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EcommerceTimes reports that the RIAA is suing 750 college students:

The Recording Industry Association of America Latest News about Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has revived its long-running campaign to stem file-swapping through legal action, suing 750 alleged file sharers across the U.S. for copyright infringement. The latest batch of suits included 25 users on 13 university campuses around the country and like past batches focuses on users of peer-to-peer services such as eDonkey, Kazaa Latest News about Kazaa, LimeWire and Grokster. In addition, the RIAA said it filed another 213 suits against defendants whose names were discovered through earlier legal action but have not settled suits. “Our legal efforts help build an essential foundation for the continued development of the legal online music marketplace,” RIAA President Cary Sherman said. “On that count, we continue to see promising developments.”

To the students who had signed up for advising today: I made a mistake in leaving Friday open - I had appointments booked long before I made the advising schedule. I sincerely hope you can reschedule. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me!

Apple released new iPods today. There’s a photo iPod with a color screen:

A delight for the ears. A feast for the eyes. Though it’s no bigger than a pack of playing cards and weighs in at just over 6 ounces, iPod Photo delivers a one-two sensory punch. Letting you carry an entire library of your favorite music — up to 15,000 songs — or enough photos — as many as 25,000 — to fill nearly 200 slide trays or cover nearly 5,000 square feet of wall space. Got a really big den? The newest member of the iPod family, iPod Photo comes in two sizes: a 40GB model, available for $499, and a capacious 60GB model that sells for $599. Both feature a razor sharp LCD display that lets you see your photos in vivid color — 65,536 colors, to be exact. And with its built-in backlighting, you’ll be able to admire those photos indoors or out.

There’s also a black and red special edition U2 iPod:

Like no other, iPod U2 Special Edition stands out. Jet black, it bears a prominent red Apple Click Wheel and, on the flip side, the autographs of each U2 band member. Available for just $349, it comes with an exclusive U2 poster and, of course, the signature white iPod earbuds. As an extra special treat, it includes an iTunes Music Store coupon you can use to get $50 off your purchase of “The Complete U2.” As unique as the iPod itself, this digital boxed set brings together an amazing 400 U2 tracks. Songs span the band’s celebrated career. From “Boy” to “War” to “The Joshua Tree” to “Zooropa” to the soon-to-be-released “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” it includes every U2 album and brings us over 25 rare and unreleased tracks. Look for it on the iTunes Music Store at the end of November.

This email just arrived:

Seven days until election day, and what I’ve dubbed an “Election Night Gathering” will be held in the Smith University Center lobby on November 2nd, beginning at 6:00pm, an hour before the first polls close. I’m targeting our students, but would love to have faculty and staff come out and spend some time with us. I know many of you come to FMU on the weekends to prepare for the coming school week. Why not do that a little later in the afternoon on election day (which is the last day of Fall Break)? Then join your students and colleagues in the UC for a good time — even if just for half-an-hour. What you will find is:
* A minimum of four cable-ready TVs available to us, including the new projection screen TV and one large screen TV, all on different channels
* Between six and ten wireless laptops with internet access for up-to-the-minute election information and political blogging
* A chance to predict the election outcome and win prizes (if you arrive early enough)
* A great opportunity to mingle with your students and colleagues in an informal atmosphere
* Free refreshments
* A chance to watch FMU’s most successful volleyball team in years take on Armstrong Atlantic State University at 6:00pm

How would you like giving up your nice-looking graphical user interface (e.g. Windows), and only use a text-based interface? Well, Jem Matzan did for a week and he has chronicled his experience. The conclusion? That it wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be, but that he was glad to get back to the GUI.

The Virginia Tech Terascale Computing’s System X made a lot of headlines last year when it launched. It was one of the fastest and cheapest supercomputers in the world, built from off-the-shelf standard Apple G5 PowerMac. Apple has a pretty interesting movie of the facility. Now CNet reports that they’ve switched to XServe’s and increased the speed of the computer:

Virginia Tech plans to announce on Tuesday that its System X now operates at 12.25 teraflops, or 12 trillion calculations per second, up from 10.28 teraflops in its original incarnation, which used 1,100 Power Mac G5 towers. The performance boost comes in large part because Apple Computer has made available to Virginia Tech custom 2.3GHz Xserve machines, faster than the 2GHz processors that power Apple’s fastest machines. The school also added 50 additional servers, or nodes, to the system.

In a related supercomputer story, SlashDot notes that Cray is shipping their latest creation XT-3:

Using AMD’s Opteron processor, it scales to a total of 30,580 CPUs. The starting price is $2 million for a 200 processor system.

The Virginia supercomputer has 1100 XServe G5 dual-processor machines, so a total of 2200 CPUs. The cost was reported to be $5.2 million for the initial setup, which comes to $2364 per processor. Cray’s price per CPU (for the 200 processor system) would be $10,000. If that price per processor is also true for the 30,580 CPU version (which it most likely isn’t!), the total cost of that system would be $305.8 million.

Here’s a good example of someone who just plainly has too much time on their hands. This guy has a Mac running Mac OS X, on Mac OS X he runs Virtual PC which lets him run PC/Windows software on the Mac. Then in Virtual PC he runs Pear PC which let’s him Mac OS X. So it’s a Mac running Windows running Mac. Is this really useful for anything? No. Note, for example, that it took two hours for the Mac OS in Virtual PC to boot. So why do it? Because you can!

Professor Smith and myself would like to know what MIS classes students are interested in taking next summer. Go to http://business.fmarion.edu and click on the survey link at the top of the page to take part. Please help spread the word about this survey to other students who may be interested in MIS classes next summer.

Check out today’s Dilbert. To recognize the ink on an expense report- is that Accounting 101?

I guess it was really just a matter of time… Nokia says they are going to put RFID technology in cellphones:

Nokia is at work on a cell phone that uses controversial microchips used to store product information and signal their location, the cell phone maker announced Sunday. So-called radio frequency identification (RFID) is a favorite of warehouse operators and some retailers because of how easy product information stored on the chip can be transferred. Nokia said delivering product information to a mobile device using RFID can extend the technology “beyond the supply chain, and into customer service, merchandizing, marketing and brand management.” For instance, retailers could put RFID-embedded “touch phone here” signs on store shelves to send a coupon to the phone, or put the same sings at checkout stands to instantly transfer personal information stored on the phone in order to complete a warranty, Nokia Director Gerhard Romen said.