A new P2P boom has began to spread on the super-fast Internet2, the research network used by several universities around the world. The network can't be accessed directly by any of the regular ISPs, but is still available for most of the students who have broader Net access rights on universities with Internet2 connections.
The new form P2P seems to be growing around the mega-popular DC++ P2P software that is widely used in "traditional Internet" as well, but the difference is that all of the users are connecting to a hub that is located within the Internet2 -- a restricted zone from "outsiders", people who can access only the good old Net. Transfer speeds can, and often will, reach to levels where the HDD speed is the limiting factor, not the Net connection.
Much hyped promotional deal between Pepsi and Apple that included 100 million free iTunes download codes hidden in Pepsi bottle caps seems to have failed rather miserabely. The promotional deal ends tomorrow and according to Apple, only 5 million free songs have been redeemed.
"We had hoped the redemptions would have been higher," said Katie Cotton, Apple's vice president of worldwide corporate communications. But she said that the promotion introduced iTunes to millions of new potential customers. Apple also announced that since its May, 2003 launch it has now sold over 70 million songs through its service and that figure excludes the 5 million songs from the Pepsi promo. They're now selling 2.7 million songs a week, a rate that indicates an annual sales of 140 million in the weekly sales figures don't change.
Apple has also announced a smaller giveaway together with Ben & Jerry's, one of the world's largest ice-cream makers. Ben & Jerry's will give 50,000 iTunes songs for customers who pledge to vote in the upcoming American presidential elections.
Apple released a new major version of its popular iTunes software that allows purchases via iTMS music store, aiming to change the authentication method of iTunes' songs that was broken previously by hackers who wished to incorporate iTunes support to various applications. Now, just 24 hours after the release of new version, v4.5, the new authentication scheme seems to be cracked again.
The library, libopendaap, allows connecting to iTunes shares and streaming audio files and by using that library, developers can easily add a support for such features in their own tools. Legality of such library is another thing, but so far the site that hosts the files in Australia hasn't been harrassed by Apple.
A Spanish judge has ruled that selling modchips and modchip installation services for PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles is legal in the country. A modchip allows a console user to play DVD movies and games from other countries, as well as copies of games.
A Barcelona video games shop Innovagames was charged for offering modchip installation services, but the judge ruled that thanks to a loophole in the Spanish intellectual property law, the modchips are legal by default.
According to The Register the loophole exists in article 270 of the penal code, which rules cracking computer programs illegal, but does not cover video game consoles or other home entertainment devices, such as DVD-players.
One could say that the case was won on a technicality.
Plextor has introduced the first ever Serial ATA (SATA) based DVD-writer -- PX-712SA. The drive writes at 12x speed, which means that it takes less than 6 minutes to burn a full DVD, with the datarate being over 16MB/s.
The SATA-interface is the successor of the ATA-interface (also known as EIDE and Parallel ATA) -- the most common HDD and CD-ROM interface used today.
The write speeds for the PX-712SA drive are: 12x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW, 4x DVD-RW, 48x VD-R and 24x CD-RW. The read speed for DVD-ROM is 16x and 48x for CD-ROM.
To ensure optimal write quality the drive uses several write enhancement technologies. PoweRec (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control) reduces errors during writing, while Buffer Underrun Proof, Lossless Linking and Zero Link prevent buffer underrun errors when writing to CD, DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW discs.
Plextor's VariRec (Variable Recording) technology, designed for audiophiles, is also included, enabling the user to select one of eight tone settings to obtain a more personalised sound.
The PX-712SA comes with an extensive software package:
* Ahead Nero: CD/DVD mastering software
* Ahead InCD: Packet writing software
* Nero BackItUp
* Pinnacle Studio 9: Video editing and authoring software
* Cyberlink Power DVD: DVD player software
* PlexTools Professional: CD/DVD utility software
TurboLinux, a Linux distribution which is very popular in Asia, has announced that their latest version of the operating system distribution, TurboLinux 10F, will support streaming of Microsoft's Windows Media audio and video formats. Company will pay license fees for the technology to Microsoft.
TurboLinux is media-centric in other aspects as well, it includes CyberLink's PowerDVD for Linux and also supports Apple's iPod players natively.
Product will be available in Japan on May 28th and will cost $149.
The number of people downloading music on the Internet has increased according to a survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project. Between November 2003 and March 2004 there was a 27 percent increase in the number of downloaders, which translates to an increase from 18 to 23 million.
