But, “In practice the Apple US web site is only promising synchronisation every 15 minutes between ‘Cloud’ and PCs or Macs, while for users of Mac OS X 10.4.11 the automatic interval is set to one hour,”  says the story, pointing out a page on Apple’s support sit explains intervals can be changed from those automatically set.

Now Apple has had to email users to apologise for using ‘push’ in describing the MobileMe service, “resulting in the impression that near instant data synchronisation could be expected at product launch time,” says the story, adding:

“As compensation for the problems in the new service Apple has given all their current subscribers an automatic 30 day free-of-charge extension to their MobileMe subscription.

“There is also an obvious bug in MobileMe, namely that the button for terminating a 60-day trial period doesn’t work. heise online queried Apple Germany about the points mentioned, but the company had not responded at the time of publication.”
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Heise Online - Apple’s MobileMe gets off to a shaky start, July 18, 2008

That’s the name of one of Canada’s most popular music acts and maybe they get away with it because they’re just as well known as BNL.

The group’s front man, Stephen Page (right), was recently nailed in New York State for alleged possession of cocaine hidden in a  container of calcium and as a result, a BNL kids’ concert slated for Disney Music Block Party on Long Island, New York, next month.

Poor Disney.

Recently, it also had to deal with Vanessa Hudgens, another supposedly squeaky clean star who suffered unwanted notoriety when nude pictures of her mysteriously started appearing online.

But it probably didn’t do her or Disney any lasting harm, and Page will live through this as well, although it’ll put a definite crimp in BNL’s activities as children’s entertainers.

He was nicked after police, “stumbled upon a car parked across a driveway with its driver-side door open,” later tracing it to an apartment where they found Page and 25-year-old Stephanie Ford.

“Ford said the two had just finished snorting what she believed to be cocaine using a rolled-up Canadian bill,” said the Canadian Press.

“She said Page had stored several capsules containing a white powdery substance in a bottle labelled Calcium.”

“The Toronto-based father of three, who separated from his wife last year, was visiting his 27-year-old girlfriend, Christine Benedicto, when they had a fight, according to a handwritten deposition filed by Ms. Benedicto’s roommate, Stephanie Ford. Both women also face drug possession charges,” says the Ottawa Citizen, adding»»»

According to Ms. Ford, the night began when Mr. Page met the two women late Thursday at a pub in Fayetteville, New York. Mr. Page fought with his girlfriend because she “was flirting with another guy,” according to Ms. Ford.

When Mr. Page stormed off, Ms. Ford accompanied him to the apartment to ensure he did not attempt to drive home.

“Steven kept saying he was going to drive back to Toronto. He was laying on the grass, so I sat on him so he wouldn’t leave,” Ms. Ford wrote. “I was concerned because he had been drinking.”

When Ms. Benedicto arrived at the apartment, the couple fought, and she drove away in Mr. Page’s car, leaving her own vehicle in the middle of the driveway, Ms. Ford said.

BNL manager Terry McBride, founder of Nettwork Music which also manages Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan, among others, said the group’s business will continue as usual until then, and that he expects Page to be “completely exonerated,” says the Toronto Star.

BNL has just released its first children’s album called Snacktime.

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nailed in New York State - New worm transcodes MP3s to try to infect PCs, July 18, 2008
Vanessa Hudgens -Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus rule on p2pnet, May 4, 2008
Canadian Press - “Ladies” frontman Page told police he was snorting cocaine: court documents, July 17, 2008
Ottawa Citizen -Details of Page drug bust revealed, July 18, 2008

p2pnet news view | Music:- “[…] our assumption that consumer spending on DVDs in 2008 would decline at an accelerating rate (exacerbated by the far slower than expected rollout of next-gen DVD) now appears incorrect,” said Pali Research’s Rich Greenfield recently.

Consumer spending on DVDs has in fact been, “surprisingly strong” in the first half of 2008 —- up nearly 2%, he stated unequivocally.

And yet,”Global sales of recorded music fell by 8% in 2007,” according to figures released in June by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), says The Economist.

They blame 70% of the decline on “file-sharing” software, the story goes on, pointing out, “Industry groups have sued thousands of users of such software, and have supported legislation to criminalise it.”

In reality, the legislation was bought-and-paid for and only one person —- a Minnesota single mother targeted by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) the Big 4’s American enforcer —- has actually appeared in court. And her case will certainly be re-heard.

