So LAPTOP magazine published a report confirming what most people already believe to be true about SSDs (that is, before last week when SSDs supposedly hit the fan): they use less power than traditional drives. Apparently they got up to 20 minutes more battery life when testing an SSD against a platter-based drive in an Eee PC and Gateway T-6828 (which jibes with our own experiences using SSDs in laptops), but if you ask us, the discussion seems a little moot. SSDs perform way faster and are far better suited to portable computing where drives are moved, bumped, and jostled -- the power savings is great, but the speed and reliability are still our top two reasons for going SSD.
Monday, July 7, 2008
New report says SSDs are, in fact, more efficient
Pioneer's Blu-ray disc hits 400GB across 16-layers
16-layers -- that's how many layers it takes to the hit the center of a 400GB Blu-ray disc, pops. That's 25GB per layer just like those dual-layer 50GB discs available for retail. Best of all, the technique used by Pioneer is expected to be backward compatible with existing Blu-ray gear since the specs and lenses required for pickup are identical. The prototype is read-only for the moment but R&D's on it so let's give them some time to work it out.
Update: Now that the English press release is out, it's less clear whether the new media -- whenever it might come to market -- will work in existing Blu-ray players or not. While "it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs," players would seemingly require a modified optical pick-up mechanism to see the data. We'll learn more on July 13th when Pioneer discusses the breakthrough in detail.
[Via Impress]
Update: Now that the English press release is out, it's less clear whether the new media -- whenever it might come to market -- will work in existing Blu-ray players or not. While "it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs," players would seemingly require a modified optical pick-up mechanism to see the data. We'll learn more on July 13th when Pioneer discusses the breakthrough in detail.
[Via Impress]
iPhone 3G launching 00:01 NZ time, home delivered in the UK
Vodafone just went public with the information you already knew, New Zealand will see the world's first iPhone launch at 00:01 local time on the 11th. That's almost a full day before any New York, propaganda farmer gets his. In the UK, O2 is now taking pre-orders (one per customer) on a first come, first serve basis. Better yet, your new slab of 3G will be delivered to your home on the 11th of July by courier where you can activate it from the digital comforts of iTunes. So civilized.
Update: According to a handful of tipsters, O2 sold out of the 16GB version of the iPhone in about three hours. Here's hoping you made the cut.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Read -- O2 UK
Read -- Vodafone NZ
Making a living taking digital snapshots of passers-by
Darryl Cannon, of Killboy.com, takes thousands of pictures a day of drivers and motorcyclists who are touring US route 129 on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. The road is very popular, especially with motorcyclists, and Cannon and three others in his company make full-time livings selling the images they take. There are least three other operations doing the same thing in the area.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)
FONTANA VILLAGE, N.C.--If you've got a fancy digital SLR and have been wondering how you could make money with it, I might have just the suggestion for you.
Head on out to the border region between Tennessee and North Carolina, just on the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and there, you'll find a never-ending supply of people riding their motorcycles and driving their cars along one of the most-famous and beloved stretches of road in the South.
Known as "The Dragon," the road is a longtime favorite, especially among motorcyclists, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people navigate its windy curves every day.
As a result, people like Darryl Cannon of Killboy.com have proliferated. They park their cars at strategic curves in the road where they can shoot pictures of drivers coming from either direction, and then they sell the drivers--at least some of them--the pictures.
And how?
At first, as I drove along this stretch of highway as part of Road Trip 2008, I was confused as to what was going on. But after seeing two such vehicles at corners, each of which had a URL emblazoned on the side, I figured it out: The photographers were taking pictures of the riders and drivers, and then later posting them online, hoping that people will visit their sites, see pictures of themselves on the famous road, and decide to fork over a few bucks for a high-res image.
That's what Cannon, his wife, and a couple of friends are doing. Full time, he said.
I stopped at one of the curves along the way to talk with him about what he was doing and why.
He said that he routinely shoots thousands of pictures a day and sometimes, if there's a motorcycle rally in the area, can take as many as 17,000 in one shift.
This is definitely a business based on direct-mail type of response. After all, there is a steady stream of traffic, and there's a lot of competition. Yet, Cannon said he's been doing this since 2003, so I guess he sells enough $6 CDs of digital images--as well as more expensive coffee mugs, prints, and other manifestations of peoples' ride along the famous road--to make it worth his while.
After he and his team finish taking their pictures--he uses a Canon 40D and has "whole pockets of" 4GB compact flash cards--they go home and laboriously sort them and post them. They organize them by date, and then by category: "Cars-Trucks," "Motards-Dirtbikes-Trikes-Scooters-Sidecars," "Touring Bikes," etc.
He said he works about 100 hours a week.
Cannon and others park themselves at strategic curves along the famously windy road to best capture drivers coming from either direction. They will also position a vehicle with a URL on its side so that drivers can see where they can go to find their picture.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)Cannon says that every day he sets up in a different place, something that's not hard, given that this stretch of road has seemingly thousands of tight curves offering the kind of two-way vantage point he needs. He's looking for good lighting and good background, so that he "might get a tight shot, but still get some of the background."
I had never seen an operation like this before, which surprises me. I heard afterward that this is something that's popular on river-rafting routes, but I'd not seen it on popular highways. And being from the San Francisco Bay Area, which is of course close to the Pacific Coast Highway, that surprised me.
But it's the extreme popularity of this stretch of US-129 with motorcyclists that makes Cannon's business possible. These are riders who travel great distances to make their way through the Dragon, and enough of them seem to like the idea of buying a picture of themselves doing so to create a business. I suspect the same is true in other parts of the country that bikers frequent.
For me, when I find myself being photographed without my consent, I usually make a gesture that I hope will render the picture worthless. It's not what you think. And I guess I'm not the only one who does things with his hands.
Cannon said that plenty of people do that, some just to say hi.
"It would be better if they wouldn't," he said, ever the photographer.
ISPs prepare for video revolution
Video may have killed the radio star, but it doesn't have to kill the Internet.
That is if Internet service providers can figure out how to keep up with the video-driven bandwidth demand on their networks. Peer-to-peer technology provider BitTorrent says it can help.
