From the article:

Does a $1.92 million award for sharing 24 songs cross the line into ‘grossly excessive’?

Does a bear !@#$ in the woods?!!!?

Analysis: $1.92M fine in music piracy case could hurt RIAA – iPod/iPhone – Macworld UK

It’s very sad to read this. The Solstice GXP is one of the best cars that GM has put out in the last 5 years. However, it’s not surprising given the bankruptcy of GM, and the announcement of Pontiac’s demise. But still, you’d think GM would want to sell these cars a *little* longer. Hopefully someone will consider buying the delaware plant and continue making this excellent car under a different moniker. It’s probably a naive hope, however.

To: Select Pontiac Dealers and Sales Managers

Subject: 2010 Model Year Solstice Orders Cancelled

On June 1st, GM announced the closure of the Wilmington Delaware plant which produces the Pontiac Solstice. All 2010 Solstice in-system orders will be cancelled today. All 2010 ordering materials in Order WorkBench and the On-Line Order Guide will be removed from the site. All 2009 Model Year Solstice orders have been received. Build out of the 2009 Model Year for Solstice will be July 28, 2009.

For the last year my wife’s small-but-growing, word-of-mouth based business has been listed with YellowPages.com. The Networking Group my wife was a member of included in their ranks a sales rep who pushed that this would be an outstanding way to expand her business. That they could setup an online coupon with my wife’s listing and people could just print it and walk in with it. All the typical sales rhetoric.

My wife felt that the momentum of her business (which was doing OK) could use a boost and decided to invest in advertising with YellowPages.com as an attempt to expand and grow her business. Contracts were signed, paperwork was filed, paperwork was turned in for the online coupon, and charges to my wife’s business card started piling up.

And as a result my wife’s business was listed on YellowPages.com.

Now, in the past year there certainly was an increase in traffic to my wife’s website. I have a statistics collection system running on her web server. And she got probably an additional 3-10 referrals via YellowPages to her website each month.

However, because of the lackluster and incompetent effort on the part of the sales rep we worked with (who’s now a district sales manager) my wife’s legitimate health care practice was listed along side escort services.

Nice…!

As a result those YellowPages.com referrals resulted in two calls. Those two calls resulted in requests typical of what escort services would provide (even tho for legal reasons they say they do not).

Pan forward a year… My wife, near the end of our contract, lo-and-behold gets a call from a new Yellowpages.com rep!! And he wants talk about renewal options for another year. My wife informs him that is not going happen. He goes into the usual rhetoric that sales reps right now are trying to use in the face of our current recession; ‘Well, with this recession going on it will be impossible for your business to survive without us!’. When she explains the lack of the online coupon, the lascivious phone calls, it’s at this point in time he’s willing to get the listing re-categorized but only in the face of certain discontinuation of a contract. When my wife asks about the online coupon he says; “Well, you needed to turn in the paperwork for that”. My wife said; “I turned in the paperwork for that [to the previous rep] when I signed up for service and paid all this money!” He replies; “Oh, well then there’s nothing I can do about that. Sorry.”

He tries every angle and pressure tactic he can think of and even offers a meager discount for the following year worth of service. Even though she didn’t get what she paid for to begin with.

At this point, if YellowPages.com wants my wife’s listing for another year, they can pony up a year’s worth of free service. They simply didn’t do their job and actually possibly did *damage* to my wife’s business considering it looks like it’s a damn prostitution service.

If you’re with YellowPages.com and you’re reading this, you and your company suck. Big time.

T-Mobile was supposed to release Android OS 1.5 (originally code-named ‘Cupcake’) was supposed to be released the week of May 18th. However T-Mobile decided to delay the release.

Enter the Android community… Someone has found the downloadable version of Cupcake, signed and ready to install on the T-Mobile G1! And with a few simple steps, you can install it before the T-Mobile OTA (over-the-air) push.

Now, without any further ado – the following warning:

1. Go download the Android 1.5 ‘Cupcake’ release here.
2. Rename the downloaded file from signed-kila-ota-148830.de6a94ca.zip to update.zip and place it at the root i.e the very top directory of your Micro SD card. (If you added the file to your microSD card by connecting the handset to your computer via USB [rather than using a dedicated microSD card reader], make sure to unmount it and disconnect the USB cable now.
3. Turn off your G1 Make sure it is completely powered off. Now again turn it on by holding the Home+End keys until you see T-Mobile G1 logo.
4. From the icon screen, open the keyboard and hit Alt+L.
5. Press Alt+S to begin the update. Remember, the update needs to be in the root of the Micro SD card and needs to be named update.zip.
6. Once it finishes, follow the onscreen instructions and press Home+Back to finish.
7. G1 Phone will reboot a few times to flash different parts of the firmware.