Another entertainment industry ‘trade association,’ Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), was vehement in blaming 44% of its domestic losses on file sharing American students.

However, after the unsupported estimate had been repeatedly quoted as fact in the mainstream media and by politicians (with an interest in entertainment) to ‘prove’ the studios are being “devastated’ by the activity, the statistic, produced by a company called LEK which is still churning out numbers used by industry elements, turned out to be wholly and completely wrong.

By the time the truth came to light, though, the damage had been done.

What fans like

Meanwhile, “file-sharing has so far proved impossible to stop,” says The Economist, going on, “And it is not all bad news for the industry, because it can provide helpful insights into music-lovers’ interests.”

For every song bought legally in shops or online, “around 20 songs are illegally downloaded,” the story has BigChampagne, a firm that, “compiles and sells statistics about file-sharing,” saying.

“Its customers can find out how many times, and where, a song has been illicitly downloaded, for example, what the figure was five weeks ago, what other music its fans like, and so on,” it continues.

BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland told p2pnet he was “tickled pink” to see his company quoted by The Economist, but its, “angle on this story may be a bit old-fashioned, and selfishly I wished they’d talked more about BigChampagne’s principal business: working with P2P data and data from a wide range of third parties (co’s like MTV, Apple, Mediabase) to integrate traditional broadcast, sales, online data and more into really unprecedented business intelligence,” he said.

“Many music executives were reluctant to take advantage of file-sharing statistics because of the trouble the technology has caused in the industry,” the story has Garland saying.

TV stations and film studios, by contrast, are “sprinting through the stages of grief” —- and, “coming to terms with the reality that details of the illegal use of their material can, in fact, be very useful indeed”.

[The cartoon on the right is from The Economist.]

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appears incorrect -2008 DVD sales ’surprisingly strong’, July 15, 2008
The Economist -Thanks, me hearties, July 17, 2008
certainly be re-heard - p2pnet Jammie Thomas v RIAA digest, June 30, 2008
completely wrong - Huge Hollywood mistake in student download stats, January 23, 3008

Before anyone worries too much for those poor BSA members, read Lies, Damned lies, and IIPA/BSA/etc statistics. In this article I offered some details on the flawed methodology used by the IDC to come up with these numbers. The reality is that they aren’t accurately accounting for people choosing alternatives to BSA member software, such as the growing usage of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).

They use these same bogus statistics in their promotion of Bill C-61 and other backward-facing legislative reforms.

Bill C-61 would disproportionately cause harm to competitors to the BSA, suggesting that their lobbying is more about ongoing anti-competitive practises and not about reducing software copyright infringement.

The press releases you see from the BSA are laughable, but not funny given there are bureaucrats and politicians that take their silliness seriously.

The claims in the recent press release included the following:

Software piracy also has ripple effects in local communities.  The lost revenues to the wider group of software distributors and service providers ($11.4 billion) would have been enough to hire 54,000 high tech industry workers, while the lost state and local tax revenues ($1.7 billion) would have been enough to build 100 middle schools or 10,800 affordable housing units, or hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.

I guess any money not paid to BSA members just disappears and is not spent on other things in the economy that also involve jobs and taxes. In the real world we know that money not spent on software will more likely be spent on other things which are taxed the same — or even higher, given how BSA likes to also lobby to get software taxed at a lower rate than other products or services.

I know that people choosing legally lower cost software such as FLOSS are included as “piracy” in these studies. I guess my supporting FLOSS (both commercially and as an individual) could be blamed for their not being enough money to adequately equip the Canadian military in Afghanistan. I guess this makes me a terrorist sympathizer, by the BSA “logic”.

Yawn.

Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He’s also the CLUE policy coordinator and p2pnet contributing editor.]

p2pnet news view Games | Music:- Jimi Hendrix isn’t being left to rest in peace.

He’s being reincarnated.

By Microsoft.

As a Guitar Hero zombie.

The Wind Cries Mary and Purple Haze will be featured in the game’s fourth series, slated for release on October 27, says NME.

“Experience Hendrix, which runs the late guitarist’s legacy, provided the game’s developers with the material.”

Purple Haze is a live track recorded at the San Diego Sports Arena in 1969, it adds.

Below is The Master doing Purple Haze with Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitcell on drums.

