Nelson Wong Life Blog

The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict – Guilty

The verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as ’severe’. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

While the court did not agree with the plaintiff’s exaggerated estimates of losses, it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). This a hugely significant amount and the court has ordered that the four should pay this amount between them.

The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.

Wal-Mart to Sell $99 4GB iPhone Dec. 28

Wal-Mart iPhone training material. Image courtesy MacRumors.com

Wal-Mart may be set to sell a 4GB iPhone for $99, Starting Dec. 28, the BoyGenius Website suggested Thursday. The move would mark the return of the iPhone version dropped in 2007 in favor of the 8GB iPhone.

Although BG told readers to take the tip with a grain of salt, reviving the once $399 iPhone comes as handset makers struggle against tightening consumer spending.

“Anyone looking to spend $99 on an iPhone probably doesn’t care that much about storage anyway,” according to the blog.

If true, the action would jive with analysts who have suggested Apple could cut the iPhone’s price to $99. In October, Needham Research’s Charlie Wolf said Apple’s high margins would permit a 50 percent price drop, increasing the marketshare of the already popular iPhone.

The $99 iPhone would require a two-year contract. In October, BG wrote that the iPhone would appear Nov. 15 on Wal-Mart shelves.

RebateStatus.com Files For Chapter 11, Your Rebate May Be Affected

One of the nation’s largest rebate processing firms, CPG (RebateStatus.com) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. What does that mean for you? Well, if you happened to mail-in a rebate form with a company that CPG works with, your check may be in limbo because they don’t have the money to cash it. At this point, exactly how the situation will be handled is unclear—but there are a few things you can do to get things under control. Dealnews is recommending that anyone who has a rebate check or is expecting one not cash it because it may bounce and result in an NSF fee. Instead, you should hang on to it until more details become available (this goes for rebates that have not been submitted as well). If you are not sure whether or not your rebate is invovled, a partial list of affected companies is available after the break.

artial list of companies that have dealt with CFG in recent months:

Acronis Software
ACTIVSION
Advance Auto Parts
Antec
AVG
Bed Bath & Beyond
BIC Corporations US – Shaver Division
BFG
Bridgevine
Canon
Citibank
costco
Fujitsu
Home Depot
Logitech
Motorola (Surfboard cable modems)
Natures Earth Products
Nero
Panda Distribution
Pandigital
PC Tools
PriceGrabber
Rosewill (Newegg house brand)
Samsung
Smith Micro Software
Tabletops Unlimited
TrendNET
Westinghouse
XFX
ZeroTherm
Zyxel

The Complete List of Closing Circuit City Stores

It’s official. Circuit City is closing 155 stores, as the Consumerist broke yesterday. They’re also “reducing future store openings,” but whatever, you wanna know if your local Circuit City is gone. Here’s the complete list of stores slotted for obliteration.

› Continue reading

Google open-sources Android

Making good on a promise it made at the very beginning, Google has today announced that the source code underpinning its Android platform for mobile devices is available for free to anyone who wants a crack at it. The code is being provided through the newly-announced Android Open Source Project, which will give the public at large the opportunity to make contributions to the platform’s all-important core — a first for a mobile operating system with true mass-market appeal. Theoretically, the move should position Android to benefit from a fairly democratic, speedy evolution, and it’ll also give anyone with a few spare chips lying around the chance to build a smartphone of their own without shelling out a dime in licensing fees. We’re really looking forward to seeing Android pop up on a whole bunch of devices for which it was never intended — but we have to admit, in a sick, totally deranged sort of way, we’re looking forward to some truly deranged individual porting Windows Mobile to the G1, too.

Microsoft set to launch Surface SDK this month

In a fashion not dissimilar from one tiny multitouch device (save the outcry), Microsoft’s large multitouch device — the Surface — will be getting its very own SDK at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference this month. The package, which the folks in Redmond have apparently been promising since April, will introduce developers to “vision-based object recognition” and something called ScatterView, and a session at the PDC will detail how the kit “aligns with the multitouch developer roadmap for Windows 7.” All exciting stuff, but if we don’t see a giant, multitouch version of FreeCell soon, we might just stop paying attention.

