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Is the RIAA Pulling a Scam on the Music Industry?
However, the RIAA is not about being fair and just. The game is rigged and the RIAA has rigged it in their favor. The strategy of playing only non-RIAA songs won’t work though because the RIAA has secured the right to collect royalties on all songs regardless of who controls the copyright. RIAA operates under the assumption that they will collect the royalties for the “sound recording copyright” and that the artists who own their own copyright will go to SoundExchange to collect at a later date.
The amount of sense behind this story is nil. The RIAA believes they can collect on songs that does not run through them, just because it’s played on Internet radio. The songs can however be available for free on the web otherwise, just not on radio. How much longer is this foolishness going to last??
Source: Daily Kos
AppleTV Killer? Vudu Pictured
The service will launch with thousands of movies from seven major studios as well as indie distributors, connects directly to your TV and does not require a PC or a cable box. The company, Vudu, Inc., has been quietly engineering the technology and striking deals with content owners for the past two years (under the codename Marquee). It’s run by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.
I admit that I am intrigued. The system has a nice sleek design and packs a lot into it’s small frame, like the Apple TV. It will be the online capabilities that will make or break it though. We won’t find out more about that until later this year.
Source: Gizmodo
Sealand Prefers Hacker to The Pirate Bay
The micronation Sealand is offering asylum to Gary McKinnon, a British hacker who’s facing extradition to the United States. Prince Michael Bates of Sealand apparently prefers hackers to pirates. Earlier this year he refused to sell its micronation to the Pirate Bay because this would upset his friends in Hollywood.
Hackers > Pirates, that’s all there is to it.
Source: Torrent Freak
Optimus Maximus Gets Street Date
After some OLED display supply issues and a few setbacks, it looks like Lebedev and company have finally settled on a launch date and price for the king of keyboard, the Optimus Maximus. Hold your breath, it’ll be due late November (the 30th, to be specific) for $1536 US (“Shakespeare’s birthday”).
Is this thing even worth being excited about anymore? $1,500 for a keyboard will make it exclusive to those with lots of money, or those who are not very smart with their money. Sure it’s classy, but it looks uncomfortable to use. I think it’s more of a work of art than an actual peripheral.
Source: Engadget
10 Things To Do With a Thumb Drive
Is that a gigabyte in your pocket? And are you putting it to good use? The explosion of USB thumb drives gives anyone the ability take some serious file storage space along with their house keys. Developers and road warriors have come up with all sorts of innovative techniques for putting these tiny roomy disks to good use. Step into my office for a list of our top 10 favorite thumb drive tricks.
I know I am going to sound like an outcast when I say this, but I use a thumb drive to… store data. Other cool uses are here as well though.
Source: Life Hacker
What To Do With a Small House
But in an era when bigger is taken as a synonym for better, calling Shafer’s home a dream house might strike some as an oxymoron. Why? The entire house, including sleeping loft, measures only 96 square feet — smaller than many people’s bathrooms. But Jay Shafer’s dream isn’t of a lifestyle writ large but of one carefully created and then writ tiny.
Although I would go nuts living in a house like this, the design is incredible. It’s a full featured house… just the size of a bedroom.
Source: SF Gate
Student Suspended For Bypassing Network Security
The University of Portland handed a one-year suspension to engineering major and Air Force ROTC member Michael Maass after he wrote a computer program designed to replace and improve Cisco Clean Access (CCA). Maass noticed flaws in CCA that would allow it to be bypassed in “antivirus and operating system check.”
This reminds me of Adrian Lamo, who helped expose vulnerabilities and then tell the companies about them. You would think that companies would be appreciative to these people, but I guess they are just upset they will have more work to do.
Source: The-Beacon
Jobs Says Apple Customers Not into Renting Music
“People want to own their music,” he said. Industry executives and analysts told Reuters last week that they expect Apple to push for further concessions from record companies on selling music without copy-protection software known as digital rights management (DRM).
Although I never buy music online and rarely need a single track, I’d love to see DRM music spread all through iTunes. It might be then that I will actually hop on and search for new music to listen to, or purchase a certain song I want. Jobs is not stupid. If anyone could make this happen, it’s him.
