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Cory Doctorow proposed an interesting method for handling this kind of situation.

And just why do you want to know where I work? So that you can complain to my boss that I made you look stupid and that he should fire me for that?

No, he wants to know where you work so he can complain to the politicians that your company is costing his company money.

Which is exactly the strategy that Cary Sherman of RIAA suggested when SOPA failed.

If it's about "Hollywood vs. freedom", Hollywood loses.

But if the debate can be reframed to "MPAA vs. Google", or "RIAA vs. Telcos", Hollywood wins, because they can just point the finger and say "Look, we're only saying the things we say because we work for Paramount, Universal, and other MAFIAA organizations. But you're only saying that because you work for Google, a telco, or an ISP, you're a lobbyist just like us!" and with the debate framed in a context that the politicians will understand, Ari and Sherman can easily demand a law that transfers wealth from "Northern California" to "Southern California" (by transferring the cost of preventing piracy from "Southern California rightsholders" to "Northern California companies whose customers happen to infringe on those rights").

As he says on his Web site, he's the "inventor of EMAIL".

He does not, however, say he's the inventor of email or e-mail or electronic mail, so I guess he means he's the inventor of a system named "EMAIL". the copyright he got was for a "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System", which suggests that "EMAIL" was a program that implemented, err, umm, email.

He als says "Every software system needs a User's Manual, so did the world's first E-MAIL system. At that time, Shiva was everything on the project: software engineer, network manager, project manager, architect, quality assurance AND technical writer.", so maybe "the world's first E-MAIL system" was the first system that "handled it all" - ARPANET e-mail involved different mail user agents and mail transfer agents on different operating systems, so there wasn't a single "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System".

Or not. A historical overview of the CTSS system, from its fiftieth anniversary, quotes Tom Van Vleck (also cited in another posting):

Electronic Mail. Noel Morris and I wrote a command, suggested by Glenda Schroeder and Louis Pouzin, called MAIL, which allowed users to send text messages to each other; this was one of the earliest electronic mail facilities.[11] (I am told that the Q-32 system also had a MAIL command in 1965.)

Reference 11 is to Van Vleck's The History of Electronic Mail (which mentions the copyrighting of "EMAIL" in a parenthetical note at the top of the page) and Errol Morris's New York Times Opinionator blog post "Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?" (my head asplode when I learned that Errol Morris was Noel Morris' brother).

The news article he cites says he "created an electronic mail system", which may well be the case. It doesn't say he created the first electronic mail system, and "created an electronic mail system" suggests that the notion of an "electronic mail system" wasn't a Shiny New Idea (and, in fact, it wasn't).

And, in fact, the article to which the "to defend his standing as email's creator" link takes you quotes him as saying "I did not claim that I created electronic communications," so at least give him credit for that.

Note the lame post-facto "sorta apology" to the readers.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/how-will-japan-earthquake-affect-apples-ipad-supply-chain/9763

Authorâ(TM)s Note: A number of readers have complained that this article is insensitive to the pain and suffering of the Japanese people. Please accept my sincere apology. I have friends and former colleagues in Japan and I offered them my prayers for their safety and recovery last night. I have been to Japan and have a respect for its traditions and people. The devastation from the quake is terrible.

At the same time, my editorial mission here is to look at Apple, its products and markets. If that appears callous, I ask your forbearance. Some of the comments in the story were made several months ago, so please keep that context in mind.

http://www.businessinsider.com/gene-munster-apple-supply-demand-2011-3

Apple's supply chain is likely temporarily going to be affected by the Japan earthquake and tsunami, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes today, but demand for Apple products is stronger than ever, he says, and that should ultimately drive shares higher.

Hilarious phrasing here, "not much impact - more worried about the impact in the next quarter":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12782566

"In the short term, there won't be much impact," said chief executive Yang Yuanqing of Lenovo. "We are more worried about the impact in the next quarter."

No shit? Employee absences common?
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=774&doc_id=205416&f_src=internetevolution_gnews

Getting raw materials supplied and distributed remains a challenge in Japan. Disruptions to the country's transportation systems have made employee absences common. Interruptions in Japan's electricity supply have hindered maintenance of sensitive processes such as semiconductor lithography. Because of the setbacks, Apple delayed iPad2 shipments by one week from the original March 25 launch to allow it to catch up with production, given the shortfall in Japan-sourced parts.

But don't worry. Apple's supply chain is very robust and you'll be able to get your iPrick in time for Christmas.
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/thestreet-apple-supply-chain-japan-supply/4/4/2011/id/33755

Apple's (AAPL) supply chain remains robust, according to analyst firm Canaccord Genuity.

"While we believe supply could be tight for the industry due to Japan, we believe Apple is leveraging its dominant market position and will fare much better than competitors," wrote Canaccord analyst Michael Walkley in a note Monday. "We believe suppliers will likely provide Apple with preferential supply, as Apple is often the largest customer for many suppliers."

