The EU decided to retroactively extend copyright from 50 to 75 years, with no evidence that this was needed or useful. There has been very little discussion of the harm this causes, and what discussion there has been has focused on the world of rock and pop music. But it has an even more negative impact on classical music, especially old recordings of classical music. See the theguardian article: the festival bubble and the music copyright extension.

Well I’m not having much luck. Today, I lost a router. The short version is, as a result, the website was down for at least 4 hours that I’m sure of, maybe longer. I think I’ve got things cobbled together and everything appears to be working again, but this is sort of a temporary solution to keep me up and running. I’m going to have to give a long term solution some thought.

So this is a post about William and Kate’s wedding you aren’t likely to see anywhere else. If you saw William and Kate’s wedding (and who didn’t?) you heard some very nice music. One piece you heard was John Rutter’s “This is the Day”, written especially for the service. Fairly traditional, but with some nice little twists that made it just a bit different, just a bit more contemporary. Just what was it that gave it that slightly modern flavor?  [ Read More ]

Great article on why upload speed matters. While cable companies continue to advertise ever faster download speeds, upload speeds are not keeping pace, are seldom advertised and may be downright difficult to find listed in the fine print. It’s the two-way nature of the internet that is revolutionary, that we can be both content providers as well as content consumers, that keeps the internet from being just another TV/CD player/DVD player. See the article at App Rising.

The internet has been running out of addresses for some time now. Fortunately, IPv6 gives us 10 billion billion billion times as many as we had before. Yup, that’s about 5 X 10 to the 28th power addresses for each of the 6.5 billion people alive today. In practice they won’t all be used, the vast numbers allows more meaningful addresses, specialty address types (like multicast), and other refinements which allow more systematic and efficient routing of network traffic. See  [ Read More ]

“We’re going to need the rest of the world to bail us out.” So says Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor. See the article on Salon.

11% of Americans would be okay with implanting a device in their head that allowed them to directly access the Internet. See the article at Broadband Reports.com.

Now this is cool. This is the kind of real innovation that will eventually help with renewable energy, global warming, waste disposal issues, etc., instead of the fake, political “solutions” being touted these days. Scientists have succeeded in making a paper-thin, flexible and biodegradable battery. Wow! Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it offers huge improvements in portable electronic devices, from reduced weight to redesign unencumbered by today’s battery compartment limitations. Here’s the article at Ars Technica.

What’s hotter than an iPhone? iPhone domain names of course. June 26th was the 10 year anniversary of the classic Reno vs. ACLU Supreme Court opinion which successfully “removed” online censorship provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The New York Times has launched a new technology blog called Bits.

The 6th Circuit holds that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mails; “emails held by an Internet Service Provider [are] roughly analogous to sealed letters”; government must provide prior notice and opportunity to be heard. Download the ruling here. See the article at Broadband Reports.com.