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Jammie Thomas-Rasset must have been relived by last week’s court ruling that lowered the damages awarded against her to $54,000 from a staggering $1.92 million. The 32-year-old mother of four was found guilty of illegally sharing copyrighted music through a P2P network in 2007. Relieved she might be, but a sense of triumph still evades her. Her attorneys had made it clear last week that they will not be satisfied until the fine itself is scrapped.

They appear to be in no mood to abandon or ease their stand after rejecting RIAA’s offer to settle the lawsuit for $25,000 on Wednesday, the very same day as it was made. Recording Industry Association of America RIAA’s out-of-court settlement offer required that Thomas-Rasset request the court to remove last week’s decision from the record. The recording industry had also warned Thomas-Rasset that they would contest last week’s ruling, if their settlement terms were rejected.

Ubuntu’s corporate backer, Canonical, is looking to raise a little scratch in a deal with Yahoo! It’s inked a deal that will make Yahoo! the default search engine on the version of Firefox shipped with Ubuntu, supplanting Google. In return, Canonical will get a piece of the ad revenue Yahoo! generates from Ubuntu users.

It’s a nifty deal that doesn’t impose any real strains on the Ubuntu user community. Firefox will act as normal, so users wanting to switch back to Google won’t have any problem doing so. The only possible loser will be Mozilla, which gets a goodly chunk of its revenue from a similar deal with Google.

The odd thing about it all, Stephen Shankland of Cnet.com says, are the relationships that may emerge from this. Yahoo! has negotiated the sale of its search business with Microsoft, a deal that’s awaiting regulatory approval. That means one of Canonical’s financial lifelines will be with Microsoft, which doesn’t hold Linux, in any of its many manifestations, in high regard.

Canonical’s deal with Yahoo! will start this April, with the release of version 10.04, or “Lucid Lynx.”

Following in Newegg’s footsteps, Shuttle this week announced the official launch its new Shuttle Canada website,http://ca.shuttle.com/.

“We’ve really got a great year ahead of us. Aside from the new models and product lines that we just unveiled, we’re focusing more closely on several of our key markets, such as Canada,” said Nicolas Villalobos, Director at Shuttle Computer Group in Los Angeles. “With the growing market demand and rising user base there, we’ve decided to roll out a new website just for Canada – making it easier than ever for resellers, distributors, and everyday users in Canada to get support for their Shuttle products.”

Shuttle said it has sprinkled in a few new areas that cater specifically to the enthusiast crowd, including a DIY section. Right now, this consists of a 3-part video tutorial showing users how to put together a Shuttle barebones system, something which isn’t embedded into the company’s U.S. portal.

According to news and rumor site DigiTimes, AMD at the last minuteuncovered a manufacturing defect during the validation of its ATI Radeon HD 5830 reference boards. This, DigiTimes says, is the reason why the card didn’t launch last Monday as originally planned.

Sources who claim to be in the know say the flaw has to do with circuits on the board. For whatever reason, the circuits are coming up bad on AMD’s software testing platforms, prompting the chip maker to grab related boards for more testing.

Naturally, AMD had no comment on the reported issue, but the company did say there is no issue whatsoever with any AMD-based videocards already on the market.

So when will the HD 5830 ship? Card makers are predicting no sooner than an early February launch.

A few of you were pretty pissed off to learn that your foul vocabulary isn’t welcome on the Nexus One, and that the smartphone’s built-in voice recognition automatically filters curse words. We imagine Google will eventually release an update giving you the option to disable the filter, but until then, you’re #### out of luck. Kind of.

While there’s currently no way to turn the filter off, there is a workaround and it comes courtesy of Neil Gaiman, who posted his method on Twitter.

“For the curious: swear into a Google & it transcribes it as ####. But if you swear and then say “dot come” it will write what you said,” Neil tweeted.

Elegant? #### no, but according to Gizmodo, it works, so it will have to do until the next update.

Yeah, sure, “always-connected anti-piracy plan” is just a tongue-twisting maze of exec-speak for “different DRM,” but the devil’s in the details, so let’s see what Ubisoft’s got cooking.

In a nutshell, the publisher’s new anti-piracy measures aim to disarm DRM’s more troubling aspects, removing install limits altogether and allowing you to play without a disc in the tray. Also of note: cloud saves. For the uninitiated, this means that your game saves can be stored remotely on Ubisoft’s servers, which – while a fairly prominent feature these days – is still 12 different flavors of cool.

