LEKARE

The people behind The Pirate Bay were convicted and sentenced to jail (apart from a ridiculously high amount of damages to be paid)… but what happens next?

They have all appealed, and the appeal (which probably will be accepted and taken to a new trial) will take place in about a year… so – for now – the convicted won’t have to face jailtime.

Now, it seems the judge that handled the case might have been biased. He is member of two organizations: The Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for Industrial Legal Protection.

This makes him – in my eyes at least – totally biased and not suitable to judge in a case involving copyright. But if Judge Norstrom was truly an impartial, brilliant, expert judge, might he have not offered the following quote: “This is a sensitive case. So before I agreed to hear it, I asked some of my fellow judges whether they considered that I would be in a position of conflicting interests. Two judges said absolutely not. While a third said he wasn’t quite so sure. I went with the majority.”

This says it all, doesn’t it?

On another note, the people convicted actually had a website much like google (albeit much much smaller).. their site (www.thepiratebay.com) contains a search engine and listings to torrent files. They don’t host files. They were convicted for “facilitating” torrent files to the public. So what does Google do? The exact same thing.

That’s why some clever guy registered the name thepirategoogle.com. Where he (or she) uses google to search for torrents. This website has the exact same functionality as the Pirate Bay – it uses Google’s search engine to “facilitate torrent files” to people searching for torrents. It seems, however, that media companies are a bit afraid to sue Google, aren’t they?

The HTC Touch Pro has just been released to rave reviews, and has also been dubbed an “iPhone-killer”. I generally both like and dislike Windows Mobile more than OSX, so I guess it will have to be tested before I give a verdict. Seems the speed troubles that bogged down other WM-based phones have been fixed here. Navigation seems to be smooth and it seems to work pretty well. Besides, you are allowed to install whatever software you want on it, not something Apple has “approved”, which makes it worth it just because of that.

Google is about to launch a phone, with a built in GPS and Google Maps, as well as Google Talk and other Google applications. There is no doubt in my mind that Larry & Sergei are trying to take over the world… A little bit like Pinky and the Brain. Muahhhahahhaahaa

Just finished watching an English documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle“. It’s a documentary that aims to prove that the idea of man causing global warming, is a myth that is used politically. I tend to agree, after seeing this documentary. Generally, global warming is said to be caused by humans releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. However, there is no correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels.

Only 0.054% of the Earth’s atmosphere consist of CO2. To say that humans – that release about 8% of what the oceans release of CO2 each year – contribute in any way to global warming, is a complete hoax.

�The period between 1945 and 1975 is when the greatest amounts of CO2 were released into the atmosphere by humans. Global temperatures, however, fell during this period.

Then what is causing the global warming? Studies show that the sun is responsible for the historical fluctuations in global temperature. Apparently, intense solar activity increases global temperature, as no solar activity cools global temperature.

�That said, I am of the opinion that we should take care of our environment and the Earth. But to use global warming as a reason to do that, is not right.

No… not talking about the Iphone… I believe the Iphone – albeit its’ cool GUI – sucks. No 3G, no flash for the camera, so-so resolution, etc. No, the phone I’m talking about is the cryptically named P4550 from HTC. This is the mother of all mobile phones. Don’t believe me? It has everything the Iphone doesn’t (except for the camera flash?):

• Slide out keyboard – who wants to jot sms messages on a screen that – if you just happened to eat junk food – just gets greasy?
• 3G
• 3MP camera
• Built in GPS

It looks to be quite cool when it’s released by the end of this month. Pricewise it will be way cheaper than the Iphone – around 800 bucks WITHOUT any contract. So you can expect to find it for a couple of hundred with a contract included.

Last tuesday, my ADSL connection stopped working. Apparently the modem gave up due to some electric discharge or something. I called it in wednesday, and the “helpful customer representative”, told me it would take between 24 and 72 hours for the problem to be resolved… Friday I called again, and they said that the 72 hours would end by saturday. Nothing happened, of course. I called saturday to ask what about the solution of the problem, and another “helpful customer representative” told me that the 72 hours are counted as working hours… so, for instance 24 hours are 3 working days. 72 hours are 9 working days. The obviously don’t work weekends, and this tuesday is May 1st, socialist holiday. So no work then… we’ll see when I get internet access back.

Telmex sucks. Prodigy sucks. Unfortunately, there are no options to Prodigy. Carlos Slim should use some of the 60 MUSD he makes EVERY DAY to make the service better. But he doesn’t care about the people that made him rich. Why should he? We can’t do anything about it/him anyway, since there are no ways to make him give his customers better support.

They have finally done it. The ADSL monopoly company Prodigy (owned by the landline monopoly Telmex) here in Mexico have begun blocking VOIP services now. I have 2 Swedish VOIP accounts, both of which ceased to function as of today. Looking in the setup page for my PAP2, which handles both accounts, the equipment de-registers continually from the SIP servers. The system manages to register every 15 seconds, but just for a couple of seconds at a time. Talked with people that also have VOIP services, and they have the same problem.

Now, as they say – they are in their own right to block such services (they name VOIP specifically) that “compromise the quality” of the ADSL service. What does that mean, exactly? According to this, you can’t use the ADSL service for VPN:s either (another premium service from Telmex). Wouldn’t it be better to say in the user agreement that they can’t allow any competition, since Telmex themselves live off the phone conversations of other people and sell VPN services?

The biggest problem might not be the fact that they actually do this. The biggest problem is that there is no place to turn to. Mexican consumer advocate groups have no power basically, and Telmex have an excellent standing with the government, given that they have spent millions in restoring Mexico City’s old town, infrastructure projects, etc. So basically they can screw the consumer as long as they don’t screw the government. That sucks.

Now, Telmex/Prodigy are into starting to send TV through the Internet. They have already acquired the necessary licenses. Is their next step to make Youtube illegal? Will they slam down on anybody downloading movies / television content? I think Mr. Slim needs a better team of advisors regarding his IT strategies… Mr Carlos Slim already owns most of CompUSA (which is, as I heard, struggling), and of US Prodigy. He should sit down and see what he wants to do with the extreme power that comes with purveying 80% of all Internet infrastructure to Mexicans.

It has caused quite a bit of a stir at ALT1040 Mexico’s (?) most prominent tech blog. Read [here]

Somebody had the idea to use a monochrome screen from a calculator (TI-84) to show video… the results? Interesting might be the word… read about it [here]

You can see on this picture, the quality we’re speaking of… btw, the image on the screen is from the movie Matrix.

Saw on another blog a letter from someone wanting to have that blog removed from Google, since it ranked higher than the guy’s (the one who wrote it) website. Quite funny, actually…
Update: seems I fell for it like alot of other people… just a pinch of viral marketing.,…A big hoax.