Source: PhysOrg
Student Writes Essay… Then Arrested
Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
Gotta love it when free expression gets you arrested. I won’t comment much on the foolishness of this so I won’t be arrested as well. Well, that and because I’m lazy. It’s Saturday!
Source: Chicago Tribune
Could Black Holes be Portals to Other Universes?
The objects scientists think are black holes could instead be wormholes leading to other universes, a new study says. If so, it would help resolve a quantum conundrum known as the black hole information paradox, but critics say it would also raise new problems, such as how the wormholes would form in the first place.
I so need to find the black hole that portals me right smack dab in the middle of the Playboy mansion.
Source: New Scientist
Can Music Survive Inside the Big Box?
Music executives — and not just those who traffic in obscure genres — are in an increasing bind when it comes to selling their wares on CD. As dedicated music stores, including Tower Records, have closed up shop by the thousands, big, generalist chains like Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. have tightened their already firm grip on the sale of physical CDs. The chains order huge quantities of some titles, while other releases find it hard to get a foothold.
It’s almost sad that these stores have such a hold on the music industry. I buy most of my music online, since a lot of it these stores don’t carry the artists I like. I guess this article explains why.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Starcraft 2 To Be Announced?
It took a good day of calls and emails, but Blizzard just got back to us about the rumor floating around that Starcraft 2 will be announced next month during their World Wide Invitation in Seoul, South Korea. According to a Korean website, StarCraft 2 is being developed in 3D with a new race and lots of changes for existing units. The site went on to say that additional details would be revealed during Blizzard’s WWI on May 19th in Seoul.
Allow me to be the 413,402nd person to scream, WOO HOO. It’s about time!
Source: Kotaku
Acer Recalls 27,000 Notebook Batteries
The Sony laptop battery fiasco of 2006 is stepping into 2007, as Acer has announced a recall of certain notebook computer lithium-ion batteries containing Sony-made cells. About 27,000 cells are affected, and Acer is recommending that applicable consumers should only use the notebook computer using AC power until a replacement battery pack is received.
The fun continues into 2007! If you are an Acer notebook user, follow the link and see the affected models. Acer stresses that affected notebooks should be used on AC power until your replacement arrives. Better than burning a house down, right?
Source: Daily Tech
New AOL Homepage Identical to Yahoo!
Nice portal…but it is nearly identical to Yahoo home page, which was redesigned last year. Click on the image above for a larger view. Internally, I’m hearing AOLers refer to the new portal as “the Yahoo Portal†although its official name is AOL 3.0.
This is no joke. Check out AOL and then Yahoo! and catch your jaw before it hits the table. Webpages that look similar are nothing new, but this is such a copy/paste, it’s simply undeniable.
Source: Tech Crunch
Microsofts Profits Exceed Expectations
Microsoft Corp. posted a 65 percent rise in quarterly profit Thursday, topping Wall Street estimates thanks to better than expected demand for its new Windows Vista operating system. Shares of Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500) rose 5 percent after the announcement, in which the world’s biggest software company also forecast 2008 profit at the midpoint of a range of analyst estimates.
I’m not sure whether to be surprised by this, or impressed. These are serious profits compared to this time last year. Is Vista really catching on that fast?
Source: CNN Money
Xbox 360 Classic vs. Elite
As we said before, these are using the old round of 90nm chips, not the 65nm variety. So it goes without saying that using the same chips as before, these things are going to produce the same amount of heat. We didn’t run an 18 hour stress test or anything (obviously), but both units did feel about the same after an hour of playing games and movies, and they both felt like they were outputting about the same amount of heat.
After reading this, it’s difficult to feel excited about the Elite version. In their comparison tests, they had to try hard to see minor differences between component and HDMI. I think it’s safe to say that I’m sticking with my Premium console.
Source: Engadget
ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX Doomed from the Start
The less than stellar performance benchmarks are no surprise to board partners and AMD insiders. Two independent ATI board builders told DailyTech that Radeon HD 2900 XTX will not be a part of their initial portfolios. Given the additional memory cost and bulky card footprint, it seems unlikely the XTX will ever see the light of day.
Things can always change prior to launch, but it’s not looking good right now. ATIs upcoming top-end card is severely under performing compared to the 8800GTX.