The survey was ran among 1371 users who were using both peer-to-peer networks, such as Kazaa and LimeWire, and online music stores, such as iTunes and Napster.
Fourteen percent of the online users surveyed had stopped downloading from the Internet. A third of those said the reason was the legal actions taken against P2P downloaders by RIAA. The number of Kazaa users dropped by five million, but most of those switched to other, smaller P2P services.
The study also had the following to say about the number of legal download service users: "While online music services like ITunes are far from trumping the popularity of file-sharing networks, 17 percent of current music downloaders say they are using these paid services. Overall, 7 percent of Internet users say they have bought music at these new services at one time or another, including 3 percent who currently use paid services."
CNET Networks launched a free digital music service on Monday. The service, hosted at CNET's Download.com website, allows people to search and download music contributed to the service by independent and unsigned artists.
While the service is similar to the old MP3.com, which was bought by CNET last year, it will be separate from the upcoming MP3.com service. CNET plans to relaunch MP3.com as a music information site soon.
CNET plans to build the service and add new technology and features to Download.com in hopes of making in the largest free-music resource over the course of the year.
The software giant is paying a heavy fee for penetrating to the gaming console market. The sales figures are up, but at a reduced price, so the business still generated loss of whopping 209 million USD. Microsoft is a very wealthy company, and it can afford to make loss with the Xbox, while establishing itself on the market, but how long is it willing to?
However, the operating loss at the division was a very substantial $209m - illustrating just how difficult Microsoft is finding it to make money out of the Xbox. Compare this with closest rival Nintendo, which made just shy of half a billion dollars profit in the year to 31 March - and expects a billion dollar profit in the current financial year.
Of course, Microsoft has arguably never needed to make money out of the Xbox, only to establish itself as a market player. After all, despite the losses incurred by Xbox, the company as a whole still made $1.32bn in the quarter (down slightly due to $1.89bn in settlements with Sun Microsystems and the European Commission) and added over $3bn to its cash and short term investment reserves, bringing the cash pile to an astonishing $56.4bn.
According to the latest RIAA survey, the DVD-Audio format seems to be gaining momentum among the American consumers, beating the competing high-quality audio format, SACD, with five times higher sales figures.
According to the survey, DVD-Audio's market share of all purchased music in the United States was 2.7 percent, compared to 0.5 percent market share for SACD. DVD-Audio is gaining popularity for various reasons, but most notably for its compatibility with DVD-Video players (although the higher audio quality is only achieved with "DVD Multi" players that support DVD-Audio natively) and with the fact that most DVD-Audio discs sold nowadays contain extras, such as music videos, interviews and artist commentaries.
Just wanted to mention that we launched today one of the most requested new features to our site. Now all of our registered users can review the software items that can be found from our site. Eventually we will phase out our own ratings for tools and instead use the user reviews as the way to rate the tools listed on our site. Or if you prefer not to say anything, you can still use the feature to submit your ratings for each tool (range of 1 to 5).
We encourage all of our users to contribute and review as many tools as possible. And try to be objective :-)
International piracy crackdown operation, codenamed Operation Fastlink, was launched yesterday in several countries including United States, Sweden, Germany, Israel, Hungary, Denmark and France. The operation was aimed against major piracy groups, including Fairlight, APC and Project X.
Over 120 searches were executed in 11 countries and over 100 individuals have been identified and over 200 computers have been seized by the investigation to date. The groups that were targeted were amongst the major release groups (i.e. the teams that actually break the copy protections in software items in first place, get the screener copies of movies and make DVDR releases out of them, etc) of pirated computer games, software and movies. Computer seizures have included 30 private FTP servers.
Even though the P2P networks have made pirated software items more accessible to general public, the role of piracy groups hasn't changed over the last 20 years and they are still the original sources of most pirated material in the world that eventually finds its way from private FTP servers and IRC channels to public P2P networks.
Apple Computer and Walt Disney Corp. have reached an agreement which brings soundtracks from classic Disney movies to iTunes music store.
"This is the next logical step in (Disney's) continuing efforts to reach the music consumer directly," Bob Cavallo, chairman of Disney's Buena Vista Music Group said in a statement. "We're happy to be in business with Apple."
The deal will be exclusive to iTunes through September 30, 2004.
