Maestro

Supreme Court Lets Stand $675,000 File-Sharing Verdict
By David Kravet

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a $675,000 file-sharing damages award that a jury levied against a college student for making 30 music tracks available on a peer-to-peer network.

Without comment, the high court, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer not participating, declined an appeal brought by former Boston college student Joel Tenenbaum. His petition (.pdf) claimed that Congress did not intend “unrestrained discretionary jury damage awards against individual citizens for copyright infringement.”

The case before the justices, the second file-sharing case the high court has rejected in the Recording Industry Association of America’s now-defunct litigation campaign against individuals, concerned a decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read more: wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/supreme-court-file-sharing/

I wish all English folk in Thailand, in their home country, and everywhere else in the world a happy St. George's Day.

Without a doubt, the English national day is also being celebrated by the English and by anglophiles in Thailand. Post here where the action is, and upload pictures of the festivities.

 Google Project Glass.jpg   117.86K   0 downloads

Project Glass

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?



Source: https://plus.google....496192147/posts

A natural blonde was getting tired of hearing all the jokes about blondes and had her hair died brunette. One day she walks in the Swiss mountains and on alp comes across a shepherd with his herd of sheep. "If I can correctly guess how many sheep you have, may I take a lamb with me?" she asks. "OK, guess", says the shepherd. "489", replies the woman. "By golly, you're right", exclaims the astonished shepherd, "chose any sheep you like". The woman takes a little animal into her arms. As she turns to walk off, the shepherd stops her and asks: "If I can guess the natural colour of your hair, may I have my dog back?"

wayned, on 2011-12-29 02:56:04, said:

The above quote is from a post in the forum "Thai visas, residency and work permits". As it is off topic there but because I consider it of general interest to our members I am starting a new topic about it here.

With the latest upgrade of the forum software we now have to click on our member name near the top right of the screen to access the "Personal Messenger", but this is not what this topic is about.

Until the software upgrade before the last one, a personal message (PM) I sent to another member was personal and private in the strictest sense. Quoting text from a PM in an open forum was not tolerated and continues to be not tolerated. With that upgrade, ie the one before the last upgrade, a PM I send to another member now starts what the software calls a "conversation". Any participant in the conversation can invite up to 20 other members to it. So let's say I send a PM to Tom, this makes two participants to the conversation. Tom invites Dick and Harry, which makes a total of four. On the left of the screen, I can see the names of all participants.

What is the purpose of this feature of adding more members to a conversation? I guess it is not often that either the sender or the recipient of a PM finds it useful to add other members to the conversation but let's say that I that Tom is very dissatisfied with the service he got from the shop where he bought his laptop. As we are not allowed to "name and shame" on the forum I ask him with a PM if knows others who had a similarly bad experience with the same shop. In his reply he says that  Dick and Harry did and he adds them to the conversation so that they may reply with information about their experiences with that shop.

Another example: Tom pointed out an apparent discrepancy in a post of mine in a topic. I do not want to start a bickering session in the topic and therefore PM him to state my point. Dick and Harry had voiced similar opinions about my post and when replying to my PM with his clarification he invites them to the conversation for their information and to give them the opportunity to reply also, giving their points of view if they wish to do so.

The way I view this new PM system I guess the opportunity or need to invite other members to a conversation will occur rarely, but when it does it is very useful to have this possibility.