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Security

Submission + - VoIP and home security systems don't get along

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "There is an ongoing story that consumer VoIP services can cause your home security alarm system to malfunction or not work at all. A news article here, brought up the problem with customer phone systems in Canada who were using Primus but Vonage customers in the U.S have complained too. And a number of sites have popped up offering suggestions to help deal with the problem. The situation isn't all that surprising as the nature of VoIP has left other emergency services wanting — for example, e911. But still. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1152 3"
Media

Journal Journal: How does anyone listen to that garbage? 2

Journal by frankie

My efficient (but not trusty) Golf TDI went to the shop yesterday for brakes and a timing whatever, so the dealership gave me a loaner. I turned on the radio and saw that the buttons were set to a mix of "christian" talk and pop "music". I say music in quotes because, well, have you tried listening to any of these stations during rush hour? There is no music. Their various corporate owners (aka Clear Channel) uniformly decree that in order to save on royalty payments, there should not be any
Media

Submission + - File sharing does not impact album sales

Submitted by papafox_too
papafox_too writes: Prof. Joshua Gans' blog CoreEcon reports on an article in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Stumpf.



Now the issue here is that if an album is popular it will have higher downloads and higher sales. So what they need is a factor that would increase downloads without impacting on sales in US stores. Their idea is to look at the time German kids were on school holiday; something surely unrelated to US store demand. They also consider intrinsic issues with a song such as the difficulty one might have spelling it. To be an effective downloader requires good spelling. (Indeed, let's face it, the Internet has been a boon to getting kids to spell well).

Taking this into account they find that there is likely no effect of downloading on US store sales. The next thing for us to work out is, why?
Music

EMI May Sell Entire Collection as DRM-less MP3s 188

Posted by Zonk from the and-away-we-go dept.
BobbyJo writes "According to the Chicago Sun-Times, EMI has been pitching the possibility of selling its entire music collection to the public in MP3 form ... without Digital Rights Management protections. According to the article, several other major music companies have considered this same route, but none as far as EMI. The reasons, of course, have nothing to do with taking a moral stand; EMI wants to compete with Apple. 'The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today.'"
XBox (Games)

First 1080p Xbox 360 Games Announced 145

Posted by Zonk from the really-quite-shiny dept.
rwven writes "In the October firmware update to the Xbox 360, Microsoft added the capability for their new console to reach the coveted 1080 resolution. EA and Sega have both announced new titles that will reach that resolution, the first for the system. They're not the most visually intense games (NBA Street Homecourt, and Virtua Tennis 3), but this is another symptom of the tight race between all three consoles. Does this change the playing field at all between Sony and Microsoft?" Moreover, does the resolution of a title matter all that much to you yet? Do you have an HDTV that can even reach 1080p? If you do, does reaching 1080p make you more likely to buy a game?
Operating Systems

Submission + - Where Are Operating Systems Headed?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dr. Dobb's Michael Swaine breaks down the question of where operating systems are headed. Among his teasers: Is Vista the last version of desktop Windows? (Counterintuitively, he says no.); Did Linux miss it's window on the desktop? (Maybe.) And, most interestingly, are OSes at this point no longer necessary? Where do you weigh in on these Big 3 questions?
Handhelds

Submission + - The next-gen PDA?

Submitted by
Kieranties
Kieranties writes: "The BBC is reporting on the new Readius PDA (which has been in development for a while)due to be released in Italy. While the device does look like it could be the next thing in handheld ebooks, the specs still seem to be lacking. Yes it has 4gb of internal memory but would this be enough? Especially as there does not seem to be an expansion slot. Furthermore, the future looks towards producing screens with colour, but could this hike up the cost of something which already looks like it may end up being overpriced?"

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