Research company Ipsos-Insight's latest digital music behavior study dubbed as TEMPO found that American P2P users are getting more and more excited about movies and music videos than previously. According to the study, in the last quarter of 2003, 21 percent of American downloaders aged 12 years or more had downloaded at least one full-length movie from the Net.
The study, which is concluded quarterly, found that age group of 18-to-24 are, rather unsurprisingly, most interested in downloading movies -- 37 percent of them had downloaded a movie during the survey period of three months.
The movie industry has somewhat predicted the trend that is getting more and more popular as the people's available storage space and Net connection speeds improve. The industry has set up various Net-only distribution channels in the States, most notably the MovieLink service and hopes to avoid the same kind of situation that has faced the music industry. The music industry seems unable to find a decent source of income to replace the falling CD sales figures.
Even though the former P2P service Napster has long been burried, and even resurrected in the format of a legal online music store, Bertelsmann AG (BMG) is still haunted by its investment in the company four years ago.
On April 27 BMG will return to court to face a lawsuits brought against the company by music labels and publishers. The lawsuits claim that by funding Napster BMG kept the peer-to-peer network running for an extra eight months which resulted in damages of $17 billion to the industry in lost sales. That's $71 million per day.
According to BMG the investments in Napster were made in hopes of turning the site into a legal, licensed service, and the claims made by the plaintiffs will prove difficult to win.
Many plaintiffs are accusing Bertelsmann of "tertiary infringement", which means that they see that by funding Napster Bertelsmann legitimized the service, and opened the Pandora's box that is still releasing new peer-to-peer services today.
The DVD transcoding software industry is not out of business, even though the double layer drives are slowly penetrating the market and increasing the capacity of a recordable DVD.
InterVideo has demonstraded an updated DVD Copy v2 version with DVD+R DL support. The new version features 25% faster encoder speed and adds a Multiple DVD Merging feature. This enables the users to squeeze multiple videos on a single disc. This is especially useful for DVD+R DL as the increased capacity can store two full length movie titles with decent video quality.
InterVideo®, Inc. (NASDAQ: IVII), a pioneer in advancing DVD and MPEG-related software technologies, announced today that Double Layer DVD+R burning capabilities will be implemented in the upcoming DVD Copy 2 Platinum Double Layer edition. InterVideo is demonstrating this Double Layer DVD+R burning technology at Retail Vision, which is being held at the Hotel Rey Juan Carlos in Barcelona, Spain, April 20-22, 2004.
DVD Copy 2 Platinum is InterVideo's latest release of its award-winning three-step software for making identical copies of personal unencrypted* DVD and CD videos for sharing or to protect them from damage or loss. Double Layer DVD+R (DVD+R DL ) technology virtually doubles the storage capacity on DVD-recordable discs from 4.7GB to 8.5GB while remaining compatible with existing DVD Video players and DVD-ROM drives. With the new DVD+R DL support, InterVideo DVD Copy 2 Platinum customers will be able to record 4 hours of DVD-quality video or 16 hours of VHS-quality video on a single side of a DVD+R DL disc.
The huge archive of independent bands that once were hosted at MP3.com will be returning online. The MP3.com domain name was sold to CNET Networks last year, but the music archive of the site was acquired by TruSonic, a former division of MP3.com. On Tuesday GarageBand announced that it has partnered with TruSonic, and will be bringing the MP3.com archive back online.
Former MP3.com members can transfer their accounts to GarageBand at http://www.mp3isback.com/ or http://www.garageband.com/mp3transfer. Members can store up to three tracks for free, with each additional song costing $6.99. For a one-time fee of $99, members can have an unlimited storage space.
Don't forget to visit our very own MP3Lizard.com for absolutely free storage space for your band!
Recording Industry Association of America has announced that they have withdrawn their amnesty offer for P2P pirates who confess their "sins".
RIAA announced the amnesty offer back in September, 2003. The deal offered an amnesty from RIAA's prosecution if P2P pirates confessed to the RIAA their copyright infringements and also signed a contract where they promised not to participate in illegal file sharing ever again. However, the offer raised quite lot criticism from various organizations, namely from the EFF, as it didn't grant a full amnesty -- individual record labels were still allowed to sue the person who signed an amnesty deal even that the RIAA itself wouldn't sue them. Organization was also sued in California over the amnesty offer -- California resident sued the organization, claiming that the offer consituted as a fraudulent business practice as RIAA can't have powers where it could offer an actual amnesty in the courtrooms for people who signed amnesty contracts.
