Last week we called for questions for Roger Nygard, the director of Trekkies, and its recently released sequel. He replies today with answers to many of your questions in a riveting interview set to stun. Or some other appropriate trek joke. Read on for the glorious answers (which might include some offensive language in the form of lyrics from a Star Trek themed band)

HellSpam writes "MacNETv2 interviewed a man who is claiming the title of "King of the Pirates". The man has over 900,000 songs, a collection that rivals even the iTunes music store(!). From the article:"I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple's iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it's the journey not the destination.""

An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."

flackrum writes "NY Attorney General Spitzer has served subpoenas to four major record labels (UMG, BMG, EMI, WMG) in a continued house-cleaning of corporations employing dirty-tricks. In this particular group of cases, investigations are focusing on the circumvention of the Federal Payola Law, which forbids bribing radio broadcasters in return for airing specific songs. Mmm sweet karma."

wraggster writes "DCEvolution, a Dreamcast site that specializes in legal rom images and more specialist homebrew offerings has released the following: "Another classic music release from us! We offer you an updated image of Dream68 featuring over 1800 Amiga and AtariST songs in the sc68 format."

FuzzyBad-Mofo writes "On 8/24/2004, I took the plunge and bought a Rio Karma digital music player. My needs were simple: Decent storage capacity, Linux friendly, and Ogg Vorbis compatible. The Karma has a generous 20 GB capacity, decent battery life, is OS-agnostic, and plays a wide variety of file formats, including Ogg." Read on for the rest of FuzzyBad-Mofo's review.

VB writes "Boycott-RIAA is running Fred von Lohmann's article which looks like the ideal answer to solving the P2P problem. He suggests setting up a payment system similar to SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI, collecting organizations for songwriters. This seems such an obvious solution and a great way to get artists paid and give listeners the right to listen to their favorite songs cheaply and keep them out of jail. Why wouldn't this work?"

Puff writes "The song for the upcoming release of OpenBSD 3.6 is now official. Available as mp3 and ogg."

The 10 questions we sent Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser were selected from 37 that were moderated +5 about 24 hours after we posted the "call for questions" last week. As promised, Glaser answered them himself rather than through PR people, but since part of a CEO's job is to be his company's number one booster it's not surprising that his answers have a high PR component to them; yours would too if you were in his position.

An anonymous reader writes "I just stumbled upon Gnomoradio, a file sharing jukebox based on Creative Commons licenses. This program looks like a garage band's dream come true! It recommends songs based on each user's ratings, and has the capability to share them. Announced less than a year ago, the program has already made a great deal of progress, as can be seen from these screenshots. I downloaded the Debian package, and aside from a few interface quirks, the program works flawlessly. Is this the future of digital music, or should we be looking for something less centralized?"

An anonymous reader writes "Paul Thorrott reviews Windows Media Player 10 and notes that unlike Apple's iTunes Music Store, which offers music that is only compatible with Apple's iPod portable player, WMP 10 will work with songs from virtually any other online music store. There are more screenshots here with a download link." Reader Thomas Hawk writes "I wrote my Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Review today the first day the software was released and one of the first reviews on the product. I basically give it good marks but there are definiately some things that they can still improve upon." An anonymous reader writes "Since I'm somewhat wary of Microsoft's new software (particularly DRM-laden Media Player types,) I was paying attention to the EULA and privacy agreements provided when downloading the software. Ironically enough, the privacy page linked from the installer (at time of writing) merely said "TODO: Privacy policy goes here". Most certainly an honest mistake, but in the meantime it appears there is in fact no policy on privacy (or it has not yet been taken into consideration) in WMP10."

pbranes writes "Microsoft has opened their online music store today with 1 million songs and it will be officially opened tomorrow when Windows Media Player 10 is released. Music costs $0.99 and $9.90 for albums ($0.09 less than iTunes). Also, music is at a higher quality - 160kbps VBR. You can browse the site with Mozilla, however, ActiveX is required for full functionality so IE is required to use the store. Also, Microsoft takes a hit at Apple for not licensing iPod functionality to third parties (kind of ironic when ActiveX is required to use the site).... If you are an iPod owner already and unhappy about this policy, you are welcome to send feedback to Apple requesting that they change their interoperability policy."

An anonymous user writes, "Apple has launched an affiliate program for their iTunes music store that earns participants 5% commission. Affiliates can link directly to songs, albums, and artists, as well as apply to the Apple Store affiliate program to sell hardware. It costs nothing to join and people that sign up prior to September 15 can win one of five free iPod minis. Apple has also assembled a handy FAQ."

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has launched a volume discount program for iTunes. The program allows for volume purchases of songs for giveaways, incentives, and others. Seems like this is what is going on beyond straight licensing programs to universities like Florida State."

DominoTree writes "The RIAA, a trade group representing the U.S. music industry has filed a new round of lawsuits against 744 people it alleges used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs, it said on Wednesday."

Cryofan writes "Reuters is reporting that the Justice Dept. has raided the homes of 5 people in several states for trading music on p2p networks. The traders were, however, not arrested. 'P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,' Ashcroft said. The Reuters story says that the 5 'were people operating hubs in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software,' and who had provided between 'one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs.' 'They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen,' said Ashcroft."

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press recently reviewed many of the copyright infringement lawsuits that the RIAA filed against individuals charged with illegally sharing songs on P2P networks. According to the article over 800 of the targeted individuals have settled for approx. $3000 in fines. One man in California had to refinance his house to pay his $11,000 settlement. Many of the defendants are unwilling to face the possibility of even higher fines by fighting the suits in court despite the fact that it could resolve important questions about copyrights and the industry's methods for tracing illegal downloads. It seems that even some of the judges presiding over these cases question the RIAA's tactics. 'I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side,' said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who blocked the movement of a number of these cases in her courtroom for months. She wanted 'to make sure that no one, frankly, is being ground up.'"

PabloJones writes "Apple and Motorola have come together to create a new mp3-enabled cell phone, according to this Reuters article. It says that the device will be capable of storing about 12 songs, and will be fully integrated with iTunes. Perhaps this is a beginning of a new relationship between the two companies, after the PowerPC problems between the two in recent years."

alphakappa writes "According to Cnet, Real Networks is expected to announce on Monday that it has found a way to make its songs play on the iPod. Now songs bought from the RealPlayer Music Store can be played on the iPod. Earlier Real had made it possible for songs bought from iTunes to be played on RealPlayer by transparently starting the iTunes authentication in the background. However since Apple has not licensed the technology to make file formats playable on the iPod, the latest Real initiative could be construed as reverse engineering. How would this fare under the DMCA? Or is it just for the tiny ones?"

CWitz writes "I'll be honest: I'm not terribly technical. In fact, I'll probably have to get someone to help me add in the tags necessary to convert this review to readable HTML. But what I lack in technical skills, I more than make up in apprehension about the darker aspects of the internet. When I get an unexpected e-mail, I'm sure it's from some identity theft villain full of virtual lock picks just dying to snatch all my private information. John Bigg's new book Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age is an entertaining and educational book that provides me with more than enough information about how to protect my vulnerable computer." Read on for the rest of his review; it's not aimed at experts, but Scott makes it sound like a good read for the interested layman.