Stories I feel are noteworthy.

Posted by timotheus on December 20th, 2007 filed in News Thingies

Random news factiods I want to share.

TorrentSpy gets Luddite judge, loses case - I really don’t understand why they lost this case. Their servers are in the Netherlands, hence do not fall under US jurisdiction or law. Still, the judge demands the server logs of all the IP’s that used the site. TorrentSpy runners say the logs were stored in RAM, and they can’t retrieve them. (Since, you know, it’s RAM and it is wiped clean after every reboot. Smart server setup.)

The judge then asked for information from the Ram in their computers but the defendants failed in their attempt to argue the data was temporary and therefore could not be retained.

The defendants’ conduct was “obstreperous,” Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in her decision.

“They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in a effort to hide evidence of such destruction.”

“A substantial number of items of evidence have been destroyed,” she wrote. “Defendants were on notice that this information would be of importance in this case.”

The ignorance here makes my mind implode.

My solution? A new breed of judge. A TechnoJudge, learned in all the computer and electronic ways.

Crowe axes slot machines in club - Russell Crowe earned points with me on this one. The Rugby team club he co-owns was planning on putting in slot machines. He thought it was a bad idea. He put it in a letter to club members, asking for their support.

In the letter, they said that excessive reliance on so-called “pokie” gambling machines would hurt Souths blue-collar catchment area of Redfern, in Sydney’s inner city.

“We are not moralising here, we just believe that low-income areas like Redfern need less poker machines rather than more,” they said.

“We believe a club can be successful if it caters for our members and the broad community; is a place where families can gather for conversation and good food; and the distracting din of pokies doesn’t stop the conversation or drown out live music.”

Good show!

Galaxy 3C321 at war with neighboring galaxy! - This will put you in your place. Think you are important? Really? An entire galaxy is getting pulverized out there. How incredibly small are we?

I got the big tif image of it, and made a nice png you could use for a desktop background. The galactic carnage is beautiful.