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NME - Jimi Hendrix for new multi-instrument ‘Guitar Hero’, July 18, 2008

p2pnet news view

The first dozen or so I visit include, in no particular order and not exclusively, MONITOR Today! an Ottawa tech portal, TorrentFreak, the Dutch .torrent news site, Ray Beckerman’s Recording Industry vs The People, the huge RIAA document archive and short posts on Big 4 misdeeds, Michael Geist, the Ottawa law professor who’s become an unofficial Net spokesman, and so on.

I also go to Googlenews.ca. But I’m starting to wonder why I bother.

Google bills it as a news site. But if that’s so, its collection algorithms need a serious overhaul.

That’s if you expect your news to be current. If you don’t, no worries.

I’ve noticed story briefs and headlines sometimes stay online literally for hours, if not entire days, on end.

One example was p2pnet’s QuebecTorrent post, which appeared as a main page lead on Saturday and which stayed there until Monday, when it was relegated to the tech section. But even then it was the principal item.

Not that I’m complaining.  But I very much doubt it was the only story on the subject and even after I’d done my own update reporting QuebecTorrent was back, thinly disguised as Torrent411.com, the first post continued to occupy a prominent position while the update wasn’t mentioned.

The same thing happened with our ‘sheep to the slaughter‘ story which was on the virtual front page all day, as were, I believe, the Hawking and Ancient Mars posts.

I’m in Canada but I bet the same thing happens on all of the other (more than 40) localised main ‘news’ sites.

Is it time for Google to stop calling these pages news pages, or at least post something somewhere telling visitors have often they can expect stories to be updated?

Or not, as the case seems to be?

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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p2pnet news view

And they’ll both be at tomorrow’s Last H.O.P.E. Conference in New York.

Plan on being there? If you do, you may want background material, so Beckerman obliges, ie:

RIAA Expert
Jacobson testimony: no testing, no publishing, no peer review, no nothing
MediaSentry printouts, part 1
MediaSentry printouts, part 2
Links to complete deposition transcript, plus all exhibits
Direct link to complete deposition transcript
Jacobson admitting they cannot “detect an individual” (contrary to RIAA lawyers’ representations to judges)

RIAA Investigator
MediaSentry says it is not an expert witness and therefore not subject to expert witness disclosure
MediaSentry says it is an expert witness and therefore not an investigator subject to investigator licensing laws
RIAA says MediaSentry is an investigator (see response to interrogatory 3)
RIAA says MediaSentry is not an investigator

Defendant’s expert
Expert witness report of Prof. Johan Pouwelse

Substantive law
Atlantic v. Howell (No “making available”)
Capitol v. Foster (RIAA’s theory of secondary liability “marginal”)

Financial
Expert Witness Defense Fund (Managed by Free Software Foundation)

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It inserts links to dangerous Web pages within ASF (Advanced Systems Format), a Microsoft-defined container format for audio and video streams that can also hold arbitrary content such as images or links to Web resources, says the story.

“The actual download is not a codec but a Trojan horse, which installs a proxy program on the PC,” Emm says.

“The proxy program allows hackers to route other traffic through the compromised PC, helping the hacker essentially cover their tracks for other malicious activity.”

MP3 extensions aren’t modified, however, meaning victims might not immediately notice the change, says Kaspersky Lab, according to the post.

“As soon as the multimedia file is played back and the advertised fake codec is being run by a tricked user, pop-ups from Windows Media Player, asking for a codec to install, do not appear anymore - creating the false impression that a codec has been successfully installed,” says Trusted Source, adding:

“Of course, this is just the consequence of the malware simply changing the compromised system’s behavior. By infecting the multimedia files, the attackers promote the spreading of their miscreant through (peer-to-peer) file sharing networks. Users downloading from P2P networks need to exercise caution anyway, but should also be sensitive to pop-ups appearing upon playing a downloaded video or audio stream.”

Trend Micro calls the malware “Troj_Medpinch.a,” Secure Computing named it ” “Trojan.ASF.Hijacker.gen” and Kaspersky calls it “Worm.Win32.GetCodec.a,” says Computerworld.

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Computerworld Norway -Opera Mobile 9.5 beta released, July 18, 2008
Trusted Source -Trojan infecting multimedia files, July 9, 2008

BC Supreme Court Justice D.A. Halfyard, “found Patrick Michael Sullivan defamed Robert Griffin, a 43-year-old resident of Sydney, Australia, in Internet postings from May 30, 2003 up until the trial in Nanaimo in April,” says The Province, going on:

“A war of words had erupted between the two men on a website used by depressed and suicidal people.”