Video consumes more network resources than any other media distributed on the Web. Even poor-quality video from YouTube eats up more bandwidth than e-mail, music downloading, and voice over IP services. And when you throw full-length high-definition video into the mix, you're talking about even more bandwidth. Depending on the compression used, a single HD video stream can eat up 20 megabits per second worth of bandwidth.
And as consumers subscribe to faster and faster broadband connections at home and sites like YouTube and Hulu come online offering all kinds of video choices, more people are watching video on the Web. According to ComScore Video Metrix, Americans are currently watching upward of 10 billion videos online a month. By the end of 2007, online viewers averaged more than one video a day.
This is just the beginning. ABI research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web will nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least 1 billion in 2013.
This summer's Olympic Games in Beijing marks the first real test of online video as NBC embarks upon the most ambitious online video project ever. NBC plans to offer 3,600 hours of live programming from Beijing, which translates to about 212 live hours for each of the 17 days of the Olympics. The majority of this viewing will be delivered online.
All this video is great for viewers, who are able to pick and choose what they watch and when. But for Internet service providers like the phone companies and the cable operators, it represents a massive challenge. Some providers, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are testing out new ways to deal with "bandwidth hogs" or individual users who use an inordinate amount of bandwidth.
Last month, Comcast began testing a new system that will throttle back or slow down traffic during times of congestion for heavy bandwidth users. The new system was developed after Comcast faced stark criticism for singling out and slowing down peer-to-peer traffic.
Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable, which says it faces the same capacity headaches, also began testing a new billing system that charges customers who exceed their limit for uploading and downloading material.
P2P as a solution, rather than a problem
Eric Klinker, chief technology officer for BitTorrent, which has commercialized the peer-to-peer technology, says that what the cable operators are doing is a good start. But more can be done to help operators deal with the onslaught of video.
"I think what Comcast and Time Warner Cable are doing is a great first step. It gets ISPs out of the business of deciding which applications are important and which aren't. But there are enhancements to the peer-to-peer protocol, in particular, that can make it easier on all ISPs."
--Eric Klinker, CTO, BitTorrent,
For one, peer-to-peer protocols, such as BitTorrent, which are often cited as major headaches for network operators because of the big file transfers they enable, need to be utilized rather than singled out as a source of the problem, he said.
"I think what Comcast and Time Warner Cable are doing is a great first step," Klinker said. "It gets ISPs out of the business of deciding which applications are important and which aren't. But there are enhancements to the peer-to-peer protocol, in particular, that can make it easier on all ISPs."
Peer-to-peer technology has gotten a bad rap for years. Since the days of file-sharing networks like Napster, which allowed people to exchange songs on their computer hard drives with others on the Internet, peer-to-peer technology has been demonized in the press. But the truth is that peer-to-peer technology actually allows large files like videos to be distributed more efficiently. And as more video makes it way onto the Web, it's increasingly being used. In fact, peer-to-peer traffic accounts for about 43 percent of all traffic on the Internet, according to a recent study by the network management company Sandvine.
The way peer-to-peer works is that when a user requests a video, the peer-to-peer network queries other users in the network and takes pieces of the file from different peers and sends it to the user requesting the file. This distributed architecture means that content owners don't have to assemble large and expensive data centers. It also means that a content distributor doesn't have to pay for expensive high-speed links to serve up an entire file from a single server farm.
That said, peer-to-peer protocols in the wild can eat up lots of bandwidth because peers on the network can silently and continuously upload pieces of files from their computers all day and all night, seeding dozens or hundreds of file requests. And because upload capacities are generally much slower than downloads, it can create bottlenecks and capacity crunches on the last mile of service providers' networks. For network operators that are already capacity-constrained, this phenomenon can dramatically affect performance for all users.
The enhanced version of peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer companies, such as BitTorrent and Pando Networks, have recognized this problem and have been working with service providers, such as Verizon Communications, Comcast, and others to come up with solutions. Verizon and Pando Networks have been working on a project called P4P, which advocates ISPs share information about their network topography and use an enhanced version of peer-to-peer to locate peers in close proximity to the file request. Getting files locally can help reduce the expense associated with carrying peer-to-peer files over long distances.
BitTorrent, whose founder created one of the most popular peer-to-peer protocols used today, has also been working on a solution. The company has developed its own enhancement to the peer-to-peer protocol that tells peer-to-peer applications to stop seeding the network with content when the network is congested.
For example, if a teenager starts playing an online video game at the same time his mother makes a voice over IP phone call and his little sister is downloading music from iTunes, the protocol will tell the peer-to-peer movie application that is running in the background on their family computer to stop uploading bits of the Spider-Man movie that had been ordered from an online movie rental service and is now stored on a hard drive in their home. Instead, the network will search for the content on another peer that is on a network that is less congested.
"If there is contention in the network, my application will back off," Klinker said. "And it will automatically and seamlessly find someone else in the network to complete uploading that content. The video quality is never disrupted, and the user never knows where the content is coming from."
BitTorrent has already tested the enhancement with more than 10 million users and it's currently working with the Internet standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force, to standardize the technology so that other peer-to-peer companies can embed it in their software client.
Klinker said that new technologies, such as the one developed by his company, as well as efforts on the P4P enhancements will help ISPs manage and control their networks so that even more video can make it to the Web without crippling the infrastructure delivering it.
And once service providers learn how to harness peer-to-peer, they will be able to develop business models that reap the benefits of the technology. For example, Comcast, Verizon, or any other TV provider could add peer-to-peer software to the set-top boxes sitting in their customers' living rooms to create a distributed peer-to-peer movie network. Instead of serving up on-demand movies from their own servers sitting in expensive-to-run data centers, these TV providers could leverage the content already stored on their customers' set-top hard drives.
"The cable and phone companies are already spending capital to put set-tops in everyone's home," Klinker said. "They could use that same hardware as part of their content distribution model. Then the user pays the electrical bill. And they pay for the bandwidth. It's just much more efficient."
Klinker said a solution, such as this one, requires a slightly different business model from BitTorrent's current business model. But he said that it's something the company is investigating.
