ccnull writes "You might remember George Ziemann as the musician who found his own music banned from eBay because it was recorded on CD-R. Now he's back with a new rant about the RIAA's statistics, which blame piracy for the dire condition of the music industry. What's to blame? Price hikes and fewer titles. The latest rant (including analysis of the RIAA's own data) is mainly circulating by email, here's a readable link. (As an interesting side note, Ziemann says that songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)"

netbsd_fan writes "Today's Chicago Tribune has an article that claims that the number of coding jobs will double by 2010, and computer support jobs aren't far behind. It's hard to believe since I just laid off our last two Win32 guys Friday. Could this be a turning point in the labor market?"

Catskul writes "Along with the news that the polished and (more nearly) complete human genome being published Monday, comes a surprising observation about the genome: We have substantially fewer genes than expected; between 27,000 and 40,000 as compared to an original estimate of 140,000." Update: 04/14 01:22 GMT by T : For everyone who can't look at a Z, headline updated with an S in "surprise."

The Original Yama writes "Intel, Nokia, Proxim, and a bunch of other companies have launched WiMax, a non-profit group founded to certify and promote the IEEE 802.16 wireless networking standard. What's interesting about this standard is that it allows "up to 31 miles of linear service area range and allows users connectivity without a direct line of sight to a base station," all at a shared speed of 70Mbps. This simultaneously blows away 3G mobile and 802.11 technologies."

kmself writes "As first reported at linux-elitists by Aaron Sherman, and with a demonstration of the denial at zIWETHEY, AOL has begun blocking mailservers identified with residential DSL lines as an anti-spam measure, apparently heedless of the huge collateral damage this move imposes (and guess who can't send mail to Mom...). This action was unannounced, and has received virtually no coverage, spare an oblique mention at News.com. It also violates SMTP RFCs, as Aaron points out, not to mention the 'good neighbor' conventions of Internet communications. Mail to AOL's postmaster is also bounced -- this is RFC-ignorant. I strongly recommend that as a compensatory measure, non-AOL MTAs be configured to deny all incoming mail from AOL's domain."

0x0d0a writes "Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft's recent campaign to promote Office 2003 based on its XML support may be a bit misleading. Only the Enterprise and Professional releases will have this support -- not Standard. Microsoft will still be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another Office release."

matt-fu writes "For a long time, live recording has been consigned mostly to the realm of DAT recorders, Minidisc recorders, or laptop computers. On one hand you have subpar sound quality, on the other you have a bulky rig with a big 'steal me' sign attached. Thanks to the folks at Core Sound though, mobile recording is about to take a huge leap forward with their PDAudio project. By using a hardware card that allows recording via S/PDIF onto Compact Flash, you will be able to use your iPaq or Zaurus alongside a decent A/D converter to portably get field recordings at up to 24bit/192kHz. The site includes WinCE screenshots, and there are Linux clients in the works as well."

Kavau writes "The lower house of the German parliament just passed an amendment to the copyright law (sorry, article in German only). The highly controversial law will severely limit consumers' rights to make private copies of copyrighted media, and imposes special taxes on virtually any device that can potentially be used for copyright circumvention (among these devices are printers, CD burners, scanners and cell phones). Also, circumvention of copyright protection mechanisms will become illegal, as it already is in the United States." There's a short blurb (in English) at the Register Update: 04/13 19:20 GMT by T : [Sorry, actually it's The Inquirer]; note that this has passed the lower house of the German parliament, but has not yet been voted on by the upper.

The 2003 Jefferson Muzzle "winners" are out. This year's crop starts with John Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress, and works its way down through the school board that voted to put Harry Potter on the restricted shelf. Innovation in censorship deserves recognition, read and enjoy. And in other stupid news, the winners of the Stupid Security Competition have been announced. I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.

rampant mac writes "An article over at the New York Post is reporting Microsoft has expressed interest in buying Vivendi's Universal Music Group, setting up a possible bidding war between the software maker and rival Apple Computer, according to sources familiar with the matter. Microsoft's interest is said to be at the level of "poking around, kicking the tires," but it has indeed had conversations with Vivendi executives about buying the music division, sources said." Here is a story from a few days ago about Apple and Universal.

nickco3 writes "The Economist is telling the business world that Linux is a worthy adversay to Windows and Unix. It is free, runs on almost any hardware, and generally more secure than Windows As result it is dividing the industry into winners that offer Linux (e.g. IBM and HP), and losers that don't, (e.g. Microsoft). Sun is probably doomed."

Kaypro writes "According to the scoop over at Ain't it Cool, it seems that Fox has decided that there's not enough viewers to keep the Firefly series on the air, but somehow there's enough fans to make money off DVD sales. Go figure. Included in the set will be the entire season plus unaired episodes and the original pilot in full 16:9 format. Extras I assume are included as well. No release date has been set as of yet." The missing episodes will be nice. In order will be nice. Such a good show. The last couple of episodes were just awesome.