British Beagle 2 probe builders seem to think so: In six months, the British interplanetary probe Beagle 2 will touch down on Mars and announce its arrival by playing nine digitized notes of a Blur song. The song was previously released as “Beagle 2” on the B-side to “No Distance …

This seems, uh, overbroad: If your company is thinking about delivering interactive video-on-demand cable-television programming or movies via satellite to consumers, maybe it’d better start thinking about paying royalties to Microsoft first. That’s because Microsoft has just been granted exclusive United States patent rights to a “networked interactive entertainment system” …

Wow, I guess creating an atmosphere where plagiarism and lying like Satan himself were tolerated is a pretty big deal after all: The New York Times announced today that Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor of The Times, has been named interim executive editor, assuming the responsibilities held by Howell Raines, …

Pearl Jam leaving Epic is potentially a VERY big deal – please check out my commentary on MSNBC.com: Bands come and go from record labels in a revolving door of euphoria and dejection, so when the news came out that Pearl Jam had fulfilled its contract and was leaving Epic …

Maybe my dad isn’t so crazy for printing out every flipping thing he does on the Internet, including email: Many of the kinds of documents that historians of prior wars, and of the Cold War, have taken for granted—memoranda, minutes, and the routine back-and-forth among assistant secretaries of state and …

This is funny: not like “funny ha ha,” but like “funny ironic” and “funny your weapons are useless against us, dickhead”: Plans to build security features into personal computers to make unauthorised digital copying more difficult could backfire by strengthening controversial peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, say US researchers. ….Security measures proposed …

Had broadband for a while? Taking it for granted? Does everything seem slow again? Coming: an entire movie in seconds: The Fast TCP system, designed by a team of researchers at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, runs on the same Internet infrastructure currently used but is designed to be …

The splendidly erudite, urbane, polymath, and wicked cool Ross the Bloviator, our fellow Blogcritic who speaks equally well on public health law and nocturnal jazz, has his ONE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY TOMORROW. All hail Ross and visit his site to heap praise and traffic upon him. I have spoken.

In an Esquire magazine interview published today, Phil Spector claims actress Lana Clarkson shot herself in his mansion in February: “She kissed the gun. I have no idea why — (I) never knew her, I never even saw her before that night … I have no idea who she was, …

Besdies being a cowardly murderer and indiscriminate terrorist of American men women and children, Eric Rudolph is a weak-assed peckerwood survivalist, according to a real survivalist: Accused serial bomber Eric Rudolph told his jailers that he survived five years in the wild on a diet [of] … Acorns, lizards and …