Week in review: Sex, spies and video flaps

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Indeed, a look at any of the many public WoW forums reveals no shortage of postings from players complaining that they had been banned and asking for help.

To Zak, a 14-year-old player, the notice didn't make any sense. He believed he hadn't done anything to break the game's rules against an illegal process known as "power leveling," in which players gain points and levels in online games through banned exploits.

That was the activity for which he believed he had been kicked out of WoW. A week later, after writing to Blizzard, his account was reactivated.

Server shifts
Defying the prevailing pattern of the computer industry, server prices increased at the end of last year as customers showed a new preference for more-powerful machines.

"For the first time in 10 years, we've seen the average selling price market-wide go up year-over-year," said analyst Matthew Eastwood. In the fourth quarter of 2006, worldwide server sales increased 5.2 percent to $15.2 billion but shipments stayed level at 2 million units, meaning that the average server price tag went up from $7,308 to $7,690.

According to analysts and server makers, virtualization and multicore processors helped trigger the change. Virtualization can make a single server more efficient, running more software at the same time in separate partitions called virtual machines. And multicore processors let a single chip handle the work of two or four single-core models.

Virtualization and multicore processors are certainly making an impact, leading IDC to lop off 4.5 million units from its forecast for the number of x86 servers to ship in the second half of the decade. That 4.5 million number is a major change--about 10 percent of the servers the market analysis firm had expected would be sold from 2006 to 2010. In addition, the firm trimmed its spending forecast by $2.4 billion.

The reason for the change is that customers are buying fewer, more powerful systems, IDC argued. Virtualization lets a single system run multiple operating systems simultaneously; multicore processors amplify the consolidation trend by enabling individual servers to handle more work.

Any new x86 server can run virtualization software, but Dell plans to release a model that's geared specifically to customers drawn to the newly mainstream computing trend.

"You're going to see us in the second part of this year going back to the virtualization trend," said Jay Parker, director of Dell's PowerEdge server group. "We believe there's an opportunity to optimize hardware products and surrounding software for virtualization."

Gadget goings-on
At long last, it looks like Apple TV is now available for purchase. The Apple Web site is listing the set-top box as available for shipment in three to five business days.

Calls to New York- and San Francisco-area Apple Stores confirmed that the box, which is meant to deliver content between a TV and a PC, is so far available only online. A San Francisco Apple Store employee said they expect to have Apple TV "any day now."

CNET got its first in-person look at the Apple TV since its unveiling back in September of 2006. Company representatives were showing it off at a Manhattan hotel suite and gave us a loaner to do our own hands-on testing.

Microsoft is still planning to release a software update soon to fix several issues with its Zune music player, but releasing the patch is taking longer than expected. The software maker said last month to expect a patch in mid-March. The update is designed to address a couple of issues, including one that causes some songs downloaded from Microsoft's online Zune Marketplace store to skip when played on the device.

Microsoft isn't giving a new time frame, but marketing director Jason Reindorp said in an e-mail that "it is very close to being ready."

On the legal front, an association of music publishers filed a lawsuit that accuses XM Satellite Radio of refusing to stop "widespread infringement" of popular copyrighted songs. The National Music Publishers Association argues that the satellite radio operator's "XM + MP3" music service skirts copyright laws by allowing radio listeners to make permanent copies of on-air tracks through devices like the Pioneer Inno player without permission and without properly compensating songwriters.

Also, in a preliminary victory for Palm, a federal judge halted proceedings related to a patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by NTP. The ruling essentially means Palm can continue to sell products in question--the line of Treo smart phones, the Palm VII, Palm i700 and Palm Tungsten--at least until the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) rules on whether they infringe on wireless e-mail patents held by NTP.

Also of note
Widespread abuse of the FBI's authority to secretly obtain Americans' telephone, Internet and financial records drew pointed questioning from a key U.S. House of Representatives panel...A security researcher has found a way hackers can make PCs of unsuspecting Web surfers do their dirty work, without having to actually commandeer the systems...Microsoft is closing its video-sharing site, Soapbox, to new users for up to two months so it can create better safeguards against pirated content.

[trueview]

GOOGLE LOST

I hardly think the YouTube lawsuit Viacom received after it filed its groundbreaking one does not take anything away from the major gross neglect and negligence by the Google Inc. company.

If you look at the history of the senior staff who run Google, they have a very biased & vocal history of speaking out and pushing against normal United States government processes (many ways like Bill Gates at Microsoft did, see MS Antitrust ongoing). Believe me, the USDOJ and the United States knew exactly what they were doing in warning Microsoft to stop its practices in early 1990. We could be living in a richer more vibrant I.T. community, much happier and less disconnected, that advanced on top of the BBS phenomenon. It all would have worked out, concerning standards, however, it would have come-on slower, less harm & stress, and would have conformed with the will of the United States business framers. There is a reason for laws of the land, and when they get broken by successful people who profit from it, it gives the illusion of success is OK and it is OK. It is not OK.

This must come to a stop.

Please look at peekvid.com. As you can see, Google Inc. still has many major full length movies stored on their servers. I do think they know about the hundreds of movies. Unless google can conform to normal business thinking and government processes concerning business, then they need to pay the price anyone else would pay for this level of fraud, deception and blatantly fingering the USA. It is not up to the USA to conform to the will of a single business, it is the other way around.

So, the law says Google must pay the price for this and it will only be a matter of time before someone takes real action. Does anyone really think for a second the business world is going to operate for the next 1000 years? Remember, there were many big companies in the past, with lush office parks, and presence.... that are no longer around. The illusion of permanency once feels with Google is maybe why the founders have become lost behind it. Somehow the message that if you are a iconic company, one can get away with a little bit or a lot.