Halfyard ordered Sullivan to pay $150,000 in general and aggravated damages for libel, $25,000 for breach of privacy and $4,600 in special damages, and ordered an injunction be imposed on Sullivan, “preventing him from posting any further defamatory messages on the Internet,” says the story.

“This was an extreme and vicious campaign of Internet libel,” said Griffin’s lawyer Dan Burnett.

“For over four years the defendant posted hundreds of outrageous accusations against the plaintiff, which he admitted at trial had no basis. The high damage award and the injunction reflects how much harm can be inflicted by a person bent on using the Internet for a smear campaign.”

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The Province -Australian wins blog libel case, July 16, 2008

Or is it?

A slide rule to help librarians and others figure out if a creative work is copyrighted has been launched by the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy, says the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus.

But, “The exceptions to the law, and the exceptions to the exceptions, are reminiscent of the nerve-wracking U.S. tax code,” says the post, adding:

“For example, say you have a book that was created before 1979 and published before January 1, 2003.

“Is permission needed to reuse the book? According to the slide-rule, maybe. Generally speaking, the book is copyright protected through 2047.

“Then again, the protection could last longer.”

Click here for the slide rule.

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Wired Campus -American Library Association Unveils Slide Rule for Copyright Advice, July 17, 2008

A new pilot program called the Microsoft adCenter will begin on July 21, says TechCrunch, but, “No word on how Microsoft will get more money to these sites than what is offered by Google today.

It goes on, “Putting ads on third parties is a controversial product, since advertisers expect the kinds of click throughs and conversions that they get from search. Earlier this week Google was sued for fraud because ads placed on parked pages weren’t producing results.”

TechCrunch is running a Microsoft email which pretty well sets it all out and which reads, in part »»»

We would request that you agree to take part in the pilot for at least two months or two full payment cycles.

Only publishers who are U.S. based may take part; completing a W9 form is necessary to receive payment.

Click rates will be closely monitored during the pilot and publishers whose click rates give cause for concern or are anomalous will be removed from the program and will not be paid for clicks on their ads.

Microsoft can make no guarantee regarding the amount of any payments you may receive for the ads shown on your website during this test although the purpose of the program is to monetize your site with contextual advertising.

We would ask that you not use a third party provider to serve Microsoft ads during this test program. If this is an impossible obstacle for you, please contact me about it.

For the purposes of the pilot, you will be limited to a single account but you may implement ads on up to ten approved web properties that comply with the Microsoft adCenter editorial guidelines.

Stay tuned.

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New York Times -Opera Mobile 9.5 beta released, July 18, 2008

p2pnet news view | Mobiles:- Opera has released the free Opera Mobile 9.5 beta with an upgraded GUI and which is, it promises, is the most standards-compliant mobile browser available.

But only for the Windows Mobile platform.

Be that as it may, “Like its little brother, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile opens web sites in an overview mode,” says Heise Online, going on:

“Users click on a content block, which Opera Mobile then adjusts for the browser’s Windows – just as Safari does on the iPhone.”

A developer tool called Dragonfly, “has a remote debugging function to allow developers to go hunting for browser bugs,” saysthe story, adding:

“The software vendor says that the new Opera Mobile is much faster than its predecessor” but, “unlike the free Opera Mini, the mobile version does not get web sites from one of the vendor’s proxy servers.”

Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile

• Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC, version 8.65
• Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone, version 8.65
• Windows Mobile 5/6 PPC, Professional, Classic, version 8.65
• Windows Mobile 5/6 Smartphone, Standard, version 8.65
• Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC, version 8.60u2
• Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC, version 8.60u2
• Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone, version 8.00

Known issues

• ActiveX is disabled — Flash plugins and embedded video streaming do not work.
• Custom IME’s (like HTC’s IME) will be buggy at best, not working at worst.
• Not multilingual build — Only English is supported. Problems with other languages (and input methods) are not unexpected.
• Installation on memory cards may cause problems.
• Text wraps in overview mode.
• Main testing has been done on English HTC devices (Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Touch, Touch Dual, Touch Cruise, TyTN and Wizard) and Samsung i900.
• We have got reports from some users that this build will disable the phones sounds/notifications.

