Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Pearl Jam leaving Epic is potentially a VERY big deal – please check out my commentary on MSNBC.com: Bands come and go from record labels in a revolving door of euphoria and dejection, so when the news came out that Pearl Jam had fulfilled its contract and was leaving Epic …
Read More »Science and Technology
Vanishing Record
Maybe my dad isn’t so crazy for printing out every flipping thing he does on the Internet, including email: Many of the kinds of documents that historians of prior wars, and of the Cold War, have taken for granted—memoranda, minutes, and the routine back-and-forth among assistant secretaries of state and …
Read More »“Cryptographic signatures could be used to verify that clients on the network are trusted”
This is funny: not like “funny ha ha,” but like “funny ironic” and “funny your weapons are useless against us, dickhead”: Plans to build security features into personal computers to make unauthorised digital copying more difficult could backfire by strengthening controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, say US researchers. ….Security measures proposed …
Read More »Faster, You Fool, Faster
Had broadband for a while? Taking it for granted? Does everything seem slow again? Coming: an entire movie in seconds: The Fast TCP system, designed by a team of researchers at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, runs on the same Internet infrastructure currently used but is designed to be …
Read More »Ross Is Boss
The splendidly erudite, urbane, polymath, and wicked cool Ross the Bloviator, our fellow Blogcritic who speaks equally well on public health law and nocturnal jazz, has his ONE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY TOMORROW. All hail Ross and visit his site to heap praise and traffic upon him. I have spoken.
Read More »Rowling Reading to Be Webcast
The J.K. Rowling Albert Hall appearance will be webcast hither and yon. J.K. Rowling [will read] from the next Harry Potter adventure at the Royal Albert Hall on June 26, and [do] a live interview about the book that will be broadcast simultaneously on the Internet, organizers said Tuesday. At …
Read More »“They, like, don’t know anything”
Though the subject matter is deadly serious, this just cracks me up: As undercover assignments go, posing as a teenage girl online to catch pedophiles has its share of challenges for the typical FBI agent. Should he ever capitalize words in instant messages? Is it okay to say you buy …
Read More »Suing the Air
The RIAA is so petulant that Morpheus and Grokster weren’t held responsible for the piracy committed by their programs’ users that they are suing the Morpheus creator again – this time for a service that wasn’t even launched. Weep: The Recording Industry Assn. of America issued a brief statement in …
Read More »Outrageous: Prior Restrainst on Internet Speech
A battle of images: The beauty queen and the cad both have Web sites. Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999 and again in 2001, uses her site to promote what she calls her “platform of character education.” “She is founder of Say Nay Today and the Sobriety Society,” …
Read More »College Webcast Agreement
Though I have learned to wait for the other shoe to drop regarding these negotiations, this deal sounds very reasonable: College radio stations have reached an agreement with the recording industry to reduce the fees the stations must pay when they play music online. The agreement, reached Friday, supplants a …
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