WOW. This week I was in Wales for a Field Trip for the first part, and then have been ‘blobbing’ since then – doing and achieving very little, but enjoying it. Just thought back on the events in Tech of the past week. We have seen TV Links being shut down, with the 26 year old owner arrested for the technological equivalent of ‘aiding and abetting’ piracy and copyright infringement. A sad day I think all will agree, and the implications of this decision may be more far reaching than we would like to think. It was said that would, for example, I also be guilty of this if I linked to TV Links, just as they linked to the sites which hosted the content? We will see but I hope this is overturned.
On a lighter note, we saw The Pirate Bay getting hold of IFPI.com, the domain similar to that of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI.org), and establishing the International Federation of Pirates Interests. According to El Reg, they claim that they were given the domain and so are using it as they see fit. Never ones to miss an opportunity to ’stick it’ to the lobbyists for the record industry et al. TPB are enjoying themselves.
We also saw Steve Jobs announce the SDK of iPhone and iPod touch (did somebody say U-turn?). Suddenly Apple realises that 3rd party apps won’t destabilise the platform after all, provided they sign off on every little bit of code that is (and take a cut from it?). Russell Beattie has put together a fantastic dissection of this official note from Steve on his blog, and it really cuts out the rubbish and spells out what we cynics see when we read the typical marketing bullshitese!
Ubuntu ‘Gutsy Gibbon’ 7.10 was released for download, and looks good. I am yet to download this release, but used Tribe 5 in VMWare Fusion on the MBP, and it seems good. I traditionally have used Ubuntu to breathe life into old hardware, such as my old Toshiba Satellite 2450-101 Laptop, which (provided you prop the screen open) works well enough. The Windows installer even seems to tax it now, but Ubuntu usually flies along. I look forward to playing with ‘Gutsy’, and eagerly await the name of the next Ubuntu incarnation (Crappy Cow?…)
Ubuntu 8.04 will be Hardy Heron. I still think Hungry Hippo would have been SO much better (and so much more copyright infringing…)