cqxxw.net

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation,” the band’s lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

“I think the way (Radiohead) parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd,” Reznor said. “But if you look at what they did, it was very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.”

Reznor was critical of Radiohead during an interview with The Chicago Tribune.

It appears now that among marquee artists, no one is doing more to experiment with the Internet as a distribution channel or alternative music-business models than Reznor.

Radiohead made it official: the band won’t be giving away music like it did with the album In Rainbows.

Many music fans had hoped that the band’s now famous pay-what-you-want promotion was an attempt by the group to discover a new way to sell music. Now it appears Radiohead at best was after publicity.

Radiohead has never revealed the promotion’s sales figures but there was speculation that the money wasn’t very good. Nine Inch Nails, led by Trent Reznor, followed Radiohead by offering the digital version of the album Ghosts I-IV for free as well as charging for premium versions. Reznor said last month that to that point the album had generated 781,917 transactions and $1.6 million.

• An aggressive partnering program to enhance its homegrown offerings.

• IBM now has a single person, Chris Lovejoy, who is responsible for coordinating security activities across IBM product and business units.

In simple terms, if you own the corporate network, you care about switches, routers, and traffic going from Point A to Point B. If you own security, you have to look up and down the old “technology stack” while keeping an eye of physical security and cross-company business processes. Little wonder why so many companies experience so many data breaches.

No, IBM doesn’t have all the answers. And there are probably lots of areas where others have better products. That said, IBM has organized its security portfolio in a way that meets enterprise requirements at the board level–and not just in the security products test lab.

• A comprehensive security framework based upon enterprise user security requirements rather than its portfolio of products.

For years, the security industry seemed to disregard the broad scope of problems faced by enterprise organizations. Instead, even the biggest security firms like Check Point and McAfee simply offered the threat management widget du jour. This is like your local tire store saying that it is in the business of selling automobiles. Something had to give which is why big enterprise-savvy companies like EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM entered the market.

Between this user-centric framework and its deep resources, IBM ought to win its fair share of security deals moving forward.

I met with IBM at last week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, Rather than talk about threat management products from ISS or identity management software from Tivoli, IBM presented a few interesting things:

• Integration between security and business processes.

One of the things that distinguishes security from other IT disciplines is its massive scope.

Pricing wasn’t included in the news release, but Samsung has told us the BD-P1500 will have a list price of $400. That’s identical to the
Sony PS3, which offers BD-Live and DTS-HD decoding now, and $100 less than the anticipated price of the Panasonic DMP-BD50, which will offer both of those features when it hits stores later this spring. As always, we’ll reserve our final judgment until we get our hands on some review samples, but at this point–even with the promised firmware upgrades–it looks like the BD-P1500 is going to have an uphill battle in the increasingly competitive Blu-ray marketplace.

But while Samsung giveth future BD-Live support, it taketh away DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. We originally reported that the BD-P1500 would have onboard DTS-HD Master Audio decoding–based on what we were told by Samsung–but now we’re been told that the BD-P1500 won’t have DTS-HD Master Audio decoding and that DTS-HD High Resolution decoding will only be supported by a future firmware update, no word as to when that update is coming. The BD-P1500 will have onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD out of the gate, but we really expect all but the cheapest Blu-ray players to have full support for DTS-HD Master Audio at this point, especially after its been added to the PlayStation 3.

Samsung announced the BD-P1500 back at CES 2008, but our enthusiasm for it has always been tempered by the fact that the original announcement pegged it as a Blu-ray Profile 1.1 player. Well, Samsung made the BD-P1500 a little more interesting this morning by announcing that the BD-P1500 will be “BD-Live Ready” when it’s released in June (pushed back from its original May release date). This means that the BD-P1500 won’t be BD-Live (also known as Blu-ray Profile 2.0) capable when it’s released, but owners will be able to update the BD-P1500 via a firmware update in the future. Samsung hasn’t officially specified when that upgrade will be available, but we’re hearing that it’ll likely be in the October time frame.

