The New York Times is reporting that Google is making the case that they just aren't that big, especially from an anti-trust point of view. While they certainly corner the market in search, advertising, and online video, Dana Wagner, Google's "senior competition counsel," is working hard to convince the public that "competition is a click away." "None of the investigations take aim at Google's core advertising business. And unlike other technology giants in years past, Google has not been accused of anticompetitive tactics. But the investigations and carping from competitors and critics have Google fighting to dispel the notion that it has a lock on its market, even as it increases its share of search and online advertising. Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. 'They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn't reflect their dominance of key sectors,' said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. 'Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.'"

An article at TechCrunch discusses a blog post from Richard Posner, a US Court of Appeals judge, about the struggling newspaper industry. Posner explains why he thinks the newspapers will continue to struggle, and then comes to a rather unusual conclusion: "Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion."

etherlad writes "MythBusters' Adam Savage got a bill charging him $11,000 for 'a few hours' of Web surfing while in Canada, using his AT&T USB Mercury modem. AT&T gave him a quote on the data rate: '.015 cents, or a penny and a half, per kb.' Looks like AT&T didn't learn from Verizon's inability to do math. AT&T is also claiming Savage downloaded over 9 GB, which he calls 'frakking impossible.' Savage's huge following on twitter got him a speedy response by AT&T."

chiark writes "Remember Steorn? Free energy for all, coming soon, and a gauntleted slap in the face to the physics establishment: 'come be our jury, and prove us right or wrong.' Well, 2 years later, the jury's verdict is in, and it's not the validation Steorn was hoping for: 'Twenty-two independent scientists and engineers were selected by Steorn to form this jury. It has for the past two years examined evidence presented by the company. The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.' Steorn had the choice to either accept this and move on, or attempt to rebut. Guess which approach they took?"

Hugh Pickens writes "Watch a video of comedian John Hodgman speak after Barack Obama at the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in DC and discuss the central question of our age: "how we can heal the great and shameful division that has plagued our nation for so long — the age old conflict between jocks and nerds" and ask Obama: Are you now, or have you ever been, a nerd?"

Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."

Barence writes "Satnav firm Mio is launching a device with an integrated TV tuner. The Mio Spirit range includes a digital television tuner that is intended to be used 'during breaks in the journey or at their final destination.' However, safety campaigners fear there's little to stop the television being used at the wheel. When the system is first turned on a warning message is displayed, telling the user not to watch television while driving. If this is ignored, a secondary warning message kicks in if the GPS chip detects the vehicle is moving at more than 5mph. But that's it!"

An anonymous reader writes "Johan Van den Brande has developed a Twitter client for the Commodore 64, allowing 140-character messages to be posted directly from this TV-connected 1982 home computer. This YouTube video shows how the Twitter client is — slowly! — loaded from a 5.25" floppy disk, how the latest Twitter messages are downloaded and shown on the TV screen, and how this tweet is posted. All that is needed is a C64, a TV, and a C64 Ethernet card. The Twitter client is implemented with the Contiki operating system, which otherwise is used for connecting tiny embedded systems to the Internet."

The Register has details on a recent EC2 outage that is being blamed on a lightning strike that zapped a power distribution unit of the data center. The interruption only lasted around 6 hours, but the irony should last much longer. "While Amazon was correcting the problem, it told customers they had the option of launching new server instances to replace those that went down. But customers were also able to wait for their original instances to come back up after power was restored to the hardware in question."

An anonymous reader writes "Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet (in Swedish) reports that Henrik Pontén, a lawyer of Antipiratbyrån, a Swedish organization against file sharing, has received a notification from officials that an application for change of his name has been approved and a new first name 'Pirate' has been added to his name. Authorities do not check the identity of persons applying for name changes. Pirate Pontén now has to apply for another change in order to revert the change."

eldavojohn writes "Stanislaw Lem was arguably the greatest non-English science fiction writer before his death three years ago and left behind many science fiction novels with messages of satire and intrigue. The Futurological Congress is no different. The book has several motifs throughout it but I found the most prominent to be that we are living in an increasingly medicated society whereby the future may be wonderfully dystopian — in that the horrors of our existence are simply hidden by drugs on top of drugs on top of drugs. With a movie due out shortly by director Ari Folman, it seems like a good time to revisit this often overlooked short classic sci-fi work." Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's review