"The RIAA has concluded that the program is no longer necessary or appropriate, and has voluntarily withdrawn it," the RIAA's lawyers told. According to the RIAA, 1108 people opted for the amnesty deal and it plans to honor their contracts.
One of the most anticipated milestones in our site's life cycle has been reached, when the 100,000th user registered to our site today. Since we remove inactive user accounts on a regular basis, we actually do have one hundred thousand active users on our site!
As we are preparing for our 5th anniversary at AfterDawn.com, we would like to take the opportonity to thank loyal users for encouraging us to continue developing and updating our site on a daily basis. Hopefully we will be able to reach the 200,000 user milestone soon!
If you haven't got one yet, you can easily create yourself a free AfterDawn.com account. In addition to allowing you to comment on all of these fabulous news items, you can use your account to post to our forums, subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and access all the software items on our site!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has expressed its concerns over two anti-piracy bills introduced in California. According to EFF the bills would dramatically impact Internet users' rights to privacy and anonymity.
California Assembly Bill 2735 and Senate Bill 1506 would require anyone who knowingly disseminates commercial recorded or audiovisual material over the Internet to mark it with his or her name and address or face a possible one-year prison sentence.
"These California anti-anonymity bills would force everyone - including children - to put their real names and addresses on all the files they trade, regardless of whether the files actually infringe copyrights," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Because the bills require Internet users to post personally identifying information, they fly directly in the face of policy goals and laws that prevent identity theft and spam and protect children and domestic violence victims."
For example, the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) forbids collection of personally identifiable information from children online without parental consent.
"This bill creates criminal liability for sharing a single song or even a portion of a song or movie, but leaves no space for fair uses such as commentary, criticism, parody or educational uses of works," said EFF Activist Ren Bucholz. "This bill is supposed to stop piracy, but it may be the most ineffective and harmful method yet proposed."
Music and movie industry, namely Vivendi's two subsdiaries Universal Music Group and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, have developed an open source software called Automated Copyright Notice System(or ACNS) that should allow administrators of campus networks to better monitor and restrict their traffic. The first ACNS system will be implemented at University of California at Los Angeles which has one of the largest number of students in the United States.
The system basically tries to automate the DMCA(American copyright legislation) process -- the ACNS-compliant DMCA complaint notifications will contain XML tags that will automatically launch the ACNS process, using network admins parameters and possibly blocking the infringing IP address from using P2P services or the whole network. For universities and other large organizations the system is tempting as according to the DMCA legislation they have to act within a rather short period of time -- and if they fail to do so, they're open to litigation themselves as well.
It is highly likely that the system will raise some serious privacy concerns and also "false positives", if the network admins simply allow the software to block users from the Net without bothering to check whether they did something wrong or not. Imagine spam emails with ACNS tags...
When the latest version of the LAME 3.96 MP3 encoder was released, there were reports on various websites, including this one, that the version is potentially buggy. In order to set things straight we decided to ask one of the main developers Gabriel Bouvigne about the new version.
What is your standpoint in the quality differeces in between versions?
Psychoacoustic encoders are not binary things. It is not "it works" or "it doesn't work".It is perfectly normal to encounter regressions on some samples while there are improvements on other ones. What is important is the global situation.
Regarding quality of 3.90.3 vs 3.96, I am still not able to clearly know which one is better. Around 128kbps (ABR) some people are preferring 3.90.3 and some other 3.96 for the same samples
Regarding quality, I would like to add something: Several people are assuming that since 3.96 is quite faster than old versions, we are favoring speed over quality. This is totally false. We did not simplify the psychoacoustic model at all. All the speed improvements are purely algorithmic improvements. We think that an encoder should also be as fast as possible, and that speed is an important factor regarding encoder choice.
After Apple askedSourceForge to remove PlayFair from their site, the software quickly found a new home at SourceForge's Indian counterpart Sarovar.org. It did not take too long, however, for Apple to do the same thing with Sarovar.
According to the release in Sarovar forums, Apple's lawyers contacted the site and requested for PlayFair to be removed immediately.
PlayFair uses a so-called "analog hole" in order to make DRM-free copies of purchased iTunes tracks.
Real Networks has reportedly contacted Apple several times in hopes of getting a foothold in both the Apple iTunes music store, and the iPod portable player.
