More Time Warner Fun, All Your RAM Are Belong To Us, and Ways to Waste Electricity

- Yes, I have even more Time Warner news to share. No, this time it is actually good news!

Starting 6/19, ESPN-HD and ESPN2-HD will be free HDTV channels, with an HDTV digital cable box rental (which I already have)! Woohoo! Sunday Night Baseball and SportsCenter on HDTV!

Just kidding, of course...at least about the SportsCenter part.

I can't wait for Monday Night Football on ESPN-HD! Speaking of which, can you believe football season is less than three months away?!? That means one thing, of course: fantasy football season is upon us!

- A Federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that computer RAM can be turned over in a lawsuit, in the fight against the piracy of films. The ruling stemmed over a battle between the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and TorrentSpy, a popular torrent site. One major concern of this decision is the potential for invasion of privacy:

"I think that people's fears about a potential invasion of privacy are quite warranted," said Ken Withers, director of judicial education at The Sedona Conference, an independent research group. "The fear is that we're putting in the hands of private citizens and particularly well-financed corporations the same tools that heretofore were exclusively in the hands of criminal prosecutors, but without the sort of safeguards that criminal prosecutors have to meet, such as applying for search warrants."

Of course, there's another glaring issue with this ruling: what good, exactly, will RAM be, in the hands of a prosecutor? Last I checked, data in RAM is lost once your computer is turned off:

But on the technical side, Dean McCarron, principle analyst at Mercury Research, said the judge erred by defining volatile computer memory as "electronically stored information."

Oops! I saw this article on Slashdot, and there were some really funny comments. One guy said something to the effect of "oh no, once TorrentSpy gives up their RAM, the prosecutors will bust them for unlawful destruction of evidence!" :P

Oh well, at least the MPAA attorneys seem to be satisfied with the ruling: "'The courts have long considered computer RAM as "electronically stored information,' [MPAA lawyer Lauren Nguyen] said." Also, "to prove that TorrentSpy was making it easier to share files, the studios told Chooljian that it was necessary that they obtain records of user activity. They convinced her that the only way to do this was to obtain the data from RAM."

I'm guessing the judge and the lawyers meant "Hard Drive" when they said "RAM."

- I found this article really interesting: there are certain devices that drain much more energy--even when idle--than you think! Of course, most people know that a personal desktop computer is a big culprit of wasted energy; even if a PC draws 100-150W on idle, running said computer 24x7 sure adds up.

Some figures in the article, though, were really astounding: according to the author, a TiVo uses 30W when idle; a Comcast digital set-top box draws 40W; and an audio system uses 47W. This statement summarizes how wasteful of energy we can be, without even knowing it:

Indeed, the Department of Energy estimates that in the average home, 40 percent of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Add that all up, and it equals the annual output of 17 power plants, the government says.

I always thought that most energy was used to power absolute essentials: the refrigerator, lights, the stove top (for those who use electric burners/ovens), and heating/cooling (for those that live in extreme temperatures). I'm so glad our electricity bill is somewhere around $60-80 every two months; my parents' bill approaches $100-120 per month, but they have electric burners and an electric water heater.

My main desktop computer needs a reboot, anyway. I guess I can go ahead and shut it down.

Next time, I'll chat about how the Pacers are trying to rip off the Lakers in Jermaine O'Neal trade talks.