Steve Jobs on the future of DRM...

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Hitachi has reached a milestone in tech's continuing arms race, announcing today that it will sell the first 1-terabyte hard drive.

It finally happened.

TECH CHRONICLES / A daily dose of postings from the Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)

When I started interviewing programmers in 1991, I would generally let them use any language they wanted to solve the coding problems I gave them. 99% of the time, they chose C.

Nowadays, they tend to choose Java.

Now, don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with Java as an implementation language.

...

Instead what I'd like to claim is that Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers. It may be a fine language to work in, but that's not today's topic. I would even go so far as to say that the fact that Java is not hard enough is a feature, not a bug, but it does have this one problem.

The Perils of JavaSchools - Joel on Software

Intel was first out of the gate with a quad-core processor, AMD will offer the first native quad-core chip - four processors that are integrated in one piece of silicon. The company today offered a first glimpse at a 4-way, quad-core Opteron processor system during its annual analyst conference.

AMD demonstrates first native quad-core CPU | TG Daily

Vista's fun run-in with CableCARD started earlier this year when we all found out at CES that they had every intention to finally make Windows (specifically Vista Home Premium and Ultimate) work with your CableCARD setup.

Analog video capture is sounding better and better!

Vista unable to stream, convert CableCARD media - Engadget

Wow!

What I want for Christmas

Honda Motor wants to persuade Americans to trade in their gasoline-fueled cars for diesel.

Over the weekend, Honda unveiled a new diesel engine that it says burns as cleanly as a gasoline one, and with about 25 percent higher mileage. The company said it hoped to start selling cars in the United States with the new engines as early as 2009.

Honda pins U.S. hopes on diesel technology - Business - International Herald Tribune

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) is developing graphics cards with fully published specs and open source drivers.

Wow ... folks finally got so fed up with nvidia that they're building their own card!

Open-Graphics

The OpenDNS team is improving the safety and speed of the Domain Name System, a fundamental building block of the Internet.

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS

So-called domain tasting is one of the more unpleasant developments in the domain business in the past year. Domain speculators are registering millions of domains without paying for them, in a business model not unlike running a condiment business by visiting every fast food restaurant in town and scooping up all of the ketchup packets.

In Bad Taste