Real CEO Rob Glaser has warned Apple, that sticking to its current policy might endanger Apple's position in the long run, and give "Microsoft friendly" music stores an edge. While Real's Rhapsody service uses the same AAC format as Apple is using at iTunes, only songs bought from iTunes can be played with the iPod player. That's because Apple doesn't license its DRM technology to third parties.
With Apple having a strong presence with iPod and iTunes, and Microsoft pushing its own DRM protected Windows Media technology to content providers, it seems that Real is quite desperate to find allies.
Sony and TOPPAN PRINTING have announced that they've managed to develop a Blu-Ray -compliant optical disc made out of paper. Companies plan to announce specific details at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference later this month.
The disc structure is 51 percent made out of paper and thus allows, according to TOPPAN, "high level of artistic label printing" and also is very easy to destroy as it can be cut exactly like normal, although slightly thicker, paper. A Blu-Ray disc can hold appx. 25 gigabytes on a single layer, single-sided disc and the format has been available already for over a year now. The format is backed by the major consumer electronics companies, but faces stiff competition from other emerging optical disc standards that also utilize blue-laser technology rather than the more traditional red laser technology used in CDs and DVDs.
The mother of all publicly owned broadcasters, the British BBC, is planning and experimenting with the idea of offering their radio shows as downloadable MP3 files. BBC has so far offered an access to its shows via corporation's own streaming audio software that allowed listening upto a week old shows over the Net.
The first shows that BBC has set available in MP3 format are a series of lectures by a Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka -- not exactly something that you would call a smash hit among the general audience, but a sign that the BBC is serious about the online distribution. It is, however, very unclear whether the music industry allows BBC to start offering any concerts, etc in MP3 format -- not to mention the fact that BBC is planning to offer the content for free.
Loudeye, a long-time digital music company, has set up a new service called IndieSource that basically acts as a middle-man between indie record labels and online music stores, such as íTunes. The demand is clear -- quarter of American music sales are for indie labels' artists and currently all of the online music stores have focused their attention to five major record labels, mostly ignoring the niche players. Already several indie labels have signed up to Loudeye's service and company seems to be optimistic about its outlook.
To ensure its position in upcoming global wave of online music services (iTunes and other services are mostly available to U.S. only), Loudeye also signed a contract with Indian company called Saregama that represents over half of India's recorded music. Under the terms of contract, Loudeye has rights to distribute Saregama's music to online music stores around the world.
Not surprisingly, Nokia is launching an updated and improved version of the N-Gage gaming console. The QD comes with the same basic features, but the developers have tackled some of the biggest problems of the original version.
First of all, you now don't have to disassemble the whole unit in order to change a game. The device should also have a quick launch button for the game. Also the funny looking 'side talking' is now history, meaning that one can hold the phone normally while talking. The QD also has some hardware changes: The display panel is a new component, but N-Gage is limited to 4096 colors in the driver layer. The vibrating alarm can now be used as an effect in games, similar to Sony Dual-Shock controllers. The device is also slightly smaller.
More information and pictures of the new design: N-Gage.com
Man from Illinnois, U.S. has pleaded guilty to copyright infringement in Los Angeles court yesterday in so-called Oscar screener case. Russel Sprague, 51, distributed over 200 pirated movie copies, that he had made from screener tapes and DVDs, over the Internet. He got most of his movies from his friend, former actor Carmine Caridi.
The case was brought against these two men in January after copies of four movies sent out to Academy members as screener tapes were traced back to Caridi. Caridi stated that he didn't have any idea that Sprague intended to make copies of the movies, but claims instead that he thought Sprague was simply a big-time movie fan. Charges against Caridi were dropped, but he was kicked out of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that hands out the annual Oscars.
Screeners are pre-release video or DVD copies of new movies that are sent out to press, movie reviewers, rental chains and people who are eligible to vote for Oscars and other movie industry awards.
Microsoft has settled a lawsuit over DRM patents with InterTrust Technologies for $440m. With the payment Microsoft resolves all outstanding litigation between the companies, and licenses InterTrust technology for use within Microsoft products.
The license makes it possible for Microsoft to really start pushing for DRM protected content. The deal includes end users using Microsoft products, but third-party software manufacturers still need to license DRM technology from InterTrust for their products.
InterTrust, partly owned by Sony and Philips, filed its intellectual property lawsuit against Microsoft in 2001. According to InterTrust Microsoft started implementing technologies covered by InterTrust's patents shortly after it had demonstrated its technologies to Microsoft. Microsoft denied the charges until last summer, when it begun license negotiations with InterTrust.
