How to Use Windows

The boss of BT has criticised the government’s plans to cut-off persistent illegal file-sharers from their internet accounts, suggesting that fining them would be a far more progressive option. British Telecom’s chief exec, Ian Livingston, has teamed up with a number of other key industry figures and written a letter to the Financial Times urging that changes be made to the Digital Economy Bill. Unnatural justice Plans to cut off filesharers go against what Mr Livingston refers to as ‘natural justice’ and instead he wants to see those accused of filesharing either pay a fine or fight their case in a court of law. ISPs will no doubt see this as a preferable option to the current suggestions in the Digital Economy Bill, which, if ratified, will essentially see them being forced to cut off their own customers. The BT boss said that this alternative approach would “create a fund” and “you get some good, rather than getting some hurt out of people infringing copyright”

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Well, we suppose it was inevitable. After being handed their walking papers earlier this week, former Infinity Ward bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella have rallied their lawyers for what promises to be the court equivalent of a train wreck colliding with the last two Matrix movies and the remnants of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie career.

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Open-source is not about the money. The software world has gotten this point pretty well by now.  Sure, you can wrap additional elements of a larger business plan around an open-source offering.  But even at its core, the concept of open-source isn’t really designed around capitalistic ideals.  If anything, it’s more communistic in its focus : everybody shares an equal stake in a project, and anybody is free to assert their individual ownership in a piece of work by advancing it toward a new direction as they see fit. But these… these are just the tools of the revolution, as Marx might have said.  When it comes to actual content itself–the very bits and bytes of progress that open-source tools help create–the current crop of major content creators and distributors are behaving like dictators in an open world.  And it’s costing both them and us rather greatly. Instead of reaping the success of a community-driven groundswell for their assets, these companies would rather lay down the hammer and stifle all innovation in an attempt to control their futures to a “T.” Two recent examples from Lawrence Lessig and the band OK Go really hit home the biggest elements that are wrong with our current system of open information distribution on the ‘net.  If it’s not the owner of the content acting like an idiot, it’s the system we’ve allowed to propagate that virtually criminalizes content sharers without a second thought.

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A senior Chinese military official has called for a new national web control agency to enforce internet monitoring methods in the country. People’s Liberation Army Major General Huang Yongyin said China needed to up its fight on online infiltration and attacks, claiming in the February issue of Chinese Cadres Tribune, a magazine published by the Communist Party’s Central Party School: “For national security, the Internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder.” China is back in the tech headlines again this month, following reports of a vocational school where military recruits were said to be the source of the spyware hacker attack on Google earlier this year. A Financial Times report quoted unidentified sources claiming that analysts had traced the online attacks to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang vocational school. Both establishments have denied the reports

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Listen up iPhone owners – if financial calculators are your thing, then RLM has you covered. The software maker was in attendance at the Macworld Expo showing off seven of its business and scientific calculators, each one tweaked to take advantage of the iPhone platform. Take the 17BII+ Financial Calculator , for example. This app is every bit like the real thing, only a little easier to use thanks to an equation editor and other iPhone-only additions. And of course it supports both portrait and landscape viewing

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Whistleblower site Wikileaks last made headlines about 6 months ago when the website got hold of a U.S. report detailing the locations and assets of U.S. neclear power plants and posted it for all the world to see. And now

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Sony Ericsson has published its financial results for Q4 2009, and they don’t make happy reading for fans of the Swedish-Japanese alliance. The headline stats show a terrible year for the firm, with sales down from 24.2 million units shipped in Q4 2008 to 14.6 million in Q4 2009. Average selling price also declined one Euro per handset, which obviously impacted over the vast numbers shipped. The company also reported a net loss of €167 million for Q4 2009, which meant a full €836 million loss for 2009

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According to a Microsoft executive, we are set to see the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system – the much-hyped Windows Mobile 7 – finally unveiled to the great unwashed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. It is hardly the most surprising news, as many mobile industry punters were secretly hoping to see the new mobile operating system being shown off by Microsoft at CES this month. But that clearly did not come to be. Mobile World Congress launch Entertainment and Devices Division president Robbie Bach claimed that Windows Mobile 7 “things will be talked about at MWC” at the company’s Financial Analyst meeting at CES

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We don’t have any facts or any figures, but if you ask us we’d be certain that broken laptop screens account for a good number of trashed laptops. If you’re confronted with a bill that runs into the hundreds of pounds then the financial outlay will make no sense, even for a system that’s just a few years old. Especially when you consider an entire new laptop could cost as little as £300 (or less if you got for one of those tiny netbook jobs). The good news is that while replacement panels used to cost £200 – even before you’d have to pay someone to fit it – these days, replacement panels can cost as little as £64 and with a little know-how are easily installed yourself. We were lucky enough to stumble across our new friends at www.accupart.co.uk up in Manchester

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To be perfectly honest, we’re tired of hearing about Apple’s tablet, which thus far has consisted of one rumor after another without any confirmation from Apple. That’s going to change next month , or so we hope. According to The Financial Times, Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days late in January.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC