"Has Steve Jobs been a recent victim of the body-snatchers? Steve has spoken in the past about how copy-protection mechanisms do not work, about how they'll never work, and about how the real answer is a social (or economic) answer instead of a technological one. But today we get a Steve that says this?

"Jobs even suggested that high-definition DVD burners not be bundled with computers at all -- a scenario he said in an interview was 'extreme' and one that 'I hope we don't have to get to, but it helps to put the issue in perspective.'"

"If hard-drive maker Maxtor and networking company Linksys have their way, your external hard drive is about to become very external.

"On Tuesday, the companies plan to announce a partnership featuring a US$99 Linksys device designed to allow an external hard drive to connect to a wireless router, letting PCs tap into the storage and share files without any physical link to the drive.....

"Through Sept. 30, U.S. residents who purchase a Maxtor OneTouch USB drive with the Linksys Network Storage Link can get a US$20 mail-in rebate."

"Intel's latest Centrino commercial, featuring a couple wirelessly videoconferencing with friends while inside some Sicilan ruins, shows a Windows laptop apparently running Mac OS X!"

"A major cock-up at Akamai has seen the world's biggest websites vanish from view for two hours [yesterday].

"From around 1.30pm, the Internet domain that Akamai uses to host content - akadns.net - disappeared and only reappeared at 3.30pm. Because a huge number of websites run through the Akamai site - including the world's four biggest, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Google.com and Microsoft.com - when Akamai went down, so did they...."

"Apple's European iTunes launch went ahead.... without the support of some of the UK's biggest independent labels.

"A spokesman for the Association of Independent Music (AIM) confirmed this morning that talks between Apple and the organisation, which represents key UK indie labels, including Beggars Banquet and XL, had broken down."

"Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. is fortifying its free e-mail service with 25 times more storage and freeing up millions of previously claimed e-mail addresses in an effort to thwart a looming threat from its increasingly disruptive rival Google Inc.

"Beginning Tuesday, all of Yahoo's free e-mail accounts will be upgraded to 100 megabytes, a move spurred by Google's plans to offer 1,000 megabytes of free storage through its Gmail service, which has remained in a test phase since early April."

"Yahoo Inc., which on Tuesday meant to pump up users' free e-mail accounts to 100MB, popped instead.

On the morning of its splashy debut, Yahoo users were greeted with notices of the upgrade, which boosted standard accounts from 4MB of e-mail storage to 100MB.

However, the vastly popular e-mail service was sluggish, if it worked at all. Starting Tuesday morning, users began complaining about the site's groggy response time-if, in fact, they could even get the [url=http://www.yahoo.com]http://www.yahoo.com[/url] site to load at all."

" Cincinnati resident Steve Philips is noticeably more excited about his recent switch from Windows-based PCs to Apple computers than his recent conversion from atheism to Christianity. Philips, an account manager for Choice Communications, was baptized shortly after his conversion and is in contact with Apple computers as a potential candidate for the company's popular "Switcher" ad campaign.

"...Philips also cited moral reasons for the changes, specifically the fact that millions of people are victimized by Microsoft's poor security, and the company knowingly sells a faulty product.

"The change in Philips has been difficult for his irreligious, PC-using family, who feel as though he has abandoned the culture in which he was raised.....

"Co-worker Dave Wilson was surprised to find that Philips was a new Christian. 'What, Steve, a Christian? I had no idea. But I guess it would be pretty easy to miss, what with him shoving that stupid PowerBook in my face four or five times a day. Geez, I wish he'd just leave me alone and let me live my life the way I want to.'"

"Researchers have observed a new type of liquid crystal - long theorised, but not observed until now - that promises faster and cheaper liquid crystal displays.

"The team, Dr. Satyendra Kumar, from Kent State university; and Dr. Andrew Primak, from Pacific Northwest National Lab. Dr. Bharat R. Acharya, of Platytus Technologies, used a small-angle X-ray diffraction technique to discover the biaxial nematic liquid crystal....

"This new crystal phase has the potential to speed the refresh rate a further ten times, the researchers say, as the crystals reorient more quickly in response to a voltage..."

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