Some of you may have seen sporadic reports (mostly coming from the L.A. Times) that Apple is in the process of coming out with an online music service this month, along with the long-awaited update to iTunes and the new versions of the iPod. Today, an article on MacCentral …

Here's an article from Salon.com that finally shows an abuse I've been wondering about for a couple of years. The idea is that it is seldom the case that the check-out workers really verify the item identification with the item being scanned by the bar code scanner. Hence, if …

Have you been looking for a way to do auto-fill with Safari? If so, this page can be used to create a button on your button-bar that automatically fills in the information for web pages that ask for standard personal information. At least when I went to the site, the …

On a day that had most people focused on the Earth, a pair of Americans were high above the planet on a mission to reconfigure stabilization gyros on the International Space Station. One of the four gyros failed last year and was to be replaced on a shuttle mission later …

Once again, the question of whether a CD with some of the newer copy protection is really a CD or not has come to the fore. An Australian Xbox user is reporting that these CDs are not compatible with the Xbox. This detailed article from The Age in Australia describes …

So far, the FCC has been holding to its thrice-postponed November 11th deadline for number portability despite clamoring from the major cell carriers to postpone it yet again. At issue is the ability to keep your telephone number when you move from one cell carrier to another. Hidden inside is …

An article on Yahoo recounts the story of U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns throwing out a request by an MIT student to allow him to decompile internet filtering software in order to determine what sites are being blocked. The judge disagreed, stating ""there is no plausibly protected constitutional interest …

An article in the New York Times covers the behind-the-scenes jockeying by the administration and congressional republicans to remove the sunset provisions from the USA PATRIOT act.

A disturbing article in Infoworld describes the terms of the new Microsoft 6.0 software agreements. This agreement, which Microsoft pressured customers to take last year by eliminating upgrade pricing schemes, apparently has provisions that require acceleration payments of the entire contract in order to make licenses perpetual on change …

An article on BBC News describes the sentence (5 months in Jail, 5 months house arrest, and $28,500 fine) for a man convicted of violating the DMCA by importing and selling mod chips for the X Box. For those regular readers, it will be no surprise to hear that …

An interesting article on SlashDot points to recent moves by a large ISP in New Zealand whose recent change to their TOS (terms of service) appear to claim ownership of the intellectual property of their customers. The TOS states that they aren't trying to gain control of customer's intellectual property …

Reports on CNet indicate that Sun officials are stating publicly that they are looking favorably at the AMD Opteron 64/32-bit processor for future machines. "Can we commit to using Opteron today? No," a spokesperson said. "Can we use it? Are we likely to use it? Yes."

Although it isn't a product announcement or press release of same, it is an interesting step in the direction of the intermingling of the internet and consumer electronics. Philips Semiconductors, the electronics giant, has modified their consumer DVD-R reference design to incorporate broadband internet connectivity and video streaming. An article …

I like Japan and I like Japanese anime, so I'm going to be inclined to like a movie like Spirited Away. And so, I wasn't surprised, and neither should you be, that I thoroughly enjoyed this award winning film (Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, 2003). The animation was an …

Here is a good article on MacDevCenter about making virtual hosts using Rendezvous technology and the built-in Apache web server.

An anti-spam activist, Francis Uy, appears to have won a victory for tracking down and complaining to purveyor of spam. Uy created a web site that claims to have a list of "Maryland's most wanted spammers". Unfortunately, I couldn't find the site (it also wasn't in Google's cache), but appears …

First Mr. Rodgers and now the inspiration for the series of books about Babar, a fond memory from my youth, is now dead too. An article on CNN provides the details, but she died of a stroke in a hospital in Paris. There is a detailed story in the article …

Wired is reporting in an article this morning that a man who shares his name with a suspected terrorist (now held by the US government at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba) has to get special clearance from the FBI every week when he flies out of his home town of Rochester …

Based on an article on the web site of Sandia National Labs, the government lab is now announcing that they are using new technology to control small fusion reactions that may lead to long-term controlled fusion reactions usable for sustainable power. Follow the link, because there are some really cool …

Based on information from this page on Adobe's web site, Adobe is readying the Acrobat product for movement to version 6.0. Many of the features appear aimed at solidifying the position of the company's PDF format and heading off Microsoft's new generic document format, slated for release with …