Science and Technology

If you are in the Cleveland area tonight, check this out – I’ll be speaking (as I so often do): Techies, Scribes, & Citizens Join AIP and the Society of Professional Journalists as they bring you a community panel discussion on how the new do-it-yourself Web publishing tools are spurring …

Very sorry about the outage for most of yesterday – the whole hosting company was down with some kind of fire situation, evacuation, cleanup, etc, many sites were down including Instapundit, so it was probably the slowest day in the blogosphere in about three years. Welcome back and please let …

We mentioned yesterday that some states are working on copyright laws even more restrictive the the DMCA. Fortunately, Colorado’s was vetoed by the governor: “Governor Owens, in vetoing the Colorado super-DMCA bill, recognized that these bills are bad for innovation, bad for competition, and bad for consumers,” said Fred von …

At least regarding digital distribution of music. Admitting a problem is the first step toward solving it, or just blowing it off: That’s the lesson industry insiders are drawing from the surprise decision by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group (UMG) to sell their service, Pressplay, to Roxio. “The …

T&A from Playboy via RealNetwork’s OpenPass paid video service. The girls will also be popping up via video clips and photos on cell phones in Europe and Asia on Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchinson Whampoa’s cellular phone service: Playboy Enterprises last week began offering a $25-a-month “Playboy TV Club” subscription as …

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 …