IBGerm

A pub owner in the U.K. has been fined £8,000 (about $13,183) because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over its open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud. 

Graham Cove told CNET sister site ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the U.K. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner–a pub that is a client of The Cloud’s–had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicized.

Cove would say only that the fine had been levied in a civil case, brought about by a rights holder, "sometime this summer." The Cloud’s pubco clients include Fullers, Greene King, Marsdens, Scottish & Newcastle, Mitchell & Butlers, and Punch Taverns.

The law surrounding open Wi-Fi networks and the liability of those running them is a grey area…

Yes, you can.

Yesterday, I installed Windows 7 Pro on my 5 year old Dell M70 laptop. It currently had only Windows Xp pro. I at first had to change and create a partition on my hard drive to install Windows 7 I gave it at least 20 gigs of free space. I used a Live Linux  Cd called GParted ( I will link to that later). So now, I set up  XP/ Windows 7 dualboot. The Windows 7 installer set the  default boot choice to  Windows 7 and renamed the XP as “Previous version of Windows”, also a timeout of 30sec set.

If you try to modify the boot options the old-fashioned with boot.ini file, you get the following warnings:

    !!Warning: Boot.ini is use d on Windows XP and earlier operating systems!! 
    !!Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options!!

If you examine, Windows 7 doesn’t have NTFS write permissions on XP system partition, even though it creates a "boot sector" inside it, cause it is the first one in line on the system disk, which is shared half on half by both systems.

So I booted into Windows 7, and run the following commands: 

• By default Vista/Windows 7 open command prompt in user mode, so we need to change the permission. To do so, just execute this command:
  Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > (right-click & "Run as administrator") Command prompt
• bcdedit /set {legacy} Description "Windows XP Pro" (Changes the text description of the "Legacy" OS line in the boot menu. he quotation marks must be included in the command)
• bcdedit /default {legacy} ( Sets the legacy (Windows XP) OS as {default} boot item)
• Running bcdedit /? (shows all commands one is able to use)

Also, if you go into the system properties (right click my computer,properties, Advanced System Settings, Click the advanced tab, under start up and Recovery, setting,) You can change the Default as well as the time to display it.

Research at the University of Rochester Medical Centre shows that the dye used to color blue M&Ms can help mend spinal injuries. The compound, known as Brilliant Blue G, blocks a chemical that kills healthy spinal cord cells around the damaged  area.

BBG has shown that it not only reduces the size of the lesion, it speeds recovery times as well. So far, tests on injured rats treated with BBG were able to walk again,although with a slight limp, while those that did not receive the BBG did not.

The only side-effect found so far is the skin temporarily turns bright blue; more tests are being done before human trials can begin. Researchers are hopeful that a treatment for spinal cord injuries will be available in the next few years.

I don’t know about you, but I am think it is time to stock up on these and make it part of my daily vitamin routine.

Fans of Knob Creek bourbon may find their favorite whiskey in short supply this summer as the brand’s bottle warehouses near Clermont, Ky., are empty and the next batch of aged whiskey won’t be ready until November. 

Bourbon experts say the looming shortage is somewhat unusual, although brands such as Knob Creek, which is aged for nine years, are more susceptible because their distillers must predict demand far in advance.

“It’s very difficult to forecast out nine-year demand,” said Kelly Doss, senior director of U.S. bourbon and whiskey at Beam Global Spirits & Wine, which makes Knob Creek. “We can only sell what we can bottle and ship.”

Beam Global, itself part of Fortune Brands, sells about 150,000 cases of Knob Creek annually, putting it at the top of the company’s small batch collection, but well below Maker’s Mark, and its flagship Jim Beam bourbon which is aged four years.. Doss said none of those brands are expected to face a shortage this summer.

Beam recently sent T-shirts emblazoned with “The drought of 2009″ to 16,000 Knob Creek fans who registered on the brand’s Web site.

The company also plans to use the shortage as a marketing tool in the months ahead, playing on the notion that the lack of Knob Creek is connected to its popularity. A recent company statement announcing the shortage carried the headline “thanks for nothing” and said the brand will be “even more popular and profitable once supply is restored.”

Tom Pirko, president of industry consulting firm Bevmark, said the promotion probably will boost the brand’s image in the short-term. But if it lasts longer than a few months, he said it could prompt customers to switch.

The next batch of Knob Creek will be dumped from barrels in October, and ready for retailers the next month. Areas that could see tight supplies first include southern California, and the eastern United States. Beam raised the price of Knob Creek earlier this year, she said, but the move was unrelated to the shortage and there are no more planned price hikes.

“They’re getting some publicity out of a real situation,” Cowdery said. “I expect that with Knob, they’ll come back in November right before Christmas with a lot of new supply, and they’ll make a lot of noise about it, and price it to move.”

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