Macrovision Corporation announced today that Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has signed a multi-year contract to copy protect all of its worldwide DVDs and videocassettes.
“Twentieth Century Fox is truly a leader in intellectual property protection. We deeply respect the significant commitment that Fox is making to protect the long term value of their content,” said Steve Weinstein, executive vice president and general manager of Macrovision’s Entertainment Technology Group. “With millions of DVD recordable devices entering the market and other digital set-top boxes and personal video recorders gaining hold, Macrovision’s video copy protection technology continues to be the most widely deployed and most reliable way to protect unauthorized copying of PPV, VOD and pre-recorded media.”
Macrovision’s technology is designed to allow consumers to transparently view original programming on all types of TV sets, but prevents unauthorized copying on DVD recorders, hard drive recorders and VCRs. The majority of hard drive recorders and home media center PCs recognize Macrovision’s technology and either disable recording of copy-protected content or record an encrypted copy that can only be played on the machine it was recorded on, thereby inhibiting unauthorized Internet file sharing.
Latest LAME MP3 Encoder comes with a lot of internal changes, but hold your horses as the version released as version 3.96 stable introduced a serious bug. According various members of the Hydrogenaudio.org community, the 3.96 causes audible drop outs to the signal.
However, it has not been determined yet how often this problem does occur. It could even be an isolated case with a single test sample. However, I would recommend to wait for a few more days so that we can see more test results and determine the quality of this release
RCA has announced that it will start shipping DVD players in the United States that will automatically censor offensive language, nudity, violence and other "offensive" content from DVDs that are played with the device. Retail giants Wal-Mart and Kmart will sell the players for $79.
Technology is based on content censoring technology developed by an American company called Clearplay. They've developed a database that contains time/frame database of over 500 movies and flags that mark the offensive material for each of the DVD in the database. The player will recognize the movie and automatically skip or "bleep" over offensive material when played. It is not known whether the devices are capable of updating their movie databases via Net connection or by other means in order to censor the new movies as well.
Clearplay -- as well as several other censoring technology companies -- has been sued by major Hollywood studios and directors. Directors say that such methods where a device alters a movie that they've created, without director's permission, violates against their intellectual property rights and destroys the artistic vision the director has created to the movie. It is obviously time to ask whether it would make sense not to purchase movies that have rating other than G(general audiences) in the first place if the buyer is not prepared to see anything other than "G" rated material.
Apple has sent a DMCA camplaint to SourceForge.net, a very popular open source development site, asking the site to remove immediately the PlayFair software from their site.
PlayFair, as we reported couple of days ago, uses a so-called "analog hole" in order to make DRM-free copies of purchased iTunes tracks.
Apple complained to SourceForge that the software was in violation of DMCA's section 1201(a)(2) that makes it illegal to distribute tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanism.
Fans of Microsoft's flagship console, the Xbox 360, will receive a new dashboard update on May 7th. One of the major improvements of this update is the integration with the Windows Live Messenger program. Thats right, 360 users will be able to go global and chat with PC and Windows Mobile users from around the world. Microsoft officials are stated this will be a marriage of over 20 billion potential relationships.
Once the free update is downloaded and updated on the system, users will be able to chat with the messenger program via either a USB keyboard or a virtual on-screen keyboard. Announced to be released later this summer will be a QWERTY type device that connects directly to the Xbox 360 controller for chat capabilities on the fly. Available immediately upon launch will be a melding of Xbox Live accounts and Windows Live Messenger accounts, giving gamers the ability to instantly see if their other friends have gamertags.
"Bringing the largest IM community in the world, Windows Live Messenger, to Xbox 360 makes sense, as Xbox Live has really become the largest social network on television," commented Jerry Johnson, product unit manager of Xbox Live at Microsoft. "For our growing community of 6 million on Xbox Live, using Xbox 360 is a very social, connected experience. They are using Xbox 360 to play games, music and movies while simultaneously communicating with one another through video, voice and text chat. With this announcement we are simultaneously expanding the access of Xbox Live users to existing friends and family while introducing Windows Live Messenger users to the benefits of Xbox 360."
Email worm Netsky.Q variant has managed to bring down the websites hosting eDonkey2000 and eMule at www.edonkey2000.com and www.emule-project.net. The worm has also brought down two piracy sites at www.cracks.st and www.cracks.am. The only site that has managed to survice the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is Kazaa homepage at www.kazaa.com.
