Download growth concerns music industry
Apple uses it to sell iPods. Vodafone uses it to sell broadband airtime. Starbucks uses it to encourage customers to linger longer, and consider a second Frappuccino.
Digital music finally took off in 2005, according to data published ahead of this week’s Midem music trade show in Cannes, while lawsuits kept illegal file-sharing [...]
British parliament attacked using WMF exploit
MessageLabs, the e-mail-filtering provider for the U.K. government, told ZDNet UK that targeted e-mails were sent to various individuals within government departments in an attempt to take control of their computers. The e-mails harbored an exploit for the Windows Meta File vulnerability.
The attack occurred over the Christmas period and came from China, [...]
Livedoor chief arrested in Japan
Three other executives were arrested alongside Livedoor boss Takafumi Horie, 33, who has denied the allegations.
Livedoor’s problems have shaken Japan’s business world and stock market amid fears that more problems may emerge.
The allegations were central to last week’s share sell-off that forced the Tokyo stock market to close early.
Bin Laden offers Americans truce
"The new operations of al-Qaida has not happened not because we could not penetrate the security measures. It is being prepared and you’ll see it in your homeland very soon," the voice attributed to bin Laden said, apparently addressing Americans.
But the voice on the tape, which appeared to be aimed at the American [...]
WinRAR – File Archive Tutorial
TAR, stands for tape archive, from when archives were initially backed up on magnetic tape. The .TAR format can archive files (combine many files into one file) but not compress, unlike .ZIP, or .RAR.
A .ZIP or .RAR file compresses each file as it is included in a zip file. A .TAR file just includes [...]
Napster claims 100 per cent year-on-year subscriber growth
Napster today said it has doubled the number of people subscribing to its music rental services in the past 12 months.
The digital music provider’s subscriber base now stands at more than 550,000 users, Napster claimed, with nine per cent of that total – 50,000 – coming through the company’s subscription programme for university [...]
File-Sharing Students Say The Ads Made Them Do It
Several students at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who got sued by the RIAA for sharing music over Internet2 are now demanding that the founder and operator of the file-sharing network they used pay the RIAA to settle the cases.
In its standard fashion, the RIAA has told the kids it will settle for payments [...]
Blackmailers target $1m website
Alex Tew, 21, hit the headlines at the start of the year when he revealed his Million Dollar Homepage had made him a million dollars in four months.
But the publicity brought the unwanted attention of extortionists who knocked the site over with a massive denial-of-service attack.
Following a week of downtime, the [...]
Supreme Court Upholds Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Law
In a 6-3 vote, justices rejected a Bush administration effort to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
The court said the 1997 Oregon doctor-assisted suicide law trumps federal power to regulate doctors. The Oregon law has been used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people.
The court [...]
Music companies bank on digital vending machines
A digital music "vending machine" of sorts, music kiosks let users browse, buy and download tracks from an Internet-connected unit that they can then either burn to a CD or transfer to an MP3 player.
New versions support Bluetooth technology, which would enable buyers to transfer content wirelessly from the kiosk to certain mobile [...]
