IF YOU CAN'T BEAT EM ...
IOmega's DVD drive embraces ALL 7 formats

Well, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, them Mohammed will come to the mountain. Iomega has shipped an external 4x Super DVD drive that burns in ALL SEVEN formats!

That's one way to have a standard.

Review forthcoming.

PAY OR PLAY
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Internet radio royalty rate which must be paid in addition to performer royalties and publishing royalties. The RIAA says that's because Internet radio has "no promotional benefit to the artists." Yeah, that's why every station on the planet wants to stream.
Thanks to LEOVILLE for this one.

A CINGULAR LIABILITY
A lawsuit has been filed against NEXTEL for sending notices to customers via text messaging and then charging them for it. Cingular is getting nailed for bad service.


BETTER ... STRONGER ... FUNNIER?
Daily Variety is reporting that the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN has cast Jim Carrey in the role of Steve Austin. The move is the latest in the trend to take popular television dramas of the sixties and seventies and turn them into blockbuster comedies.


What's next? Sandra Bullock as Bionic Woman Jamie Summers? Hey, wait a minute! I'd pay $10 to see that!

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
This month, WIRED MAGAZINE has an inside story about the Wachowski Brothers and how The Matrix films made them the "it team" in the `Wood.

HI-FIDELITY
Stereos can now download music for all to enjoy. I bet the RIAA loves that.

MAINSTREAM MODS
Companies like Memorex and CompUSA are now selling mod supplies. With each passing day, the E-R analogy of cars in the 50s to computers in the new millenium is truer than ever.

Next up, hot rod CPUs.

WHAT NOT TO DO
On the heals of the mod story comes this about how NOT to upgrade your computer.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
Hollywood is split on the MPAA decision to disallow screeners of Academy Award winning films in an effort to stem the flow of film piracy on the internet. Studios are protesting that smaller films and performances worthy of Oscar won't get noticed unless they can send out tapes and DVDs to Academy members. The MPAA argues that the screeners always get copied and end up on file sharing services within hours. A likely compromise is either to allow studios to send awards-season screeners to members of the Academy and thereby divide the film community between screener haves and have-nots, or to place markers on each screener print in order to determine which screener recipient had them copied.

THIS TAPE WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN FIVE SECONDS
New Microsoft Office suite has an interesting feature ... SELF-DESTRUCTING DOCUMENTS! Email and office files can be set to have a time-stamp which can make a message or file unreadable after a certain date. It was designed to act as a barrier against sensitive information being copied or leaked.

Another feature will determine whether a file can be allowed to be opened by certain people and not opened by others.

BETTY DAVIS EYES
High focused laser scans have detected carvings on Stonehenge that can't be seen by the naked eye.