The eDonkey website is available at eDonkey2000.com, and the eMule-project is currently available at an alternative address -- www.eMule-Project.org. Of course not too many would think of trying the second-level domain name without the third-level part, www.
According to the F-Secure virus information page the Netsky.Q work will be performing its DDoS attack between April 7th and 12th, 2004.
While Apple iTunes, Roxio's Napster and other online music stores are still offering a lot of single track downloads at 99 cents a piece, and full albums at $9.99, the prices on new releases have already went above the prices of new CDs.
For instance N.E.R.D.'s new album Fly or Die costs $16.99 at iTunes, and $13.99 at Napster. For comparison you can purchase the album on CD for $13.49 at Amazon.com.
The driving force behind the changes to the price structure are the five major record labels that provide the licenses to online music stores. The single track download prices on hot new releases might be boosted to anywhere from $1.25 to $2.49 per song. Some labels are very eager to lift prices, while the others realize that at the current stage raising prices would make little difference in revenues, but would definitely drive customers away rather than lure them in to explore new technologies.
One has to hope that the record industry has the patience to let the industry grow, and maybe even try and find ways to offer discounts and great deals to loyal customers. It doesn't take an analyst to predict that a 150 per cent increase to prices would deal a huge blow on the sales. And it doesn't take a legal expert to see the blame eventually being cast on peer-to-peer networks and Internet music piracy.
Taiwan's government-sponsored digital video standard, FVD(forward versatile disc), has been released officially today by the country's Industrial Technology Research Institute(ITRI).
The new format will add more confusion to the already crowded digital video standard jungle. The specifications of the new disc use traditional red laser, just like CDs and DVDs do, and the two released formats will feature storage space of 6GB for single-layer disc and 11GB for a dual-layer disc. Its difficult to understand what the format tries to achieve, as China has already released their blue laser -based EVD specs, DVD Forum is trying to figure out final pieces in their upcoming HD-DVD puzzle and Blu-Ray is already available in various markets as a blue laser product with storage capacity of 25GB and more. As a comparison, traditional single-layer DVDs hold 4.38GB of data, only appx. 1.6GB less than the Taiwanese standard does.
However, ITRI claims that it has a support of Microsoft for its standard and plans to roll out FVD-based players and other products to store shelves by the end of this year.
In a recent interview with Andy Parsons, chair of the U.S. promotion committee for the Blu-ray Disc Association, details of the next-gen Blu-ray players were addressed to curb concerns of current Blu-ray player owners. The major topic of discussion was the inclusion of all next-gen Blu-ray players to utilize the BD-Java programming language which will be standard for interactive menus and content on all disks released after October 31, 2007.
Parsons stressed that from day one, all Blu-ray players were built with BD-Java compatability, however most disk publishers have not utilized its functions to its potential. Such noted Blu-ray titles as "Chicken Little" and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" do currently use BD-Java in their menus as well as provide the user with interactive games. Parsons stated that current Blu-ray owners will not have to worry about next-generation disks which use this format to be any problem for their current generation players.
There are a few other specifications coming to the Blu-ray lineup as well. All players produced after October 31 must meet these requirements.
Specifications of note are the increase in storage to a minimum of 256Mb while BD-Live capable players must have at least 1Gb. BD-Live is an Internet connected service that allows the user to download additional content directly to their Blu-ray player. Additionally, all players must support the picture-in-picture capability, connected through a secondary video stream as well as support for secondary audio for audio mixing. Audio mixing will enable users to enable sounds from within the player to interact with the media's soundtrack.
Ever wanted to know if your audio CD is actually made from an original source? In many countries pirated copies are sold as original, and the music material might have been transferred in a lossy compressed format at some point. Now a new interesting software tool has emerged, which will help you to determine the originals and compressed copies.
auCDtect - is a program for determining the authenticity of musical CD records, using the character of the audio information it contains, and predict its possible source is it an original studio record or a reconstruction from a lossy encoded data (for example, MP3).
Jon Lech Johansen, who has become world famous for originally cracking the CSS protection of the DVD movies, has made yet another decryption tool.
"The playfair program is quite simple," according to the README. "It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File. It then optionally copies the metadata tags that describe the song, including the cover art, to the new file."
