A bit of technology

The New York Times has an article about GE's work in holographic storage field. GE wants to put about 100 DVDs on one disc. Sounds great, but I'm a bit sceptical that we will see something in near time. Why? Simply because I hear about holographic storages for about eight years now. And I've never seen any working device just yet. So good look GE! If you put it on my table I will be very excited! But I don't believe I will see production devices any time soon, sorry.

P.S. By working I mean a prototype which is stable enough to enter mass production after few years of polishing.

Some mixed music albums are distributed in a form of one audio file with CUE sheet. This is great if you use audio player which supports CUE sheets, otherwise finding your favourite track can be a pain. Especially on hardware players. Solution? Meet Medieval CUE Splitter! It will help you break one large MP3/APE/OGG/whatever into separate tracks/files without re-coding. Definitely saves your time and nerves (: Enjoy!

It is confirmed that Windows 7 RC will be out on May 5 and MSDN subscribers will get it a bit earlier - on April 30. But impatient ones may already start their torrents and search for a leaked release (: Yes, it can be found in a wild!

Another W7 piece is that Microsoft will make Windows XP SP3 environment available as a free download for Windows 7 which will run in a transparent emulator allowing to run old software which is not compatible with Vista/W7. I really hope that this feature will cause removing a lot of legacy overbloat from new Windows codebase. Basically that means that W7 will be fast OS and you can forget about "resource hog" nickname. At last! But it is too early to praise Microsoft - their PR/marketing guys may spoil everything...

So it happened! And the result is not so good... TPB guys were found guilt, but it is not a final decision and appeal will be sent to higher instance courts. Here's a quote from TPB blog:

On friday we will get the verdict in the ongoing trial. It will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate, so we hope we win of course.

A lot of additional information is available, notably TPB blog posts: about verdict, TPB press release and a press conference. You should also check a Russian LJ blog post with some videos inside and an article on TorrentFreak with a lot of details.

Personally, I believe that they (The Pirate Bay) WILL WIN!

More information can be found on TorrentFreak, but I would like to note that it is good, that French Parliament listened to EU instead of USA. Of course RIAA and MPAA will try to refactor this law and propose it one more time, but I hope French government will think twice before playing under USA.