Author: Serkadis

It continues to amaze me that there’s anyone out there who thinks that the damages awarded in many copyright suits are anywhere close to reasonable or proportional to the “crime” at hand. Copycense points us to an article about a guy who was found guilty of putting software on the internet that allowed people to unlock Dish Network programming on unauthorized receivers. Because of this, Dish and another satellite TV provider, NagraStar, were awarded $51 million. $51 million — for putting the software on the internet. That’s all. The amount was determined based on the number of people who downloaded the software, even though, in all likelihood, a much, much smaller percentage would have ever actually paid for an authorized satellite TV account. Furthermore, this guy did not do the actual act of accessing the unauthorized signal, or breaking any encryption. He merely provided the tools to do so. Charging him with the bogus “cost” of each user of his software makes no sense at all. Even if you accept what he did was wrong and clearly illegal, it’s difficult to see how that justifies the ridiculousness of the award.

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The 1925 Bugatti found at the bottom of a Swiss lake after seventy years went under the hammer the past weekend in Paris, and was sold for nearly $370,000, well above estimates. This means the car was bought for three times above its estimated value which was set between $98,000 – $127,000 before the auction.

The proceeds from the auction go to the diving club that recovered the car to benefit a charity preventing youth violence, Luxist says, in the name of a member of the club who died.

… (read more)

Google has always struggled to provide users with the most relevant search results, not that other search engines haven’t, but at one point having the same set of results for everyone doesn’t cut it, what is relevant to someone may be completely off the chart for someone else. This is why Google uses personalized search results, based on previous se… (read more)

It seems that American automakers are ganging up on Toyota, as Ford announced that it will also offer incentives for Toyota customers, just like General Motors. If you are working for the marketing department of Toyota North America this might be the right time to panic.

Just as GM, Ford is offering $1,000 for customers who trade in Toyota, Lexus, Scion, Honda or Acura vehicles with model-years between 1995 and 2010. The incentive can be applied on all Ford vehicles, except its gas-electric h… (read more)

Saab is back in the business after General Motors decided to sell it to Spyker, so the Swedish unit has already started making plans for the future. And the first thing to do is to attend the Chicago Auto Show in February and show the world the company’s main model, which is hoped to bring the company back on the floating line: the new 9-5.

According to a report published by SaabsUnited.com, Saab will showcase both the new 9-5 and the upcoming 9-3x wagon, but the long-awaited 9-4x will hold i… (read more)

The European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) released today the list of top five safest cars of 2009, a list which actually comprises seven cars. The cars entered the top based on their five star award and overall score.

This is the first time we can calculate results that demonstrate an overall safety performance. Even though these cars excel in different areas of safety, their presence in the top-five list indicates that they are among the top safety achievers of the year, Michiel v… (read more)

Fernando Alonso recently experienced his first car launch at Ferrari and admitted his excitement over it. The Spaniard joined his new teammate Felipe Massa, team principal Stefano Domenicali and CEO of the company Luca di Montezemolo at the Maranello launch earlier today, and expressed his hopes that the new F10 will take him to the world title this year.

This is the first time for me, the first presentation for Ferrari, and it is a big emotion for me. I want to thank the whole team because t… (read more)

Here is one of two videos I made yesterday at the launch of the iPad by Apple in San Francisco yesterday, stalking my All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg to get his take of the event.

We talked about whether Apple could innovate enough with hardware and software to make a tablet computer finally become popular outside of Silicon Valley, as well as a range of other issues from multimedia to mobility to price.

I did a pre- and post-event video interview with Walt about the new device below and also caught a bit on my Flip camera of Mossberg kibitzing with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs about the iBooks application, battery life and whether he could write his eventual review of the iPad on, well, the iPad.

Here it is:

[Photo by Shibani Joshi of Fox Business Network.]

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YouTube revolutionized the world of video making by giving anyone with a webcam the possibility to have their videos seen by millions of people. It’s not enough to just make the tools available though, you have to make sure that as many people as possible are able to use them. Uploading a video to YouTube is a rather trivial affair already, precisel… (read more)

Two of the strongest unions in the US will join forces on Thursday, January 28, in front of the Embassy of Japan in Washington to protest against the closure of the New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI) facility in California. The delegation will be lead by UAW vice president Bob King, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger and Teamsters general president James P. Hoffa.

