Robert Cringely of PBS has a proposal that he wants people to look at for creating a commercial music service that keeps the simplicity of Napster without the legal problems. I'm not so certain that it would be successful in court, but it's a nice exercise in thinking outside of …

The (presumably biased) Dr. Mac from the Houston Chronicle seems to think so. In this article, he smashes the advertising, ease-of-use, and licensing of the new site. However, the best line was definitely in this selection:"The site is called BuyMusic.com. At first glance it looks a lot like …

Apparently, if you have a Macintosh, you aren't supposed to even visit BuyMusic.com, Buy.com's new web-based WMP music store. Despite the fact that they're more than happy to bash Apple in their ads (yeah, right "music for the rest of us"), they can't seem to stand the heat …

OK, I'll admit, I wasn't surprised to read the article from the New York Times yesterday about computerized voting machines and the ease with which they could be subverted. Software is the basic problem, and the experts who looked at it say that it is not to be trusted. In …

Well, it's official, Doom III is now a 2004 release. According to an article from Wired, the publisher (Activision) has stated that "for planning purposes, we're assuming Doom III will come out in the fourth quarter." Hey, Carmack, stop playing with your X-Prize toys and do some work, dude!

Remember the 45? No, not the .45 caliber, the 45 RPM record. They were small, came sheathed in an uninteresting piece of white paper, and contained only two songs. Often in the 1950s,1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, you could find them in record stores (you remember, the places that used …

It's not aimed at stopping you from traveling, or keeping you from getting an abortion, but the legal tactics being employed by the RIAA (as described in an article from the Associated Press) certainly seem to qualify as using fear to coerce behavioral change, thanks to our duly elected representatives …

In an interesting turn of events, investment powerhouse Merrill Lynch is dumping their existing deployment of Cisco's IP voice telephones for new systems from Avaya. An article from CNet describes the defection as having taken place due to "network utilization issues." Those familiar with Avaya will note that this is …

Garmin, makers of fine GPS products, has announced the shipment of a new combination GPS and PDA named the iQue3600. The device is PalmOS-based and thus will run some software from other vendors, but it seems a bit crippled with only 32MB of RAM and no built-in wireless of any …

I'm not a big fan of reading the obituaries, but this one was forwarded to me this morning from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Jane Barbe, the voice that people associate with Ma Bell, died Friday of cancer at the age of 74.

Pearl Jam has announced a contest to find the favorite versions of each of a dozen or so tunes that they have posted to iTunes after each concert on their current tour. Pearl Jam has taken the novel approach of posting an "album" after each concert so that attendees (or …

An article from BBC News discussing a new paedophile (sic) victim database provides some details into the new database that will contain the faces of children who have shown up in pornographic images on the internet. All told, the database (called ChildBase, but apparently not associated with any of the …

For those who use SSL for email, you may find interesting a recent enhancement to server certificates from Thawte, the addition of client capabilities as well as server. By popular demand (and I know I was one of those demanding it), the company has decided to cut a break to …

According to an article from the Washington Post, AOL lost 846,000 subscribers in the last quarter. Not all of this is attrition, though. It appears from statements by the company that some of it was caused by "previously miscounted" customers being removed as well. They still stand at a …

Wired has an article about the response of a number of universities to subpoenas from the RIAA about alleged illegal file sharing. There are a wide variety of good issues that the universities are trying to bring to the table before this situation gets even more out of hand than …

I wasn't so much surprised as pleased to see an article in Wired describing independent game development as a healthy industry. With so many computer and console games costing millions of dollars to develop, produce, and market, and with the seemingly enormous power of a small number of retailers to …

According to a survey on Netcraft (an internet server analysis site), the number of JSP (Java Server Pages) sites has grown almost 100% over last year, despite Microsoft's heavy push for ASP (Active Server Pages) and .NET development. More interesting is that almost 26% of the sites are running Microsoft …

Not the hard-biting news, but this article from the Washington Post gives some good hints about how to appropriately choose and use sweet corn.

An article from the Scotsman is reporting that Virtual Clones, a technology company in Glasgow, Scotland, has developed a technology that can create meshes from high resolution photographs. If the stuff really works, it could cut substantial time and anguish out of modeling faces for games and, potentially, motion pictures …

I was reading an article from the The Scotsman this morning about the agreement between the US and the UK not to allow the death penalty for certain UK citizens who are detained at Guantanamo Bay and found myself feeling empty on this issue. I understand that 9/11 was …