Even though it seems virtually impossible to securely protect digital audio, the Apple Corp. doesn’t give up. According to the source, a patent application by Apple implies that they are developing a new DRM method of their own.
Microsoft and Time Warner have made substantial new investments in digital rights management (DRM) company ContentGuard, the company announced Monday.
ContentGuard develops content protection technologies, and holds several patents that have been licensed by, for instance, Microsoft and Sony. Its technologies have also been adapted by several content delivery companies, including Zinio, which provides technologies to deliver identical digital versions of newspapers and other print magazines.
ContentGuard technology originated from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Time Warner, Microsoft, and ContentGuard now own substantially all of the company, with Xerox retaining a small equity interest in the company.
Microsoft and Time Warner have not commented on the possible uses of ContentGuard's technology. According to ContentGuard, the companies will co-operate to extend the DRM license portfolio offered by ContentGuard.
Minister of Canadian Heritae, Hélène Scherrer promised on Friday that changes will be made to the Canadian copyright law. The changes would make it illegal to download music for free from the Internet.
Both the federal court and the Copyright Board of Canada have ruled that sharing and downloading files on peer-to-peer networks is not illegal by Canadian law.
The rulings caused an instant turmoil in the Canadian music industry. They felt that the rulings would in effect destroy the industry, and the livelihood of Canadian artists. However the Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm, for example, feels quite differently about the whole P2P issue.
"Whether people download or not, as long as they're listening to music," Malcolm said. "I think it's a challenge for the industry, to try and find a new way to survive."
It remains to be seen what kind of changes, if any, will be made to the law.
The Blu-Ray format may get major hardware support from Sony as their recent comments might suggest that BD-ROM is used in the Playstation 3.
According to a report by Asahi PC magazine, Sony may be considering using Blu-ray Disc (BD-ROM) technology in the PlayStation 3. The news comes from an interview that the magazine conducted with Kiyoshi Nishitani, Sony's management director in charge of Blu-ray Disc development and next-generation home electronics. In his interview about the future business strategies for Blu-ray Discs, Nishitani commented, "We'd like to establish a ground by adopting read-only BD-ROMs for a home video game console."
Ahead Software jumps on the dual layer bandwagon. According to their press release, their techniques optimize the recording process and the layer break. Ahead however is not the first to make such claims, as we already saw similar technologies announced by the Sonic Solutions in their product line.
Nero's LayerMagic(TM) effectively decreases the amount of time required to master a DL DVD by automatically distributing video content equally between the two layers in order to simplify the final layout in the recording process. If the "padding" recording process is used in which filler content, not actual video data, is recorded to even out the data on both layers, there is high risk of creating incompatible discs. Nero Layer Magic(TM) however avoids padding by distributing the content between the two layers in equal parts, ensuring that the second layer is already in a compatible state at the end of the recording process which greatly reduces recording time.
Nero SmoothPlay(TM) automatically modifies video content written to the end of the DVD so that delays in playback are reduced to an absolute minimum. The process of switching from one layer to another takes a considerable amount of time as the drive needs to refocus its laser to the second layer as well as perform any seeking operation necessary to find the beginning of the data on layer two. Due to that, many badly mastered DVD-Video media will cause the player to interrupt playback at or shortly before switching layers. Nero SmoothPlay(TM) avoids these problems by coding detailed instructions into the DVD's navigation data, making most DVD Players perform the caching and playback optimization necessary to prevent playback distortion. When applying the unique Nero SmoothPlay(TM) algorithm, the optimum layer break location for both new and pre-mastered DVD-Video content will be detected by analyzing video signal and navigation structures, ensuring maximum compatibility with standalone DVD players as well as the smallest possible delay in switching from one layer to another when playing back mastered video content
A new P2P boom has began to spread on the super-fast Internet2, the research network used by several universities around the world. The network can't be accessed directly by any of the regular ISPs, but is still available for most of the students who have broader Net access rights on universities with Internet2 connections.
Much hyped promotional deal between Pepsi and Apple that included 100 million free iTunes download codes hidden in Pepsi bottle caps seems to have failed rather miserabely. The promotional deal ends tomorrow and according to Apple, only 5 million free songs have been redeemed.
Apple released a new major version of its popular iTunes software that allows purchases via iTMS music store, aiming to change the authentication method of iTunes' songs that was broken previously by hackers who wished to incorporate iTunes support to various applications. Now, just 24 hours after the release of new version, v4.5, the new authentication scheme seems to be cracked again.
