p2pnet news view P2P:-If It Rode the Airwaves, It’s Probably Here New York Times
Bob George’s office smells of cardboard, wax and ink. A soulless sort might dismiss it as a dusty, musty funk, but to music lovers of a certain age (middle and up), it is a glorious bouquet, familiar to anyone who has ever dug through the crates. The collection, housed in TriBeCa, includes celebrated and obscure recordings made around the world since 1950. It smells of records. Tons of them. They hang from walls and are stacked on shelves. They beckon with wild covers, corny covers or blank covers. Some famous ones are signed by the artists, while obscure ones have been written off. They have all wound up at the ARChive of Contemporary Music, which Mr. George helped to found and still directs on White Street in TriBeCa. He bills it as the largest collection of popular music from around the world and recorded since 1950, with more than two million sound recordings on tape, compact disc and vinyl. Last month, he entered a partnership with Columbia University to allow the archive to be used as a research and classroom resource. You want rockabilly? Well, the first dozen recordings on Sun Records, including some signed by Johnny Cash, hang proudly on one wall. Feeling in the mood for Fela? Another wall displays covers of the late Nigerian superstar. And of course there are lesser known gems, like Fearless Iranians From Hell, or “Miss Calypso,” which was recorded in 1957 by a very young Maya Angelou. The collection of unlikely calypsonians also includes a record by the Charmer, now known as Louis Farrakhan. It’s all there, from Aerosmith to Zappa, and religious recordings he files under “God,” plus all sorts of how-t

Vodafone to launch own app store TechRadar
Vodafone has begun the process of releasing its own version of an app store and plans to make it easier and safer for users to pay for applications. The network says it will let developers have access to location information and will enable micro-payments directly linked to users’ post- or pre-pay billing, so credit cards will no longer be necessary as is the case with Apple. It has released a set of APIs for developers to work with to code for the internet applications and widgets, which it claims will include areas such as media and games.

SRJC threatens to sue students, faculty over private e-mail accounts PressDemocrat
Santa Rosa Junior College is threatening to sue several hundred students and faculty members who have created private e-mail addresses that use the college’s name without permission. The college is attempting to stamp out Yahoo, Google and other e-mail accounts that include the letters “SRJC” or the words “Santa Rosa Junior College” in the user’s name, such as JohnDoe_SRJC@yahoo.com. Critics say the endeavor is a waste of time and a local attorney said the college’s legal threat is without merit. Rachel Hamilton, a SRJC student, said the college was meddling in other people’s business. “It’s not up to the college to mandate what your e-mail is,” Hamilton said. “That’s just silly.” But administrators said using the college’s name in e-mail addresses could potentially confuse people. “Unless they have been given permission to use that, we are asking them not to use it,” said Ken Fiori, director of computing services at the college.

Greece puts brakes on Street View BBC
The Hellenic Data Protection Authority wants more information. Greece’s data protection agency has banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending “additional information” from the firm. Street View gives users a 360-degree view of a road via Google Maps.Authorities want to know how long the images would be kept on Google’s database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights. A similar street mapping service, run by local ISP Kapou, was also suspended for the same reason.

TD Ameritrade data theft settlement gets court OK Associated Press
More than 6 million current and former customers of online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. will be able to benefit from the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed over the theft of client contact information. Formal notice of a settlement agreement will be sent to people who used TD Ameritrade’s services before mid-September 2007. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco approved a revised version of the settlement agreement earlier this month despite some misgivings about it. Last summer, Walker rejected an earlier version of the deal. Anyone who held an Ameritrade account or provided an e-mail address to the company before Sept. 14, 2007, could benefit from the lawsuit. The database that was breached included information on 6.2 million people.

The President And The Pirate White House
Pity the poor historian a couple hundred years from now, at a loss to figure out why Barack Obama, an American president at the start of the 21st century, was photographed meeting in the Oval Office with a pirate. What kind of unexplained policy initiative was being played out in this photo, the historian might wonder, perhaps confusing it for something other than what it was: a gag one of dozens for the president’s remarks at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. The joke was the idea of three top presidential aides including senior advisor David Axelrod. They would have Mr. Obama refer to his recent meetings with world leaders. “There I am with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso,” he would say, followed by, “there I am with Gordon Brown.” But the punch line was his assertion that he was living up to his campaign pledge that “we can’t just talk to our friends.” And with that, up would pop the photo of President Obama with a pirate.

National Astronaut Recruitment Campaign Canadian Space Agency
The Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the CSA President Steve MacLean will introduce the two Canadians that have been selected to join the Canadian Space Agency`s astronaut corps, at a news conference to be held at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, Ontario, on Wednesday, May 13. Journalists who cannot be on site will be able to follow the event live on the Canadian Space Agency Web site at www.asc-csa.gc.ca.

TrueCrypt 6.2 disk encryption software released Heise Online
Version 6.2 of TrueCrypt has been released and includes several improvements, security enhancements and bug fixes on all platforms. The open source, cross platform disk encryption tool has an updated I/O pipeline that uses read-ahead buffering to improve the read performance, especially on solid-state drives (SSD), by around 30 to 50 per cent. The release now includes boot loader support for motherboards with BIOSes that reserve large amounts of base memory (normally for onboard RAID controllers). The Auto-Mount Devices feature has been improved on Windows, making it run significantly faster, and the header areas will now be wiped before the encrypted headers are written to the disk.

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May, 2009