I’m only going to say one thing on this topic.

Never before has so much been asked of so many to bail out so big a problem created by so few people.

Now I gotta get back to work.

All the elements of a good story.

[The court] ruled last May that TorrentSpy must begin saving the internet addresses and download activity of its U.S.-based users, and turning over the information to the MPAA in pretrial discovery. In response, TorrentSpy began blocking U.S. users, and made changes on its site to protect user privacy — drawing a fresh burst of outrage in legal filings by MPAA lawyers earlier this month.

I’m particularly curious how the guy was able to intercept emails before they reached user inboxes on the server.

I found this CNET article about the US patent system in a HardOCP news item on my Google homepage. It talks about various flaws with the current patent system, presents examples of those flaws, and briefly discusses current legislation aimed at fixing some of those flaws. I generally don’t read things on CNET, but this author is a partner at a law firm in New York and has a JD from Columbia (and BS from MIT), so it might be worth reading if you’re interested in that kind of stuff.

The parents say it means “Love Him” in Chinese, supposedly by taking the pronunciation “A-Teh” and extrapolating it out to “Ai Ta.” At least it’d be an interesting conversation starter once the kid grows up.

*rolls eyes* Get the story here. This lady says she bought a computer with a “Vista capable” sticker on it, and is suing Microsoft because it can only run Vista Home Basic, not Vista Home Premium. She should go out and buy a Mercedes C230, then sue Mercedes because it only has 200 hp and not 600 hp like the Mercedes SLR McLarren. I hope someone slaps her.

The NYTimes has a fascinating article on Korean men who use brokers to find brides in Vietnam. The interesting thing about the article is that it covers the experience of a practice most of us see as sad, degrading, and even comical, in a matter-of-fact manner with a seemingly objective voice. It definitely provides more details than I’ve ever heard before on this subject. Below are some excerpts:

Ahn Jae-won, a Korean broker who has long been based in Hanoi and is married to a Vietnamese woman, began: “The women have come out looking their best for you. But don’t expect them to look as pretty as Korean women.”

Ouch, I don’t think Vietnamese women would appreciate that. It’s interesting to note the author of the article is a Korean woman by the name of Su-hyun Lee.

“The parents know that their daughters will marry a Korean man. The authorities know this is happening, but there’ll be trouble if we do it in front of them. So I seek your understanding. Once we land in Hanoi, even though it’ll be very late, we’ll go meet the women right away. It’s safer to do this at night.”

You’d think it’d be safer to do these things during the day, but what do I know?

But Ms. Thuy’s father, Bui Van Vui, 52, was displeased that his daughter was marrying a man just one year younger than he was.

Now that just elicits a collective, “ewwww.”

Some of us have suspected this for ages, but Reuters has just published an article citing a study from the February issue of Archives of Surgery which suggests a strong correlation between a surgeon’s past gaming experience and their ability to perform laparoscopy and other similar surgeries.

Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.

But at the same time,

“Parents should not see this study as beneficial if their child is playing video games for over an hour a day,” Gentile said. “Spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child’s chances of getting into medical school.”

The WSJ published a behind the scenes look at the type of negotiations and tactics employed by Apple’s Steve Jobs prior to the iPhone launch. Here’s a snippet from the article.

Mr. Jobs once referred to telecom operators as “orifices” that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers. While meeting with Cingular and other wireless operators he often reminded them of his view, dismissing them as commodities and telling them that they would never understand the Web and entertainment industry the way Apple did, a person familiar with the talks says.

Apparently Tencent is the hottest Internet company in China with services that include QQ, a mobile IM service, and this New York Times article describes its ascent to stardom and why it was able to beat out the likes of Google.

One of the figures the Times reports is that 70% of Internet users in the US are over 30, whereas 70% if Internet users in China are under 30. Not that I don’t believe it, but how do they get these figures? It’s not like people broadcast their age each time they send packets over any given network interface. (Translated for the non-geeks: People don’t always advertise their age when sending email or IMs, or during casual Internet browsing.) The age data that does exist out there are mostly likely from parents who sign up for Internet service so their kids can use it, or from kids who create accounts with fake birth dates so they can access that “special” content. The only accurate (though not necessarily precise) method I can think of is surveys of random households, which I doubt they did.

Or rather, a woman has died from participating in a contest to win a Wii. A Sacramento, California radio station, KDND 107.9, decided to hold a contest where the person who could drink the most water without going to the bathroom would win a Nintendo Wii. The contest was aptly dubbed, “Hold Your Wee for a Wii.” In the end, one of the contestants died from “water intoxication” while trying to win a Wii for her three kids.