"It's interesting enough that we're in discussions and testing some scenarios with ISPs," he said. "In general, service providers move slowly. So nothing will happen overnight. But I think we'll see some interesting changes within the next three years."
Apple MacBook: Change is in the Air
The Apple MacBook Air has been a ground-breaking first-generation product (in my opinion). So, what will Apple do to top it when an update comes later this year? There are some telling indicators already. This is what I expect--and hope for--as a user.
(Credit: Apple)First, a disclaimer. I am not an Apple fanatic. The MacBook Air is the first Apple product I have ever used for more than a few days. For well over a decade, I have been wedded to Wintel (Windows-Intel) laptops.
Before I dive into upcoming features, I should also mention that I have been extremely pleased with the Air and have used it almost daily for the last four months. But I would be remiss if I didn't say it is overpriced, as all subnotebooks are.
• Overpriced but still an amazing design Apple made a very studied decision to exclude certain features. This makes the Air an Air. Apple could have included more ports and a little more of this and pinch of that--but then it would have been just another subnotebook.
So, I expect Apple to maintain the uniqueness of the Air for the next refresh.
But improvements are always welcome. And here are a few things that potential buyers can expect to see when a new Air is rolled out.
Apple has begun to give us hints of things to come. A $500 price cut for the solid state drive (SSD) model is one of the biggest indicators so far.
• A bigger, better solid state drive The next Air will offer drives that range in size to more than 100GB. A likely offering would be 128GB from vendors like STEC. (Samsung supplies the current SSD.) Intel and Micron Technology can't be ruled out. Their drives will come in 80GB and 160GB capacities.
These SSDs will also likely use multiple-level cell (MLC) technology, in contrast with current drives that use single-level-cell (SLC). MLC allows higher-capacities but presents power and data reliability challenges, which suppliers claim to have overcome.
• Processors Invariably, all notebooks get upgraded with better processors and graphics. I think the Air's current performance is superb for a subnotebook. I have owned many subnotebooks over the years and anemic performance can render them practically unusable as an everyday machine. But I haven't had this problem with the Air (see note at bottom).
Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer "Montevina" (Centrino 2) low-power offerings should make this experience even better. Though an initial Montevina refresh is slated for July 14, low-power versions won't appear until this fall. Intel refers to these as SFF (small form factor) processors. They will come in high-performance, low-voltage, and ultra-low-voltage variants.
SFF Montevina processors will range from 25-watt (2.4GHz) to 17-watt (1.86GHz) to 10-watt (1.2GHz). The current Intel processor used in the Air is rated at 20 watts at 1.8GHz.
Whether Apple chooses one of these or opts for something not currently on the Intel roadmap of course remains to be seen.
• Graphics Graphics will get upgraded. Montevina will come with Intel's GMA X4500 graphics, which Intel has said repeatedly will be three times faster than current X3100 integrated graphics.
• Battery Insufficient battery life is a problem that plagues all subnotebooks. It has often been suggested that Apple include a removable battery (for easy replacement), but that could compromise the ultraslim design. Having said that, I have been pleased with the battery life compared with other notebooks I have owned.
Hazarding a guess at other features such as upgraded hard disk drives, better screens, and external extras like a docking station is too speculative (and the latter would also compromise the design), so I'll refrain from making any predictions.
But the Air shouldn't change too much. With a simple performance upgrade, it would be an even more remarkable computer.
(Note: No, the Air is not as fast as a 14-inch Hewlett-Packard 6910P, for example, but no PC maker can squeeze that kind of performance into a Air-like form factor.)
LiMo gets Openwave browser and messaging
Published: July 7, 2008 6:15 AM PDT
Purple Labs, an increasingly prominent mobile Linux firm and a member of the LiMo Foundation, has bought the browser and messaging side of Openwave's business.
Purple Labs joined the LiMo Foundation--one of three big, mobile open-source consortia, alongside the Symbian Foundation and Google's Open Handset Alliance--at the start of 2008. Working alongside NXP Semiconductors, it gained further exposure at the end of January by launching the Purple Magic phone, a cheap, Linux-powered, 3G handset that could be sold to operators for less than $100.
Openwave supplies mobile-client software to 12 of the top 20 global mobile operators, including Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. It also supplies fixed-line broadband providers with software. Around 80 employees are expected to migrate to Purple Labs, including the general manager of the business unit, Gordon Tsang.
Through the $32 million acquisition of Openwave's mobile-client business, Purple Labs said it now supplies mobile-browser software to all of the top five phone manufacturers, which together produce over 80 percent of the world's mobile phones.
Purple Labs' chief executive, Simon Wilkinson, sent a letter to handset manufacturers on Thursday, in which he said Openwave's existing products would be maintained. He also said Purple Labs would "invest in the next-generation Surfer browser and other advanced mobile-internet technologies."
"Further, we plan to reuse many of the Openwave technologies in our Purple Labs Linux platform," wrote Wilkinson. "We are focused exclusively on the requirements of LiMo Foundation members, such as Vodafone and Orange, and believe that this will ultimately create new market opportunities for our manufacturer customers."
In a statement earlier this week, Openwave's chief executive, Bruce Coleman, said his company would now focus on "network-based offerings."
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Yahoo unveils timeline of failed Microsoft talks
Updated at 3:54 p.m. PDT with comments from institutional investor advisory services analyst on Yahoo's investor presentation materials.
Yahoo published on Monday its version of the details of the failed merger talks with Microsoft, as the Internet pioneer heads toward the frontlines of its proxy battle with investor activist Carl Icahn.
Yahoo, which wants its current nine-member board to be re-elected at its annual shareholders meeting on August 1 and is up against Icahn's dissident directors slate, is hoping to woo investors in its direction with a presentation filed with Securities and Exchange Commission.
The presentation also touches on the benefits of its Google advertising deal and offers an update on Yahoo's strategic plan and the background of its current board members. But investors will likely home in on Yahoo's past dealings with Microsoft, given that that is what raised Icahn's ire to begin with and prompted his efforts to wage a proxy battle with Yahoo to oust its board of directors.
Yahoo has been criticized by investors for failing to strike a deal with Microsoft, with shareholders expressing concern that its co-founder and board were more interested in keeping the company independent at all costs.
