Week In Review 49w2009
News this week was obviously Codebits 2009. Geek out!
Nokia figured out having 3 pages of catalog only confuses people and is going to reduce the smartphone lineup in half in 2010. They’re also promising to take the Symbian UI to a new level and deliver Maemo6 devices in 2H2010 which is about one year from now. Speaking as the owner of a N900, lets just hope for better Q&A than the one Maemo5 device they managed to produce.
Google now has a public DNS. If you were paranoid about giving Google your searches, how about your A queries ? Anyways, Google snatched up 8.8.4.0/24 and 8.8.8.0/24 from Level3 and setup global service at what probably are the best dns server IPs ever, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
Guys who are both artists and music industry insiders have interesting stories. Tim Quirk had a band and now works at Rhapsody and he wrote a great article on how Warner Bros robs artists all the way. Warner Bros actually lies to him digital sales made through Rhapsody. It’s not they need to cause due to the way major record labels “foster” new bands the balance is over 350k USD negative. They do it just because they’re lying conniving pirate scumbags and want a) to steal from artists b) cook the books so that digital sales appear weak. I suddenly feel the urge to download all the music I get my digital sights on.
And shortly after making internet access an universal service, the Spanish government gave its Minister of Culture powers to shutdown any website without due process for, you guessed it, copyright infringement claims. This makes things so much easier! WhistleBlower forum ? Copyright infringement! Pesky newspaper ? Copyright infringement! Company competing with “friendly” company ? Copyright infringement!
In a rather interesting case, a Danish guy wants to go to trial for breaking DRM. He ripped the DVDs he owns and turned himself to the Danish-RIAA (hummmm … danish …) which just ignored him. Now he gave up himself to the Law and wants to defend himself in court.
In free enterprise news, the Somali Pirate Stock Exchange is now open for business. Yes, you can invest in privateers and get a share of their profits. If you have a RPG or box of AK-47 ammo that you’re not using they’ll happily use it in their next raid and then divvy up the booty with you!