Lawsuit forces Microsoft to stay mum about Xbox Live status

It looks like we won’t be seeing another barrage of Xbox Live status updates like we saw in the past few weeks anytime soon, at least as long as that little lawsuit is going on down in Texas. That unfortunate word comes from none other than Major Nelson, who said in his podcast that Microsoft can no longer update gamers on the situation due to “legal issues.” Those constraints apparently even extend as far as the Major’s Twitter page, leaving gamers in the dark in the event of yet another Xbox Live outage. In case you missed it, the lawsuit in Texas was filed after the outage in December by three disgruntled gamers, who claim that Microsoft knew activity would be at a peak during that time of year but “failed to provide adequate access and service to Xbox Live and its subscribers.” No word on any progress in that suit just yet, but we’re guessing that Microsoft and Xbox users alike are hoping it gets wrapped up as soon as possible.

Google and HTC’s “Dream” phone prototype semi-revealed

a Google-sponsored phone OS in the way of Android is pretty great news for mobile phone land, but what if your really had your heart set on some Google hardware this Monday morning? Well take heart, because Forbes has the skinny on an HTC device labeled “Dream,” (most likely not pictured above) which could very well be oft-rumored hardware of legend, and could also be hitting the market as early as next year. Apparently the phone is one of roughly five prototypes that Google had built to demonstrate the Open Handset Alliance software to potential members, and HTC’s Peter Chou says in the two years it’s been working on OHA designs, “this is the best one we’ve seen.” The device itself, which measures about 3 x 5-inches, sports a touchscreen, navigational controls at the base, and a full swivel out keyboard. When swiveled the screen goes from portrait to landscape mode, but unfortunately that’s the limit of info on the actual hardware. The software apparently has “time-sensitive” touch controls that expands your area control the longer you touch. Icons for your most important apps — which are apparently email, text documents, and YouTube — are lined up across the top of the screen. There’s also some fancy stuff under the hood to keep an ongoing browser session open to speed launch times, and the browser downloads large files in stages to speed delivery. HTC is considering a commercial version of the phone, which we could be seeing as soon as the second half of 2008.

Microsoft says goodbye to the social

AdAge has a piece profiling the “180″ Microsoft made in marketing the Zune; many have already seen this year’s far less, shall we say, esoteric ads, but few (including us) realized the new hardware’s marketing onslaught was the result of Microsoft’s doubling — even quadrupling — its Zune ad budget, switching advertising firms (which resulted in those trippy Flash sites), and, oh yeah, killing off “the social”. Sorry obsessive Zune guy, we hate to be the bearers of bad news but the truth can be hidden no longer. “You make it you” is officially confirmed as the new brand tagline and the ever-so-slightly-less-grammatically-correct “Welcome to the social” is deader than a WiFi-shared song after three plays. So now that we don’t have to worry about the ever-lingering peer pressure to get social, does that mean we can loosen up a little and start to proudly love our still-virginal Zunes just as they are?

is real? Asus Apple Tablet PC

Crave hangs with people in high places — that’s how we get exclusives and free food. A few weeks ago we were having a civilised dinner with our friends at Asus and angling for cool stories when we were told in a very hushed manner: “Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC.”

We’re tempted to ignore all Apple rumours because there’s just so many of them, but this rings true because Asus is Apple’s contract manufacturer. It’s one of the companies responsible for building the iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBooks of this world, so when their guys tell us they’re building an Apple Tablet, we believe them.

We checked back with our source at Asus on a different day and they confirmed that the Apple Tablet will not be based on existing Asus designs such as the R1. It will come from a completely new blueprint, possibly based on the patent Apple filed back in May 2005. We’re guessing it’ll be based on Intel Core architecture, a tweaked version of Leopard, and have all the multi-touch, CoverFlow goodness we’ve seen in the iPhone and iPod touch.

All this begs the question: Can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success when previous attempts have failed? The short answer is ‘yes’. Any company that can make a mobile phone with no buttons, no picture messaging, slow Web access and no video capture into the most desirable phone on the planet can easily make tablets popular.

Sadly, we’ve no word on when we can expect the Apple Tablet PC, nor what the final specs will be, but you can bet your bottom dollar it’s being built as you read this. Mac fanboys rejoice.