Yahoo’s gotten Hollywood Records, owned by Disney, to release the new Jesse McCartney’s album Right Where You Want Me
, as unrestricted MP3 files. Apparently hell has frozen over — via Boing Boing
Researchers from Intel and the University of California at Santa Barbara have found a way to build low-cost laser chips that could eventually shuttle data around PCs at much higher speeds than today’s copper wire interconnects. The researchers combined the properties of a compound semiconductor material called indium phosphide, which emits light constantly, and silicon, which can be used to amplify and direct that light. They sandwiched the materials together to create a single device that can be manufactured using standard chip-making techniques
UK-based online trading site Betfair was granted a licence to operate in Australia this January; it built a new data centre and flew the whole thing from the UK to Tasmania on two chartered aeroplanes; in the first three weeks of going live, the company has achieved 100 percent uptime
An MIT researcher has a vision: Four hundred huge offshore wind turbines are providing onshore customers with enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes, and nobody standing onshore can see them. The trick? The wind turbines are floating on platforms a hundred miles out to sea, where the winds are strong and steady
Toshiba will replace about 340,000 laptop computer batteries made by Sony worldwide, the latest in a string of Sony battery woes. The batteries, used in Dynabook and Dynabook Satellite laptops manufactured between March and May this year, could fail on the road because of problems with storing and transmitting power
Most studios have already picked a side in the HD-DVD / Blu-ray war, but for the few still contemplating a near suicidal attempt at a simultaneous DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray release, there’s help on the way. A pair of Warner engineers have been working on a way to get all three formats to hold hands on a single disc, and have recently filed a patent to that effect
The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet
The airline has become the third to impose restrictions on laptops, following the recall of millions of exploding
batteries. The airline has banned the in-flight use of most Dell and Apple laptops, following recalls of thousands of batteries by both computer makers. The decision follows similar moves by Qantas and Korean Air
A Taiwan-based maker of DVDs and CDs for major studios is about to begin putting RFID chips in disks. The eventual aim is for DVD and CD players equipped with an RFID reader to prevent copied or out-of-region disks from being played
Users of modchipped gaming consoles could face fines of thousands of dollars when new copyright protection laws are introduced this year by the Federal Government. Until now, it has only been illegal to distribute or sell services or devices seeking to disable or override copy control technologies, but now users of such tools will also fall foul of the law once the legislation is introduced later this year
Engineers at Brown University have built a prototype of a hybrid plastic battery that uses a conductive polymer. The system, which marries the power of a capacitor with the storage capacity of a battery, can store and deliver power efficiently. For example, during performance testing, it delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery. Still, it’s unlikely that such a device can appear on the market before several years
Zune’s highly touted wireless file sharing will infect otherwise unprotected audio files with proprietary DRM. In cases where users are sharing songs covered by any of the Creative Commons licenses, this would be a clear violation of those license. From the CC FAQ: If a person uses DRM tools to restrict any of the rights granted in the license, that person violates the license
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new campaign in an effort to shed light on the US government’s electronic surveillance programmes
A new nano-optical device can focus laser light tighter than traditional optics, which could lead to higher-density data storage
Google Book Search and the American Library Association have teamed up to offer searchable indices and library links to banned books, in celebration of Banned Books Week
A US Department of Justice official has joined the debate surrounding Apple’s proprietary digital music technology by criticising European antitrust activities, but groups attacking Apple are defending their actions — via Macworld
Bill says: Sometimes I waste time on the Net by putting in interesting searches into Google. Today’s was quite interesting — Google this: Confidential do not distribute
. I just can’t believe in this day and age that anyone would think, let’s keep it confidential, but put on our web site
. I found some VERY interesting info I probably wasn’t supposed to see — via Boing Boing
Apple overhauled its digital music and video offerings on Tuesday, introducing new iPods in three categories, an update on iTunes and announcing plans to make movies available for purchase through the iTunes store. Apple also plans to introduce a product in the first quarter of 2007 that lets consumers stream their movies or music to televisions. The new device, code-named iTV, has 802.11 wireless built in. It will sell for US$299 and works with PCs and Macs
Jimmy Wales has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive Wikipedia entries. He challenges other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing. Wikipedia has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information
— via Slashdot
Servers participating in the TOR anonymising network have been seized by public prosecutors during a child porn crackdown in Germany. TOR provides anonymity for clients and servers by redirecting traffic through a network of volunteer-operated relays; the German prosecutors may have been trying to locate an anonymous server by examining the logs of the captured relays — via Slashdot
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