So, are you feeling sufficiently buttered up? Because here comes the letdown. See, there’s one major string attached, and if you disconnect that string, then you can kiss your gaming time goodbye. It’s the Internet, and you’ll be required to connect to it in order for Ubisoft to authenticate your game. Despite the restrictive nature of that limitation, however, the publisher doesn’t seem too worried.

“We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection,” said Brent Wilkinson, Director, Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft.

Which is mostly true, but we’ve been known to game on-the-go from time-to-time, and – unfortunately – where our laptops go, the Internet does not always follow. Maybe it’s just nitpicking on our parts, but still: until someone thinks up a one-size-fits-all anti-piracy measure – one that leaves little-to-no room for griping or outright dissatisfaction — piracy’s not going anywhere.

The latest numbers from market research firm Futuresource Consulting demonstrate just how important mobile app stores are to driving the mobile content market. In 2009, smartphone owners downloaded some 3.6 billion apps from app stores, and that’s expected to nearly double this year to 6.6 billion. But by 2013, app stores will be pushing out 16.2 billion mobile programs worth $15 billion.

“More than 85 percent of app store downloads are currently free to users, and we expect this percentage to remain stable for the next few years,” says Patrik Pfander, senior market analyst at Futuresource. “Despite this glut of free content, the market will still experience vigorous consumer spending, and the paid-for market has already developed beyond the established gaming segment. Our forecasts are showing global revenues of $4.6 billion this year, rising to nearly $15 billion in 2013, which includes payments for direct pay-per-download and indirect value-add services like in-app payments and subscriptions.”

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Once you factor in content revenue from outside of app stores, like direct downloads from gaming companies, ringtones, music, and other goodies, Futuresource says it will all add up to a $38 billion in 2013.

Just a couple of years ago, few would have believed that Google would soon become a major force in the mobile OS market. But that’s exactly what has happened since the launch of the Android platform in late 2008, and there’s been no sign of the mobile OS slowing down. On the contrary, IDC says Android is on track to become the No. 2 mobile OS by 2013.

“Mobile operating systems have become the key ingredient in the highly competitive mobile device market. Although the overall look and feel of the device will still play an important role in the buying process, the wrong choice of operating system coupled with an awkward user interface can mean the difference between success and failure,”says Stephen D. Drake, vice president, Mobility and Telecom.

We’re still waiting for that must-have Android device, but even though there doesn’t yet exist an Android-powered handset we can’t live without, there are several we could live with. And by 2013, there will be some 68 million Android-powered units in the wild, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 150 percent, IDC says.

If you’re a Nexus One owner struggling with 3G connectivity problems, hang tight, because a fix is on the way,Google said on Monday.

“Our engineers have uncovered specific cases for which a software fix should improve connectivity to 3G for some users,” a Google employee named Ivar said in a Google Nexus One support forum. “We are testing this fix now, initial results are positive, and if everything progresses as planned, we will provide an over-the-air software update to your phone in the next week or so.”

Ivar was quick to caution, however, that the fix won’t address all 3G problems users have reported having, especially those that are the result of “being on the edge or outside of 3G coverage, which a product fix cannot address.”

We know you’re anxious to learn all about Apple’s upcoming tablet, and you will, but not until tomorrow morning when Steve Jobs plans to announce “a major new product that we’re really excited about.” So even though it might be pretty poor timing on HP’s part, there’s a new video making the rounds on the Web in which Phil McKinney, CTO of HP’s Personal Systems Group, answers a few questions about his company’s upcoming HP Slate.

Most of the video deals with the Slate’s background and history, and we learn that HP first began working the tablet concept five years ago “around the concept of an e-reader platform.” Based in part on user feedback requesting rich media content, the initial concept evolved into the Slate, McKinney says.

“What we predict is that users are looking for that consolidated device, that one device that they can use really as their ultimate content consumption experience,” McKinney explains. “And also we saw this gap in the marketplace north of kind of what a smartphone was and smaller than the netbook and notebook. They wanted something thin and light, but again, allowing them to have that rich media experience.”

According to McKinney, the Slate will be every bit as good as the current e-book readers on the market, but also capable of a whole lot more. What he didn’t say, however, is what kind of hardware you can expect, though he did describe 2010 as the optimal year for the Slate because of a “perfect storm of innovation” consisting of  a convergence of “low cost, low power processors, Win 7 with an operating system that is touch aware, the ability to create these kind of platforms with new kinds of touch technologies and hit that price point.”

YouTube Video