Pounding the Keyboards: What's In a Name?

By Cliff Feldwick

One really hates to be on the side of the music industry in their insatiable quest to sue everyone for copyright infringement who ever lent a disk to a friend, but sometimes you just have to be there.
In April, a Swedish judge sentenced four founders of a company accused of enabling downloading of music and videos to a year in jail and fines of $4.5 million. This was down from the $16.5 million originally sought ($2.8 by the music companies and $13.7 million by movie companies).
Considering that there were only four movies and one TV show mentioned in the suit, $13.7 mill seems a tad over the top - have you truthfully ever seen four movies, or especially a TV show, worth that? Me neither.
The defendants were not going quietly. As one said, "We can't pay, and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I own, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes." They will of course appeal, since they claim they were doing nothing illegal.
The name of the company? "The Pirate Bay." Yes, that was the name. And they had more than 1.6 million files on their servers linking to movies, songs, etc. Nope, nothing illegal there.
This may top the 2009 list for "just plain stupid," but, of course, we still have lots of time. It's like getting a vanity license plate tagged "BAD DUDE" and wondering why the police were stopping you all the time. What's Swedish for "get a clue"?

Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
Adding memory is one of the cheapest ways to make your computer run better and faster, and the cost of doing so is the cheapest I've noted in a long time.
I recently bought a 2 gigabyte upgrade for a popular Dell model for $32. We're talking party favor pricing here, folks. It's always cheaper for newer models where they are churning out tons at a time, but worth checking for everything - so do.
My favorite web site for upgrades is Crucial.com (no financial or other involvement on my end), where you can put in your manufacturer and model number and it tells you how much it will hold and the price, which is usually good.
And while we're talking cheap (as opposed to talking trash, but you'll be the judge on that front), I must once again note that prices of external hard drives are irrationally low. As backup devices for those thousands of photos you always say you're going to preserve, they're easy and perfect. I've seen 250 gigabyte drives for $70 and 1,000 gigabyte drives for about $120 on sale days.
Unless you're saving the Library of Congress (or own 1,000 downloaded movies), that much space should last you forever.

Not Cheap
Even before the economic stimulus package and its associated emphasis on technology in health care, several large players were quietly working on having their systems ready. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if video communication and remote monitoring will ever take the place of human interaction.
Intel and GE's health care division recently announced a partnership to create and market a hardware device known as the Intel Health Guide. The technology combines obtaining measurements (of blood pressure, oxygen levels, weight, etc.) with daily reminders and communication with a central monitoring system that alerts a patient's doctor if anything is off target.
The partnership budgeted $250 million for further development of the systems, which feature large icons and simple interfaces for the tech-phobic, available health care videos for education, and interactive video chats with providers for conferencing with patients who don't have to leave home.
Some years ago, I did setups for a company that was paid by health care companies, usually HMOs, to monitor chronic patient care. They used nurses who would call a patient's home (usually patients with diabetes or congestive heart failure) on a regular basis and ask how they were doing: if they had weighed themselves (they even mailed patients a scale), taken their blood sugar levels, etc.
Being nurses, they often responded to the subtle clues of voice or things left unsaid in a way that technology will be hard pressed to duplicate. But GE is betting that the shortage of trained people willing/available to do this work will make reliance on remote devices necessary.
By the way, this monitoring was not primarily for the patients' sake. The service company sold itself by proving that people who were checked on at regular intervals made far fewer visits to emergency rooms, thus paying for the monitoring service.
You didn't think HMOs were in this for their health, did you?

Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer Consultants and offers PC troubleshooting, data recovery and network setups for small businesses when not worrying if future health care monitors will be able to detect how much ice cream is in his freezer. He can be reached at 410-880-0171 and cliff@feldwick.com.