Viacom vs Youtube | Privacy Scare - All User Details to Be Handed Over

Written by Admin on July 3, 2008

In a shocking turn in the gigantic court case between Google and Viacom, a judge has ordered that Google hand over records of every video watched on YouTube. The information to be handed over to Viacom includes user names and IP Addresses.

Viacom has ordered for the data to be handed over so they can prove that Copyrighted material is more popular than the user created video. They believe that Google is purposely leaving the Copyrighted content online as long as possible to attract users to the site.

This would invalidate, to an extent, their augment at they are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as Google would receive financial benefit from having the copyrighted material on their site. If Viacom do prove that this Copyrighted material is more popular then Google could be forced to pay over more than the $1 billion in damages already requested.

But what does this mean to us?

Well Viacom will own information about every YouTube you’ve ever watched, quite rightly Google and privacy groups are in an uproar about this breach of privacy. Though the Judge pointed to Google that they themselves have said that IP addresses aren’t personally identifiable, what about the User Names? Most people don’t use their own name as a user name, but what of those who do? What protection is offered to them?

I think it will be interesting to see how Viacom react to the uproar that the internet is in at the moment about the breach of privacy, and I feel sorry for the people who have to look through the set of 4 tera-byte hard drives.

Ubuntu Is the Worst Game Ever?

Written by Admin on July 2, 2008

Just browsing the internet today I found this ludicrous image on flickr of someone posting a review on the Ubuntu install disk, stating that it’s a game. You can read the review by clicking the image bellow.

Now, let’s list all the things that are wrong with this review. First of all he states that Ubuntu is a game, everyone who knows anything about computing knows that Linux is an operating system and not a game. Second he is shocked that it erases all of your data, Ubuntu can easily create new partitions so you can still duel boot into Windows or any other operating system for that matter. Ubuntu is able to run on a Mac contrary to what Ernesto stated. He seems to label Dell computers as the only type of Windows computers when there are just a few more brands of computers that sell their hardware with Windows installed. He also moaned about the layout of Ubuntu, yes it’s a different operating system so they aren’t going to conform to the same standards as Windows does just like Macs don’t look like Windows. Finally he moaned about the software availability on Ubuntu in terms of Notepad, Limewire and Internet Explorer, all of this software is in fact available on Ubuntu in open source form.

Obviously from the tone that he uses and looking at his other reviews on amazon he is obviously joking and for his sake I hope he was. It’s just that I don’t like seeing people scared away from a perfectly good open source operating system just for a joke.

PC Prowl Theme Release

Written by Admin on July 1, 2008

As you may or may not know the theme on Pc Prowl is the Blue Block Theme from WpThemeDesigner.

After a couple of requests from both readers of the blog and readers of wpthemedesinger I have decided that I will release the theme for public enjoyment.

The main change to the theme is of course the width, but there are also some smaller changes that you may or may not notice such as:

• the RSS Image
• Comments Image
• Comments Style
• Spaces Between Paragraphs
• Inclusion of Tags at Bottom of Posts
• Next Page / Previous Page Size
• & More

I would like to request that you leave a link to PC Prowl & WpThemeDesigner somewhere on your site as a recognition of our work, whether you leave it in the Footer or put it on your About page.

You can download the Theme here