The two unions will deliver a letter for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, in which Gettelfinger and Hoffa express their concerns ove… (read more)

{img align=left}UK’s Department for Transports admitted that MOT failure reports released earlier this year are inaccurate, containing multiple errors, as autocar UK reports.

According to the aforementioned source, a part of the percentage failure rates didn’t match the published number of MOT tests and failures for certain vehicles.

"These are the result, chiefly, of human error," a spokesman told autocar, "We relied on MOT garages inputting the data manually into the syste… (read more)

The Italian government is to consider raising the speed limit on its motorways to 150 km/h (93 mph), from the existing 130 km/h (81 mph) level, in 2010, and MV Agusta president Claudio Castiglioni is backing up the plan.

In a recent interview with the Motociclismo magazine in Italy, Castiglioni says modern sportbikes are more than capable of traveling in perfect safety at that speed.

However, the MV Agusta boss says the speed limit increase should only be applied on the highways.

&quo… (read more)

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak paid a visit California State University of Chico yesterday after the official unveiling of the iPad, and while there he was asked by the audience how he sees the device affecting the entertainment industry.

Videomaker caught his response on video, posted it to YouTube and voilà, the first official opinion of the Woz finds it way to us and more broadly, the Internet.

Wozniak foresees – but admits that it’s just a ‘total’ guess at this point – that in the future you’ll be able to subscribe to magazines and newspapers on the iPad via iTunes. In his view, such an endeavor would leverage the iPad to become much more than a hardware play.

Nothing earth shattering, but always nice to get übergeek Wozniak’s opinion on the stuff Apple makes.

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Dacia is growing, that’s for sure. And along with this impressive growth, the Romanian brand is also migrating to a new type of culture. Up until now, most of its models, designed (or not) in collaboration with Renault, were addressed to emerging markets and to people looking for budget-minded vehicles. However, the Duster is going to be different.

Even if this might make you laugh, this is what Constantin Stroe, Dacia’s vice-president, promises. He ensures Dacia’s fans (if there are any) tha… (read more)

For some of us, amid all the hubbub about revolutions and whatnot yesterday, the most significant announcement on hand was Apple’s supposedly custom A4 CPU. Alas, in the cold and brutal light of the morning after, we’re hearing that it is in fact a system-on-a-chip driven by a Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU “identical” to the one found inside NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, while besting the iPhone 3GS significantly with its 1GHz speed and multicore architecture. The chip is composed of that Cortex barnburner, an integrated memory controller, and the Mali 50-series GPU, making it an all ARM affair — though we still don’t know how much Apple and PA Semi did in terms of arranging and integrating those components within the silicon. While still not 100 percent confirmed, it would seem there were no revolutions on the iPad’s processing front — just a rebranded bit of well engineered hardware.

Apple’s A4 is an ARM-based system-on-a-chip a la Tegra 2? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The same cat that brought us the last Magnum scoop is back again, this time with a short video detailing the differences between RIM’s supposed first effort at making a touchscreen / QWERTY hybrid device and its nearest cousins, the Bold 9000 and 9700. Notably, the narrator points out that the phone shares its keyboard design more closely with the 9000 than the 9700 — for aficionados, this can be a crucial difference — and it generally shares its physical cues with the older Bold apart from a move to micro-USB (and the SurePress screen, of course). Sadly, the proto here lacks an operating system so there’s not terribly much to see beyond the hardware itself, but it might all be for naught — the latest intel suggests that this phone has been supplanted by a mysterious “Dakota” with updated specs, so we’ll just have to hang on to our Curves and Storms for a little while longer. Follow the break for the full video.

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RIM’s (doomed?) BlackBerry Magnum makes its video debut originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vitaly Petrov will become Robert Kubica’s teammate at Renault F1 for the 2010 Formula One season. While still waiting for an official confirmation from the Enstone based team, France’s Auto Hebdo went right ahead to predict that the Russian driver will sign a one-year agreement with Renault this Sunday.

Renault F1 also planned their car launch on Sunday, one day before the official start of the testing season, in Valencia. It will be during the same media event that the team will officially c… (read more)