• RIAA sues the Internet of the future

    According to The Inquirer, “The RIAA is suing 405 students at 18 colleges with access to the Internet2 network”. About six months ago I wrote an article for .net suggesting that in 2005, the RIAA would sue orphans and puppies; in 2006, it would sue God; and in 2009 the RIAA would sue itself. Perhaps…

  • The only chart that counts

    According to NME.com, indie labels intend to rig this week’s download chart to prove that it’s easy for unscrupulous firms to cheat. Because of course, the real-world chart has never been rigged. No. Definitely not.

  • Ban Clarkson!

    Road safety campaigners want to ban the BBC’s car programme, Top Gear, on the grounds that it encourages irresponsibility. As The Guardian reports: Transport 2000, whose president is Michael Palin, claimed Top Gear promoted irresponsible driver behaviour and an obsession with big cars. It said the motoring series, one of BBC2’s most successful shows with…

  • Calm down dears, it’s only an operating system

    When you write about technology, you get used to a certain amount of hate mail: god forbid you should say anything bad about Apple, or PlayStations, or… you get the idea. However, this report in The Inquirer is particularly pathetic: an analyst writes a report suggesting that in some respects Windows Server is as good…

  • More rubbish T-shirts

    This week’s b3ta newsletter brings tidings of yet another bad t-shirt shop: Christian Shirts. Some of the highlights – if you can call them that – in this car-crash of Comic Sans and bad clipart include: And: And: But strangely, not:

  • More than maps

    Maps aren’t particularly exciting things, but when you combine them with other systems then they start becoming much more useful. So the (US-only) Google Maps is mildly interesting, and more so when you switch to the satellite photo view; but when you combine it with the CraigsList classified ad site then it becomes very useful.…

  • Are Napster customers sharing accounts?

    There’s an interesting article by MusicAlly on The Register, which suggests that Napster subscribers are sharing their logins with their pals in order to save cash. It suggests: Apparently it’s a relatively common practice, at least among these London youngsters, for one person to pay for the £9.95 per month Napster account and then to…

  • Oh, my aching sides

    Thank god for advertising: without it, I’d have been unaware of Wearable Vegetables, a collection of hilarious food-themed clothing such as: The site also includes such comedy gems as “The Rocky Horror Pickle Show”, “Lord of the Onion Rings” and “Eat, Drink and be Bloody Mary”.

  • Gaming: not just for kids

    Some interesting research on gaming by stats firm Nielsen: Gamers are getting older, with 25% now over the age of 40. 40% of all US households have some kind of gaming system. Gamers spend an average of 5 hours a week playing alone and 3 hours a week playing online. That trend is modified by…

  • If life gives you lemons

    As Jack Handey puts it: “If life deals you lemons, why not go kill someone with the lemons (maybe by shoving them down his throat).” I’m not my usual cheery self today after yet another night of insufficient sleep followed by the morning ritual of painkillers and swearing. However, Mr Sun has the answer: Are…