Editorials

There has been a lot of talk about how Google is not making any money on the Nexus 7 and in truth they are probably not making much on hardware sales. This is not an uncommon trend to get products to the market at a cost that puts them in the consumers hands only to follow up with services that do generate income (in fact that is the business model of the cloud). The question is; if there is no margin for Google how much is there for Asus and why would they want to make these without making money per unit.

We have talked (at length) about Microsoft’s new move to the cloud and also their push with the Windows 8 Ecosystem (which is the cloud). We have pointed out many items of concern as well as shown some of the good parts to the OS; such as faster boot times, much better windows explorer interface, significantly improved task manager etc. However, the one massive point that we cannot get past is the choice Microsoft has made in making the Xbox and Windows Phone the center of the connected home. What Microsoft has done with this mode of thinking is what earned me a D- on a science paper in High School; Concluding the Assumption.

As we follow the MegaUpload case and by extension the case of Kim Dotcom and six other managers in the company we are finding out more and more about the US governments case against the file sharing site. Yesterday we published a two part article about some of the tactics used in the case that has slid from being active and interesting into a long siege with the US attempting to stop access to both funds and legal representation. Now we are finding out more about the original “evidence” against the corporation and the seven individuals.

Conflict of Interest; it is an interesting term. As an absolute definition it means; “when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.” As a legal term (as you might imagine) there are multiple meanings with enough ambiguity to keep things interesting. However, to one group of people most notably the MPAA and RIAA it is a way to support and defend their position in the world when they push their lawsuits around the globe. In part two of our look at the MegaUpload case we will dig into how the Content Industry and the DoJ have tried to deny even the right to a defense to MegaUpload.