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 Bangkok (Thailand) - Glittering watches, silk ties and tailored suits are what you would expect to buy from a shopping center in Asia, but what about illegal software? While software pirates in the United States generally download their programs from peer-to-peer download sites, people in countries like China and Thailand can simply head to a nearby mall. Chances of criminal penalties for the buyers are slim. In a recent trip to Bangkok Thailand, TG Daily had a chance to have a closer look at pirated versions of typically pricey applications such as Microsoft Windows XP, Office, Macromedia Studio. In Bangkok, such software is offered not just in some dark alleyway, but also in regular stores and trendy malls.
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Gmail users experience service issues throughout the weekend. We had a very happy Halloween but the candy-filled festivities were slightly marred by a Gmail outage that saw a some users without service for much of the weekend. While Google now says that the number of users affected was less than 0.001 percent, that assurance did not come until nearly 7 p.m. on Sunday. Most affected users began to experience problems on Saturday, and according to complaints noted by PC Pro, some of these problems lasted "more than 30 hours," with emails to Google going unanswered. 
Today sees the launch of the Peewee PC, a convertible netbook designed specifically for kids. The Peewee PCÒ - described as an introductory PC for kids with none of the fuss involved in modifying a netbook so that it"s safe to give to a kid - comes with a bunch of useful stuff like time limits, internet filters and software packages that are tailored to specific ages. It also costs $600. When we first saw the price, we recoiled. Six hundred bucks for whatò€™s essentially a stripped down netbook, are they serious? A trip to the Peewee website explains the price tag.
Clinton (IA) - A small Iowa-based ISP has been awarded a huge $11.2 billion dollar judgment against a Florida spammer. CIS Internet Services in Clinton Iowa sued James McCalla of Florida for sending 280 million email messages into the CIS network. Since 1996, the CIS network was a conduit for McCalla"s emails which contained spoofed return information. The lawsuit initially had 300 defendants listed. In 2004, the ISP won another judgement against three other defendants.