quoperative

This is absolutely incredible.  Wolfram Alpha is a “knowledge engine” launching this month. It’s being dubbed a Google killer and even though its’ creator says it isn’t, it’s getting tonnes of (deserved) attention.

Check out this screencast posted last week to see Stephen Wolfram take Wolfram Alpha for a little test drive and show off what it can do.

Ok, fine… it probably won’t *kill* Google, but considering that people are turning to Google more and more to look up dinky facts and definitions because it’s such a damn good search engine, Wolfram Alpha stands a good chance of biting a serious chunk out of Google’s mind share when it comes to settling useless trivia disputes.

This is such a totally fresh and radical approach to using the internet — I can’t imagine this not having a massive impact on the everyday user in the next 3-5 years.

At least, that’s what some people maintain.  Including me.

If you’ve got a couple hours to kill you can read that article or I’ll just draw your attention to Exhibit A below.

I submit, for your listening pleasure, two songs…

The first is “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, a song that appears on Led Zeppelin III and was released in October 1970.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The second is “Never” by Moby Grape from Wow/Grape Jam, a double-album released in April 1968.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This one is definitely Page/Plant tag team thievery — Plant clearly borrowed big chunks of lyrics word-for-word and even though the song is a pretty standard blues jam I’d say the slinky feel of it combined with the stolen lyrics makes Page just as guilty.  Shame on you guys.

Word on the street is that Led Zeppelin reached an out-of-court settlement in 2005 on this one, paying Moby Grape’s Bob Mosley an undisclosed amount of money… but still no writing or arrangement credit on the song.

Looks like the verdict has finally come in and it’s bad news for the Pirate Bay — guilty.  While this is definitely a landmark case in the realm of piracy, torrents and the distribution of copyrighted materials, it’s expected that the defendents will appeal the decision and that it could be years until the final decision is made.

It’s interesting to note that the guys behind Pirate Bay were convicted on “intent” rather than on the technical workings of the site.  I’m no lawyer, but I think that’s always been the legal safety net for the webmasters in these situations — dubbed the “King Kong defense”. Since they’re not actually storing the copyrighted materials on their servers or initiating the transfers they aren’t committing any crime. The users are. According to them, at least.

If this verdict sticks then maybe we’ll see Canadian and American courts taking notice. I’m sure they’d just love to put the screws to those pirates.