News for Friday, 17 March 2006

The different articles of the DADVSI law are currently being voted by the French lower chamber. Last night, a couple of them were voted on despite their complete irrelevance and putative non-constitutional aspects: the music majors have won the battle, even though this law, once it passes all the necessary steps, creates clear conflicts with our constitution. It is now obvious that this law has been designed for the music majors in order to push customers to listen music the way that they have decided.
- The Vivendi amendment makes all software that could potentially by used to share files illegal.
. Even talking or posting information about such applications or file-sharing networks could be punished by up to 3 years in jail and/or a 300 000 euro fine.
- It will now be illegal to make a backup copy of DVDs for one's own private use, whereas previously such a copy was possible. Of course the different taxes applied on digital media (CD/DVD/iPod and other music players) originally created to compensate the lost of revenue for the artists due to the piracy on the net will not be removed as they were in Canada.
It is quite obvious that our chamber representatives were either not properly informed or were strongly influenced by lobbyists to initiate this bill. At least the current situation make everything clear. The largest music major, Vivendi, a French company,like all majors, are engaged in a campaign of FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. They seek to convince artists that they are protecting them from pirates/thieves. They seek to tell consumers that P2P networks are inherently poor. They choose to ignore their own inappropriate and archaic business plan that they are currently operating under.
Due to the potential changes in the internet-related laws, we might have to consider moving our servers outside of France. Once more, some politicians are discrediting both our constitution and our image to the rest of the world. They might have forgotten the meaning of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". We have to hope that during the parliamentary debates, the bill will be modified and admended in order to modify some of the articles. For sure our Constitutional Council will have some work to do in the future.

For years, left-handed users have not been able to find a mouse that will fit with their hand.
Logitech has decided to release a mouse specifically designed for left-handed users.

It is almost sure to be a success, and it should also push other manufacturers to develop devices for users representing at least 10% of the population.

Three days after its release, the security update 2006-002 has been updated to version 1.1 for Tiger (OS X 10.4.5 PPC and Intel). This update does not seem to be available via the software update panel but you can download it from the Apple Support webpage.

Intel has released a new Xeon model based on the Core Duo architecture, named Sossaman.

This processor can support up to 64GB of DDR400 dual channel, sports 2 cores and can be associated to create a dual core dual processor machine. Its releases only 31W @ 2GHz. it is a transition CPU before the Woodcrest in September.
We do not think that a Sossaman-based Powermac will be enough to replace the current, especially for the PMG5 Quad. But due to its low Power consumption, it could allow Apple to install it quickly in the Xserve models.