However, Yahoo characterizes Microsoft as "unresponsive and inconsistent" with its unsolicited buyout attempt of the company, further stating: "The record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition."
Yahoo, which has been slammed by investors walking away from the stock since Microsoft said it was no longer interested in acquiring the entire company at $33 a share, laid out these complaints:
• Microsoft was unresponsive to multiple requests--No response to regulatory information requests
--No response to non-price terms, including value protection for stock component and regulatory issues
--No revised price indication until several months into the process, days before withdrawing
• Microsoft's actions and statements were inconsistent
--Publicly announced an unsolicited offer
--Threatened withdrawal
--Threatened to lower price
--Threatened proxy fight
--Only orally indicated possible increase in price after several months of discussions
--Initially stated "a few" more dollars, then "a couple" more dollars per share
--Withdrew offer within days of suggesting there "could be" an increase in price
--Ultimately proposed search-only "hybrid" transaction
But as with any controversy, there are two sides to the story.
"This is simply revisionist history," said a Microsoft spokesman.
And in looking at Yahoo's timeline of key events, here are a few things that pop out:
The timeline states that Microsoft made an unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo on February 1 for $31 share and that the Internet pioneer issued a public statement on February 11, rejecting the offer.
But not included in the timeline is this: Yahoo, according to sources, never sent a letter to Microsoft to "formally" reject the offer until nearly three months after the offer was initially made. And without a formal rejection, the folks in the Redmond camp were loath to bid against themselves.
And while Yahoo's investor presentation carries much detail on the rational behind its interactions with Microsoft, two things that are lacking include the reasoning behind its rejection of Microsoft's verbal $33 a share offer and how it determined a counter offer at $37 a share was appropriate, said Chris Cernich, a mergers and acquisitions senior analyst with institutional investor advisory service Proxy Governance. Cernich's firm serves institutional investors like mutual funds and pension funds, providing recommendations to its clients on how to vote on proxy issues.
"It's puzzling why Yahoo didn't include their reasoning in the investor materials. It's important to understand the stewardship of the company," Cernich said. "I would have thought it would have been addressed in one of the first three investor slides. You have Icahn saying he's aghast that Yahoo would turn down an offer with a 72 percent premium, so you'd have expected to see why Yahoo turned it down in their investor presentation materials."
Instead of just jumping at the $33 a share offer, Yahoo believed it could potentially get more for its investors by countering with a $37 a share bid, said one source close to Yahoo. And in making its counter offer, Yahoo believed Microsoft would either come back with a higher offer than $33 a share, or stand firm at that price, said the source, adding it wasn't anticipated Microsoft would walk away altogether from the buyout bid.
According to Yahoo's timeline, there were four meetings between the companies to discuss the transaction, regulatory issues, and integration issues up until April 5 when Microsoft threatened to launch a proxy fight and lower its bid if a deal was not reached within three weeks. But Yahoo's timeline does not mention whether financial advisers were sitting in on these four meetings.
During the three-week deadline, according to the timeline, Yahoo and Microsoft did meet once--on April 15--with financial advisers to discuss a possible transaction and Yahoo provided the software giant with a "non-price terms proposal," according to Yahoo's SEC filing. So up until this point, Yahoo apparently had floated no official figures for a buyout price.
The three-week deadline then hit on April 26, with no deal reached. Yahoo sent a formal "private" letter to Microsoft on that day, indicating it was open to a transaction but not at $31 a share. Microsoft finally, officially received its rejection letter.
Four days later, and over the course of several days, the two companies met and Microsoft indicated a possible increase in its offer price for a full buyout of the company. The two companies also discuss a partial deal for Microsoft to buy Yahoo's search business.
On May 2, Microsoft orally stated it was willing to pay $33 a share for all of Yahoo.
This timeline is part of a Yahoo presentation filed with the SEC.
(Credit: Yahoo)The next day, the two companies meet to talk turkey about a price. Yahoo proposes $37 a share and then, Yahoo notes in its investor presentation that within hours, the software giant withdraws its buyout proposal.
Two weeks after buyout talks collapse, Yahoo's independent board members and management meet with Microsoft, which confirms it is no longer interested in acquiring the entire company.
The next day, the Redmond giant goes public with its statement about a "hybrid" transaction.
On May 24, the CEOs of both companies meet to talk about the "hybrid" deal and five days later Microsoft submits its "hybrid" proposal. Approximately a week later, on June 8, Yahoo's independent board members and management meet with Microsoft, which states it is not interested in a full buyout of the company--even at its prior price range.
Four days after that meeting, Yahoo announces its search advertising deal with Google, while Microsoft reiterates its interest in a "hybrid" deal but not a full buyout of the company.
Yahoo, in rejecting Microsoft's "hybrid" proposal, notes that the search pioneer would be left without any search assets if it had engaged in Microsoft's "hybrid" deal, as a result jeopardizing its ability to "maintain search and display volume," according to its shareholders presentation.
Yahoo also noted that Microsoft's 10-year exclusive search partnership would make the company dependent on Microsoft's ability to generate enough search advertising revenue to ensure it receives its share of those proceeds from the software giant.
"Despite all the challenges we've been through, including Microsoft's unsolicited proposal and now a proxy contest by Carl Icahn, Yahoo remains a unique value proposition," Jerry Yang, Yahoo co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "The combination of our leading positions in search and display together with the benefits expected from our recently signed agreement with Google make us exceptionally well-positioned to capitalize on the convergence of search and display."
That said, Microsoft, according to sources, is contemplating making a sweetened offer to its "hybrid" proposal for Yahoo's search business and some members of the Internet search pioneer's board are receptive to that notion.
But will that satisfy Icahn and other institutional investors?
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9980498-7.html
How Facebook stays afloat adding 250,000 users per day
A few weeks ago I talked with Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, about the challenge of innovating quickly and building stable infrastructure while 250,000 new members are added to the social network every day. Check out the video on ZDNet.
Jonathan Heiliger
(Credit: CNET News)
(Credit: CNET News)
Q: You've been at Facebook, I think, for about a year and it's been quite a ride I guess, scaling up from zero in 2004 to over 80 million today. How do you keep up with that hyper growth?
