This is a court case in Germany that has drawn a lot of international attention.

Germany’s Supreme Court has just handed down a landmark ruling on the liability of Internet subscribers in copyright disputes. Overturning an earlier decision by a lower court the Federal Court of Justice said that an account holder could not be held liable for piracy carried out by an adult family member if he had no reason to believe any was being carried out.

Not clear how this ruling will impact other countries, but it is a precedent.

Like a lot of you, I’m sure, I’ve been a Mac user since the beginning. True, I didn’t buy my first Mac until March of 1984, but that was purely lack of funds, not lack of desire.

And, in the blink of an eye, it’s 30 years later. Big wave of nostalgia.

On January 25, 2014, All Planet Studios, the Computer History Museum and Macworld/iWorld will be throwing a celebration at the Flint Center in Cupertino, Calif. The event will be held in the same 2,300-seat auditorium where Steve Jobs first introduced the Mac, though the space has since been renovated. Of course, you wouldn’t go just to see the auditorium, so the organizers have put together some fantastic panels.

Members of the original development team will be holding a series of discussions about the creation of the Macintosh from conception to the modern day. Using previously unreleased video, attendees will be taken back in time to experience those early days. And, in what is possibly the coolest aspect of the event, directer Ridley Scott will be on hand to discuss his iconic “1984” ad.

Daniel Kottke will be one of the main hosts of the event, with author Steven Levy, Randy Wigginton, George Crow, Rod Holt, Larry Tesler, Bill Fernandez, Bruce Horn, Ron Nicholson, Larry Kenyon, Jerry Manock, Donn Denman, Bill Bull, Martin Haeberli, Bryan Stearns, Bob Belleville, David Beaver, Sam Lyall, Carolyn Rose, Joe Sheldon, Debi Coleman, Brian Robertson and Pamela Wyman making appearances along with other original Macintosh team members.

Wow! This is a great group. Here’s the official link. You can buy your ticket on the site. All proceeds after expenses go to Coder Dojo, the open source, volunteer led, global movement of free coding clubs for young people.

Take a look and, if you’ve got some experience in this area, add to the thread.

About the size of a miniature ukulele, the Jivix JamStik features real strings that can be pressed, strummed, and bent, as well as piezo and infrared sensors so the Jamstik can be used as a MIDI controller. There’s even a GuitarHero-like tutorial to help you learn.

This has real possibilities. A travel guitar you can fit in your backpack. The JamStik is available for preorder, but be aware that this is an IndieGogo project, not yet a shipping product. That said, this was demoed on the floor of CES, so that gives me hope.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon will attend the session with in-house lawyers only, according to a Wednesday court filing. Their legal teams had met on January 6 to “discuss settlement opportunities,” the filing read.

Let me get this started: Stop stealing our shit you slimy bastards and we’ll stop winning lawsuits against you.

Someday I’m going to get these.

Nilai will be renamed, redesigned, and be completely open sourced. We’ll offer a fully hosted solution that people can use for both for free and for pay for but anyone that would like to they can download the application and run it themselves. We’re going to build it out in the open, which means that we’ll be publishing our roadmap, our internal discussions, our design mockups (both failures and successes), our business ideas, our marketing materials — anything and everything we can publish as early as we possibly can. In short, we’re going to rebuild Nilai into something new and do it in public.

Interesting. This comes from the folks who make the Barley CMS.

Totally agree with Gruber.

Jim and Dan talk about Canadian blizzards, Jim’s missing 2013 Mac Pro, the LaCie Fuel, Dropbox, DROPOUTJEEP, coding on an iPad, apps that Must Always Be Installed, Jim’s amazing new rig, and more.

Sponsored by Ting, Squarespace, and Freshbooks.

One of the best things I purchased for my guitar pedals.

Every year brings some new exciting things in design.

Some interesting thoughts from Om Malik on the Snapchat drama of late. I don’t know, I think they really screwed up, but maybe I’m in the minority.

The gathering featured some 200 manufacturers displaying an array of gadgets that is quaint by today’s standards, but must have been impressive at the time. As The New York Times described it, the conference’s audio section alone offered products ranging from “phonographic needles to the tiniest radios and TV sets, to giant high fidelity, stereophonic sound systems.”

It’s great looking back. I enjoyed this more than any CES coverage this year.

Mashable:

We’ve found 10 of the most interesting and interactive real-time visualizations on the web. Feast your eyes on these awe-inspiring pages for a fresh look on what’s happening on the planet right now.

I don’t know about “put the world in perspective” but the Tweetping and FBomb_co data is fascinating.

The Week:

if you wanted to improve your Canadian accent, you would do better to just use your Californian accent. In some important ways it is closer to the real Canadian accent and vice versa than other American accents are.

Canada actually has many regional differences in accents. The most extraordinary ones are of the people native to Newfoundland but mine and Jim Dalrymple’s home province of Nova Scotia has some very distinctive accents too.

A few days ago, a picture appeared on Reddit showing a flatbed truck loaded with a gigantic Amazon box. If you haven’t seen the picture, click here.

Lots of people speculated on the contents of the box, but we now have a definitive answer.

Great marketing! (H/T to Jonathan Hendry)

I like David Pogue. And I like what he’s done with Yahoo Tech. The new look is very clean and easy to navigate. As you’d expect from Pogue, it’s also very friendly.

All that said, I suspect the site will be an acquired taste for some. It’s more visual than organized, so if you are a list oriented person, it might be a little hard to take in. But me, I’m good with this approach.

Spend a few minutes digging through it. I’ve added it to my daily reading list.

Fresh water sources throughout the southwestern US are dwindling.

The Colorado basin states tried in the 1920s to stave off future fights over water by splitting it, 50-50, between the upper-basin states of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming and the lower-basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California.

In fact, the deal underestimated how much water the fast-growing lower-basin states would need. During most of the wet 20th century, however, the river usually produced more than enough water to offset any shortage.

Now, the gap between need and supply is becoming untenable.

Lake Mead currently stands about 1,106 feet above sea level, and is expected to drop 20 feet in 2014. A continued decline would introduce a new set of problems: At 1,075 feet, rationing begins; at 1,050 feet, a more drastic rationing regime kicks in, and the uppermost water intake for Las Vegas shuts down. At 1,025 feet, rationing grows more draconian; at 1,000 feet, a second Las Vegas intake runs dry.

Read the article. Not an easy problem to solve.

These nine bar charts lay out the stock fundamentals for Apple, Amazon, and Google. Any analyst that follows these companies surely is familiar with all of these. They tell a strong story. Certainly not definitive, but hard to ignore.

To me, the most interesting of the nine is the price/earnings ratio (AKA, P/E Ratio). The higher that number, the more speculative the stock. A stock with a proven track record will have proven earnings and the ratio of the stock price to those earnings will be lower.

Let’s take a look at the relative P/E ratio of these three stocks:

• Apple: 14
• Google: 30
• Amazon: 1,436

I am amazed when I see an analyst paint Apple with doom and gloom and, at the same time, pile the accolades at Amazon’s feet. I’m not bashing Amazon. On the contrary, I think Bezos is a smart cookie and I appreciate his expansionist approach. But at the same time, it is certainly fair to say that Amazon is a speculative stock by comparison to Apple.

Look at the nine charts. Good food for thought.

I love this.

[Via Coudal]

If you didn’t spend enough time exploring already today, here you go.

I’m not one of those crazy Batman people, but this cool.

I don’t have these new versions, but I swear by the older models of these products. Apogee makes quality.

Some of this stuff is just great.

Pro Tools updates have been coming fast and furious. I like it.

Gretsch makes some fine instruments.