Daily Archives: October 5, 2007

Please Don’t Ride Your Bicycle on the Train Tracks

So my friend who was in the Train Crash last year tends to have more problems on the train than most people I know. Delays at the start of the trip and at the end so we tease him about it. Today I called him after he left for his parents and the train left about 20 minutes late, no crisis. But, he calls me about an hour later, they’re stopped west of Ann Arbor and they hit someone on the tracks. He didn’t have much in the way of details.

So I just called him for a status and it turns out it was a guy on a bicycle (I’m assuming on the tracks); I guess the conductor said he saw him before they hit him (I’m surprised they gave them that much info). The train was stopped for a while (I’m guess less than 2 hours) while things were checked out; he could see flashlights and cameras going off. The odd thing is they never found the guy, but they found the bicycle.

Update – This mLive Ann Arbor Article says no one was hurt and contradicts a bit of what my friend says that he heard the conductor say. It’s the only article I can find and it was from early last night, so I have no other way to verify info. (This is the right link, their whole site just seems to be having problems right now)

I Barely Passed The Internet Quiz…

Wow, it was pretty hard. Some geeky stuff in the quiz (and that’s not even the parts I got wrong).

JustSayHi - Dating

I did miss a few obvious ones (I over-thought a few). I found it at Amy’s.

Fined $222,000 for sharing music.

So MacWorld reports that ‘a U.S. jury found her guilty of copyright infringement and fined her a total of $222,000’.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota could have fined Jammie Thomas as much as $3.6 million, but opted not to. The mother of two was found guilty of stealing and giving away via Internet peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing service Kazaa a total of 24 songs from companies including Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records.

Macworld Oct. 5, 2007

Did you see the important part? It was only 24 songs!!! Ouch! I assumed it was thousands of songs when I saw the fine…

I’d really like to comment that all of that is pretty harsh. But she was breaking the law so I guess there isn’t much to say. Actually, I will make a comment, file-sharing is bad, but she’d have to share an awful lot for the record companies to lose that much money. Although, 24 songs is probably what they specifically proved, she may have done thousands of others that they just didn’t have the details on (but that would probably be inadmissible too). How would you even pay a fine like that?


Here’s the direct link.

Update: Turns out there were 1,700-ish songs, they just focused on a smaller amount for the case. Scott (over at Dean’s World) has some more info and a few more links.