Qtrax Promises Legal P2P Music Sharing Service, the Impossible [Music Downloads]

We have long thought the acronym P2P was the very antonym of the word legal, but Qtrax, a new P2P music sharing service, has plans to rewrite the geek dictionary. Here's the skinny: The service is free, completely. Qtrax offers an unlimited service. It is supported by the four major labels, as well as smaller, niche music groups, and that means it will have a start-up music library of over 25 million songs. That is about four times bigger than iTunes, and about 100% cheaper. We know what you are thinking; is this all smoke without fire? Short answer; we're not sure, but Qtrax is hitting soon. Very, very soon.

Monday, in fact, is the day the service goes live, and we cannot hold our wee we're so excited. Initially, only Windows Vista and XP will be supported, but the Macboys and girls see some action on March 18th.

The system will work by tracking all downloads, royalties will then be issued accordingly. It isn't too clear how that revenue will be generated, but expect some anal advertising to bombard a PC near you if you do give it a whirl. Still, we can't help our cynical judgement chiming in—how did Noah get two of every species on a wooden boat? He didn't—do you know what I mean? Nevertheless, we wait and hope for a legal, free, P2P music service, but we think eternal world peace is a little more likely by Monday. [Boy Genius Reports]

Like WoW, The Pirate Bay Has Reached 10 Million [Stats]

Torrent sharing group The Pirate Bay has asserted itself as "World's Largest Tracker," now claiming over 10 million peers sharing 1 million files. Not only is 10 million more than the population of New York City, it's just about equal to the user numbers of the most successful MMO on the planet, World of Warcraft, which not so long ago announced the same user milestone...and may have a thing or two to say about The Pirate Bay's title.

Blizzard, like The Pirate Bay, implements a P2P system. Instead of avoiding issues of copyright, the developer utilizes P2P as an inexpensive way to distribute WoW updates and patches. And the last time we played WoW, which was admittedly some time ago, Blizzard's P2P updater was pretty much mandatory to play the game. So if you're thinking what we're thinking, The Pirate Bay may have jumped the gun with their announcement. And Blizzard may actually be the sleeper king of P2P. 

My new dog. Lady.

Lady's First Night.



Lady and my wife. Lady is very shy.




Like I said...Lady is shy.

New Blu-ray 2.0 spec makes PS3 the most future-proof player

By Ben Kuchera | Published: January 18, 2008 - 10:13AM CT

With the sudden and unexpected announcement from Warner that the studio would be abandoning HD DVD titles in favor of Blu-ray, it seemed to many observers that the high-def format war was all over, bar the shouting.

With the upcoming 2.0 player profile requiring Blu-ray players to be networked, Sony finally gets to play its trump card: the PlayStation 3, which has clearly emerged as one of the best Blu-ray players on the market—and is likely to remain so for some time. Why? Because the first player now becomes the most versatile, sporting a future-proof Blu-ray setup.

Before we can understand why the PlayStation 3 is able to so easily deal with new profiles, we must first look at the difference between the 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 profiles to see why a simple firmware update isn't enough to make a player compliant.

• 1.0 is the launch profile, and secondary audio and video decoders are optional, as is local storage and network connectivity. The majority of standalone players fit into this category.
• 1.1 is the newer profile, and to take advantage of these discs, players need a secondary audio and video decoder to handle picture-in-picture, as well as at least 256MB of local storage for content.
  
• 2.0 is the profile of the future, requiring the two secondary decoders, 1GB of local storage for updates and content, and an Internet connection.
  

HD DVD players have included networking as standard since the beginning, but Blu-ray has not, and the evolving standard may become a large problem for early adopters. The 2.0 profile actually changes the minimum requirements for full compatibility. In other words, there is only one player currently on the market that will be 2.0 compatible: the PlayStation 3, which, with its upgradeable hard drive, Ethernet port, and powerful graphics capabilities, will be able to adapt to any and all future updates. This is quite the slap in the face to consumers who paid several hundred dollars for players that won't able to be updated to take advantage of the 1.1 profile, much less the upcoming 2.0

What 2.0 brings 

The 2.0 profile brings picture-in-picture and online functionality to Blu-ray discs; these movies will have "BD-Live" stickers on the case so you know certain features will require 2.0-compliant players. Discs that only require 1.1 profile players will be adorned with "Bonus View" stickers. Are we confused yet?

In contrast, HD DVD has required an Internet connection and local storage from day one, and certain HD DVD movies already use picture-in-picture and online functionality for their bonus features.

What will Blu-ray do to compete with these features? At CES, FOX Home Entertainment showed off a Blu-ray version of Aliens Vs. Predator that featured an online, multiplayer game that had you throwing virtual knives and shooting at the aliens on the screen using the remote and competing against other players remotely. Other exhibitors were showing off trivia games with a PlayStation 3 as a demo unit. In other words, vendors and Blu-ray partners already have the 2.0 profile running on the PS3, allowing them to use the PS3 controller and remote to design BD-Live titles.

