You should not be surprised to learn that a federal judge yesterday ordered BlueBeat.com to immediately stop selling Beatles songs and other music from its site, rejecting a goofy assertion that the company had copyrights on the songs via the use of something called “psycho-acoustic simulation.” Read More »

“The decrease in _____ revenue was primarily due to _____” and “uncertainty associated with the proposed acquisition by Oracle and increased competition.” That refrain is repeated over and over again in Sun’s latest grim earnings report, which was filed without much in the way of announcement Friday afternoon. Read More »

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) Read More »

Well, this is a first, I think: Google is promoting a consumer electronics device on its front page. Surf over to Google.com right now and you’ll find this pitch plugging Droid, Motorola’s new Android phone: “The Droid is on sale now. Learn more.” Read More »

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said Friday that the online encyclopedia aspires to be a higher-quality source of information but added that mainstream publications could learn from its disclaimers and community features. “Our goal is to make Wikipedia as high-quality as possible. Britannica or better quality is the goal,” he said during a question-and-answer session at the ad:tech conference in New York. Read More »

Silicon Valley legend and now VC Marc Andreessen was making the interview rounds after the settlement between the litigation-addled co-founders of Skype and all the various people they were suing was announced this morning. In an interview with BoomTown, when asked about the aggressive legal tactics of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis that resulted in them finally seizing a stake in the Internet telephony giant by suing him and many other Silicon Valley players, Andreessen said: “We did not take it personally. It’s a clean sheet of paper.” Well, it is actually a torn, stained and very worn out piece of paper, but bygones! Read More »

Beginning Nov. 15, Verizon subscribers looking to get out of their smart-phone contracts early will pay $350 for the privilege. That early-termination fee is double the current one, but Verizon insists it’s justified because of the higher prices of today’s phones. An interesting move for a carrier that just last year agreed to pay $21 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by California consumers over the very early-termination fees it is now increasing. Read More »

My productivity lapses don’t come from Facebook. My problem is a combination of world news sites and Twitter. Using RescueTime, an online time management tool, I’ve named two productivity goals for myself. One goal sets my unproductive time at less than 90 minutes per day. The other sets my highly productive time at greater than five hours per day. Read More »

Blowing away terrorists, apparently, never gets old. The new videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, set to hit stores Tuesday, is a sequel spawned by sequels. But rather than following the frequent pattern of franchises fading as they age, Modern Warfare 2 is the most highly anticipated game of the season. Read More »

The fight for Skype has ended. After weeks of nasty legal sparring, the Internet telephony service’s founders agreed to join the investor group purchasing it from EBay and dropped the lawsuit that had threatened to bollocks the deal. Read More »

ABC certainly has been taking its sweet time in releasing the first episode of “V,” a sci-fi television series that debuted earlier this week on the Web in any substantial way. The premiere of a redo of a 1980s miniseries about a lizardy alien invasion disguised as a peace mission by outerspace hotties turned out to be a big broadcast hit, but it is hard to watch online. Until tomorrow, that is. Read More »

Droid, Motorola’s most anticipated cellphone since the launch of the Razr in 2004, arrived at market today, to a warm reception by most accounts. Some 2,000 Verizon Wireless stores opened early this morning, many to lines–though admittedly, the lines are far shorter than those that accompanied the launch of certain rival devices. Read More »

Depending on whom you ask, U.S. online shopping is either in unprecedented decline–or one of the only bright spots in American retail. On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped two percent to $29.6 billion versus last year. Read More »

QOTD

“Hopefully, we won’t repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about. This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader. Read More »