Orwell would approve | Bangkok Post: tech

Not so fast, said authors of a yearlong study by the US Government Accountability Office; the report called assertions by the anti-piracy lobby questionable, and concluded ``it is difficult if not impossible to quantify the net effect’’ of counterfeiting and piracy on the economy; the GAO was unable to find evidence that illegal file sharing has affected the US economy, let alone caused a recession; there are also no underlying studies that can measure, just for example, on the extent of digital copyright piracy; US trade and FBI officials use industry data on piracy, and even though it is undoubtedly flawed, no attempt is made to produce original data; the report is available at (www. gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf).

North Korea, whose Dear Leader became a fashion plate in Paris (according to official North Korean media) has invented the Red Star computer operating system; a Russian blogger studying in North Korea said he bought a copy on a Pyongyong street for about 150 baht, the same price at Microsoft Windows in Pantip Plaza; he and wondered what Red Star was for, since North Koreans are barred from having computers, most of them, and of course the system has few applications — apart from a calendar which numbers years starting from 1911, the year the Great Leader was born; the blogger said it is Linux based, “heavily influenced’’ by Windows, and takes only about 15 minutes to install; other apps include an email system called Pigeon, and the Firefox Internet browser, with the home page set to the North Korean government website (www.korea-dpr.com/ users/thai/).

In 2008, when the crowds on the street were clad in yellow, the 20th century technology firm formerly known as America Online paid $850 million to acquire bebo.com, explaining that it would soon knock off ridiculous and inferior sites such as Facebook and hi5 and set the standard for social networking; well, it’s 2010, and the plan didn’t quite work out; if you move quickly, you might be able to take over Bebo for something around 850 baht, otherwise AOL will probably shut it down.

British startup Ether Books launched at the London Book Fair, confident that it will prosper by offering original short stories, essays and poetry for reading on the Apple iPhone; the media is slavering over the iPad, Kindle and Sony eReader,’’ said director Maureen Scott, but her firm will deliver content via an iPhone app to people with 10 or 15 minutes to spare for the written word. Lenovo Group of China, the world’s fourth largest PC maker since it bought out IBM, predicted that new lines of mobile Internet products such as netbooks and smart phones will account for 10 or even 20 percent of its revenue by 2015.

Let’s see, lessee.... Palm Palm, that’s a familiar name, something to do with technology, right? The Palm Inc company, once the gold standard in handheld devices, slid further towards final oblivion as Michael Abbott, the senior president in charge of vice, resigned from the firm to try to distance himself from the Pre and Pixi mobile phones, which are selling dozens worldwide. RadioShack of America announced it will no longer sell Palm phones; well, it announced it will no longer stock Palm phones because it isn’t selling them successfully. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was photographed “running Norway’’ from New York with an Apple iPad. He was stranded in the US by the cloud of volcano ash that grounded all flights in Europe.