As a point of interest, Opera, not Firefox, is often credited as being the first company to come out with tabs for browsers.

However, although it may have been the first company to really zero in on the potential, the first browser with tabs was InternetWorks, “developed by Booklink Inc., and winner of the Comdex show’s Rookie of the Year Award in 1994,” says livinginternet.com, going on:

“The program was renamed GNNworks the following year when it was bought by AOL and incorporated in their online client. (The same development team then went on to develop AOL’s Instant Messenger application.)

“The next known browser with what it called ‘dynamic browser tabs’ was Simulbrowse, now called NetCaptor, released by Adam Stiles on January 3, 1998. The Amiga browser IBrowse introduced tabbed browsing in 1999. The browser Opera V4 introduced tabbed browsing in 2000 (Opera had earlier introduced the multiple document interface enabling cascading and tiling of browser windows).”

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Heise Online - Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows, July 17, 2008
XP-reliant, DRM-loaded -James Brown’s Estate Cashes In on His Stuff, July 17, 2008

“Fans and collectors packed a Christie’s salesroom as more than 300 lots of Brown’s belongings were sold, bringing in a total of $857,688, the auction house said,” according to MSN Entertainment.

“Bidding rocketed past estimates for many of the items, which included some of the Godfather of Soul’s furniture, musical instruments and a poem Muhammad Ali wrote for him.”

Ali’s typewritten “King James Brown by Muhammad Ali, The World’s Greatest Poet, King of all Poets, On Behalf of the People of Western New York” fetched $25,000, says the story, adding:

“Brown was known for donning and doffing elaborate capes during his shows, and some of them were among the auction’s highlights. An intricately beaded, black satin cape went for $47,500; a blue satin one embroidered with ‘Thy Name Is Godfather of Soul’ fetched $35,000.”

But, Brown’s daughter, Yamma,  said a list of items she and her family wanted to keep, “was disregarded by the new trustees of Brown’s estate, who only on Monday got the OK from a South Carolina judge to proceed with the auction,” says E! Online.

“Whether the money brought in at auction belongs to Brown’s estate or his trust, which holds his song rights and other especially valuable assets, can be ’sorted out at a later date’,” South Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Jasper Cureton has decided.

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MSN Entertainment - Got a brand new bag? James Brown items auctioned, July 17, 2008
E! Online - James Brown’s Estate Cashes In on His Stuff, July 17, 2008

She does, too.

And she’s, “stood by Ronnie during his battles with drugs and alcohol which have seen him go through several stints in rehab,” says the story.

Ekaterina Ivanova, 20, “spent 10 days with the 61-year-old guitarist before he flew back to Britain and checked himself into rehab,” says The Telegraph, adding:

“A former alcoholic, Wood started drinking again after meeting Ivanova in a bar and was said to be consuming two bottles of vodka a day.

“The pair were spotted drinking near his house in Co Kildare, before he decided to seek treatment. Ivanova also returned to Britain this week and was seen in north London, staying with a friend.”

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Daily Mail -Pictures that show Ronnie’s ‘new love’ is a dead ringer for wife Jo, July 18, 2008
The Telegraph -Russian waitress: ‘I will stand by Ronnie Wood’, July 18, 2008

That’s Google co-founder and semi-supremo Sergey Brin, quoted by the New York Times.

Translated, as the headline to the story says, it means, “Google Deliberately Sells Fewer Ads —- and May Have Gone Too Far.”

Fewer ads?  How can that be?

“Listening to Google’s executives on their conference call with investors Thursday afternoon, you’d never know that the company’s second-quarter results fell short of expectations and its shares plummeted 10 percent in after-hours trading,” says the story, going on:

“Since Google has chosen, as a matter of principle, not to offer any guidance in advance about what its sales and profits will be, it avoids any embarrassing questions if it misses its own marks. So Eric Schmidt, and other executives, blithely insisted that all was well.”

But, “Some of the softness” in Google advertising revenue was, “self-inflicted,” says the NYT, which has Google’s Jonathan Rosenberg saying the company, “had chosen to reduce is advertising coverage —- the percentage of Web pages on which it displays advertising —- to an all-time low.”

And according to Rosenberg, Google’s other co-founder and semi-supremo Larry Page, “would like to see even fewer ads,” although the New York Times observes, “Page was not on the conference call to speak for himself.”