The BD-P1500 will be BD-Live ready, but it won't have DTS-HD Master Audio decoding.

commentary

Even after controlling for variables such as race, income, and education levels, a state’s dominant personality turns out to be strongly linked to certain outcomes. Amiable states, like Minnesota, tend to be lower in crime. Dutiful states–an eclectic bunch that includes New Mexico, North Carolina, and Utah– produce a disproportionate share of mathematicians. States that rank high in openness to new ideas are quite creative, as measured by per-capita patent production. But they’re also high-crime and a bit aloof. Apparently, Californians don’t much like socializing, the research suggests.

As published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers combed through more than 600,000 personality questionnaires and discovered that certain states attract or shape concentrations of similar personalities. Intriguingly, this may affect the types of industries and health care problems that arise in certain states:

In fact, as researchers recently uncovered and which the Wall Street Journal reports, there are lots of other great places in the United States to live, places with people who are equally open to new ideas, while being much more extroverted, conscientious, and agreeable, and far less neurotic (their words, not mine).

As for high-anxiety states, that group includes not just Type A New York and New Jersey, but also states stressed by poverty, such as West Virginia and Mississippi. As a group, these neurotic states tend to have higher rates of heart disease and lower life expectancy.

I’m a bit biased toward Utah, where I live, what with Utah hosting the best snow on the planet, as recently noted in Ski Magazine. But there are plenty of other great places to live. Silicon Valley may be the center of the technology universe, but but you’ve got other, potentially better options. Really.

Which states rank highest? That, of course, depends on what you’re seeking. As shown in the Wall Street Journal’s interactive maps, if you want extroverts go to Utah, Florida, or a few other states. Agreeable neighbors and co-workers? Try Utah, North Carolina, and eight other options. Looking for a conscientious employee? New Mexico tops that list, followed by North Carolina, Georgia, and Utah.

Hoping to avoid neurotic people? Better steer clear of West Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York.

(Credit:
Wall Street Journal)

Silicon Valley’s economy is sliding into the doldrums, with unemployment now topping 6.6 percent, but it’s not the only place to live.

(Credit:
Dipity)

Among the chronological listings are some memes that pre-date my knowledge of the Internet (”Trojan Room coffee pot”); a few classics like All Your Base, Hampsterdance, and Peanut Butter Jelly Time; and more recent ones like lolcats and Rickrolling. Don’t know what those are? Check out the timeline.

But Sen. Ted Stevens’ parodied, mocked, and dance-remixed “Series of Tubes” speech was the only really glaring omission I saw, aside from a few memes that are entirely too disgusting to mention in a family-friendly context (though be warned, a few gross-outs like “Goatse” are already on the list).

Timeline creator Dipity has finally been put to a completely awesome use: a user called “tatercakes” has created a timeline of fads and memes that have surfaced on the Internet since its earliest days. And, as far as I can see, almost nothing has been left out–if you’re a Dipity member, you can add to the list.

It also fails to mention, at least at this point, the latest Internet meme: the Internet meme timeline.

There are also a few culturally significant moments that go beyond the Web, like Stephen Colbert’s White House Press Correspondents Dinner speech in 2006. The pirated C-SPAN clip of that speech taught the media industry that it’s tough to put a lockdown on video that everybody wants to see, taught the White House that you should really be familiar with a comedian’s schtick before booking him for a speaking engagement, and taught millions of erstwhile American Luddites about the possibilities of YouTube.

Aside from that, the list does not yet include many of the people who have arguably turned into Internet memes themselves: digitally beloved politicians like Howard Dean in 2004 and Ron Paul earlier this year, a smattering of YouTube stars, and over-the-top bloggers like Perez Hilton.

The bottom line here is that I have a problem I don’t know how to solve. I’m sure Comcast can’t solve it; it isn’t in control of these blacklists, and if it could control the botnets, it would already be doing that.

It turned out that the messages were being delayed within the .Mac servers by a couple of hours, and I never did get an explanation of why that happened, but the .Mac support specialist who replied to my initial report told me something that surprised me a lot.