If all went well, you should now be running Android Release 1.5 on your T-Mobile G1…!

And, yes.. I installed it using the above steps.. and it’s working great..!

After a 26-year run that saw it adopt multiple personalities in going from influential to non-entity, the tools house that once challenged Microsoft and Lotus is being acquired by Micro Focus for $75 million cash, a buck a share.

Borland has been operating under an acting president since CEO Tod Nielsen, an ex-Microsoft star, jumped ship in January to join his old Microsoft colleague Paul Maritz at VMware as COO.

Gee, thanks Tod.  You totally trashed the value of what few shares I had left in Borland, and then jumped ship.  I really hope there’s a special place in hell reserved just for complete incompetents like you.  I wouldn’t waste the saliva to spit on you.  Hopefully you won’t destroy VMWare the way you destroyed Borland.

I will take this moment to remind my friends who were at Borland that I said this is exactly what would happen with him coming to the helm.  I was right.

Micro Focus Buys Borland | JAVA Developer’s Journal

In my last post I mentioned the android:minSdkVersion attribute to <uses-sdk> tag. As of SDK 1.5 the attribute values used correspond to the following API releases:

You can read more about all of this at http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.5.html

With the imminent release of SDK 1.5 (also known as “Cupcake”) for Android and T-Mobile G1 users a new rule is being enforced on the Market when you publish your application. The rule itself isn’t new – it’s existed since the 1.1 release of the Android SDK, but it’s enforcement in the market is new. You’ll see the following message if you haven’t been configuring your application correctly.

Market requires the minSdkVersion to be set in AndroidManifest.xml. The server could not process your apk

What this means when you read the Android 1.1 SDK documentation is simple enough. You just have to add the following code to your AndroidManifest.xml. Seems simple enough:

<manifest>
  ...
  <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="2" />
  ...
</manifest>

Or at least it would seem that way.

I added this code to my manifest and was met with the same error when I went to publish my app:

Market requires the minSdkVersion to be set in AndroidManifest.xml. The server could not process your apk

The Market dashboard is actually requiring (for whatever reason) that the android:minSdkVersion attribute in the <uses-sdk> be at the beginning of your manifest, immediately after the manifest tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.codethought.my.killerapp"
      android:versionName="1.0.1" android:versionCode="2">
    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="2" />
....
</manifest>

With this minor adjustment my application uploaded without a hitch. Keep this in mind if you run into the same error.

The bug allows a guest operating system (that’s the OS running inside the virtual machine) to execute code on the host operating system (the OS running the actual virtualization program). Kostya created a short video that shows just how this works. In the video, a Windows XP guest operating system launches the Calculator application in Vista, the host operating system.

The fix is simple… VMWare has already done the patch. Just go to http://www.vmware.com/mac and upgrade to version 2.0.4.

(Via Macworld UK)

Android 1.5 is just around the corner. It introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition. While none of this will be available on the T-Mobile G1 (until T-Mobile does an official release – IF they do) it’s worth getting ready for.

Android Developers Blog: Getting ready for Android 1.5

Android Developers Blog: UI framework changes in Android 1.5

Here’s a great writeup on making screen orientation changes faster.  I figured out a bit of this myself with when I wrote ConvertDroid, but there are some great tips in here to avoid memory leaks.  Worth a read.

Android Developers Blog: Faster screen orientation change

Huawei confirm T-Mobile G3 for Euro Q3 launch: “

Huawei have confirmed that they will be supplying T-Mobile with their Android-based smartphone, which will launch in Q3 2009 as the T-Mobile G3.  An Huawei spokesperson has told reporters that ‘I can confirm that Huawei will be releasing the third Google phone on T-Mobile this year’, with the handset in question presumably the full-touchscreen device the manufacturer showed at Mobile World Congress in February 2009.

The handset is expected to have a 5-megapixel camera, headphone jack and integrated WiFi.  Huawei’s demo unit was a non-functional model, and the company refused to remove it from the glass casing during the show.

According to the reports, T-Mobile are angling the Huawei device as a low-cost handset, although specific pricing has not been confirmed.  It will launch in the UK sometime after July 2009, trailing the HTC Magic which sees its European Vodafone launch in May.

[via Electricpig]

“

(Via Android Community.)