intodimensions.com

The Economist reports:

In September, according to comScore Media Metrix, 10m American internet users visited four paid online-music services. The same month another 20m visited file-sharing networks. The majors watch what is being downloaded on these networks, although they do not like to talk about it for fear of undermining their legal campaign. Online music might truly take off if the majors were to make a truce with the file-sharing networks. The gulf between the two worlds has narrowed now that the industry sells its product online and allows customers to share music using digital-rights management. As for the file-sharing networks, “the other side is more willing to talk and less adversarial,” says an executive at one of the majors in Los Angeles. Music industry executives say that Shawn Fanning, founder of Napster, the first file-sharing network, is working out how to attach prices to tracks downloaded from such services, with a new venture called “Snocap”. Mr Fanning tried to make the original Napster legal back in 2001, but the music industry decided instead to sue it out of existence. Sam Yagan, boss of eDonkey, currently the most popular file-sharing network, says he had meetings with three of the four major labels last summer about how his network could start selling their music alongside free content. As IE Music’s experiment shows, that is not an impossible dream. Music executives may not have the confidence yet to make a deal with their arch-enemies. But eventually they have to get bolder. It seems clear that the only way for the majors to stay on top of the music industry into the next decade is to take more risks—both technological and creative—than they have done for a long time.

Since some of you will be looking for a job soon, DataMation has some tips:

An interesting trend has recently emerged, one that we haven’t seen in the IT staffing industry for a number of years: Approximately 80 percent of the candidates we represented to clients in a sampling of markets reported receiving not just one, but multiple job offers. Certainly, the increased demand for IT professionals in both permanent and contract positions created by the improving economy was one reason for the boom in job offers. But that alone was not enough to explain the sudden, dramatic increase in multiple offers. So we took a closer look at what these professionals were doing that others were not. What we found was not so much surprising as it was a confirmation of what we have suspected all along: The most successful job candidates are those who first take the time to clearly define their needs and expectations from the positions they are seeking, and second clearly communicate those needs and expectations, along with their unique skills, to potential employers.

Here’s someone else who clearly has too much free time… this guy built a Halloween costume that looks (and works!) like an iPod, complete with functioning screen, buttons and speakers.

The outcome of the presidential election might still be unknown, but the online betting on who will win is breaking records:

We bet on ballgames and poker, the Oscars and the Emmys, so why not the presidential election — especially one as tightly contested as this one? It’s better than even money that somebody’s got to win. Oh, sure, it’s illegal to wager on a presidential race in the United States. But thanks to the Internet we now live in an age of gambling without borders, which enables Americans — along with the rest of the global village — to get a piece of the action. Although precise numbers are impossible to come by, it’s estimated that tens of millions of dollars have already been plunked down on the 2004 presidential election. But the size of the online pot spread out across a dozen or so Internet sites could possibly double as the campaign winds down, according to gambling experts. (Even so, presidential betting would still only represent a fraction of the multibillion-dollar online gambling industry.)… Betting on the free world’s next leader has the potential to be more than just another over-hyped social gathering; it might also become a cherished crystal ball. While most polls and pundits are calling the presidential race even, gamblers are giving a slight edge to President Bush. They think Bush’s chances of reelection are around 55% — and Sen. John F. Kerry’s chance of preventing that at roughly 45%.

EcommerceTimes reports:

Among the security Relevant Products/Services from AT&T Network Security Solutions concerns that have been raised is the possibility of someone being able to cast multiple ballots. Other concerns are about a sudden power outage and whether data would be lost in that scenario. An actual hacking could only be done if the voting machines were on a network. However, results from many of the machines will transmitted to election officials remotely. Some in the hacking community have challenged each other to attempt to disrupt e-voting come Tuesday. Ironically, e-voting was turned to by many election officials as a way to reduce the human error and confusion that caused so much turmoil during the 2000 election. Counties in southern Florida, where the 2000 election was disputed for weeks after ballots were cast, have invested heavily in e-voting machines, as have counties in Ohio, California and Maryland, among other locations. But how well those machines will perform, and how secure they are, is a matter of great debate, one that will likely rage on even after the election.

What’s your view on when the election will actually be settled? Tuesday? Unfortunately I think there’s a chance that we’ll get in to a mess similar to 2000. And electronic voting might be a big part of the reason for that.

This has been around the web for a while, but it’s still funny.

SlashDot points to a story about what your pick of Linux distro says about you. FYI, I currently run Suse, of which they say:

If you like beer, horns, or green eggs, you’ll like SUSE. The recent acquisition of SUSE by Novell is similar to Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers adopting the West Coast offense. SUSE users like a clean, well-lighted desktop, and are far less concerned about where things are kept in the filesystem than they ought to be.

I knew you could install Mac OS X on an iPod and boot your Mac from it, but Linux on a USB key? Well, it can be done, and here’s the story.

The FireFox project reports that they’ve raised $250,000 on the recent fund-raising campaign.

BBC reports on ATMs running Microsoft Windows:

Cash machine networks could soon be more susceptible to computer viruses, a security firm has warned. The warning is being issued because many banks are starting to use the Windows operating system in machines. Already there have been four incidents in which Windows viruses have disrupted networks of cash machines running the Microsoft operating system. But banking experts say the danger is being overplayed and that the risks of infection and disruption are small.