While the cable modem service was down, I connected via the Option 3G wireless card I use when I’m traveling. I also checked that IP address–no blacklist entries at all.

I discussed the situation with a friend of mine who works in the network security industry, and he says the problem may be related to the proliferation of botnets on home PCs. Users click on malicious Web sites, their PCs get infected, and they start sending spam at the direction of the botnet organizers.

This came up about a week ago, when I noticed that some (but not all) outbound e-mails sent through Apple’s .Mac service (now known as MobileMe) were not going out. After waiting about an hour for the messages to go through, I reported the problem to the service’s support desk.

I could get a different Internet service, but there aren’t many choices around here, and it’s quite possible that any service that has a large number of home users is going to be blacklisted for the same reasons as Comcast.

So all in all, I’m happy with the service.

I have Comcast cable modem service here at home. It’s been very reliable. Service interruptions have been rare and brief. The cable modem I was given years ago is still working fine. Network performance has been reasonably good.

(This problem turns out to be unrelated to the message delays I was seeing, but it’s a pretty serious problem on its own.)

I checked the new address against the same e-mail blacklists and found that it’s on all the same lists.

But I don’t want to have to use the Option card all the time, either.

You can check for yourself. The service I used to check multiple blacklists is hosted by MXToolBox; just enter any IP address–such as the address of your home Internet connection, or the address of your e-mail server–and in a few seconds, you’ll get a report summarizing the responses from 123 different blacklists. (If you don’t know your own IP address, try a service such as WhatIsMyIP.com.)

So at least I have a way to avoid this problem when I’m sending a really critical e-mail to people who aren’t expecting my message and thus haven’t whitelisted my e-mail address or personal domain within their antispam software.

It turns out that the IP address of my Comcast cable modem–which had been the same for several months–is in a range of addresses that is listed on several major e-mail blacklists. That is, some e-mail services regard e-mail from many (or most?) Comcast customers as more likely to be spam. This may be old news to many of you, but as I said, I found it very surprising, and I bet a lot of other Comcast customers aren’t aware of it.

But I just found out about something that really bugs me–and may explain why I’ve received occasional reports over the years that an e-mail I sent didn’t get through at all–or was marked as spam when it did arrive.

(Credit:
Comcast)

Any suggestions?

My friend says these infected PCs can be difficult for ISPs such as Comcast to detect. His company makes a server appliance that is designed to detect such things, so I believe it.

As it happens, I had a brief service interruption yesterday, and in case the problem was a glitch at my end, I reset my cable modem and router. When it came back up (several minutes later, actually) I discovered I had a different IP address, one that is substantially different than the previous one.

Yahoo has reached a settlement with activist investor Carl Icahn, who will join the Internet company’s board.

Eight members of Yahoo’s current board of directors will stand for re-election at the scheduled shareholder meeting next month: Roy Bostock, Ronald Burkle, Eric Hippeau, Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern, Mary Agnes Wilderotter, Gary Wilson, and Jerry Yang.

As part of the settlement, Icahn, who owns about 68.7 million shares, or 4.98 percent of Yahoo common stock, has agreed to withdraw his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting and to vote his Yahoo shares in support of the board’s nominees. Board member Robert Kotick will not seek re-election.

The board will expand to 11 members, adding Icahn and two other nominees from Icahn’s slate.

Icahn, who had proposed his own slate of board members, was agitating for the company to reach a deal to sell all or part of the company to Microsoft. Icahn and Microsoft officials had previously stated that they could not work with the existing Yahoo board.

“While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole company or the sale of its search business in the right transaction must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo’s valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders,” Icahn said in a release. “I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship, going forward. Additionally, I am happy that the board has agreed in the settlement agreement that any meaningful transaction, including the strategy in dealing with that transaction, will be fully discussed with the entire board before any final decision is made.”

It was not immediately clear whether the board would continue negotiations with Microsoft.