While HD DVD may have done a better job of future-proofing their players, the immaturity of the Blu-ray spec hasn't proven to be an insurmountable obstacle. At CES, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that 3.5 million Blu-ray players had been sold to date. Of those, 3 million were PlayStation 3s, the most future-proof Blu-ray player on the market. Still, this means that roughly 15 percent of the early adopters are going to be frozen out of the latest and greatest Blu-ray features with BD-Live. That's bad news for current owners of stand-alone players, but with the price of the PlayStation 3 now down to $399.99 and the format wars shaping up nicely in Blu-ray's favor, the system may actually be less expensive and more powerful than the latest-generation standalone players.

This is quite the odd turn of events: it was assumed when the PS3 launched that the gaming system would be the Trojan horse that brought Blu-ray into the homes of the mass market. Now? The inexpensive and future-proofed Blu-ray functions of the PS3, matched with the high-quality upscaling the system brings to normal DVDs, may be the Trojan horse bringing gaming to home theater enthusiasts.  

News.com Extra: Top 75 essential sci-fi terms

Textbook barons Houghton Mifflin have of late proclaimed 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, probably in an attempt to shame and terrify the average student into purchasing an appropriate SAT study guide. For those of us who grew up reading science fiction and/or comic books, the list reads like the margin notes of every classic supervillain’s world-domination handbook. For some actual enlightenment, I recommend a different guide, Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, the polished dead-tree version of the OED’s Science Fiction Citations Web site (found via SFSignal).

From the latter resource, with the addition of some personal selections from Wikipedia, I have gathered a list of 75 Words Every Science Fiction Fan Should Know. Because if you’re going to learn obscure words and concepts, it may as well be terms you’re actually likely to use.

1. Alderson disk (n.)
2. arcology (n.)
3. areography (n.)
4. astrogate (v.)
5. avatar (n.)
6. Bernal sphere (n.)
7. chrononaut (n.)
8. Clarke ring (n.)
9. Clarke’s First Law (n.)
10. Clarke’s Second Law (n.)
11. Clarke’s Third Law (n.)
12. computronium (n.)
13. contraterrene (adj.)
14. Dyson sphere (n.)
15. elsewhen (adv.)
16. esper (n.)
17. Faraday cage (n.)
18. FTL (adj.)
19. geas (n.)
20. grey goo (n.)
21. grok (v.)
22. Jovian (adj.)
23. kiloyear (n.)
24. light cone (n.)
25. light sail (n.)
26. light-second (n.)
27. Lofstrom loop (n.)
28. mass-driver (n.)
29. Matrioshka brain (n.)
30. meatspace (n.)
31. megastructure (n.)
32. megayear (n.)
33. mindfood (n.)
34. nanotech (adj.)
35. needler (n.)
36. neutronium (n.)
37. Niven ring (n.)
38. O’Neill cylinder (n.)
39. parking orbit (n.)
40. precog (n.)
41. pocket universe (n.)
42. positronic (adj.)
43. posthuman (n.)
44. psi (n.)
45. psychohistory (n.)
46. quine (n.)
47. ramscoop (n.)
48. replicant (n.)
49. rimworld (n.)
50. ringwall (n.)
51. Santa Claus machine (n.)
52. sapient (n.)
53. sentience (n.)
54. Shkadov thruster (n.)
55. Singularity (n.)
56. skyhook (n.)
57. sophont (n.)
58. space elevator (n.)
59. space fountain (n.)
60. Stanford torus (n.)
61. starwisp (n.)
62. stellar engine (n.)
63. superluminal (adj.)
64. TANSTAAFL (n.)
65. Tellurian (n.)
66. terraform (v.)
67. topopolis (n.)
68. transhuman (n.)
69. universal constructor (n.)
70. uplift (n.)
71. Von Neumann probe (n.)
72. waldo (n.)
73. wetware (n.)
74. Whuffie (n.)
75. xenology (n.)

The space agency is looking into creating a massively multiplayer online game as an educational tool.

NASA considering making a virtual world

Posted by Daniel Terdiman

There are all kinds of virtual worlds these days: Those for kids, for adults, centered around fantasy battles, and even those centered on space.

But no one has a better hold on space than NASA, and that agency is now considering creating its own virtual world, according to the BBC.

"The virtual world would be aimed at students and would 'simulate real NASA engineering and science missions,'" the BBC wrote, adding that the space agency has put out requests for vendors interested in producing the virtual world.

The idea behind the so-called massively multiplayer online game would be to help train future scientists and foster a broader interest in space among students.