[unknown unknown]

RE

What a diatribe.

"I hardly think the YouTube lawsuit Viacom received after it filed its groundbreaking one does not take anything away from the major gross neglect and negligence by the Google Inc. company. If you look at the history of the senior staff who run Google, they have a very biased & vocal history of speaking out and pushing against normal United States government processes (many ways like Bill Gates at Microsoft did, see MS Antitrust ongoing)."

Yeah, that's how things change. People push the boundaries and the law adapts by acts of congress and court rulings. It's hardly gross negligence by Google, since the DMCA only requires that they respond promptly to a valid take down notice. Gross negligence would be Viacom sending a take down notice for 100,000 videos it scraped from a simple search without verifying that they indeed own the copyright. It should also be noted that Viacom owns iFilm and Atom Films, both which allow user to post video, some of which is infringing. Much like YouTube Viacom only offers DMCA take down notices to content owners that had their stuff illegally posted. Both iFilm and Atom Films have been around longer than YouTube and do not implement any of the features Viacom criticized Youtube for lacking...A bit hypocritical I'd say.


"Believe me, the USDOJ and the United States knew exactly what they were doing in warning Microsoft to stop its practices in early 1990. We could be living in a richer more vibrant I.T. community, much happier and less disconnected, that advanced on top of the BBS phenomenon."

Whether they knew what they were doing or not, they settled with Microsoft after the judge in the first trail had lapse of professionalism. The rest is conjecture and speculation.


"It all would have worked out, concerning standards, however, it would have come-on slower, less harm & stress, and would have conformed with the will of the United States business framers."

business framers? That sounds like something you'd find in communism.


"There is a reason for laws of the land, and when they get broken by successful people who profit from it, it gives the illusion of success is OK and it is OK. It is not OK. This must come to a stop."

You've already assumed Google will be found guilty when the case hasn't even come to trial yet.


"Please look at peekvid.com. As you can see, Google Inc. still has many major full length movies stored on their servers. I do think they know about the hundreds of movies."

peekvid.com isn't owned by Google, but I assume you mean what they link to. Perhaps you could be a little more specific so we don't have click through everything on the site look for links to YouTube. The ones I did click on were all Daily Motion videos. It's a reasonable assumption that if you allow users to upload stuff some of it is going to be illegal. Whether Google knows enough to remove them is another question. Of course when Hollywood lobbying for the DMCA, the safe harbor that was included says that service providers can avoid liability if they adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly respond to take down notices. Indeed the previously mentioned iFilm and Atom films have some material that is almost certainly infringing.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Difference Between Google and MSFT

Google as a meta player lives and breathes by being able to play well or at least in a state of mutual cooperation with content owners and providers. They are letting their model play out to bring content owners and providers to the table and will probably be smart enough to cut deals that makes money for the company and gets everyone else at the table paid enough to keep them all out of court. Still, everyone should remember that any outfit that runs around squeaking "Don't be evil" is probably on its way to emerging as the corporate equivalent of Ike Turner and needs to be watched closely.

MSFT is simply a sociopathic (some would say psychopathic institution) that lives and breathes to just murder everything that is not MSFT and create a desert it can run with impunity. It is probably one of the few outfits in American industrial history that has a purely annihilationist development model designed to fatally disrupt the trade of competitors rather actually compete on quality and service. (Hard to think of a non-computer equivalent - imagine Ford hiring snipers to sit outside of Chevy dealerships and pick off customers to scare away car buyers. MSFT history is filled with this kind of attack. Read the 'Microsoft Files' for a look at the law suits it has generated with its competition killing tactics. The MSFT response is always hey, the competitors should have seen it coming and were stupid to not be prepared for it. Of course! GM needs to hire its own snipers and have them camped out on the roof of the dealerships.

Can anyone remember any CEO of any company larger than 10 people appearing in the press profanely screaming its intent to f****** kill a competitor (Google) while throwing furniture?

A good example. MSFT knows it doesn't have the engineering talent to build a search engine that works much less works as well as Google. (They're paying their own customers to look at it, probably not enough.) No new talent in search technologies with any self-respect is going to work for the company now that the options plan has been gutted. So MSFT has cooked up an idea to demonize Google's model as criminally negligent, by infringing copyrights, in an effort to get the publishing and media companies to sue Google into oblivion.

The MSFT attorneys think they're clever and enjoy entertaining themselves with the fantasy that Google will be assaulted by endless torts, be reduced to a flaming wreck and MSFT can just shovel its lame search into the void. Google will surprise them by cutting deals the copyright holders can live with and benefit them both, an alternative that MSFT could never imagine given its traditional impulses.

[Fil0403]

Real Difference Between Google and Microsoft

Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world with strong revenue from Windows (85+% market), Office (75+% market) and Xbox (50+% market).
Compared to Microsoft, Google is small company who depends on revenues from ads.
If you think Google will ever destroy Microsoft you don't know anything about this market and will be very disappointed, LOL.

[EmporerEJ]

Clearly Biased

Your attitude against the Adult industry is very clear. While we fight for everyone's free speech, you snicker and made politically correct noises.
But we know our customers, and I can assure you, if there were "two internets," there would only be one that survived on it's own. YOUR internet would need to be subsidized with government funds.

How about this....you want your kiddies to go out in the big cruel world? How about you hold their hand, just like you would, anywhere else as a responsible parent. I'm not interested in being your substitute parent.