Illegal Music Sharing...any takers?

A federal jury in Duluth, Minn., on Thursday ordered a Minneapolis woman to pay US$220,000 to six music companies for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music over a peer-to-peer network.

The 12-person jury said Jammie Thomas must pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that were the focus of the case. In their complaint, the six music companies that sued her had claimed that Thomas had illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs over the Kazaa file-sharing network, but they chose to focus on a representative list of 24 songs.

The verdict was greeted with dismay by many in the blogosphere who have been following the case closely for some time now.

New York lawyer Ray Beckerman, writing in the Recording Industry vs The People blog, called the verdict "one of the most irrational things I have ever seen in my life in the law."

"A verdict of $222,000 for infringement of 24 song files worth a total of $23.76?" he asked. "It is an outrage, and I hope it is a wake-up call to the world that we all need to start supporting the defendants in these cases."

Commenting on Gizmodo.com, a reader identifying himself as DirtyBacon said he was shocked but not surprised by the verdict. "I guess my two mp3 players, that have thousands of songs that I bought on CD, are illegal contraband," he said. "My options of moving to Asian countries for work are looking more appealing. I've officially lost faith."

The six music companies that sued Thomas were Capitol Records Inc., Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records Inc., UMG Recordings Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.

Article Source: PC World

Halo 3: Microsoft to replace damaged games

Microsoft has been forced to offer replacement Halo 3 games within hours of launching the much-hyped Xbox 360 game.

Not long after thousands of fans walked away from long queues with the software giant's most eagerly awaited computer game, reports of scratched video game disks flooded the internet.

Microsoft faced a flurry of blogs claiming that the scratches were a result of the game's special limited-edition packaging. In response, the group told its customers on the Xbox website, "if, for any reason, you have a damaged Microsoft Xbox 360 disc and (would) like to replace it...you will need to complete the program form".

Customers have until December 31 to send their damaged disks back to Microsoft, which warned that the replacement games would take four to six weeks to deliver. The game went on sale in Britain at midnight last night. Prices in the US start at around $60 (£30), yet the same basic edition of Halo 3 in the UK is on sale for £49.99. Retailers Amazon and Game, however, are offering it online for around £39.99. Last month, Microsoft finally caved in to Xbox 360 games console price cuts in the UK, just weeks after Nintendo turned up the heat by lifting its profit forecast for the year by more than 40pc on the back of soaring global sales of Wii and DS devices.

The news of damaged Halo 3 games will come as a blow to Microsoft, which recently admitted it will have to spend up to $1.15bn repairing defective Xbox 360 consoles and extending their warranty policies.

Microsoft Anna - Sensual Babe or Just Another Robot?

Microsoft Anna is the new English text to speech voice of Windows Vista. She replaces Microsoft Sam, the robot-like voice that comes with Windows XP. Microsoft Sam has probably single-handedly done more than anything to give text to speech a bad name. The only positive thing I can say about Microsoft Sam is that he reminds me of the Commodore Amiga, possibly the first personal computer to have a built-in text to speech capability.

Does Microsoft Anna sound any better than Sam? Does she have a sensual voice that you could listen to all day or does she have you reaching for the mute button? How does she compare to a voice from a leading speech engine provider, such as one of Nuance®’s RealSpeak™ voices?

To answer these questions, I’ve conducted a simple ’speak-off’ between Microsoft Sam, Microsoft Anna and RealSpeak™ Samantha. Each voice had to read three passages of text, ranging in difficulty from a simple news story to an abstract from a medical journal that most humans would have trouble pronouncing.

Read Full Article at: text2go