Though there have been many recent improvements, especially in the area of selection, the fee-based online subscription services are still being dwarfed by free P2P services like Kazaa, Dawn C. Chmielewski writes in the Mercury News: In the 12 months since MusicNet and the other subscription music services were launched …

Sunday night on the Discovery Channel, James Cameron, Titanic’s “King of the World,” takes on another famous lost ship: The Bismarck, the German warship that went down in 1941 only nine days after it’s departure from Germany. On the show’s site, you can examine the underwater wreckage of the ship, …

Between the vicarious terrorist-squashing (in real time!) of 24 and the alternative reality of The Osbournes, Tuesday is now THE TV night around the homestead. Tonight we hear Jack threaten the murderous, traitorous Nina and slam the bitch against the wall; and on the Osbournes, Sharon is diagnosed with cancer. …

Is it ever appropriate to blame the victim? As harsh as it sounds, yes, it is appropriate when the very perception of victimization has become a core problem in and of itself. The NY Times reports on the surprising and disturbing results of a study conducted right here in the …

Jim Thome said he was different from the greedhead players who were only in it for the maximum cash. Thome said his priorities included loyalty to the fans of Cleveland, the Indians organization, and the community (he lives, or I should say, lived right down the street from us in …

Shortly after midnight on November 3, the Racine, Wisconsin police raided a non-profit fundraiser featuring electronic music and cited 441 people in the “techno room” for being “inmates of a disorderly house with narcotics,” for which they could be fined up to $968. Many appeared in court yesterday: Defiance was …

Leftist Italian journalist and former Resistance fighter Oriana Falacci’s brave, now famous screed from against anti-Semitism, in particular European anti-Semitism, has been made au courant again with the recent dismissal in a French court of a request to ban “The Rage and the Pride” on the grounds that it incites …

In conjunction with the series of the same name, the BBC ran a competition for Britons to vote on the Great Britons. The top 10 are as follows: 1 Churchill 456,498 (28.1%) 2 Brunel 398,526 (24.6%) 3 Diana 225,584 (13.9%) 4 Darwin 112,496 (6.9%) 5 Shakespeare 109,919 (6.8%) 6 Newton …

We just mentioned the psychological front of the War on File-Swapping, where the RIAA is set to aggressively confront university swappers, and the technological front, which is self-explanatory. The legal front sees a major confrontation today as well, with the studios and labels confronting Morpheus and Grokster in an LA …

So it was Thanksgiving night at our place. The whole family was over for dinner at our new house: 13 people with a very broad spectrum of (musical) tastes, ranging in age from 3 to 70. What to do about the music? There were voices quietly agitating for the sound …