CNN: “The chief of the British Army has called for a pullout of British troops from Iraq.” 
The Amish have the right idea, they demolished the school where last week’s tragedy took place. We should be so smart about what we call Ground Zero. Don’t build a shrine there. Don’t make a point of the place. Leave a hole there. Put in a park, with benches, and swings. Build a minor league baseball stadium. A venue for concerts. Don’t build another skyscraper. Don’t be defiant. Accept the deaths and let’s move on. No more shrines. No more global war on terror. We’re not the most important people on the planet.
A few years back we wrote about cars with interfaces for MP3 players, and now they’re starting to make them. That’s good. Okay, the next thing is to put fractional horsepower HTTP servers on board, with simple programming interfaces (I like XML-RPC because it interfaces easily with every programming language, but lower-level interfaces would be okay, just more work for the programmer). While you’re at it, home theater systems should also have HTTP servers with programmable interfaces, so I can write a script on my desktop computer to move stuff over to the hard disk on the music system. Oh that’s right they don’t have hard disks. Add one, okay? They’re really cheap.
The home theater system I bought, it’s a turnkey system, recommended highly by CNET, connects to my iPod, and I like that! The system doesn’t have its own hard disk, but it connects to one of mine. That’s a good place to start. But their software is totally lo-rez, and how are they going to upgrade it without a net connection? At some point we’ll stop buying electronics if it doesn’t have easy connectivity to the systems we already have. That’s why I bought a Mac Mini for my new TV, so I could find the points of frustration, where it drives me crazy that I can’t connect two things together that should be able to connect.
AppleInsider: “Owners of Apple Computer’s new 13-inch MacBook notebooks, whose systems are plagued by intermittent shutdown issues, have become fed up with extended repair times and inadequate resolutions to the problem, and are now organizing a class action lawsuit against the Mac maker.”
WSJ: “Does YouTube make Google a big target for copyright suits?”
Bryan Schappel: “This topic came up during the first hour of the Howard Stern show on the 10th. Howard said that loads of his material has been uploaded without permission and Artie Lange said that his DVD’s have also been uploaded without permission. Both of them agree that Google will be a prime target for copyright lawsuits.”
AppleInsider: “Apple Computer has been granted a patent for a pretermitted feature of Mac OS X that would have allowed users to sync their home directories to an iPod and then use the data stored on the player to securely log into any supported Mac.”
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Bryan Schappel on October 12, 2006 at 10:57 am
This topic came up during the first hour of the Howard Stern show on the 10th. Howard said that loads of his material has been uploaded without permission and Artie Lange said that his DVD’s have also been uploaded without permission. Both of them agree that Google will be a prime target for copyright lawsuits. Everyone on the show agreed that, with Google’s deep pockets, that many people will probably sue in the hope of a quick settlement.
If I recall the EULA for YouTube states that all uploaded material becomes the exclusive property of YouTube and you relinquish all rights to the material. I think that this part of the EULA absolves the uploaders of copyrighted content of wrongdoing and transfers all liability to YouTube. If you claim ownership of the content then you also must assume the responsibility for that content. At least as far as I’m concerned.
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You would never quess who owns the domain this site is registered to,,,
Microsoft…….
Posted by Jacob Levy on October 12, 2006 at 1:31 pm
That ownership-responsibility argument is pure hogwash. It only applies if the person uploading has the ownership in the first place. If not, then the uploader cannot give up her ownership because they don’t own anything.
Google will not settle. Instead they’ll just remove the content. Its already happening on both Google Video and YouTube. Nothing thats relevant to the DCMA aspect of this has changed now that google owns YouTube.
Posted by jim on October 12, 2006 at 3:36 pm
There is no suit available.
The DMCA safe harbour provisions apply. If you think your intellectual property has been posted on youtube, you notify them and they take it down. Sometimes they even notify the poster. Howard Stern may believe that much of his property has been uploaded, but if so, he hasn’t notified youtube of the specifics.
Nor can the sort of suit that killed napster succeed. There are legitimate uses for the system. Lonelygirl15 is a good example.
It’s a safe assumption that google can afford the best legal advice. It’s also a safe assumption they wouldn’t have offered $1.65B without exercising due diligence. If the purchase opened them to the risk of lawsuits with large damages, as people speculate without devoting three minutes thought, they wouldn’t have done it.
Posted by r4wb3r7 on October 12, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Data should be available everywhere. I don’t care if it’s a server built into every mobile or embedded device, I just on one repository for all of my data. It should also be open and support existing standards – who wants to be locked into Amazon S3 or Microsft MDrive (coming soon)?
When WiMax rolls out in 2008, over 100,000,000 people should have access to 4mbps for a cust of under $30.00 (via Sprint). Imagine having your PDA or cellular phone connected to your repository for streaming of media content or important files? How about having your data available everywhere?
Hmm, sounds like prototype we’re working on 🙂
Posted by Stefan Constantinescu on October 12, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Dave I would like to draw your attention to the latest John Sircusa blog post about Apple and it’s relationship, or lack there of, with blogging.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/10/12/5604?posted=true
Posted by antonis hontzeas on October 12, 2006 at 11:39 pm
>>WSJ: “Does YouTube make Google a big target for copyright suits?”
Could be…but they’re (Google) probably prepared, and maybe even looking forward to it.
Posted by Michael Markman on October 13, 2006 at 4:55 am
WRT home theatre… I’m planning to leave my content on my computer(s) and stream it to the upcoming Apple iTV thingy. Yeah, I know, more lock-in. But on the plus side, a high rez U-I, home-theatre access to podcasts (including videos), music, photos, and movie trailers. (Plus anything you may happen to purchase from iTunes store).