn’t iPads. Or maybe not now that kids don’t care about iphones anymore.

Flash Player 11 for Android!! It just doesn’t plays On2 or Sorenson. Or scrubbing. And if a call comes in the video keeps playing. And text entering doesn’t exactly work perfectly. Yeah …

IE6 will start updating itself into something less crapy in January. What’s that woshing sound ? It’s a million IT drones scrambling to disable autoupdates to keep their craptastic IE6 only “webapps” working. Also, Messenger will get XMPP. Microsoft seems to be correcting its mistakes one small push at a time.

Whoops, Google Wallet stores stuff in the clear. And Windows 8 will sync passwords across computers using Live logins. I predict a field day for some people.

Sony, pirates. Universal, pirates. Fox, Pirates. Homeland Security, pirates. RIAA, pirates. The official home of the French President, pirates. Of course you could argue an IP address isn’t enough to identify someone and lots of people have access to those addresses but only pirates would argue that.

If you ever wonder what a SOPA/PROTECT IP world looks like, today Universal can censor a news piece about Universal censoring a music it doesn’t own on shaky claims. Post-SOPA will be fun fun fun.

HAARP you say ? No, it’s just the chinese making rain.

Windows App Store. At some point Microsoft will be just like Apple. One way or the other. Have you hear about the latest xbox upgrade ? You agree not to sue.

China will get a traveling wave nuclear reactor. I’m sure Bill Gates would much rather help USA build it but that would mean not having depleted uranium to make ammunition.

A domain stolen by the US Govt was returned after over one year. All to keep the artists safe. Or lobyists in food and board. Noone is really sure cause canadian musicians want to make music sharing legal. And Clinton confused everybody by saying US Govt wants the world to keep the internet open while the US Govt is working to make the Firewall of China seem amateur.

A security advisor who worked for Delta says TSA is a gigantic waste of money throwing away over $50B in pretend security.

CarrierIQ steals your keystrokes, manufacturers take a step back, Sen Franken demands answers and the lawsuits start flying

Wanna know why people are upset ? Maybe because the financial system is so corrupt the US Federal reserve lies to the elected representatives about a $7.7B loan bellow market. Result, $13B in income from money printed in secret. Or maybe because 85% of the most expensive building in London doesn’t pay property tax and most have little helpful schemes involving offshores to avoid sales tax to the tune of 750 million pounds a year.

EU is going after Facebook’s abuse of personal information in advertising right before Facebook settled with FTC over privacy violations. Nice for Facebook buying Gowalla.

Elvis Costello says my recording company is gouging you so just steal my music. You wouldn’t steal a handbag but the anti-piracy group BREIN would steal music to use in anti-piracy marketing materials. But hey, the recording industry will help the guy get his money back for a mere third.

Maybe it’s because Berlusconni is gone but an Italian court ruled web editors are not responsible for what people’s comments. And man, someone should stop those US 5 year olds from beating up cops. Maybe it’s all the hamburgers they eat turning them into super-5-year-olds.

Facebook is probably developing a phone. Great if you want all your 462 facebook “friends” to know who you’re calling. Not so great if you don’t want to facebook advertisers to use your profile to endorse hemorrhoids cream after you like from a pharmacy.

Ubisoft isn’t releasing I Am Alive for PC cause of piracy while Valve isn’t worried about piracy at all. One of this companies is failing the other isn’t, care to guess ? I do remember Ubisoft’s GR:AW 2. Everyone I played with had a legit, honest, copy. The game however was a let down and it died cause 6 months after release there was rampant cheating (not piracy). At some point my legitimate game key just stopped working. So yeah Ubisoft, keep worrying about piracy while EA and Infinity Ward keep cashing in by having games people actually want to play.

Remember SOPA ? The real great think all copyright industries needed or they would die ? Yeah … even BSA is backing away from it. The software industry realized at some point treating everybody like criminals don’t make for good costumer relations. Meanwhile, it takes the EU high court to figure out ISPs can’t be forced to censor customer data any more than the post office can be forced to open and read all letters.

USA probes at chinese companies for spying. You know who’s not going to worry about probing ? The Dutch govt cause they certified OpenVPN. Cause if you can’t trust your VPN you can’t trust anything.

US Govt wants hackers to help them “cyberwar”. I’d help them but in the course of the last 10 years USA outlawed and pushed other countries to outlaw the tools of the trade so we’re kind of helpless here.

And to end on fun note, a list of technologies RIAA/MPAA tried to outlaw for the benefit of artists: the self-playing piano, the gramophone, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the audio cassete, the VCR, MPEG Audio, the Internet, Tivo. List of things they didn’t try to outlaw for the benefit of the artists: movies with sound which drove entire orchestras to unemployment as theaters didn’t need them anymore.