Pirates of the CaraSweden!

With the recent news of piracy along the important sea routes that border Africa, it it only fitting that another type of piracy reclaims its place at the head of Arrggghhhh table!  Old school pirates made their living off of hijacking and pillaging vessels along the water.  The Pirate Bay however takes swashbuckling to a more modern type of criminal activity, namely illegal file sharing.  

The four defendants in the case against Pirate Bay face jail time if found guilty tomorrow in Stockholm, Sweden.  While their prison sentences may be tame (up to a year), this could be a landmark case in the broader fight against illegal file sharing.  The entertainment industry has been waging this war for quite sometime now with limited success.  While victories against entities like Napster seemed like a step in the right direction, like weeds, file sharing sites keep sprouting up again.

From someone who knows the ins-and-outs of music downloading, I can honestly say that the effects of this ruling will be minimal.  While P2P sharing software, LimeWire comes to mind, is a powerful tool, it is too easy to shut them down.  The music downloaded from P2P services can be completely shut off just by closing the service.  But torrent services like Pirate Bay are a completely different animal.  The torrent sites are spread out all over the internet, and it would be an extremely difficult challenge to irradicate the Web of all of these torrents.

No actual material is stored on the Web site that features a search function for file sharing with BitTorrent technology-which is legal in itself, but commonly used for illegal file sharing.

If the verdict, however, comes in not guilty the entertainment industry could be set back for quite some time.  Perhaps, they might recognize the futility of this endeavor.  I think South Park addressed it best.  Let's hope that some kind of compromise can be reached.  This whole thing's a mess, and in the end, everyone is losing.  This is the original article.

Uh Oh...I'm in Trouble

Hide me.  Please!  Take me somewhere, anywhere, but far from a laptop.  Miles from a wireless router. Lightyears from anything even remotely resembling a computer screen.  Let me explain my problem.

Time Warner is testing out a new pricing plan for Internet usage.  Mr. Gonsalves' article titled, Time Warner Tests $150-Per Month Unlimited Internet exposes Time Warner's recent shunning of traditional pricing methods.  And all I can say is...yikes.  As a college student I spend most of my life on this laptop.  When I'm not doing schoolwork its watching streamed TV, listening to downloaded music, and playing games.

The newly proposed method would charge customers based on their Internet consumption.  This would be measured in Gigabytes of data downloaded.  The steps include plans ranging from 1 to 100GB, including the unlimited package.  Obviously, the prices increase with consumption levels.  Also, I understand the need for doing this.  The current networks we use to access and use the Internet will soon be unable to support this growing YouTube culture.  Time Warner COO Randell Hobbs stated:

...without expensive upgrades, Internet demand in the United States would outpace capacity within a few years, possibly as soon as 2012.

Something must be done, I know.  But this? I might be able to get by with the 100 GB per month, but with overage charges of $1 per gig, I risk my weekly allowance.  Believe me, as a proud owner of my very own checking account, I am fully aware of the pitfalls of overage charges.  

Time Warner says that 30% of its customers use 1GB a month, the $15 pricing plan.  To that I say, "Bull*&%&".  Who did they do their market research on, the Amish?  I know of only one person who could use a data package that small... my dad.  I didn't feel like interviewing him, but I'm sure it would have went a little like this:

"Hey dad do you think its fair that Time Warner is patterning its Internet pricing based on consumption rather then a flat rate?  And, how do you feel as someone who uses the Internet away from the office once a month about the suggested $15 price for such service?"

"Well hello Dane, go to Church today?"

"No dad."

"Well get to Church, and sign us up for that $15 plan, sounds like a steal."

Not much help I know.  It seems that Internet fiends worldwide will be relegated to deciding between our passion and eating.  So I know I would be paying $150 for sure.  And I absolutely could not afford that.  So I've decided that I might take up tennis, or chess perhaps, to relieve myself of the need to spend my days by the computer.

The greatest news ever

Let me preface this post by saying that I have never worked.  Oh, I've held jobs before.  Paper boy, banquet bartender (it was like Wedding Crashers every week), and unfortunately a short stint as a chaperone at a daycare.  These "jobs" took time out of my day and I earned a steady paycheck.  But I've never sat at a desk, I have yet to have my own office, and God forbid I am ever enclosed by a cubicle.  I figure that I'll have plenty of work drudgery to look forward to in the following 40 years of my life, so why start now?

But I fear not.  Why you may ask?  No, I haven't won the lottery or inherited an estate.  I just read  this fascinating article about workplace productivity.  I have dreamed for years now that I could be watching the Evolution of Dance and be on a conference call at the same time.  While that may be a bit of an exaggerated example, take a look at the facts.  

Workers who 'surf the Internet for fun at work-within a reasonable time limit of less than 20 percent of their total time in office-are more productive by about 9 percent'

You can't see me now, but right now I'm smiling ear-to-ear AND doing the robot.  I don't know what's more incredible; the 9 percent increase in productivity or that 20 percent of time spent on the Internet is somehow considered "reasonable".  Think about that for a second.  With a 40 hour work week that's 8 hours a week and roughly 400 hours a year.  With that kind of time I could:

• Watch "Charlie bit my finger" 24,000 times.
• Read every Fail Blog entry three times over.
• Learn every quote from every single Adam Sandler Movie ever made by heart.
• Become a World of Warcraft master a la Leeroy Jenkins

The possibilities are limitless.  Leave it up to the Aussies to promote workplace le-

isure over exerting actual effort.  These are the same people who brought us Outback Steakhouse, Foster's Beer, and, of course, Crocodile Dundee.  

While I can almost guarantee that bosses all over America will never adopt this form of leisure based management.  It makes me happy that when I get caught creeping on Facebook at work I'll have an excuse.  As long as I can still search for this article.