Canadian File Swappers Under Fire

Despite legal setbacks, the music industry is having another crack at those pernicious fileswappers in Canada.

"The Canadian Recording Industry Association said on Friday that it had filed court requests earlier this week that seek identifying information for subscribers at five Canadian Internet service providers. The information gained from those requests would be used to file copyright infringement lawsuits against people who had made large amounts of music available for upload, the group said. "

All this follows on from a Canadian court ruling a little while ago that downloading from services such as Kazaa appeared to be legal under Canadian law. Of course, the music industry disagreed, although this time they appear to be focussing on people who upload as opposed to download.

Grey Album Mixes Up a Storm

A DJ who re-mixed the Beatles White Album with words from a popular rapper has incurred the wrath of music giant EMI whilst simultaeneously enjoying 'thermonuclear' applause and the album being dubbed an instant classic. Problem is, he didn't ask EMI's permission, and they own the rights to the Beatles album.

"As news of EMI's demand spilled online this week, music-industry and intellectual-property activists went ballistic. It's a sign of everything that's wrong in the American copyright system, they contend. "

Eat M&Ms for a Physical Breakthrough

If my kids ever find out, I'm in big trouble. A love for M&M chocolates has sparked a physics breakthrough. A US physicist was known to be passionate about the chocolates, so his students played a prank, leaving an oil drum's worth in his office. Which made him realise that the oval M&Ms packed more tightly than normal round spheres.

"The issue of how particles pack together has intrigued scientists for centuries and has implications for fields such as the design of high-density ceramic materials for use in aerospace or other industries."

The Luuurve Detector

Well I suspect a legion of Barry White fans would suggest he would be off the scale with this little gadget. It's the Love Detector, a gadget which allows you to analyse a person's voice on your computer as they speak on the telephone.

"On the computer screen, the love level is presented by a daisy. The more petals on the daisy, the hotter the passion. If the love level is negative, the daisy starts to wilt. The program also gauges the level of embarrassment and concentration in the call. "

Apparently it's based on Israeli anti-terrorism software!

Ticketmaster Criticised for Security Flaw

Ticketmaster7 has been taken to task because of a security flaw on their web site, patched only in the last few days, which allowed anyone to look up other peoples' personal information. They were using a simple url with a 4 digit code number at the end to display your details. All you had to do was change the code number and it would bring up someone else's details.

As a web programmer this is about as simple a mistake you can make in security terms, and it's extremely surprising, and worrying, that a company like Ticketmaster7 would let this happen. Normally a web site would use precuations such as a encrypted link, or a user id matched with a password, for these types of URL links.

Online Art Sales Survivor

Nice story from London about an online art sales web site, which weathered the dot com boom and bust, and which now employs several people, is selling 25 pictures a month, and is about to hold it's first offline art prize and exhibition.

"The site works because it gives artists who struggle outside the gallery system an opportunity to sell their work. More than 1000 pieces were entered for The Art of Love, for example. The site also provides an outlet for buyers, who may live far from art galleries or not have the time to peruse. The site offers a full refund if you don't like the art you've ordered. Returns are less than 1%. "

There's Gold in Them Thar Downloads

The Net has caught up with the traditional. Legal music downloads in the UK have outsold traditional physical formats such as DVDs and CDs for the first time, according to research from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

"The organisation found that over 150,000 downloads were sold in January 2004. Some 50,000 of these sales came in one week alone, with the launch of legal download site MyCokeMusic."

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

It was produced last year, but this report from the US-based Center for Democracy & Technology is an excellent plain English explanation of why you get spam; how the spammers acquire your email address; and how to reduce the chance of receiving unsolicited email.

"In the summer of 2002, CDT embarked on a project to attempt to determine the source of spam. To do so, we set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses, used them for a single purpose, and then waited six months to see what kind of mail those addresses were receiving. It should come as no surprise to most e-mail users that many of the addresses CDT created for this study attracted spam, but it is very interesting to see the different ways that e-mail addresses attracted spam -- and the different volumes -- depending on where the e-mail addresses were used. "

Partying Halts the Mars Rover

Well the boffins have figured out why their billion dollar remote control toy on Mars stopped working. It ran out of memory. These days it's not a problem most of us encounter. But those of us with a few years experience of computers remember the days when we had to make sure we deleted unwanted files, otherwise our steam-driven pre-pentium beige boxes would grind to a halt.

Same thing happened on Mars. The NASA scientists knew about memory management, but, read between the lines of this article, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that what stopped the Rover was too many drinks:

"But with all the excitement after the Mars landing on Jan. 3, and with data being returned to Earth by the rover, that step was not performed quickly enough by mission technicians. "

By which I think they mean 'we all partied late, were a bit hungover, and someone forgot to clear out the memory'.

Information Sewer Highway

Couldn't resist this one, even only for the headline. A Scottish internet company has done a deal to run broadband cable through sewer systems, as a way of quickly cabling an area.

Popping the Balloon of Hyperbole

Some company in the UK has come up with a massive dollar cost of the myDoom virus. Which put me onto a fabulous site I'm sorry I didn't find before. VMyths:

"Learn about com­puter virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hys­teria, and the impli­ca­tions if you be­lieve in them. You can also search a list of com­puter virus hoaxes & virus hys­teria from A to Z. "

I've long held a suspicion that interested parties are not backward in ramping up the supposed scale and impact of virus alerts, terrorist attacks on the Internet and other mass media hysteria. VMyths is all about popping the ballon of hyperpole, with plenty of sarcasm, wit and humour.