Heiliger: You're absolutely right--we've had a lot of growth. We add over 250,000 users every day, and that means a lot of infrastructure, a lot of servers, and constantly looking at new processes and looking at how we're doing things and ensuring that we're doing things the most efficient way possible, not just for delivering all the content to our users but to stay on top of what it costs to run the site.
How do you stay on top of the cost in terms of the kind of equipment you buy and how you work with the vendors? How do you prioritize those things?
Heiliger: One of the things we recently did was we ran an RFP process for the servers we buy from vendors and essentially did a bake-off with a number of different people looking at building servers on our own. What we concluded from that process was to continue to buy servers from a couple of major OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), but through that process we were able to lock in prices today and carry those prices forward as all the commodity components costs drop.
When you're buying those servers, and I assume you're doing just a huge scale out of commodity servers, what do they look like? How are they configured?
Heiliger: We're pretty lucky in that we run a wide variety of applications, literally tens of applications on our own and hundreds of applications for our platform developers that use Facebook as a distribution mechanism, as a way of interacting with their users. But one of the reasons we're very lucky is our engineering team has selected to use PHP as the primary development language. That allows us to use a fairly generic server type. So we, with a couple of exceptions, have three main server types and run a fairly homogeneous environment, which allows us to then consolidate our buying power.
You're different from Google in the kinds of applications that you run. They are mostly running search queries, and you're running all kinds of queries and bringing back all kinds of data from the social graph. How is it different in terms of the way you build out your data center from the inside?
Heiliger: Google has a tremendous amount of information that they index and archive and present to users, but fundamentally if you go to Google and type in a search for a "tiger" and I go to Google and type in a search for a "tiger" we're going to see generally the same results, so they're presenting that same information to both of us. Facebook is a little different in that the context for our data is all social. When you look at your friends and their status updates and their photos and the notes they may have written, you're going to see one set of data versus if I look at my friends and their photos and their notes and status updates, and those tend to be non-intersecting sets of data.
So it's much more dynamic?
Heiliger: Much more dynamic data set--and what that means is it's caused us to do a bunch of different things relative to caching and relative to federating all of that data up amongst thousands of different databases so that as a user requests all of that information we're not using one particular server every time for different data.
You recently introduced a chat application on Facebook, and it seems like it took a lot of time to test it to make sure it could scale having all those simultaneous conversations going on. Could you give us a little background and color on how that came to be?
Heiliger: Chat is actually one of our most recent launches. It started as a hack-a-thon project, which is one of the things we do about every other month. People get together and work all night and pick a project they don't have time to do necessarily during the day. From the time it really germinated as an idea to the time it launched and was available for our entire user base, it became a more formal development project. One of the things we did as part of that was actually built a new back-end service to be able to deal with all of the millions of simultaneous connections that we persist for users.
One other thing I was reading up on some of the work you've been doing--you say that clouds don't solve single points of failure in your stack. What are those single points of failure?
Heiliger: Interesting question, and the notion you are referring to there was part of the talk I give in regards to cloud computing is just a panacea, and for a start-up or even a more mature start-up like Facebook, isn't the answer to solving failure points in an application. By that I mean the underlining infrastructure that powers an application is typically the result of, or the outcome of, how the application is originally designed and how users interact with that application. If an application is poorly designed or designed to constantly reference a single set of data, the underlining infrastructure is going to be the victim of that. Guys like myself in the infrastructure world have to figure out how to best make that work.
As someone who is in operations how much impact do you have on the application development to make sure that once it gets into the data center that it can work properly and scale and not have the kind of failures we're seeing with some of the new applications?
Heiliger: I think it's a constant challenge in any organization, particularly a fast-moving one like Facebook, where we want to iterate quickly and get product out in our customers' hands so we can get feedback on that product and continue to tweak and enhance it over time. We have one force that's moving in that direction, and we have another force that says we want to keep the site up, we want the site to be reliable, and we want the site to be fast.
So there's a fine balancing act, where everyone in management and everyone in both the engineering and operations department constantly just sort of works, interacts, and goes back and forth, figures out just how to make those trade-offs. Sometimes we err too aggressively on the side of innovation and iteration, and put things out on the site in perhaps a small quantity that may break the site or cause the site to slow temporarily. Other times we air on the side of conservatism, of not releasing new functionality or new features, and that then delays the sort of user gratification of having that feature or fixing that bug.
What are the challenges that you see--let's say you're at 80 million unique users per month, 250,000 being added per day and 50,000 transactions per second. What happens when you get to 500 million or a billion if you ever get there?
Heiliger: Hopefully, tremendous things. I think we can only look forward to those days.
But what are some of the bottlenecks or barriers you have to overcome to get to that kind of scale?
Heiliger: Some of the bottlenecks we're facing are how we scale this extremely distributed set of data. One of the challenges we have is figuring out how to make that replicated such that it can exist in multiple places around the world and we don't also have to bring users back to the U.S. or back to one of our data centers. I think it's a challenge that most Web sites tend to face as they scale, which is you start in one location with a single database and then you have to figure out how to grow from there, primarily driven by the amount of latency or the amount of time it takes to reach the site and interact with the site. Being able to replicate the data across multiple data centers and across multiple geographies allows users to not just read their data from a local version but write that data as well. That is one of our key challenges over the next 12 months.
As you learn more about building up this very large scale infrastructure do you ever see the possibility that a Facebook could be a service provider?
Heiliger: What do you mean by service provider?
In the sense that right now you're just running the Facebook application but what if a developer or user wanted to do something similar to what Amazon is doing, using your infrastructure to run their applications in the cloud?
Heiliger: Gotcha. So one of the values of Facebook is the Facebook platform. We have over 100,000 developers and several hundred applications that have over a million users using them. We've talked about perhaps opening up or further opening up the platform by offering compute power for those application developers. One of the steps we've already taken to improve that development environment and improve the experience for our developers is just to open-source our platform, which we announced just a couple of weeks ago as well.
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9980569-80.html
Google to Viacom: 'Respect YouTube users' privacy'
Posted by Greg Sandova
Viacom is getting its hands on some of YouTube's sensitive user data as a result of the copyright infringement lawsuit the conglomerate filed a year ago.
