Remember Kevin Cogill? He’s the Guns N’ Roses fan that leaked Chinese Democracy songs early and now is paying big time for it. His favorite band hates him and to top it all off he’s facing five years jail time just for promoting Guns N’ Roses’ latest album.

Now Kevin has agreed to a plea bargain in the case and last month, his charge dropped from a felony to a misdemeanor. Right now, he’s only looking at a year jail time, but it’s all going to come down to the judge’s decision. If that judge isn’t Axl Rose, Kevin is in the clear. Otherwise, be prepared to hear some real lousy singing from both ends of the courtroom.

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If you’re a fan of Guns N’ Roses, it’s more likely than not that if you aren’t the guy signing Axl Rose’s non-existent checks then they hate you. They all hate you. Yes, even Slash hates you. Remember that blogger who leaked their latest suckfest, Chinese Democracy? That was an honest mistake any fan could have made. Well, now he faces a long term of jail time for simply being a fan and helping to promote Guns N’ Roses.

They sure needed it according to Eric Garland of BigChampagne, a company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland brings to light the fact that no file sharing of Chinese Democracy ever took place until Kevin Cogill leaked it and then got arrested. Since his arrest, Chinese Democracy has become the whore of torrent downloading.  The question on my mind is why is the FBI wasting time with this and what does the band think of Kevin? Scratch that, no one really cares what Guns N’ Roses thinks.

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We’ve been slowly bringing you news on Dell’s mini laptop that’s been all over the ‘net. There just wasn’t that much to talk about - until now. Dell is flipping the netbook market on its head with the Inspiron Mini 9, a $399 laptop with a 1024×600 LED-backlit screen. SSD storage will be standard with 4, 8 and 16GB options. Battery life is around three hours and you even get Windows XP. Want Linux? Shed $50 off the price tag for Ubuntu.

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I thought I was really into Star Trek.  I have every episode from the original series and TNG as well as many articles of clothing and a beer bottle opener shaped like the Enterprise.  However, Bob Prior’s passion and fanboy-ism for Star Trek far surpasses my own.  He’s created Star Trek replicas from Rice Krispies boxes. From Kirk to Picard, Spock to LaForge, Bob has created over 50 models which include the Starship Enterprise, its command bridge and captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. The funniest part of the whole thing is that his wife hates the show but has been putting up with his obsession all these years.

Says Bob:

“I’ve made models from the start – right through Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the films up to First Contact.”

Deep Space Nine? Ew! Now I know for sure he’s suffering from dementia.

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Chinese Democracy is the Duke Nukem Forever of the music industry. It’s been over 10 years in the making and everyone has lost interest since seeing Axl Rose’s last performance. Then, Los Angeles based blogger Kevin Cogill leaks nine songs from the album which eventually leads his site to crash from high traffic shortly thereafter. No one is sure how he obtained access to the songs but the “band” was pissed and demanded the songs be taken down.

But, the damage had already been done. Users who obtained the tracks had made them available on file-sharing sites. Guns N’ Roses: owned.

Earlier this week Cogill posted a plea for legal help on his blog, writing that, “more and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted.”

Cogill was released after signing a $10,000 signature bond and is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on September 17. Things are not looking good for Kevin as he faces a judicial system of a Chinese Democracy. And here I sat thinking this album would never see the light of day.

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