What's a music-download fan to do -- actually pay for music?

If it comes to that, they'll find that a lot has changed in the online music business.

These rental-music outfits are highly conducive to exploring and discovering new music. They're ideal if your taste leans toward what one Internet wag calls Disposable Contemporary.

Britney to Rent, Lease or Buy

Aug. 16 - Last year a Chinese mathematician, Xiaoyun Wang, shook up the insular world of code breakers by exposing a new vulnerability in a crucial American standard for data encryption. On Monday, she was scheduled to explain her discovery in a keynote address to an international group of researchers meeting in California.

But a stand-in had to take her place, because she was not able to enter the country. Indeed, only one of nine Chinese researchers who sought to enter the country for the conference received a visa in time to attend.

"It's not a question of them stealing our jobs," said Stuart Haber, a Hewlett-Packard computer security expert who is program chairman for the meeting, Crypto 2005, being held this week in Santa Barbara. "We need to learn from them, but we are shooting ourselves in the foot."

A policy designed to protect national security by preventing tecchnology transfer from the US to China has actually hurt national security by preventing technology transfer from China to the US. If you know someone at State tell them to read this article. This matter is very serious and they should have made an exception in this case and gotten the visas in time.

Chinese Cryptologists Get Invitations to a US Conference, but No Visas

Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. It's a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnod's intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.

Gnod Music: Discover new bands and artists. Let gnod find out what music you like and what you don't like.

Gnod Books: Get to know new authors and find out what other people like you like to read.

Gnod Movies: Discover new movies, travel the world of film and discuss it all in the forums.

The music map is cool, but it works best in Internet Explorer.

Gnod - The global network of dreams

The rest of the Beethoven symphonies will be broadcast and posted this week. Listen while you read the Grokster decision.

Symphony 6 will be broadcast on Monday 27th June, and available to download from Tuesday 28th June to Monday 4th July.

Symphony 7 will be broadcast on Tuesday 28th June, and available to download from Wednesday 29th June to Tuesday 5th July.

Symphony 8 will be broadcast on Wednesday 29th June, and available to download from Thursday 30th June to Wednesday 6th July.

Symphony 9 will be broadcast on Thursday 30th June, and available to download from Friday 1st July to Thursday 7th July.

BBC - Radio 3 - Beethoven Experience - downloads

This is an experiment in using wiki, a relatively new form of Internet interactivity, to bring readers into the process of forming and expressing editorial opinions. "Public Beta" is just a euphemism for "We're just trying this out. Please forgive any problems and give us suggestions for improvement."

I really don't think this is going to work. This is an idea whose time hasn't come.

Welcome to the Los Angeles Times Wikitorial Page (Public Beta)

Read your Neal, you geek!

It's not every day that Neal Stephenson writes an op-ed.

In the spring of 1977, "Star Wars" wasn't famous yet. The only people who had heard about it were what are now called geeks.

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out

Acidus gives Elonka a run for the money. Way to go Acidus!

How scary. And how refreshing.

Make, a new quarterly put out by O'Reilly Media, is a throwback to an earlier time, before personal computers, to the prehistory of geekiness - the age of how-to manuals for clever boys, from the 1920's to the 50's.

The technology has changed, but not the creative impulse. Make's first issue, out in February, explained how to take aerial photographs with a kite, a disposable camera and a rig of Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Silly Putty. It also showed how to build a video-camera stabilizer - a Steadicam, basically - with $14 worth of steel pipes, bolts and washers; how to boost a laptop computer's Wi-Fi signal with foil from an Indian take-out restaurant; and how to read credit card magnetic stripes with a device made with mail-order parts and a glue gun.

Congratulations to Acidus on being the first MemeStreams user to make the New York Times op-ed page. And on a Sunday, no less! (14:59, 14:58, 14:57, ...)

A New Magazine's Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty!

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based US Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

"What's changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you. This gets to the importance of the war of ideas."

I'm very happy to see an approach like this to the WoT.

Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Effort

"If everyone else is putting out horrible CD's," he said, "why not buy something from people with taste you more or less trust?"

Little-Known Bands Get Lift Through Word-of-Blog

This book was published in March by Brookings Press. Excerpts from the first chapter:

Movable type presses were available in China as early as the eleventh century, but they were little used and had essentially no influence. The European invention of the printing press transformed Europe because Europe was ready to be transformed.

We are now, potentially, at a similar turning point. Information technology may once again be poised to transform politics and identity. If the print revolution made possible the nation-state system and eventually national democracy, where might the digital revolution lead us? Can it help us create new, and possibly better, ways of running the world?.

This is an idea that I have a lot of interest in.

The Coming Democracy: New Rules for Running a New World