Google responded on Thursday in a statement to the court's order.
"We are pleased the court put some limits on discovery," Google said in the statement, "including refusing to allow Viacom to access users' private videos and our search technology. We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."
CNET News.com reported that Viacom is under strict instructions from the court not to use the data for anything other than proving the prevalence of infringement on YouTube.
Viacom, therefore, is forbidden from targeting individual users in the manner of the Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits against individuals found to be downloading illegal music.
The case is important to Internet users because it could help define the scope of the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That's the part of copyright law that Google and other Internet service providers claim protects them from being held responsible for the actions of their users.
Don't look for the case to get to court anytime soon. The discovery part of the case isn't expected to end until sometime next year.
What might prove interesting in the meantime is that among the people Google has asked to depose are Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of the The Colbert Report.
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983702-7.html
Yahoo's top U.S. sites get traffic help from Google search
A fresh look at Yahoo's search results Thursday by Hitwise Intelligence raises the question of whether Yahoo could survive just fine without its search engine.
Such a question is rather important to Yahoo investors, given the Internet search pioneer has given a cold shoulder to Microsoft, which has previously expressed interest in buying Yahoo's search assets. Yahoo, however, rebuffed the offer, noting in its investor presentation that selling its search assets, including its algorithmic search, would:
Jeopardize the Yahoo user experience and make it difficult for Yahoo to maintain search and display volume.
But Heather Hopkins, vice president of research for Hitwise, noted in her blog that Yahoo's valuable sites would not necessarily fair poorly without Yahoo's search engine.
Hopkins took Yahoo's top 20 U.S. Internet properties for the month of June and ranked them, based on user traffic.
As expected, Yahoo Mail represented a 37.5 percent slice of the traffic pie, followed by the main Yahoo site with 30.6 percent and Yahoo search with 12.l percent.
Then Hopkins compared whether these top 20 sites were getting their users by way of a Google search or a Yahoo search. In all but six of the top 20 sites, more users were coming to Yahoo's top 20 sites by way of a Google search--even to its popular Yahoo Mail and Yahoo.com.
Yahoo Answers showed the disparity the most, with 49 percent of its U.S. traffic coming from Google in June, while only 20 percent was from a Yahoo search.
Hopkins made this observation in her blog:
I'll admit, I went into this analysis thinking that the data would show that Yahoo was worth more together--I thought that the sum of the whole would be greater than the parts. However after looking more closely at the data, I'm not sure that is necessarily true.
Whether Yahoo is better kept whole or split up I can't say. What I can say is that the parts of Yahoo are quite valuable and wouldn't necessarily be lost without the search engine.
Wonder if Yahoo has read Hopkins' blog?
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983784-7.html?tag=nefd.top
Google Talk comes to the iPhone, iPod Touch
Google is making its Google Talk instant-messaging application available for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.
One of Google's software engineers posted the news in a blog on Wednesday.
(Credit: Google)"In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you're on the move, too!" Adam Connors, of Google's mobile team said in the blog.
The application doesn't require any software to be installed or downloaded. Instead it works within the phone's browser, so users can simply go to the site www.google.com/talk, sign in, and start chatting.
Connors pointed out that there are a few differences when using Google Talk on the iPhone versus a computer. For one, to receive messages, the application needs to be open on the Safari phone browser. When users navigate away from the Google Talk window in the browser, their status is set to "unavailable."
That said Google has tried to keep the experience close to what users experience on their desktop or laptop computers. They can select contacts from a quicklist, search contacts, and manage conversations.
With half the world's population soon owning a cell phone, the opportunity to reach more people on the Web via a mobile device is huge. Google recognizes this as a big advertising opportunity. As a result, the company has launched several initiatives to make sure it gets a piece of the action.
It's already adapted its Web search, mapping service, and advertising tools to work on cell phones. And it even bid in a U.S. auction of wireless spectrum to help ensure rules requiring open access on those networks were achieved. The company has even gone so far as to develop its own mobile operating system, known as Android, to ensure that its applications and services are tightly integrated into mobile devices.
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-9983680-94.html?tag=nefd.top
Apple cuts price of flash-drive MacBook Air
The MacBook Air is now cheaper if you want the flash-memory hard drive option.
(Credit: Apple)Apple has quietly reduced the price of the flash-memory version of the MacBook Air by $500.
Appleinsider tipped us to the new price, which can be found at the online Apple Store. Before today, you would have paid a $999 premium if you wanted a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to $599. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, $200 instead of $300, on either the flash model or the one with the standard hard drive.
PC companies have been interested in flash memory hard drives for some time, but it's not clear how well they are selling. Using flash memory instead of moving parts to store data improves the reliability of the system; hard drive failures are one of the most common problems experienced by notebook users.
But it's still very expensive to choose a flash drive over a regular hard drive, and potential customers might not be able to justify spending that extra $999, or even $599. Reliability is important, but so is price, and recent news that flash-memory drives are actually a drain on battery life won't help sell them as an upgrade option.
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983811-37.html?tag=nefd.top
BitTorrent Tracker Hosting Illegal Says Dutch Court
Written by Ernesto on July 04, 2008
Leaseweb, the former ISP of BitTorrent trackers such as Demonoid, What.cd and Waffles.fm lost the appeal against the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The Amsterdam court concluded that Leaseweb has to permanently shut down the BitTorrent tracker everlasting.nu, and hand over the admin’s personal information.
Last year the court decided that Leaseweb had to take down everlasting.nu and hand over the name and address of the owner because the site because it structurally facilitated copyright infringement, as pointed out bu BREIN.
At the time Leaseweb was hosting dozens of torrent sites, including Demonoid, mybittorrent.com, btmon.com, btjunkie.org, seedpeer.com, what.cd and waffles.fm. Although Leaseweb decided to appeal the decision, the torrent sites were no longer welcome, and were asked to find a new ISP.
Yesterday the appeal was denied, as the Amsterdam court again ruled that everlasting.nu was facilitating copyright infringement, by allowing their users to download copyrighted content via torrents hosted on their site.