There’s something cool going on there for just the next few days. And if you’ve bought an Amazon Kindle or a Sony Reader–or just like to read e-books on your laptop, cell phone, or other system–you’ll want to scoot right over to the “Freebies Bonanza” page. [Update-- this content is no longer available.]

This is all good stuff from major authors and artists. I already owned two of these books myself.

And you’ll also want to bookmark Tor.com, where you can participate in discussions with Tor and Macmillan employees, authors, and other science-fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. Plus, there are other free stories there at the moment, and more to come. The site is still officially in beta, so even Tor is probably not entirely sure what it will be offering over time.

This content will only be available through Sunday. So don’t delay.

Tor and its authors are following a path blazed most notably by Baen Books. The Baen Free Library has been giving away free e-books for years, attracting considerable attention in the publishing industry and–more importantly–lots of extra business for Baen’s participating authors.

I don’t foresee a day when free e-books will be the principal means of distribution for new titles; authors still have to make a living somehow. But as a means of attracting new readers to an author’s work, offering free e-books of older releases has proven to be very effective.

There you’ll find 24 free e-books and a collection of downloadable, high-resolution cover art suitable for use as a computer desktop background.

A friend of mine told me recently about Tor.com, a new site managed by Tor Books, part of the Macmillan publishing group.

Even if you haven’t read a lot of science fiction or fantasy lately (or ever), try downloading some of these titles from Tor and Baen and give ‘em a look.

That’s when Electronic Arts and Maxis plan to release the Spore Creature Creator, in both a free, downloadable demo version and a $9.99 retail version (or 9.99 euros, for buyers in much of Europe). The demo version will be available from Spore.com and also will be included with The SimCity, due to be released June 23.

When designing characters for Spore, players will have a wide selection of body parts to choose from.

In Spore, a long-awaited game from Sims creator Wil Wright, gamers will get a taste of evolution, taking their characters from primordial existence to civilization. (Wright has set a high standard for success–The Sims recently logged its 100 millionth sale.) Besides the individual characters, Spore-ophiles will be able to establish tribes and conjure up buildings and vehicles, including UFOs.

Spore for the PC and the
Mac is set to debut September 5 in Europe and then two days later in North America, and a version for the Nintendo DS is also due at that time. A version for the
Nintendo Wii will come sometime later–it’s still in the “early prototyping phase,” according to the Spore FAQ.

The retail edition provides access to all the creature-making parts for Spore, while the demo version is limited to 25 percent of those parts. Gamers will be able to share their creations with friends, via routes including uploads to YouTube.

(Credit:
Electronic Arts/Maxis)

Attention gamers: If you’re looking forward to the taking a hands-on role with the forthcoming Spore, you’ve got work to do starting June 17.

The hands-on work of shaping and painting fantastical critters with Creature Creator won’t be just a preliminary exercise, to be abandoned when Spore arrives in September. Gamers will be able to import their creations into the retail version of the game.

For more preview images of Spore, see this CNET News.com gallery: Images: Conjuring creatures in EA’s ‘Spore.’”

It’s not clear whether the museum Wi-Fi will also let visitors access the Web as a whole, or just the internal museum site. Requests for clarification were not immediately answered.

Additionally, MoMA has put its library of audio and video programming into podcast format for Apple’s iTunes Store’s iTunes U education section: current and past audio programs, content from panels and lectures, and video clips from exhibit installations and artist interviews.

MoMA announced Monday that it has installed a museum-wide Wi-Fi network so that visitors can access a mobile Web site on handheld devices with HTML browsers, which basically means Apple’s iPhone and
iPod Touch. They can then load up audio tours and commentary; content is available in eight languages as well as in specialized versions for children, teenagers, and the visually impaired.

The legendary Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan just got a bit more…modernized.

Museum visitors who are particularly information-hungry can also now use “interactive kiosks” in the form of a number of Apple’s iMac computers stationed around MoMA, featuring detailed museum information, artist biographies, events listings, and e-card services.