Culture and Society

There is some truth to the accusation from some anti-war partisans that those who argue for the War on Terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular – myself included – think only in generalities and don’t pay enough attention to the very real human beings fighting and …

If these guys can get access to “millions” of songs, why is it that none of the authorized digital music services in the U.S. have been able to do better than a few-hundred -thousand? It sounds like the pubs are the place to be, luv: Internet terminals offering instant access …

New vocal technology called Vocaloid: Developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else’s) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as …

Politics play a critical role in how medical patients are treated. Cultural norms and the politics that implement those norms determine even what is considered a treatable medical condition in the first place. Nowhere has the politics of medicine been more evident over the last century than in the treatment …

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an anti-spam bill today: Online marketers who flood e-mail in boxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes would face multimillion dollar fines and jail time under the measure. It passed by a vote of 392-5 at dawn on Saturday, following an all-night session of the …

Wouldn’t the answer to this be to remove the tags at point of purchase just like they do with shoplifting sensors now? Why is it all or nothing? The use of radio tags on consumer products should be put on hold, say a number of consumer, privacy and civil liberties …

I find it amazing how quickly “Google” has become synonymous with with “web search.” For me, it’s as simple as Google was the first search engine to really work. When I was researching The Encyclopedia of Record Producers in the late-’90s, especially the discography database part of it, I used …

Kazaa is urging P2P users to pressure content providers lke the RIAA to license to them: There is a revolution underway which is changing the world of entertainment. It will effect how you discover, buy and share songs, movies, games and ideas. Peer-to-peer technology is driving the revolution and it …

Our own Brian Dear was featured in the NY Times yesterday for the smackdown he laid on former Red Herring publisher Tony Perkins: Evisceration is not pretty, especially on the Internet, where the verbal slicing and dicing can be done before a potential audience of millions. Which is pretty much …

No, not Christina, the other one. Paris weeps: “I feel embarrassed and humiliated, especially because my parents and the people who love me have been hurt,” the socialite and reality TV actress said Monday in a statement to The Associated Press. “I was in an intimate relationship and never, ever …