Meanwhile Brin, “noted that Google developed technology that helped increase its revenue from advertising (largely by finding ads that are more interesting to users). Indeed, it had a rule of thumb that for every potential dollar the company could earn from an improvement in advertising revenue, it would reduce the number of pages showing ads so that Google would only earn 50 cents more in revenue.”

However, “Clearly that is not the ideal strategy, because we don’t want to end up with no ads,” Brin admits in the story.

No kidding.

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New York Times -Google Deliberately Sells Fewer Ads — and May Have Gone Too Far, July 17, 2008

The computer mouse, that is?

“It’s nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered,” according to the BBC, which has a Gartner analyst predicting it [the mouse’s]  demise within the next three to five years.

“Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices,” says the story.

But mouse makers don’t agree

“The death of the mouse is greatly exaggerated,” says Rory Dooley senior vice president and general manager of Logitech’s control devices unit, in the story.

Logitech is the world’s biggest manufacturer of mice and keyboards and has sold more than 500 million mice over the last 20 years, it explains, quoting Dooley as saying, “This just proves how important a device the mouse is.”

So what about the keyboard? Is it on its way out as well?

Not according to Gartner’s Steve Prentice.

It’s here to stay for the foreseeable future, he says, stating firmly:

“Nothing is easily going to replace it.

“But the idea of a keyboard with a mouse as a control interface is the paradigm that I am talking about breaking down.”

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BBC -Say goodbye to the computer mouse, July 17, 2008

p2pnet news view | Off Topic:- Last year was a good year for flying saucers in Canada.

So says Chris Rutkowski, director of the Winnipeg’s Ufology Research institute which has just published the 2007 Canadian UFO Survey.

Researchers studied 836 UFO sightings from across Canada, an increase of almost 12 per cent over 2006.

Reports were filed by witnesses with government and military agencies, police, civilian UFO groups and several online UFO websites, says the document.

So are we undergoing a mass invasion by aliens?

Not from the look of it.

“Of the hundreds of cases, only a fraction - about 16 per cent - were labeled as unexplained after review by investigators,”   Says the report, going on:

“Only about one per cent of the total were ‘high quality unknowns’ that were both unexplained and had above-average levels of investigation and documentation.”

2007 saw the second-highest number of UFO reports filed in Canada in a single year, “since we began collecting data in 1989,” says Rutkowski.

That year, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec each had all-time record high numbers of UFO reports ranging from, “relatively commonplace reports of starlike lights maneuvering oddly in the night” to, “large, structured craft with lights moving ponderously overhead to the amazement of witnesses”.

One such  such was seen on March 3 over Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, and, “In Granisle, British Columbia, a ‘blacklight-coloured‘ object moved across the sky accompanied by odd clouds” and in North Tryon, Prince Edward Island, a, “small shiny object flew in a corkscrew-like manner through the late afternoon sky, leaving behind a strange smoke trail.”

The excellent Creative Commons pic on the right first appeared in Digital Journal.

Click here for more reports of UFOs in Canada.

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New York Times - Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows, July 17, 2008
XP-reliant, DRM-loaded - Amazon Unbox with DRM, September 8, 2006

“Music lovers could also decide whether or not to buy a discbox with a vinyl album, bonus CD and other assorted bits and pieces, for about $80 US,” posted p2pnet.

Now they’ve done it again with House of Cards.

And this time, they’ve apparently gone open source.

Their new single comes with a promo video shot with two advanced visualisation techniques to produce computer renderings in real time, as The Guardian describes it,  continuing:

“Radiohead has employed a scanning system, called Geometric Informatics, that produces structured light to capture three-dimensional images in close-up. Then, for some atmospheric location shots, an advanced Velodyne Lidar system, which uses multiple lasers to capture large environments, has been used to create scenes of suburban Los Angeles. The system uses 64 lasers rotating in 360 degrees at a rate of 900 times per minute.

“The live action promo was created entirely with visualisations of that data. But what is most interesting is the way that Radiohead has decided to ‘open source’ the project, allowing anyone to use the data to produce their own interpretation of the promo.”

Very cool.

Click here for the YouTube video on how they did it.

The results are below.