Leaseweb’s defense argued that Everlasting was not facilitating copyright infringement, because the torrent files itself are not copyrighted. However, the judge ruled that this was irrelevant, since the files are an essential part of the download process.
Leaseweb’s lawyers further argued that the tracker is not necessary for the download process, that the torrents could be mislabeled, and that there are also BitTorrent clients that do not upload (downloading music and movies is legal in the Netherlands), but there arguments did not impress the judge either.
At the moment it is still unclear what this means for future cases, such as the upcoming court case between Mininova and BREIN. In the ruling the court places a lot of emphasis on the tracker, as an essential component of the infringement process. Mininova does not operate a BitTorrent tracker.
It is however very unlikely that Leaseweb will ever host a BitTorrent tracker again. The ISP that once was a safe haven for most torrent sites is most likely done fighting.
Virgin Media: ‘Absolutely No Possibility’ of Disconnecting File-Sharers
Written by enigmax on July 03, 2008
Virgin Media, plagued by a recent flurry of bad publicity thanks to its policy of working with the music industry to warn file-sharers, has announced today that there is “absolutely no possibility” that it will disconnect its users from the Internet or hand over their details to the music industry.
To its credit, one ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has refused to comply. Others are working with the music industry and at the forefront of that group is Virgin Media.
Virgin has been receiving quite a lot of bad publicity recently after it was revealed that it agreed to work with the music industry to send out so-called ‘educational warnings‘ to its customers the BPI accuse of file-sharing. Virgin has sent out hundreds of these at the behest of the music industry and they have been dropping through mail boxes up and down the country. The letters come in an envelope and printed on the outside are the words: “Important: If you don’t read this, your broadband could be disconnected” so recipients could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, frankly, if they don’t read it, their broadband could be disconnected.
However, Virgin Media told has told Jim over at Newsbeat that the printing on the envelope was “a mistake” and there is “absolutely no possibility” of legal action or disconnection for any recipient of these letters. Nice to know.
Furthermore, Asam Ahmad from Virgin notes that they cannot be 100% sure that the person they send the letters to has actually committed any offense at all. “It is important to let our customers know that their accounts have been used in a certain way but we are happy to accept it may not be the account holder that’s involved.”
He goes on to highlight the problematic issue of incorrectly accusing someone due to a lack of solid evidence: “It could be someone else in the family or someone living in a shared house. It could even be someone stealing wi-fi. We are not making any form of accusation.”
Virgin Media has also stated that it will not hand over the personal details of anyone accused by the BPI “under any circumstances”. This is a good start by Virgin and all credit to them for taking this stance but the reality is that Virgin hands over its subscriber’s details in the blink of an eye when faced with a court order to do so. We know for a fact that they hand over the details of petty file-sharers to the likes of lawyers Davenport Lyons for the alleged sharing of one cheap game costing little more than a single album. However, the BPI has said in the past that it doesn’t want to start taking legal action against individuals.
‘Heroes’ Producer Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on July 02, 2008
Half of the people who use BitTorrent do so to download TV-shows. Some episodes of popular shows such as ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’ get up to 10 million downloads. We had a chat with Jesse Alexander, the co-producer of both ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’, and asked him what his thoughts are on BitTorrent, piracy and the future of TV.
Jesse Alexander has co-produced and written for both ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’, two of the most successful TV-series today. In addition to millions of viewers on TV, both shows are are also extremely popular on BitTorrent. In fact, millions of people share a single episode and this can go on to 10 million downloads per episode.
One could argue that their availability on BitTorrent actually helped ‘Lost’ and ‘Heroes’ to build a stronger fanbase. With torrents, no-one has to miss an episode anymore which keeps the fans more engaged. So called “pirates” advertise the shows to their friends, or write about it on their blogs. Accordingly, when we asked Jesse Alexander whether he thinks that BitTorrent might have helped to reach a broader audience, he answered with a clear cut “Yes”.
Not that Jesse wants everybody to get the shows off BitTorrent, but he said that it certainly signals that there is a market for on-demand and interactive TV. “People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality,” Jesse told TorrentFreak. TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience.”
“It’s the same for music artists. The reality is, people share music. Artist now make money by driving people to concerts, through community websites, and by offering exclusive events. TV networks are focusing too much on one exclusive product, instead of building a community. This is a mistake I think.”
The success of Heroes on BitTorrent didn’t pass by the cast of the show unnoticed either. “The cast and the people behind the scenes have all been talking about it,” Jesse said. As an example he mentioned last year’s promotional tour in France, where the actors were recognized by hundreds of fans, even though the show had not even premiered on TV yet.
Alexander has hit the nail on the head. This is in fact one of the main reasons why shows like ‘Heroes’ are so popular on filesharing networks. It can take up to six months after the US premiere before these shows are aired in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world. Jesse agreed that this is indeed one of the major causes of piracy. “This gap is something that is certainly going to change in the future,” he added.
Jesse went on to say that in the near future, thanks to the Internet, the viewers of TV-shows will see more interactive components and alternate realities they can participate in. The future of TV will be more international, with real interaction, and shows will be more and more integrated into the core part of an online community.
When we asked Jesse if he has ever downloaded TV-shows off BitTorrent, he told us: “I can’t confirm or deny, but I’m familiar with all kind of new technologies.” I guess we all know what he’s trying to say.
It is no surprise that Jesse is more positive towards new technologies than some others in the entertainment industry. Last week we reported on the upcoming “Pirate TV” show that he is working on, together with Matt Mason, the author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’.
“Matt’s book needs to get a broader audience,” said Jesse. “We want to discuss the negative and the positive side of piracy, and place things in a broader historical context. We want to start a real conversation about the future of intellectual property.”
We’re happy to join the debate, what about you?
Court Hits BitTorrent Users Who Failed to Appear
Written by enigmax on July 02, 2008
Last week, lawyers Davenport Lyons who are currently threatening hundreds of BitTorrent users with legal action, tasted victory in Central London County Court with wins in cases against four file-sharers. Fortunately, these ‘victories’ mean little, as Davenport chose not to go after people who defend themselves, instead picking on people they knew wouldn’t even come to court.
