Tech News

Gizmodo About To Prove How Stupid Shield Laws Are?

11:13 pm EST April 26th, 2010 | Media | 7 Comments

Gizmodo is apparently set to claim reporter privelege in response to a raid of writer Jason Chen’s computer being seized in the whole iPod 4G incident.

What?

As I noted before, it’s good to see some Apple news broken outside of an Apple PR event, but it seems like Gizmodo at best knowingly paid for stolen goods for its story. Even worse, the idea that they could hide behind some sort of special reporters law is gross.

We are in an era where the distinction between guy with a website and “journalist” is negligible at best. Sure, the output quality can be wildly different (generally establishment media produces better work, but on the other hand Fox News) but as far as the laws go, we’re all journalists now.

Shield laws, in my view, create a special class of citizen, one where you don’t have to respond to government requests for information like everyone else, just because you publish information. I think that’s wrong.

I sort of hope Gawker media really plans to go through with this, just to prove how dumb these laws are. Gawker wasn’t writing about the secret government whistleblower who knows the truth about WMDs. They were writing about Apple’s new stupid telephone, and may have broken a law in the process. They shouldn’t get to claim that they’re super special journalists to bypass prosecution.

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Google’s Super Network

2:46 pm EST February 10th, 2010 | News | 1 Comment

Especially since I can’t get Fios at my home, I’d like one please.

Google said it would use fiber optic lines to the home, the same technology used by many telecommunications companies, but declined to give details about whether it would build, buy or rent such services and how much the venture would cost.

The move, which follows successful and aborted attempts to launch wireless Internet networks in some U.S. cities, could put Google in direct competition with the likes of AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, although one analyst did not see the move as a new stand-alone business for the search company.

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Sweet Merciful Storage Heaven

10:20 am EST February 3rd, 2010 | News | 7 Comments

My first DOS-based PC (a smoking fast 486sx-25mhz with 1mb of RAM) came with a 60mb hard drive that was pretty hefty for its day. Now? You can get 2 TERABYTES for around $200. And that will probably cost $100 by the end of the year. Crazy.

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Mark Cuban Is Still Full Of Crap

10:16 am EST February 3rd, 2010 | News | 1 Comment

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Yesterday, Mark Cuban warned media owners in a keynote speech that Google is a vampire trying to suck them dry, giving them nothing back and daring owners to block it. This is the same Mark Cuban who is an investor in Mahalo, which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. Is Google a vampire except when it works in Cuban’s favor?

PREVIOUSLY: Mark Cuban’s Glass House

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Apple iPad Reveal

4:08 pm EST January 27th, 2010 | Comic Books | 11 Comments

I want one, and I want to be able to read comic books on it. Comic book artist-gods Erik Larsen and J. Scott Campbell concur.

Make this happen, Marvel/DC/Image/Etc.

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Apple Profits Beat Estimates

7:12 pm EST January 25th, 2010 | News | 1 Comment

steve jobs iphone

If Apple is doing this well now, what if the economy wasn’t in the crapper?

Apple on Monday reported growth in revenue and net income for the first quarter of 2010, buoyed by strong iPhone and Mac shipments.

The company reported a net profit of US$3.38 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 26, compared to $2.26 billion in the first quarter of 2009. The company reported earnings per share of $3.67, which beat estimates of $2.09 from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

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Google Beats Earning Estimates, Slightly

4:27 pm EST January 21st, 2010 | News | Comments Off

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Google Inc.’s fourth-quarter earnings soared as the Internet giant posted strong growth in advertising clicks and avoided big charges that weighed down prior-year results.

‘Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year,’ Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said.

Even though results topped analysts’ expectations, shares fell 4.8% to $550.94 in after-hours trading. The stock has nearly doubled over the past year.

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Mark Cuban’s Glass House

3:31 pm EST January 19th, 2010 | News | 18 Comments

In an otherwise tedious blog entry defending failed NBC exec Jeff Zucker, Mark Cuban writes:

In today’s world, we reward Patent Trolls with 8 and 9 figure settlements for ideas they never did a minute of work on or ever tried to monetize. The extent of their effort was hiring or selling out to patent lawyers. That’s a problem.

Where does the bulk of Mark Cuban’s fortune come from?

Yahoo today said its $5.04 billion acquisition of Internet audio and video streaming company Broadcast.com is a done deal, and it will begin integrating multimedia services throughout the Yahoo network.
Broadcast.com’s content and services will be integrated during the third quarter of 1999.

What do you get when you visit Broadcast.com today? Nothing. It redirects to the Yahoo! home page.

Mark Cuban suckered Yahoo into acquiring his company for far too much money in the middle of the dotcom craze. Other than that, most of Cuban’s other ventures are mostly unremarkable, from HDNet to blog search engine icerocket.com. Cuban’s one success has been his NBA team, and in a major city like Dallas, that isn’t completely brain surgery.

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34 Gigs A Day: Do Your Part

12:07 pm EST December 9th, 2009 | News | 1 Comment

A new study indicates that the average American is consuming 34 gigabytes of data a day. Now this includes all the information you run across each day, not just what you get over the web. Still, “I’m just filling my quota” could easily become the mantra for the digital Tiger Woods set.

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Are People This Naive?

7:50 am EST November 16th, 2009 | News | 13 Comments

Back in 2003 I argued to the chagrin of some techno-utopian types at a blogging conference, that as a Howard Dean supporter I would be really upset if he was wasting time blogging when he should be glad-handing with possible supporters. I’m reminded of that because some on the tech blogs are expressing some mild surprise that President Obama isn’t the person writing his tweets on Twitter.

Come on. Seriously?

Next thing you’ll tell me that you think he composed all those e-mails during the campaign and that they weren’t the work of highly skilled pro writers.

Also, professional wrestling is pre-scripted. Even when Trish Stratus kissed that girl.

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