Source: Daily Tech
The Gradual Demise of AMD
I am no Intel fan boy but like most enthusiasts, I simply prefer the better processor. For example, we ran an Athlon X2 Socket 939 system as our graphics card test bed for a long time and we did some articles that revolved around building the ultimate gaming PC which included the FX processor series from AMD. At that time life was good for AMD, even to the point where computer stores were installing AMD processors into new Ma and Pa systems. Market share was up, which in turn meant profit was up. AMD was riding a wave, and a damn big one you could say. So what happened?
It’s no secret that AMD has been less than hot lately, which is honestly sad to see. This opinion article is taking a look at how the downhill slide began, and what would happen if AMD was ever wiped out. I, like many others, are hoping that we never reach that conclusion.
Source: Tweak Town
105 Power Supplies Reviewed
Before you send me an e-mail asking me how I could make such a blatant typo, there is none. This really is a roundup of over one hundred power supplies from a variety of companies. The downside? It’s all in French, so you might want to grab a translator. According to the author, the roundup took over four months to complete. Not much a surprise given the scale… what ambition!
Source: Matbe
Lineage 3 Source Code Stolen
French news site PC Inpact has reported that source code from NCSofts upcoming Lineage III game has been stolen, or at least parts. It’s expected that previous employees are the culprits, with intentions to sell to Japanese game developers for their own titles. NCSoft claims that this scandal has cost them near 1 million Euros to date, so it’s no surprise they are intent on finding the culprits.
As if that isn’t bad enough, it seems like half the programmers have recently left. In the meantime, both Lineage 1 and 2 are riding the storm, performing as normal.
Source: PC Inpact
OCZ Announces Reaper PC2-6400 Kits
Sunnyvale, CA—April 26, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced two new additions to the Reaper HPC family, reflecting OCZ’s dedication to evolving their memory lineup for enthusiasts of all walks of life. The two new kits will be available in two classifications depending on the platform at hand and desired performance levels. While both feature DDR2-800 speeds, the PC2-6400 Reaper Enhanced Bandwidth Edition is designed for optimal performance on NVIDIA nForce 680i chipsets.
Source: OCZ Press Release
10 Most Commonly Used Passwords Online
In PC Magazine’s upcoming May 8th issue they list the 10 most commonly used passwords online – if you are using any of these please turn off your computer immediately, go take a nap and then download this add-on for FireFox.
In the top ten: “123456”, “qwerty”, “password” and “letmein”. It’s amazing that people still wonder why and how they get “hacked”.
Source: Thread Watch
Windows Vista Beta to Expire Soon
On 31 May 2007, all Customer Preview Program (CPP) pre-release versions of Windows Vista will expire. If you are running a pre-release version of Windows Vista (Beta 2, RC1 or RC2), you will begin to receive warning notifications about the upcoming expiration on 18 May. To avoid work disruption and loss of data, we strongly recommend that customers running any of these pre-release versions of Windows Vista migrate their PCs to the final version of Windows Vista prior to 31 May.
Those of you with the CPP still installed will have to plan on what to do next month. Although, I can barely handle using the RTP. People are still using the beta??
Source: Windows Vista Blog
Judge Says RIAA “Disingenuous,” Decision Stands
Judge Lee R. West in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has rejected the arguments made by the RIAA in support of its ‘reconsideration’ motion in Capitol v. Foster as ‘disingenuous’ and ‘not true,’ and accused the RIAA of ‘questionable motives.’
Kudos to the judge who sees through the RIAAs total rubbish. This needs to keep happening. If it does, less people would be needlessly sued, as the RIAA couldn’t just randomly target people as they are doing now.
Source: Slashdot
ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Performance Benchmarks
AMD equips the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT with 320 stream processors to take on NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTS, which features 96 stream processors. However, AMD and NVIDIA have taken different approaches towards their unified shader designs. AMD pairs the R600 GPU with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 1.65 GHz across an eight-channel, 512-bit memory interface. In comparison, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS features 640MB of 1.6 GHz GDDR3 memory on a 320-bit memory interface.
The results that DailyTech churned out gives hope to ATI fans. Compared to it’s direct competitor, the 8800GTS, it performed better in most tests.
Source: DailyTech