Archive for the ‘tech’ Category

Amazon retreats slightly on the Kindle

Posted: March 3, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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Score one for the publishers:

“Amazon realized the magnitude of the contractual problem,” Aiken said Monday morning. “Many of the author’s publishing contracts give publishers the right to publish e-books, but only without enhancing audio. A reasonable reading of those contracts shows that publishers didn’t have the authority to sell e-books for use in a Kindle device with audio enhancement.”

An Amazon spokesman denied being pushed into Friday’s decision. As for whether contractual issues played a part, the spokesman repeated what the company said Friday: “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal.”

Aiken began criticizing Amazon soon after the Kindle 2’s debut last month. He argued that the retailer was violating the author’s copyright and was cutting them out of a potentially new and lucrative market.

On Friday, Amazon announced it would reconfigure the Kindle 2’s systems to allow publishers to disable the text-to-speech function for titles of their choosing. However, the retailer made it clear in the announcement that it believed text-to-speech did not violate copyright.

Amazon may be the big fish in the pool but they don’t own the lake.

Why buy with windows 7 coming

Posted: March 3, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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The BBC reports that pc sales are down:

The PC industry will see a decline of nearly 12% in 2009, analysts predict.

It would be only the second period of negative growth in the industry, after a slump of 3.2% in 2002.

With the economy tanking and windows 7 coming why buy now? The BBC also states a relevent fact:

“The PC market is much more mature [as compared to 2002], and the PC is relatively more important to consumers,” Mr Atwal said.

“But nevertheless, it’s still a luxury item, it hasn’t gone all the way that it’s a necessity.

“That means if your PC slows down, doesn’t work well, doesn’t do what you think it should do, you’ll live with it.”

Or you contact DaTechguy to help you out.

The Tube court

Posted: March 3, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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The NY Times note another change is how things are done:

The Supreme Court is entering the YouTube era.

The first citation in a petition filed with the court last month, for instance, was not to an affidavit or a legal precedent but rather to a YouTube video link. The video shows what is either appalling police brutality or a measured response to an arrested man’s intransigence — you be the judge.

Such evidence vérité has the potential to unsettle the way appellate judges do their work, according to a new study in The Harvard Law Review. If Supreme Court justices can see for themselves what happened in a case, the study suggests, they may be less inclined to defer to the factual findings of jurors and to the conclusions of lower-court judges.

Like every other change of this nature, when it first happens it is interesting, the time will come with it is the norm, but its worth noting.

Ok lets talk porn…

Posted: March 2, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, oddities, opinion/news, tech
Tags: , , ,

Now that I have your attention…

I was thinking of this post concerning file sharing and how it has been a pain to persuade people off of these sites. Mostly due to free music and porn.

I can’t tell you how many systems I’ve worked on that were loaded with porn or with explicit icons on the desktop. I’ve actually had to tell explain the risk difference between stuff you will download with limewire or torrents and “good” porn sites that have subscription walls and do not want to infect you because they want you to be paying your $10 or $20 or whatever a month to keep looking.

These are tough economic times as my own job search has shown. With this in mind consider old but very relevant article:

“The contributors, or amateur porn models, they target are between the age of 18 and 24.

“Often struggling students, young single mothers, or just underpaid young women.

“So they come to a site that seemingly offers them an opportunity to make money while expressing themselves as sexual beings in an environment they are told is pro-female and that their creations will be viewed exclusively by members.

Now many of those sites do have subscription walls for their material just like many songs have copy protection and we all know how that works out. Once that file is downloaded by a member and put on a torrent or on a system with any file sharing poof the wall is gone.

Do you remember this exchange from the Magnificent Seven:

Chris: Harry tells me you faced bigger odds during the Travis County war.
O’Reilly: Well, they paid me six hundred dollars for that one.
Vin: He said you got that Selena thing cleared up in less than a month.
O’Reilly: Paid me eight hundred dollars for that one.
Vin: You cost a lot.
O’Reilly: Yeah. That’s right, I cost a lot.
Chris: The offer is twenty dollars.
[O’Reilly keeps chopping wood. Chris and Vin turn to leave.]
O’Reilly: Twenty dollars? Right now, that’s a lot.

Consider this for a moment (content warning):
(more…)

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