Science and Technology

Why file sharing isn’t the recording industry’s biggest problem: It’s the busy season for number-crunchers at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). By the end of February, the industry trade association will release new statistics on what it says is a dizzying two-year decline in CD sales. The latest …

MusicBrainz is here to help you with your music selection: MusicBrainz, an open-source music meta-data service, has announced the formal launch of its music recognition service designed to provide an open standard for recognizing and identifying digital music files, while providing an alternative to costly proprietary offerings. Supporting this effort, …

My beloved Valentine (who has a cold – get well) has an on the scene report from a protest where a dangerous social rift seems to be developing along the fault line of support for the war: As an impending war with Iraq looms like an outbreak of herpes on …

Inside Digital Media audio interview with Eric Garland of BigChampagne, the P2P measurement company. Highlights of the interview include: – Music that is popular on KaZaa differs from the SoundScan data – Billboard popularity charts also don’t match KaZaa. – New releases that are heavily traded on KaZaa become best …

By an overwhelming vote of 418 to 7, the House voted yesterday to create a “do not call” registry for people who want to be left alone by telemarketers: The House measure would allow the Federal Trade Commission to collect fees from telemarketers to pay for the registry, which would …

Six indicted on pay-TV satellite transmission hacking charges: The defendants allegedly created software and hardware designed to unscramble transmission signals sent by satellite TV operators, such as DirecTV and Dish Networks, said IDC with the computer crimes section of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for the Central District of California. …

Ultrawideband, a new short-range wireless standard, is causing concerns about interference: UWB operates across a wide range of these so-called frequencies all at once. The “flooding” of the airwaves creates a short but powerful signal–about 100 times faster than Bluetooth, another short-range wireless standard. Beginning last February, the Federal Communications …

Maybe this is part of the answer to this foolishness: Australian researchers unveiled a chip that lets cell-phone users receive high-quality face-to-face video and other streaming media at rates faster than a home broadband connection. Developed at Bell Labs in Australia, the chip works on a next-generation cell-phone network like …

Broadband, everything is dependent upon broadband to move to the next level of services, content, etc via the Internet. The single use most driving the expansion of broadband right now is P2P trading. So what do European ISPs want to do now? Limit usage – could they be more retarded? …

You might as well stop fighting all of the 9/11 anniversary activity out there for the next week and go with the flow. Steve Kelly has just launched “36 Views of the World Trade Center,” “a communal art/photography project commemorating the WTC, inspired by the Japanese artist Hokusai’s ’36 Views …