The lengths to which people will go to avoid admitting they were perhaps mistaken can be truly astonishing: I remember novelist Alice Walker raving hysterically about the “500,000 dead Iraqi children” that would result from this war. Knock off four zeros for margin of error and you were right on …

Is it better to have “access” and report a distorted version of the news from a totalitarian country such as the former Iraq, or is it better to withdraw, call the regime on its threats, and report the truth that you DO have? The only rationales for the former course …

Zack Rosen provides an invaluable, brilliant analysis of the file sharing systems developed by the four college students sued by the RIAA for $97.8 billion, which is way more than I made as a radio DJ when I was in college. In fact, slacker that I am, I have yet …

HITS Daily Double has the details of Don Ienner’s appointment to new Sony U.S. post: In an announcement that will surprise absolutely no one who’s been paying attention, recently appointed Sony Music Entertainment Chairman/CEO Andrew Lack has placed the crown on the head of Columbia Records Group Chairman Ienner, naming …

In a PW Daily interview, historian Niall Ferguson discusses his new book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. PWD: Can global empire be avoided? NF: I don’t think it’ll be possible for an even partial isolation. Globalization transforms economic and …

Rapper, rocker, actor Ice-T to sell new album via Kazaa: Users of the Kazaa Media Desktop software (www.kazaa.com) can purchase a downloadable version of Ice-T’s new album, Repossession, for $4.99. The album contains 19 tracks by his band, Sex Money & Gunz. Ice-T also plans to sell physical CDs from …

Rob Pegoraro reviews MusicNow: Buying music on the Internet isn’t as easy as you think. You can order a CD with one-click efficiency — but if you want to download a song instead of waiting for a plastic disc to arrive in the mail, you’ll face a maze of fine-print …

The results of a new survey on e-government reflect a common sense understanding of the Internet in general: the convenience is great, but there is concern about privacy and security issues: The report said that 49 percent of its general American population survey believe it is appropriate for the government …

Bill Gates now looking at Universal music: 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, …

First, read Michael Croft’s post here. I had a Latvian-born professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University – a brilliant, benign, sad, yet almost giddy man named Klive who saw ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” as the downfall of Western Civilization as we know it – who wrote the official philosophy of education …