Written June 2009
by Cliff Feldwick
One really hates to be on the side of the music industry in their insatiable quest to sue everyone for copyright infringement who ever lent a disk to a friend, but sometimes you just have to be there.
In April, a Swedish judge sentenced four founders of a company accused of enabling downloading of music and videos to a year in jail and fines of $4.5 million. This was down from the $16.5 million originally sought ($2.8 by the music companies and $13.7 million by movie companies). Considering that there were only four movies and one TV show in the suit, $13.7 mil seems a tad over the top – have you truthfully ever seen four movies, or especially a TV show, worth that? Me neither.
The defendants were not going quietly. As one said, “We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I own, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.” They will of course appeal, since they claim they were doing nothing illegal.
The name of the company? “The Pirate Bay” Yes, that was name, and they had over 1.6 million files on their servers linking to movies, songs, etc. Nope, nothing illegal there.
This may top the 2009 list for “just plain stupid”, but of course we still have lots of time. It’s like getting a vanity license plate marked “BADDUDE” and wondering why the police were stopping you all the time. What’s Swedish for “get a clue”?
Cheap, cheap, cheap
Adding memory is one of the cheapest ways to make your computer run better and faster, and right now it is the cheapest I have seen in a loooong time. I recently bought a 2 gigabyte upgrade for a popular Dell model for $32. We’re talking party favor pricing here, folks. It’s always cheaper for newer models where they are churning out tons at a time, but worth checking for everything – so do. My favorite website for upgrades is Crucial.com (no financial or other involvement), where you can put in your manufacturer and model number and it tells you how much it will hold and the price, usually good.
And while we’re talking cheap (as opposed to talking trash – but you’ll decide that), I must once again note that prices of external hard drives are irrationally low. As backup devices for those thousands of photos you always say you’re going to preserve, they are easy and perfect. 250 gigabyte drives can be had for $70, and 1000 gigabyte drives for about $120 on sale days. Unless you’re saving the Library of Congress (or those thousand downloaded movies) this much space should last you forever.
Not Cheap
Even before the economic Stimulus Package and its associated emphasis on technology in health care, several large players were quietly working on having their systems ready. It will be interesting to see how this plays out – if video communication and remote monitoring will ever take the place of human interaction. Two very big players – Intel and GE – recently announced a partnership of GE Healthcare division with an Intel-based hardware device – the Intel Health Guide - that combines measurements (blood pressure, oxygen levels, weight, etc) with daily reminders and communication with a central monitoring system that is supposed to alert the patient’s doctor if things get off target. They have budgeted $250 million for further development of the systems, which feature large icons and simple interfaces for the technology-phobic, available “health care videos” for education, as well as interactive video chats with providers for conferencing with patients without leaving home.
Some years ago, I did setups for a company that was paid by health-care companies, usually HMO’s, to monitor chronic patient care. They used nurses who would call a patient home, usually of people with diabetes or congestive heart failure, on a regular basis and ask how they were doing – had they weighed themselves today (they even mailed patients a scale), taken their blood sugar levels, etc. Being nurses, they often responded to the subtle clues of voice or things left unsaid in a way that technology will be hard pressed to duplicate. But GE is betting that the shortage of trained people willing/available to do this work will make reliance on remote devices necessary.
Oh, and this monitoring was not primarily for the patient’s sake. The service company sold itself by proving that people checked on regularly made far fewer visits to emergency rooms, thus paying for the monitoring service. You didn’t think HMO’s were in this for their health, did you?