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p2pnet - Radiohead DIY sales results, November 6, 2007
The Guardian -Is Radiohead the latest band to go open source?, July 17, 2008

p2pnet news view

He was referring to the furor opened by Quebec extremists on the news that McCartney is one of the artists performing at Quebec city’s 400th anniversary scheduled to be staged on the Plains of Abraham, scene of the battle between began on September 12, 1759 between the British Army and Navy, and the French Army just outside the walls of Quebec City.

A “few dozen separatists, including two Parti Québécois front- benchers, Pierre Curzi and Daniel Turp,” have, “worked themselves into a froth of indignation over the former Beatle’s big show,” says a Montreal Gazette editorial.

Nor is the first time McCartney has sparked a political row in Canada.

In 2006, he, “touched off a minor storm in Atlantic Canada with his vocal opposition to the seal hunt,” says the Toronto Star, going on, “McCartney’s visit included trading barbs on CNN with Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams.”

This time around, Quebec sculptor Luc Archambault had, “issued an open letter denouncing McCartney’s arrival because the star is British,” says the story, going on the letter was co-signed by several “high-profile artists and a handful of Parti Québécois legislators”.

McCartney, “rejected criticism that his concert is an affront to Quebec’s francophone culture,” says the story, quoting him as saying:

“I’m very friendly with the French people that I know, I’m friendly with people of all nationalities. I’m friendly with German people, but by … (Archambault’s) argument I should never go to Germany again” because of World War II.

Now he’s telling Quebeckians, as he quaintly calls the people who live in La Belle Province, he wants to give them the, “best night in their lives,” according to the Gazette.
Meanwhile, “The only thing being tarnished here is the image of the PQ and the sovereignist movement when prominent figures in its ranks indulge in such ludicrous displays of nationalist pique,” it says, adding:

“Curzi and Turp really should know better than to stoop to this. They’re making it bad, mostly for themselves.”

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400th anniversary - Quebec separatists vs Paul McCartney, July 17, 2008
Montreal Gazette -All we are saying is give Paul a chance, July 18, 2008
Toronto Star -  Pass the peace pipe and inhale: McCartney, July 18, 2008

p2pnet news view P2P | Freedom:- Is yet another Bell Canada travesty about to spark yet another CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) submission?

“The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan is a huge institutional investor, with $108.5 billion in assets as of Dec. 31,” said the Motley Fool of the Bell Canada Enterprises deal.

It went on: “It has interests in a diverse roster of companies, including oil and gas company Nexen, supermarket chain Safeway , Deutsche Telekom, and pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. Its $52 billion leveraged buyout of BCE represents the biggest acquisition in Canada’s history, and the world’s largest LBO ever.”

It’d been predicted that once the the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and its partners had acquired BCE with Michael Sabia retiring as CEO, we’d see price hikes and layoffs since this buy-out puts the union and Bell Canada $52 billion into dept.

Sabia said he’d step down once the “teachers” deal was a go, and he was true to his word, his place being taken by one George Cope.

It seems one of the first things Cope did was to trim the number executives down from 17 to 12.

So the jobs cuts start. And more are likely to follow shortly to help Bell quickly reduce its newly acquired debt.

We can also confidently expect the nickel and diming and cut-throat tactics aimed at weeding out the competition to really start.

Bell Canada has apparently announced to its wholesale competition that it’ll open up 10 & 16-meg internet to them at the end of the month.

But it gets worse.

The company has also apparently announced it’ll start charging wholesalers for bandwidth used by their customer bases.

Or to put it another way, Bell will start levying charges for internal bandwidth used by the wholesale competition before the data even hit the net!

As it is, it charges the wholesale competition $21 to $24 per user for use of “last mile” access, and in some cases around $7 to $15 more per user for what’s called a “dry-loop”.

And so the World According to G. Copes begins.

Will the wholesale user-base and the wholesalers revolt?

Will we see another CRTC case hitting the fan?

I think so.

Stay tuned as this situation develops.

Ottawa Gal - p2pnet
[Ottawa Gal is a long-time p2pnet reader and comment poster who’d rather remain anonymous. She says she works in the University, likes her cat, reality TV, and Doctor McDreamy. Her favourite web sites are the Michael Geist blog and p2pnet.net. “Privacy on the net is also important to me,” she says. “I need a tinfoil hat ;)” She’s also the mother of, “two darling little girls who tore down my ceiling fan thinking it would be fun to hang from it.” So she advises parents to, “never have an armchair around from which little ones can reach fans”. (No one was hurt ) ]

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