A glimpse at the news for Thursday, January 17, 2008 from the New York Times

I was reading today's online edition of the New York Times and figured I'd give a general overview of some interesting articles I found.

The New York Times reported today that Netflix is hitting a different market than iTunes will be with their new movie rentals. Apple announced earlier this week (at the annual MacWorld conference) that iTunes users will soon be able to rent directly through iTunes. After this news was released, NetFlix immediately changed their digital download service to offer unlimited downloads, but only of older movies that usually aren't still available on Pay-Per-View, at video rentals, on cable or on broadcast. iTunes, on the other hand, will be offering mainly new releases, and at a higher price.

The first suit against corporate executives who had illegally backdated stock options to gain massive profits has found its first convict. As the New York Times reports, the "first backdating conviction brings prison term and $15 million fine." With all the other executives of various companies awaiting their own trials or sentencing, this deceitful tactic, which takes money from the pockets of legitimate shareholders, and the company itself, should soon be a thing of the past.

A few years back, Google announced it would keep "1 percent of its profit and equity" as money to be used for philanthropic purposes. This week, Google has announced its plans:

"[Google]DotOrg officials said they had decided to spend the money on five initiatives: disease and disaster prevention; improving the flow of information to hold governments accountable in community services; helping small and medium-size enterprises; developing renewable energy sources that are cheaper than coal; and investing in the commercialization of plug-in vehicles." (New York Times)

And finally, the New York Times has reported that Time Warner will stop charging flat fees for high-speed Internet connections. They plan to test out a billing system by which customers will be charged for how much data they actually use in a month. This will benefit those customers who rarely use the internet so that they won't have to continue to pay a month's rate for a few hours usage, but gamers and high-volume Internet users might see their bills soar.

Please feel free to leave your comments below on any of these articles and let us know what you'd like to see more of on the My Useless Opinion blog. Thanks for reading!