Science and Technology

The megalomania continues – Microsoft in Wired: Microsoft has two visions for the future of digital media: unlimited choice for consumers, and unlimited control for producers. One thing’s for sure, it’s unlimited opportunity for Redmond. ….These two homes represent two futures. The first is what consumers want: digital media their …

Dude is down on Nokia (scroll down “News”): Between your insulting advertising, shitty fucking product and infuriating public comments it’s almost like you are TRYING to get gamers to hate you. I honestly cannot understand how a single company could make so many mistakes. I await your next move with …

Very interesting thoughts on blog design from web designer Eric Siegmund: This “personal publishing revolution” that many of us are participating in has created new opportunities for expression, but it’s also created new problems that authors and journalists never before had to deal with. How many mainstream journalists, for example, …

Tells Congress it needs MORE POWER: The Federal Trade Commission asked Congress yesterday for broader powers to attack the rapidly growing problem of spam, which new studies show accounts for half of all e-mail traffic. In joint testimony, Chairman Timothy J. Muris and the four other commissioners told House and …

Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp with the latest development: The new optic-fiber technology will increase communication speeds to one gigabyte per second, up from 100 megabytes per second now available for homes and offices, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said in its evening edition. The technology developed by NTT, Japan’s …

ReplayTV is eliminating the PVR’s abilities to skip commercials automatically and send shows through the Internet, two of its best features, sealing its own doom – good thinking: Executives at DNNA, the D&M Holdings Inc. subsidiary that bought the Replay line from Sonicblue Inc., said they made the concessions to …

Fascinating copyright debate on the NewsHour between Larry Lessig and the RIAA’s Matt Oppenheim: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued four students on April 3 for allegedly operating music-sharing Web sites, accusing them of enabling large-scale copyright theft. Although the RIAA initially asked for $98 billion in damages, …

Are your URGENT REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE going unheeded no matter how many emails you send out? Learn from the Nigerians: Breakfast Kickoff Session: Your choice: A hard boiled egg, or two slices of white bread and a cricket. Keynote Address: Dr. Hamza Kalu’s adds some historical perspective in his keynote …

Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is preparing a consumer-friendly digital copyright bill that he could present as soon as this week. In what must be taken as a good sign, it has the RIAA spitting: “This draft legislation is weighted down with a variety of bad public policy judgments hostile …

Give Apple credit for taking the risk and proving the viability of a relatively user-friendly digital music store. Now will the world’s biggest butts squish Apple? Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and AOL Time Warner Inc.’s America Online unit are among the companies expected to launch services to compete …