In a new lawsuit, RightHaven has lost another countersuit against it to the tune of $119k for costs, legal fees and attorney’s costs. What is significant about this ruling is that RightHaven is already having trouble paying for a ~$35k lawsuit it just lost a couple of months ago. They had actually filed appeal papers that were dismissed by the 9th Circuit.
This new outcome will probably put them over the edge and into insolvency. The once the veil of the corporation is broken, and it will, Mr. Gibson, RighHaven’s CEO will see his entire assests seized.
More here.
… as it was not for lack of trying.
The FTC had alleged that Google misrepresented its privacy claims because it led Gmail users to believe they could choose to join Buzz. Instead, Google Buzz, Google’s first attempt at a social network, was integrated into Gmail. This resulted in Buzz users’ e-mail contacts being made public. That didn’t go over well.
By the end of March, Google has apologized for its blunder. Alma Whitten, Google’s Director of Privacy, wrote, “User trust really matters to Google. That’s why we try to be clear about what data we collect and how we use it-and to give people real control over the information they share with us.”
She continued, “That said, we don’t always get everything right. The launch of Google Buzz fell short of our usual standards for transparency and user control-letting our users and Google down. While we worked quickly to make improvements, regulators-including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission-unsurprisingly wanted more detail about what went wrong and how we could prevent it from happening again. Today, we’ve reached an agreement with the FTC to address their concerns. We’ll receive an independent review of our privacy procedures once every two years, and we’ll ask users to give us affirmative consent before we change how we share their personal information.”
If you read the order, FTC has a 20 year whip against Google. Google blew it and now they pay the piper. What’s worse is now, you got a beef with Google, write a letter to the FTC. Google must now respond. It might end up better than filling in one of their silly online forms.
Task.
Well I guess we are at the point where we are going to see many of the early pioneers of IT pass away now. I am nearly 60 and most of first rung CS leaders predate me by at least another 20 years. So it is time.
Yesterday we lost John McCarthy at 84. The unparalleled voice of Artificial Intelligence and the co-developer of the LISP programming language. He was known as a cankerous sort but an acknowledged leader in several fields. McCarthy unknown to many was also significant in developing core systems used by a firm called BBN. Lest you know, BBN was the hand maiden to the Internet, being the firm that DARPA turned to for turning a paper idea into a physical net reality.
Wired has more here.
A huge loss.
Netflix Inc. (NFLX) dropped the most in seven years after the video-rental service said it lost 800,000 U.S. subscribers in the third quarter, more than expected, and predicted more cancellations over a price increase.Netflix plunged 37 percent to $75.28 at 9:39 a.m. New York time, for the biggest intraday decline since October 2004. The stock closed at an all-time high of $298.73 on July 13, according to Bloomberg data.
The outlook suggests Netflix has been unable to contain a subscriber revolt over a price increase and aborted plan to force subscribers into separate streaming and DVD services. The company now forecasts losses in 2012 because of costs to offer content in the U.K. and Ireland, and will delay further expansion until profitability is restored.
The institutionals are now trying to understand if this is just a blip or something more long term. –
investors are trying to gauge the extent of the fallout from the price increase and aborted plan to put DVD customers on a new service called Qwikster.
“To show even modest U.S. subscriber growth in the fourth quarter will require significant ramp-up in Netflix’s marketing spending,” said Paul T. Sweeney, director of research for Bloomberg Industries.
Hastings downplayed the likelihood of a big increase in marketing efforts.
“Our streaming marketing has been very effective in the past two years,” Hastings said. “We are going to work on improving the user interface, expanding to more platforms and delivering more content. There’s no grand gestures, there’s just a lot of steady and intense efforts.”
Domestic streaming subscriptions are forecast to decline this month, level off in November and rebound in December to end at 20 million to 21.5 million, Netflix said. DVD subscriptions will fall “sharply” to 10.3 million to 11.3 million customers.
News to the investors — Its long term fellas. This is the opening that the likes of RedBox and Dish were looking for. Dish already has their ads out with their BlockBuster streaming service. RedBox will be shortly to follow. NetFlix will go from being a one horse race to a three ring circus. What makes the sitatuion worse is that NetFlix instead of being the destructive darling will be the legacy loon if RedBox follows through on their pricing strategy ($2.99 streams).
The thing that NetFlix forgot is that they are in a market that is extremely price sensitive. Entertainment is not an essential utility service. Hence consumer reaction to price changes can be huge. Confusing the customer only mkaes the matter worse.
Bleak indeed. Can NetFlix respond?
The OM-Copter gives wings to the Red Epic from omstudios on Vimeo.
We have not provided a photo hack in a long time so it was due. So lets combine that with one of our favorites — RC quadcopters.
As you can see by the video above, this is shall we say upscale. Eight motors, larger batteries and a payload, a Red Epic, that ain’t exactly cheap if it gets busted up. The combo seems to work quite well as the video shows.
More here
Enjoy….
Recent Comments