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Comment Re:Priorities on disbursment.... (Score 1) 174

But under english law, are financiers of the company itself really involved in champerty or maintenance? Isn't there a big difference between funding a third party's lawsuit and actually buying an interest in the third party in question even if the effect is to give the third party the funds to pursue thte lawsuit?

Comment Re:As I have posted previously.... (Score 3, Insightful) 244

The evidence of what happened is clear: 2007 was the best year in almost a decade for decent movie releases. And, I'm not talking about just the big crappy blockbusters, but actual good movies like There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men. The increase in box office intake correlates to what we've (intelligent people) been saying all along - put out good content and people will consume it.

People are sick of crappy popular music and the only stuff that sells in huge quantities is kiddie stuff because they are easy audiences and don't realize that Hannah Montana can't hit a note without autotune. That is the main reason why the music industry is hurting - the talent is abandoning them and their old ways. Pretty soon though, you will find that as video equipment comes down in price and editing software is cheaply available, independent movies will come out and have global distribution the same way any musician can over the internet. The talent will slowly migrate to the new business model while the old studios will cry foul on their own customers. The best thing the movie studios can do to slow down the inevitable is to put out more good movies and stop trying to cheapen your brand by remaking everything just for a quick buck.

Feed Suggestion: Don't Name Your Illegal Computer Spying Business 'Hackers Are Us' (techdirt.com)

While everyone has different ways of going about marketing various businesses, you would think that if you're involved in something illegal, you wouldn't refer to your organization in a way that reveals the illegality of what you're doing. Apparently, a private detective firm in the UK had a separate group which they proudly named "Hackers Are Us," which was making quite a bit of money by helping people get info from the computers' of others. There's no real mystery (and no real "hacking") in how they did so. They just sent an email and used some social engineering to convince people to click on the attachment, which loaded a keylogger. Pretty straightforward. Of course, the group is now in court trying to defend these actions -- but the use of the name probably doesn't help.
Google

Glitch Has Users Fuming, Google 'Frantic' 349

netbuzz writes "A problem with Google's Personalized Home Page feature has apparently cost a lot of users their carefully crafted doors to the Internet. And Google, which says it is frantically searching for a fix, also acknowledges that it is not sure if it will be able to recover the lost settings. 'The problem is the latest in what seems a regular stream of technical glitches and availability problems affecting Google's online services. In the past six months, Google services like Blogger, Gmail and Google Apps have all experienced significant technical issues that have left users fuming. The problems highlight one of the risks of relying on hosted applications providers, which offer to house software and its data for individuals and organizations. Google is one of the biggest cheerleaders for this software provisioning model, which many see as a viable option to the traditional approach of having users install applications on their own PCs and servers.'"
Music

New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio 273

FlatCatInASlatVat writes "Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: 'The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Still alive, just not active

Since last I updated, I have left my job at The Firm, have contemplated (but not yet decided to) stop doing this lawyer thing altogether, and moved to the oilpatch (God help me.). I'm looking for law jobs, but I'm having trouble being enthusiastic about another soul-killing 12-20x7x365 job where you're either responsible for multimillion or multibillion dollar suits (I've worked on both high hundred millions and low $X Bn litigation), or what is usually just as stressful, litigation involving m
Movies

Journal Journal: Thank God for Catwoman 5

Thank God for Catwoman. That's right, true believers, that movie is the best thing that could have happened to comics in general and DC in particular. With the spectacular failure of this craptastic piece of celluloid trash, this perfect storm of teh suck, one can only hope that the folks at Warner Brothers learn to listen when their DC division tells them that their latest pillaging of DC's intellectual property is a Really Bad Idea. It should also slow down the process of the comic culture bei

Comment Re:Windows kernel owes little to Unix (Score 1) 390

Thanks for the enlightenment, now if MS office just gets ported to BSD, I will be in heaven! I really do hope that MS Windows is not just a cut and paste hack. I do understand the importance of kiss, and how MS has thrived on the stupid user.

For instance I have a friend who only runs XP pro on an open DSL, with no firewall, as admin all the time. I suspect that this is the case in the majority.

Just that fact that RPC and 135 are on by default out of the box, makes me question Microsofts true motives. I believe it is planned obsolecense. The only reason for this would be Bush style Government forced upgrades to the latest incarnation of so called MS (trusted computing).

I do not trust any monopoly that has to spin doctor it's every product to make up for the fact that in reality it is still a BETA!

User Journal

Journal Journal: Mike Rowe Soft

The newest cause celebre on Slashdot has a local connection for me. I actually know some of the lawyers at the firm that caused this brouhaha for M$(Smart & Biggar). Took a course from one of their senior guys a ways back, and know another of their guys from back when he was at UBC.
User Journal

Journal Journal: New Year's Resolutions

Having just finished nearly two weeks of vacation (my first since before articles), I am refreshed. I am also dreading the return to work, with a big trial starting Monday.

Resolution One: Get my ass organized. Budget. Plan. Stick to it. This includes finances, exercise, diet, time management, and (most importantly) practice management. If I can get my practice in order, then the rest will fall into place. If I can't, 2004 will be much like 2003. And NOBODY wants that.

KDE

Journal Journal: KDE Slackware

Well this journal entry is being written on a dell 101.<it works> yahoo! I had alot of trouble with it before with KDE. I have to say KDE has come a long way and the config is much better than any other desktop. Slack 9.1 rocks, no trouble with usb mice, great config tools and all the docs. I have the feeling Slack is going to catch on with the mainstream guys.
Movies

Journal Journal: Movie Adaptation

god help us, the Watchmen movie project is actually getting off the ground with the X-Men writer as director (be afraid...).

The best quote from the interview has to be this one:

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