San Disk is announcing this week that they’ve actually talked record execs into selling high-quality, DRM free music on 1Gb microSD cards.  Can you believe it?  This is amazing to me on a number of levels, not the least of which is the fact that flash media is so cheap that it has become a suitable media for delivering music to customers.

But DRM-free and already on a microSD card?  Could this finally be the recording industry coming to grips with reality?  Naw, gotta be a misprint. . .

Sorry, headline of this article is an old tech geek joke. . . .

Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked into.  You know, the one she used to communicate official business whilst skirting document retention laws?  Yeah, that one.  And here’s the really funny bit.  Check out the McHacked-Failin ‘08 campaign’s reaction:

“This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law,” GOP presidential campaign manager Rick Davis said Wednesday in a written statement. “The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them.”

OIC. . .  So, cracking Sarah Palin’s clandestine gubinatorial email account was a violation of law because it’s a violation of privacy.  Except that there’s really no privacy with government communications, which is why she’s not supposed to be using that email account in the first place.  Right?

Now, I’m not suggsting that you should go rooting through what’s there, but I will say that if you did want to look, you’d better do it quick.

Actually, it looks like it might just be anti-trust.  No big whoop: the Bush Justice Department probably just wants to look like it’s doing something.

Google recently announced a deal with Yahoo! to provide advertisement on Yahoo!’s network, sharing the profits with the portal company.  This deal, should it be put into action, would make Google the soul source of 80% of all Internet advertising revenue.  That’s a fairly staggering figure that does make you wonder about the potential monopoly.

But what is genuinely amusing about all this is having Microsoft lawyers tsk-tsking over Google’s dominance in search and advertisement:

Microsoft also has objected to the deal, saying it would unfairly foreclose competition on the Web. In Senate hearings in July, Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith, testified that “if search is the gateway to the Internet, and most people believe that it is, this deal will put Google in position to own that gateway and the information that flows through it.”

Well, now. Ain’t that rich?  Basically, Microsoft objects to Google’s dominance primarily because they want to be the dominant company.  If anybody should be sued for anti-trust, it should be Microsoft.

If you haven’t had time to do so already, you should really check out Google Chrome, which promises to be the most significant new development in computer software in about ten years.  Personally, I’m not a big fan of adapting new technology right away, prefering instead to watch others scrape their knees while the kinks are worked out of the new system.  In this case, however, I’m inclined to maybe take the leap, just because this seems a genuinely new and different technology of which I’d like to be well-familiar by the time it reaches saturation.

What Google is not saying about this new app - but everybody else who knows a thing or two about computers is saying - is that Chrome is not really a browser at all: it’s a web-based application Operating System.  Chrome allows you to launch web apps directly from the desktop - like anything from Flickr’s photo managing to your WordPress blog.  It handles file downloads on its own, has an integrated search/url/bookmarks toolbar that seems at least as impressive as FireFox’s “Awesome Bar,” which I love.  In short, this application seems built around the idea that you can virtually bypass your current Operating System and file system to store and work with everything online, making Windows optional and Linux systems at least as viable.

All of this is fascinating, but think for a moment about the consequences.  Your ISP is looking to cap your downloads, which means even accessing your own stuff could cost extra money.  Telco giants - not just your local ISP - want extra money for all that surfing you do.  Meanwhile, Google itself has left privacy advocates steaming over it’s dealings with China, and the pressure to release sensitive information in the United States and elsewhere will become more and more difficult to resist as we continue to do more things online.

I don’t particularly have any perscriptions for any of this.  All I’m saying is that we need to pay much, much more attention to the Internet as a vital resource than our current political environment allows.  We need to forget that much of the traffic on the Internet is concerned with porn or Miley Cyrus and take this seriously.

The Department of Homeland “Security” gets it’s out of date PBX mail exchange telephone systems hacked, and the hacker procedes to make $12,000 worth of calls to the Middle East and Asia, presumably just to be a dick.

Now, two things about this worth remembering: first, this is a very, very old and very well-documented form of hacking that barely happens anymore in large companies because the PBX system is irrelevant with VoIP, which is the current state-of-the-art voice system.  So, not only are you as a tax payer paying for an outdated technology, but if DHS is going to use old crap, this is a vulnerability they should have known about and prevented.

Second, PBX is a very simple system, and there aren’t really any “rights administration” things as firewalls built in.  Once a hacker has gained access to a PBX system, they’re free to listen in on calls, listen to legitimate users’ voicemails and delete them if they please, and even re-route calls away from their intended destinations.  That the hacker chose to make calls to the Middle East and Asia on DHS’s dime is nothing short of amusing in the way of that classic hacker wit, but that it was even possible is actually quite a bit bigger a deal than the media will let on.

The Washington Post is reporting that recently disclosed Homeland Security policies lay claim to the right to indefinitely detain your laptop PC, iPod or other electronic device without probable cause and share the information stored on those devices with third-party companies.  It’s all a part of making you feel safer.  Do you feel safer, yet?

I’m sure I’m basically wasting time trying to argue logically about the policies of an organization which is neither founded upon nor governed by rational interests in security.  Nevertheless, let me point out that border security - especially airport security, for which this rule seems largely designed - is about preventing dangerous items from entering a plane or the country.  Such things include guns, knives or shoe bombs.  Or more than one lighter at a time.  Or toothpaste.

So really, there is no logical reason for needing to interpret data on a PC or iPod hard-drive, is there?  Other than an attempt to bully and intimidate travelers, I mean.

How can you tell a project at Microsoft isn’t going too well?  I mean, really isn’t going too well?  Check out their latest advertisement on Hotmail:

Microsoft is in the midst of a bid to buy Yahoo! Wonder why? Well, they’ve lifted the veil a bit on their newest product line, Live Mess Mesh:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft unveils its web vision

Live Mesh is designed to blur the lines between running software and storing data on a desktop and “in the cloud”.

You know? The last thing I want Microsoft to *intentionally try* to do is “blur the lines” between anything. How ’bout you folks work on establishing something clearly-delineated first, and work your way up? I remember working for Comcast as a tech support rep, patiently explaining to customers that they didn’t need to be connected to the Internet to view their Word documents. Trust me, the lines are already plenty blurred.

Kodak’s technology blog, A Thousand Nerds, has an interesting post about the changing nature of consumer entertainment demand and how that will affect the way content gets delivered to its audience. It may be that we finally bridge the Television / PC divide by eliminating both from the equation:

A Thousand Nerds: A Kodak blog about innovation

What does this all mean? The TV and Internet as we know it are about to undergo massive change. TV will be replaced by connected displays able to deliver a full range of multimedia output. Sitting in front of the computer clicking away will also be replaced by new ways of interacting with these connected displays as the interaction transforms from passive consumption to two-way interaction. You can also expect more changes within the industry as companies consolidate, form new strategic partnerships, and realign offerings around multimedia.

Not that PCs will go away, or televisions either. But after decades of attempts to somehow merge the two (Windows Media Center, WebTV, etc), its seemed very clear that the two do not go together. The problem is largely one of furniture, however: people sit at desks to use their PCs and lounge on couches to watch TV, neither of which providing a comfortable environment to swap roles.
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If you need still further evidence that Internet Explorer is a losing bet - if better standards compliance, superior plugins, great skins and overall better performance don’t sway you - check out The Beeb’s latest article on yet another Windows virus propagated through IE on malware sites.