Already, NASA has a presence on an island in Second Life.

"We at NASA are working hard to create opportunities for what I might call participatory exploration," the BBC quoted the director of the project, Simon Worden, as saying. "We are looking at how this island can be a portal for all to fly along on space missions."

Cnet.com

Judge: Mobile phones in tiger attack may be inspected

Calif. judge says that the San Francisco Zoo may look for incriminating photographs on cell phones owned by two men who were mauled by a tiger last month.

A California judge has said the San Francisco Zoo may inspect the mobile phones of two brothers involved in a deadly tiger attack on Christmas Day.

Superior Court Judge Socrates Peter Manoukian in Santa Clara County ruled late Friday that the city and the zoo can review the devices for photographs that might provide clues about what happened that day, and for logs of conversations near the time of the 911 call.

He wrote: "Under the maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words the Court believes that the allegation of existence or nonexistence of any photographs is specific enough to justify an attempt to perpetuate them."

The defendants in the civil lawsuit are brothers Kulbir Dhaliwal and Amritpal Dhaliwal. They were mauled during the tiger attack and their friend, Carlos Sousa Jr., was killed. The tiger pen's wall was only 12.5 feet high, 4 feet below generally accepted safety standards. The Siberian tiger, Tatiana, was shot dead by police that day.

Manoukian said, however, that the city and the zoo could not inspect the contents of the car. (There have been reports that a bottle of alcohol was present.) Their attorney has called these efforts a fishing expedition.

It's unclear what the real impact of this ruling will be--that's because the San Francisco Police Department has obtained a search warrant allowing them to examine the car and mobile phones in conjunction with a separate criminal investigation.

Cnet.com

&lt;strike&gt;Steal</strike> Download Music From Any Shared iTunes Library with OurTunes [Featured Download]

Windows/Mac only: Freeware application ourTunes downloads music from any shared iTunes library on your network to any folder on your computer. There's a good chance you've heard of ourTunes (or a similar app, myTunes) before, as it used to be the go-to app for sharing music with your peers using your iTunes library, but every time Apple updated iTunes, ourTunes would die another death. Well, it's back, and it works with iTunes 7. I hadn't used ourTunes in a while, and things seemed to be working differently, so to get you up and running, here's how it works.

First you'll want to download the ourTunes.jar file from the Save OurTunes web site. If it's not already installed, you'll also need to download and install Java on your computer.

Now fire up iTunes and ourTunes on your computer. Before you go any further, I'd recommend choosing a download folder for all that music you're about to download. Done? Then let's move ahead.

If there are other computers on your network, you'll see them start popping up in the ourTunes (and iTunes, for that matter) sidebar. In ourTunes, click on the name of the library you want to download music from. ourTunes will work a little magic, creating a duplicate entry for this shared library in your iTunes sidebar. Click on the duplicate library in iTunes, let it load the library, and then you're ready to go.

So how do you download songs? Easy—just play the song in iTunes and ourTunes will start sucking down the file to the folder you chose above. It downloads quickly, so you don't have to listen to the entire song before moving to the next. Generally songs just take a few seconds to land on your desktop.

Problems?

I only ran into one problem testing ourTunes, and it only appeared on my Mac (Windows tests went without a hitch). When you choose the download folder, for some reason ourTunes was incorrectly saving the folder with a weird sort of duplication. That is, if I chose ~/Documents as my download folder, ourTunes tried saving to ~/Documents/Documents. The way I got around this was to create a second Documents folder inside the original Documents folder, then choose ~\Documents as my download directory. I'd assume this bug will be addressed eventually, but in the meantime that workaround should do the trick.

If you're sick of the restrictions Apple places on iTunes music sharing on your local network, ourTunes will do the trick. ourTunes is freeware, Windows and Mac only, requires Java. Thanks EricTJ!

ourTunes [Save OurTunes]

Silence Your Xbox 360 with a New Fan [Hardware]

Whether you're using it for video games or as part of a media center powerhouse, all of our Xbox 360s have one thing in common: They're loud. Hardware site ExtremeTech walks through how to replace the stock fan unit (which screams like a 747) with a whisper quiet, $25 alternative. This is one of those warranty-voiders, so you'll have to decide whether or not a little peace and quiet is worth it.

Hacking Your Xbox 360 Fan [ExtremeTech via Lifehacker AU]

Learn Online: Access Free University Lectures at LectureFox

LectureFox is a cool resource if you have an interest in academic subjects and want to kill some time. The LectureFox site contains a growing catalogue of links to lecture materials (video, audio, and notes) from distinguished universities such as Harvard, Yale and Oxford.

The lectures are skewed towards the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Math, and Computer Science) but they also have a section with all sorts of subjects from copyright law to modern poetry.