Listen to The Laporte Report on podcast. Mp3 version, click here.
The dark side of Moon was seen for first time on this day in 1959. American Bandstand premiered in 1957. The MPAA adopted the film rating system in 1968. Adam Rich was arrested for stealing hypodermic needles in 1991.
Happy Birthday physicist Neils Bohr, 1885 and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 1931. John Cougar Mellencamp is 53.
- The Senate Judiciary Committe votes on the Induce Act this afternoon. The highly controversial bill, created by and for the RIAA, makes fundamental changes to the copyright law, making it illegal to distribute any product that can be used to steal music or movies - that means Kazaa and Morpheus, of course, but also DVD recorders, CD burners, and even the iPod. This bill would jeopardize the entire consumer electronic industry. If it’s voted out of committee the Senate is expected to take it up after the November election recess. Contact your member of Congress today.
- Stern’s doing it. As expected, the syndicated radio shock jock announced Wednesday that he’s moving the lucrative program to satellite radio provider Sirius starting January 1, 2006. The five year, multimillion dollar deal is a big blow to Infinity broadcasting, Stern’s current employer, and an even bigger boost for Sirius. There’s a giant ad for Sirius on Stern’s site saying “some things should be censored, just not your radio.” Sirius says the show will cost $100 million a year to produce.
- Microsoft has released a patch and a scan tool for TV Media, a piece of spyware that was causing Service Pack 2 to blue screen. Spyware seems to be the number one cause of SP-2 issues and Microsoft is recommending scanning for spyware before attempting the upgrade.
- Microsoft also warned webmasters this morning of a flaw in ASP.NET that could give attackers access to password protected areas of web sites. There is no fix as yet for the bug which affects 2.9 million active sites.
- Vice President Cheney slipped when he sent debate viewers to factcheck.com Tuesday night. It’s Factcheck.org for one thing. For another, the dot-com site now sends surfers to financier George Soros’s anti-Bush site. Frankly, factcheck.org is not much better. It does point out some inaccuracies in John Edwards’s debate claims, but it’s harder on the Vice President.
- Amazon launched Google competitor A9 last week. Turnabout is fair play. Google is putting book pages online, ala Amazon. print.google.com lets you search through the handful of books they now have online, but they’re soliciting publishers for more.
- Netscape founder Marc Andreesen told the Web 2.0 conference yesterday that he expects Microsoft to take aim at Mozilla and Apple’s Safari real soon now. “If I were them I’d take another look, and I would see how I could screw with other people’s businesses with this monopoly (I) have,” he said.
- Just when you thought the DVD camcorder was dead, Sony, Sharp, and Panasonic have announced they’ll offer camcorders with 15GB Blu-ray DVD recorders built-in some time next year. The cameras would likely be aimed at the HD prosumer crowd. Give me a hard drive instead.
- Skype says it’s going to target businesses next with its free peer-to-peer Internet telephony software. Skype for Business will include expanded conference calling, SkypePlus voice mail and SkypeIn, for receiving calls from POTS phones.
- Jib Jab’s new video, Dixie, premieres on Leno tonight then will be available online at jibjab.com. In addition to this years presidential candidates, the 80 second animated film features John Ashcroft, Dan Rather, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh and Jane Fonda. Atom films is stocking up on bandwidth even as we speak. [Awesone!!!]
I'll update later, but for now I'm out like Bush in November :)
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