Science and Technology

I am mortified by the big paraphernalia bust – I didn’t even know this was federal law. In this time of terror and rampant white collar crime, does the Justice Department really have nothing better to do? Three years in federal prison for selling bongs??? There goes another one of …

Interesting approach: The White Stripes are letting fans hear tracks from their forthcoming album ‘Elephant’ first. We wanted to thank all the people that have supported The White Stripes by buying their albums and signing up to our mailing lists, so we have created a secret area only for you! …

John Borland reviews the situation: Those persistent types of programs, frequently operating on computers without owners’ knowledge, have spread quickly in the last year, evolving as rapidly as anti-spyware software has been able to find them. EarthLink executives estimate that 40 percent to 50 percent of the Internet service provider’s …

There seems to be a direct relationship between online and offline attacks.

Napster has been buried in the “Pet Sematary” and is now coming back to walk the earth once again. Does Stephenen King own stock? Controversial song swapping site Napster, the former nemesis of the music industry, is set to relaunch before the end of the year with whizzkid founder Shawn …

Glenn Reynolds reports that Sonic Foundry, maker Acid music creation software and lots of other cool stuff, is in financial trouble: Well, lots of companies are, these days, but they have terrific products in their Acid music software (I did the music for my wife’s documentary, largely using Acid Pro …

Cellular systems may be outdated in five years: Originally a home-and-office product designed to link up personal computers without wires, Wi-Fi is an inexpensive way to send data over the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. …