Still here

Work has me busy and I have not had a chance to do anything useful here. My managing someone on a project is really outside of my comfort zone, and something that came up today is even further outside of my comfort zone. Plus all my other stuff. Right now I feel like I am going warp 10 through an asteroid field.

Interesting Comic

I just read yesterday's Non Sequitor in my "dinosaur blog". Thought I'd throw a link in for everyone.

Some cool music

Dave Winer of Scripting News has a link to a Wired magazine article about South by South West Festivals. This year they have a huge honking (an industry term) BitTorrent file that has all the donated songs from artists who are performing. They have a 2.6 gig (yep, gig) file that has 750+ full length songs from the 1300+ acts at the festivals. There is also a 345 meg file containing a 30 second clip of each file. Each file can individually be downloaded from the website.

More interesting is that the entire program from the conference can be downloaded to your iPod. This is one advantage the iPod has over other MP3 players - programability. What would be cooler is if iPod had Bluetooth and could pick up changes to the schedule as you move from event to event.

However the coolest thing this shows is there are some real uses for BitTorrent. I would be more than willing to get my podcasts through BitTorrent if it was integrated with Doppler that I use to get my podcasts. There are some great, legitimate uses for this kind of software, especially as more and more people begin to leave their compuers on 24/7. I just wish I had a computer I felt comfortable leaving on 24/7.

David Stands Off Goliath

There was an article in the Akron Beacon Journal (no link guys - requires registration :( ) about a local college student, David Zamos, who was sued by Micro$oft for a variety of things. The problem was David sold some software, unopened & unused, that he bought with a student discount but later did not want. He tried to return it to get his $60 back but to no avail. He put the software up on eBay and got, after getting the first lawsuit dismissed, $203.

Micro$oft then sued for a variety of reasons, but it all boiled down to David sold the software and made a profit.

The best part is David, a chemistry major and with no law experience, has acted as his own lawyer. Not only did he get the first case for copyright infringement dismissed but he also has Micro$oft tied up in court.

Now Micro$oft has admitted that fundamentally there is nothing on the packaging saying David was not allowed to sell the software, although it is at least implied when buying software with an educational discount. At this point all he really wants is about $40 he laid out for copies and an apology from Micro$oft to drop his case, which they seem unwilling to do. Unless one side says uncle in this there is a court date of March 25th.

Now to me it seems Micro$oft just needs to suck it up and apologize. Given that, as was pointed out, they made $38 Billion the year this was started and David made $3500 I think they could part with $40 for something that was their fault. Now I do not faulting Micro$oft from going after him in the first place - they have to maintain their rights and licensing agreements. However if they did not mark the software, and even if they did there should still be a way to return the software IF it had not been opened. Even if the stores will not Micro$oft should do it directly. Frankly I have seen first hand some serious abuses of the educational discount programs, so they should make it easier for someone to get their purchase price back on unused software, such as the case here. David did try to return the software. With $3500 in income all he wanted was to get his money out of the software.

This case also shows an interseting problem with eBay. Had David done this through the school newspaper he would not be bothered. However because someone saw this on eBay we are now sucking out all kinds of time from the court on a silly case.