If job one is "don't be evil" this is long overdue. I'm serious.

First of all, this is only useful if you're willing to log onto the service from an untrusted machine. It shouldn't store or be automatically linked to personal information other than user interaction preferences. Previous settings should have a roll-back (similar to a wiki) in case someone messes with an unattended instance or sniffed and hacked from some library PC. Vandalism should be easily dealt with by a simple revert and a change of password.

The preferences available might read like a sequence of Slashdot polls.

How do you feel about your keyboard?

A) good for catching toast crumbs
B) round keys good, square keys bad
C) can hum a few bars, but don't ask me to shift key
D) Liszt himself would blanch watching me type

How do you feel about interactive whiz-bang?

A) Every key a hot key to destinations unknown? Cool!
B) Jiggle good, stutter bad.
C) I'm tighter than my Amish chess correspondent.
D) My enter key is operated through a postage meter which prints receipts.

Are you social?

A) Don't tell about my varroa mites, K?
B) Happiness is a tribe of peanuts.
C) If you hate something send it away, if it comes back, kill it.
D) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.

How do you feel about novelty?

A) I miss Clippy
B) ask forgiveness
C) ask permission
D) those little Roombas in the Smithsonian make me nervous

What is your preferred display resolution?

A) dangles off my keychain
B) flips open with one thumb
C) flips open with two thumbs
D) I'm an authorized EyeWonder theme park

What's your idea of light entertainment?

A) outtakes from Married with Children
B) Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration (aka The Blues Brothers)
C) Lord of the Rings trilogy in a single viewing
D) The Seventh Seal, looped, Criterion edition, Swedish/Latin without subtitles

Do you have anything else to add?

A) 3.141592
B) Captain Kirk
C) Elvis has left the room
D) Cmdr Taco

From a hierarchy of preferences from general to specific, default settings on new Google offerings could be set appropriately. It's time to stop pretending that there's a universal set of GUI defaults that span three orders of magnitude on personal aptitude and work style.

Seriously, real friends respect taste. My real friends don't stuff my face into a bling parlour or offer me a Bud Light. Why can't my online services have half as much clue?

The alternative here is to watch Facebook slurp and dribble.

From RockMelt: Modestly Useful, But Not for Enterprises

When you first launch RockMelt, you have to sign in with your Facebook account. No account? You can't use RockMelt. Also, RockMelt requests that you agree to a long list of Facebook permissions, such as "Access my basic information," "Access my data any time," and "Access my custom friend list." ... [RockMelt] stores and synchronizes your data on its servers. That offers a benefit because you may log into RockMelt on any computer and see your same configuration.

... beginning with tomorrow!

This article says that the average user is costing google about a dollar a day. Now I don't know if the article and the numbers are correct, but they don't seem that far fetched.

So, yes, right now Youtube costs money, but that is called investment. It is what shareholders were supposed to be for.

This particular investment is costing Google (and its shareholders) about 2 million dollars a day; subtract revenue from that number and they end up spending about 1.65 million a day. Google Losing up to $1.65M a Day on YouTube. Now roughly calculated that means that Google will lose about 600 million dollars this year keeping YouTube alive. If I was an investor in Google I would be getting exceptionally sceptical to this particular investment.

Unless bandwidth becomes drastically cheaper in the immediate future Google will have to find a way to at least break even; if not they'll have to get rid of YouTube since despite any non-tangible reward they might gain from ownership is by far outweighed by the very tangible drain on the company's resources. Google might have more money than you can shake a big stick at; but 600 millions is not insignificant.

there's a good argument on the comments section of that article. Doctorow's a BoingBoing blog editor and it's easy for him to bash other medium and touting his as the best one.

don't step on your fellows when you're climbing, who knows they might be the ones holding your lifeline..

We already have a business model that works well in practically every situation.

Well, good. Then there is no need to discuss business models at all. If the current one works, then piracy won't be a problem. On the other hand, if piracy became a problem, it becomes a business model issue.

Which shows that the average pirate's taste is similar to the average legitimate media user's taste. What's your point?

You got it nearly all wrong. It's not that the average pirate's taste matches the average legitimate media buyer's taste, it's that the average pirate is the above average media buyer. Those are 4 different studies in 4 different countries.

I hope that articles over multiple pages just for advert-hits dies a death in 2009, along with webmasters who practice this.

Anyway, 1 page version of the article:
http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=169817&print=yes

I'm posting this story and this here because I see a very important trend. Not only the convergence of the Internet and TV. But the passiveness of TV being replaced with a more active process. these two simply reenforce that but from the "my computer is a TV" rather than the aforementioned "my TV is a computer".

Agreed that this is bullshit, but the wording and context were not misleading. FWIW, here's the original poll in its entirety.
Of course, this is some shitty little website doing a poll of it's own readership, with less than 400 total replies. Given the sample size, I'd say these results are even more useless than a Slashdot Poll... which I suppose would require some negative amount of usefulness.