To those in the BitTorrent community, the name Davenport Lyons will be familiar. The London-based lawyers are responsible for a barrage of threatening letters sent to hundreds of alleged file sharers. They want people who they accuse of uploading Dream Pinball 3D, Colin McRae Dirt and Call of Juarez to comply with their demands, which means accepting that the highly-suspect evidence provided by anti-piracy tracking company Logistep is actually correct, promising never to share files again and then paying several hundred pounds to Davenport Lyons to call off the legal action.
Several individuals accused by Davenport in the Dream Pinball 3D case have access to some formidable resources and are actually relishing the opportunity of having their day in court. However, as we recently reported, Davenport Lyons like to carefully pick their prey - they simply cannot afford to lose a case due to faulty evidence. TorrentFreak is in contact with many people who are accused by Davenport of uploading, and it’s becoming apparent that people who dig in their heels - who refuse to be intimidated and refuse to be bullied - are mysteriously left alone and not taken to court.
But before we get carried away, here’s some sobering news. Last Friday, seemingly against all the odds and proving our previous articles completely wrong, Davenport Lyons achieved court victories against four file-sharers it accused of unauthorized distribution of Topware’s Dream Pinball 3D.
David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons said: “Copyright owners spend millions of pounds developing copyright works for sale to the public for their enjoyment and yet many think it is acceptable to obtain the work illegally and for free by procuring a copy on a peer-to-peer network.”
The four were hit with fines of £750 each - to be paid within a week - along with £2000 costs. Ouch. Surely these historic victories would now open the flood gates to enable the lawyers and anti-pirates to absolutely hammer the hundreds of people who also stand accused?
Well, not quite, no. Not even close.
The victories claimed by Davenport Lyons at Central London County Court on behalf of publisher Topware were all achieved by way of so-called ‘default judgment’. In basic terms, this means that as the individuals accused didn’t bother to turn up at court or even answer court documents, the court had no alternative than to hand victory to Davenport Lyons and Topware.
The remaining several hundred people accused of file-sharing by Davenport Lyons will be heartened to know that the company only has the confidence to go after people it knows will not turn up at court, assuring them of victory.
Loading up its metaphorical gun and getting ready to fire more legal bullets into a small barrel of defenseless fish, Davenport says it has more of these cases lined up to ‘win’ later on this week, while everyone else stands around yawning wondering when they’ll pick on someone who will actually fight back.
If you are one of the four who lost their case last Friday or have been served with court documents to appear in the future, please get in touch via the contact page, we want to speak with you.
Australian Drug Mafia to Sell Pirated DVDs?
Written by Ben Jones on July 01, 2008
If you ask any Australian what the most annoying thing is about TV shows or movies, a common response is that it can take a long time for things popular in the US and UK to make it ‘down under’. Apparently, the Mafia has picked up on this, as they have started selling pirated movies and TV-shows on the streets, or have they?
When you get in any sort of reporting, you start to see the same sort of stories crop up. We’ve been writing for almost 3½ years, and even in that short time, and in as narrow a field as I keep an eye on, we see the same things crop up. In that way, it’s like fashion, except instead of cycles of 20-30 years, its often only 3-4. One such example comes courtesy of yesterday’s The Australian. Under a headline of “Organized Crime gets into Video Piracy” is a number of claims.
“DVD and other piracy can now be more profitable than drug trafficking,” AFACT’s director of operations Neil Gane told The Australian. “That’s why crime organizations are going into it.”
It might not sound familiar to some of you, but a similar claim was made some four years and 9500 miles away, in the UK. Back then, during a campaign called “piracy is a crime” they made similar allegations (see the top of this page, court. wayback machine), allegations that didn’t stand up to scrutiny back then, when we first encountered them.
Do these? Well, the article in question makes use of the infamous LEK study, and even the MPAA knows it’s inaccurate (pdf). So, it’s not exactly off to the best of starts. Unfortunately, that’s also the only start. Despite a trawl of the websites and press releases put out by the two organizations (the other being Foxtel), there is only one recent link (doc) between drugs and ‘piracy’ and that is the prosecution of ONE MAN just over a month ago, for cultivating cannabis, and what is described as ‘multiple copyright offenses’.
So, we’ve gone from one guy, with 3,300 movies+TV shows and growing some cannabis (total punishment, 7 month suspended sentence, and a 2 year good behavior order) to Organized Crime. Despite the utter failure of the similar campaign in the UK years earlier (where the only thing remaining of the campaign is the ‘You wouldn’t steal a…” advert) Australia seems determined to try and make it work.
However, there is a plus side, in that AFACT have established a market price it believes consumers feel to be the worth of a DVD. In all their estimations of yearly capacity, they give a ’street value’ of roughly $5AUS, which is about $4.77 US (3 Euros, or £2.40). In this they differ from the campaign in the UK, where the value given was some 20 times greater. In this, while telling lies, they are also more truthful.
In the end, no ‘criminal gang’ will forego their drugs, weapons or other lucrative money-making operations for DVD piracy. The reasoning is as plain as it is simple. With drugs, or guns they have small, highly valuable goods that can’t be easily obtained elsewhere. As the world becomes increasingly connected, and peer-to-peer becomes simpler to use, more reliable, less time consuming AND more powerful, the potential returns on selling bootleg DVDs reduces, ask Tony. Ten years ago, people had dial-up, and hard drives were maybe big enough for 2-3 DVDs. Now you can buy terabyte hard drives, and even the TorrentFreak researcher, living in the middle of rural Georgia, 10 miles from the nearest shops, has an 8Mbit connection.
The reasons for comparisons become clear when you hear the comments of Foxtel’s head of Fraud, Mark Mulready (a ‘former police prosecutor and detective’), who told The Australian “Police should have all the same investigative tools to fight piracy they currently have for organised drug trafficking or money laundering,” so, as usual, it’s about not having to spend time and money on civil cases, but having the taxpayer foot the bill, and the ability to use law enforcement to patch their business model.
Rehashing failed campaigns is a sign that the industry has no new ideas, and is desperately trying to avoid dealing with the root of the problem – themselves and their greed. When even the police are so into ‘piracy’, that there are too many to prosecute, it’s time to stop sticking your head in the sand, and deal with the causes.
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