An anonymous reader writes "Published today in the journal Current Biology, a new study shows that laughter is not a unique human trait, but a behavior shared by all great apes. Tickle a baby chimpanzee and it will giggle just like a human infant. This is because laughter evolved millions of years ago in one of our common ancestors, say scientists."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that a Spanish woman who is thought to be the world's oldest blogger has died in Muxia, the northern coastal town where she was born on December 23, 1911. María Amelia López's posts, which chronicled her civil war memories, failing health, left-wing views, and cantankerous humor, attracted a global following and more than 500 readers have left tribute messages on her site after her family published a final post to announce her death. The blog began in 1995 as a gift from her grandson Daniel, with whom she lived, who had no idea what he was unleashing into cyberspace after he taught her to navigate the Internet after she pestered him to download biographies of poets and politicians. He later become her chief assistant, typing in her words as she dictated. 'Now so many people write to me that I can't hope to reply to them all, though I want to,' she explained. 'My grandson complains that he has to work as well, he can't spend all his time typing.' López said in an interview that the Internet had given her a new lease of life and in one of her last posts, published in February, she wrote; 'When I'm on the internet, I forget about my illness. The distraction is good for you — being able to communicate with people. It wakes up the brain, and gives you great strength.'" The Times adds, "Mrs Lopez became the world's oldest blogger on the death of 108-year-old Australian Oliver Riley in June 2008. The new holder of this unofficial title is unknown, although the actor Kirk Douglas, 92, who blogs regularly on his MySpace page, could be in the running. Twitter's oldest microblogger is the 104-year-old Briton Ivy Bean."

theodp writes "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,536,726 (it was filed in 2005) for intentionally crippling the functionality of an operating system by 'making selected portions and functionality of the operating system unavailable to the user or by limiting the user's ability to add software applications or device drivers to the computer' until an 'agreed upon sum of money' is paid to 'unlock or otherwise make available the restricted functionality.' According to Microsoft, this solves a 'problem inherent in open architecture systems,' i.e., 'they are generally licensed with complete use rights and/or functionality that may be beyond the need or desire of the system purchaser.' An additional problem with open architecture systems, Microsoft explains, is that 'virtually anyone can write an application that can be executed on the system.' Nice to see the USPTO rewarding Microsoft's eight problem-solving inventors, including Linux killer (and antelope killer) Joachim Kempin, who's been credited with getting Microsoft hauled into federal court on antitrust charges." Sounds like the mechanism by which Microsoft sells one version of Vista to all users, and lets users upgrade to higher-tier flavors of the OS after cash changes hands.

Bantu1 writes to mention an attention grab by anti-virus company Sophos, which is now offering a Klingon language version of their popular anti-virus software. Now Qo'nos too can be completely safe from the storm. If only we could see a Sophos logo in the next Paramount endeavor, the cycle would be complete.

davidmwilliams writes "Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything 'the hard drive.' Why is it so?" As much as I hate to admit it, this particular thing drives me nuts. You don't call the auto shop and tell them that your engine is broken when your radio breaks!

jammag writes "For Seinfeld's George Constanza, his dream of the ideal moment was having sex while watching TV and eating a pastrami sandwich. He called this Nirvana state 'The Trifecta.' Developer Eric Spiegel adapts this concept of Nirvana to the act of writing your best possible code. He examines all (or most) of the possible things that might contribute to the 'The Trifecta' for developers — food, beverages, time of day. Spiegel also describes his personal Trifecta."

An anonymous reader writes "DJ Danger Mouse famously fought with EMI over his Beatles/Jay-Z mashup, 'The Grey Album,' and now seems to be battling with the label again. Rather than release his latest album and face legal issues with EMI, Techdirt is reporting that Danger Mouse will be selling a blank CD-R along with lots of artwork, and buyers will be responsible for finding the music themselves (yes, it's findable on the internet) and burning the CD."

Drivintin is one of many who have written to tell us about how The Pirate Bay has taken an interesting approach to the 30 million SEK fine levied in their recent court case (which they said they wont pay). "The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky's law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be paid. Anakata's clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky's law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money."

Phase 1: Break into a realty office, and steal a computer hard drive.

Phase 2: Ask if they will pay you $50 to fix the computer.

Phase 3: Get charged with theft and receiving stolen property!