Never accuse our student population of lacking for resourcefulness. Especially when it comes to the naked facts about paying for their studies. Just ask Vikkie Richmond, who is selling a print of her breasts on eBay to help get her through the final months of her studies in English and journalism. And it started when she kidded around with friends discussing putting handprints on canvas: she joked about putting her breast prints on canvas. The auction was due to end at 11 p.m. British time April 22.
Gucci hopes it's painting a pretty picture of a kind with this: an ebony-and-beige, coated-canvas, $195 carrying case for Apple's popular iPod digital music player, priced almost equal to an iPod itself. The new accessory sold out in Beverly Hills as of April 20, with a few left in New York and one left in San Jose.
Baggage of a different kind and not designed by Gucci is dogging the ghost of Napster past: music labels and publishers plan to square off against former Napster owner Bertelsmann AG in federal court April 27, claiming Bertelsmann's buying Napster in 2000 - when Napster, long since remade/remodeled into a pay-to-play music service, was still the king of the peer-to-peer world - kept it alive as a music piracy promoter eight months longer than Napster would have lived otherwise and thus cost the music industry $17 billion in lost sales.
Piracy stopping was on the mind of Palisade Systems even as the music business and the ghost of Napster classic prepared to square off: Palisade has unwrapped software it says can identify and block copyright songs even while they're being swapped in cyberspace. The Recording Industry Association of America is backing the Audible Magic-made software heavily enough, while some in the P2P community say they're skeptical of the claims, especially since they haven't yet been given a chance to test the program for themselves.
Louis Nomar got his bid for a shorter sojourn in the calaboose blocked by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The circuit court upheld his 77 months in the cage for Internet fraud, posing as a licensed doctor and using his Website to charge $120 for telephone consultations and prescribing prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, and others. One major problem with his bid for shorter time: he was fool enough to bolt the cops a few days, after he learned his supervised release was revoked, getting himself an extra 17 months for his trouble.
Meanwhile, yonder across the Pacific, a Philippines-based company has unwrapped software it claims will keep you from having to bolt your Windows-based programs if you want to use Linux as your operating system. SpecOps Labs says the software, which it calls a bridge program, will make it seem as though you've got Windows anyway. Microsoft's Philippines spokeswoman says they can't comment until they know more about the software, which SpecOps says will be available commercially by year's end at a price yet to be determined.
