Culture and Society

Computer scientists construct supercompuer from game consoles: The resulting system, with components purchased at retail prices, cost a little more than $50,000. The center’s researchers believe the system may be capable of a half trillion operations a second, well within the definition of supercomputer, although it may not rank among …

Microsoft, quietly seething at the success of Apple’s iTunes Music Store, is working to enable subscription services to transfer music to portable music players: Microsoft is betting that new security enhancements planned for later this year could make renting music, rather than owning it, more attractive to consumers. ….These services …

Jack Valenti, the 81-year-old president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966, in on a mission: to deny you have any fair use rights at all. He’s been pretty successful so far: Valenti is considered one of Washington’s top lobbyists to Capitol Hill on behalf …

We regularly document here the evils of the DMCA, the Digital Milliennium Copyright Act, whose greatest crime is to prevent consumers from legally making backup copies of their own DVDs or copy-protected CDs. As bad as the federal DMCA is, some states have even worse laws, as Hanah Metchis of …

The Bear is the coolest, always pushing, prodding and making the blogosphere a better and more interesting place. His Blog Ecosystem was the first of its kind, lighting the way for the many blog indexes that have followed. I remember his first Ecosystem, there were about 200 blogs and I …

Is your spam flood a mere trickle? Do you get at least 100 pieces of spam per day like I do? Want to bump up your spam quotient? Try these tips: Put an E-mail address on a high-traffic Web site. Post (or reply to a post) on Usenet. Post (or …

Jackass star Steve-O Glover was arrested in Sweden following a raid on his hotel room. Why the raid? Glover and other “Jackass” regulars had performed their “Don’t Try This at Home” show in the Swedish capital Wednesday night. Prosecutor Gunnar Fjaestad said the raid happened after Glover said he swallowed …

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean has raised $1 million via the Internet: The former Vermont governor and self-described underdog has used the Internet to complement traditional fund-raising techniques, collecting contributions through his Web site and e-mail at little cost to his campaign. Dean hit the $1 million mark in Internet …

Kazaa about to become the single most popular free software on the Web with 230 million downloads – the RIAA intends to sue and/or disable the computers of every one of those bastards: As of late Thursday, the Kazaa Media Desktop application–a file-sharing software that has drawn the wrath of …

Derrick Story of the O’Reilly Network wants to hear from you: It has just been reported that six Butterfinger candy bars were illegally downloaded into a college student’s backpack from Sam’s newsstand in New York City. The candy was then distributed to friends who are know to have a craving …