Wouldn't it be nice to have an MP3 CD player that not only played your CD's, but could rip them into internal memory so you can still listen to those same tunes when there is a different or no CD in the tray? Wouldn't it also be nice if you could hook up an outside audio source from a cassette or LP or even a mixing board and record into the unit on the fly? Enter Panasonic's new portable CD player.
Vincent Gullotto, vice president of AVERT, the company that developed McAffee anti-virus systems, warns of a new avenue for viruses to infect your computer - through mp3 files.
Very soon, Gullotto says, mp3 files will have the ability to play video in addition to music. This added capability will require Java programming to become realised.
With the increased Java programming, the possibility occurs that malicious hackers could encode .mp3 files with a virus.
Nearly a year after his company filed suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Aimster head Johnny Deep has declared bankruptcy.
Morpheus, in an attempt to gain a more legal position in the music industry, has added digital rights management technology to their system which should prevent copyrighted music from being illegally copied.
Morpheus is now positioning itself as a distribution system for independent artists. By using the new technology, the artists can reach a broad market while protecting their work and having the ability to receive money for it.
With the collapse of Morpheus, many individuals are looking for alternative sources of mp3's. As a result, many networks have seen their populations swell. One community that has benefited from the current upheaval is the Spanish based P2P community called Blubster.
Selling for $249, Dension's DMP3 digital music player is an in-dash unit that let's you stick in your own standard hard drive for song storage. The advantage is that you can not only install larger drives, but the final cost is significantly less. With 160GB drives running about three hundred dollars, that puts a 160GB DMP3 at $549.00. Music is transferred to the player using a mobile rack frame which taps the player directly into your systems board. This means very fast file transfers, far faster than using USB.
Didn't I admit last week that I felt like I might be going overboard with all the cloak and dagger stuff regarding the Morpheus shutdown? Agatha Christie could have written this one. It was KaZaa BV who pulled the plug on Morpheus. The reason they claim is that Morpheus parent StreamCast didn't pay its bill.
StreamCast announced yesterday that it was hackers that broke into the FastTrack network and brought down Morpheus several days ago. It was a two prong attack that not only hit Morpheus' servers with a massive Denial of Service attack, but also changed the registry settings on user's PC as they attempted to log on the network.
Here is an interesting point. Morpheus - based on being knocked off the FastTrack network only two days ago - may have decided to abandon this network that had been so fruitful for it for the Gnutella network. As this article points out, there must be something really wrong on FastTrack for Morpheus to make such a drastic move so quickly.
