Culture and Society

Cellular systems may be outdated in five years: Originally a home-and-office product designed to link up personal computers without wires, Wi-Fi is an inexpensive way to send data over the airwaves at blazing speeds. Asia’s fixed-line carriers are capitalizing on that bang-for-the-buck to offer broadband access to the Internet in …

We mentioned last week that FCC Chairman Powell’s deregulatory agenda was in jeopardy, largely due to the efforts of fellow-Republican and Bush insider Kevin Martin. This has come to pass: With Republican FCC commissioner Kevin Martin staging a palace coup on Thursday and joining with Democrats on a key vote, …

We live in very strange times: on the one hand the world has become a very small place and there are no longer any true terrestrial frontiers. This is the psychological foundation for the space program: we need frontiers or we begin to feel hemmed in like rats in a …

Kazaa hooks up with MatchNet for “Love and Dating” service: Dating services company MatchNet has announced it has entered into an agreement to exclusively provide an online dating channel on Kazaa. Kazaa is the leading peer-to-peer file-sharing software with 186m downloads so far, and an active community of 70m users. …

What can bring AOL and Microsoft together? Spam. Since my email is publicly available via this site, I get more than my fair share of electronic diarrhea – I get a lot of wealthy Nigerians who need help moving funds – but I also keep out a lot by not …

They may call it “fingerprinting,” but they are after your ass: For months, the digital equivalent of a postal censor has been sorting through virtually all file-swapping traffic on the University of Wyoming’s network, quietly noting every trade of an Eminem song or “Friends” episode. The technology, provided by Los …

DK Matai, Chairman and CEO of mi2g, on the unintended global consequences of the war with Iraq re cyberspace: “Disaffected groups are beginning to acquire the means to execute asymmetric attacks on the West through CBRN-DS means blended with conventional physical attacks. Whilst we may think in the local context, …

Pass the traffic, please. Happy 1-year anniversary to Blogcritic Tom Shugart, a cool guy with a cool blog. One year is a few lifetimes in the blogging world and no small accomplishment. I guess I’ll mention that’s this month is my year anniversary as well – we launched my old …

We mentioned the upcoming Digital Music Forum a couple of weeks ago. Here’s an update: DIGITAL MUSIC FORUM The Impact of Technology on Music Business Today technology►transforming►entertainment March 3, 2003 | 9:00AM – 7:00PM | New York City The Association of the Bar of the City of New York 42 …

More cogitation on power law, this time as regards to the music business by Tim Oren. My head may explode from all of this analytical thinking. So, why can’t the big dogs just go away and leave the little guys and us customers alone? Or even try the trick themselves? …