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Apple says iTunes has sold more than 5 billion songs

Apple, maker of the iPod media player, said its iTunes online store has sold more than 5 billion songs since its debut five years ago as more fans abandon record shops for the Web. The site is the most popular in the United States for legal music downloads, with more than 8 million songs. ITunes customers also are renting or buying more than 50,000 movies a day, Apple said Thursday in a statement. Sales of CDs and music DVDs fell 13 percent to $15.9 billion last year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said yesterday. Sales of downloaded songs and mobile-phone ring tones rose 34 percent to $2.9 billion.

Data From Hubble To Earth Cheaper Than Texting Your Friend

"A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr Nigel Bannister's calculations were used for the UK's Channel 4 Dispatches programme "The Mobile Phone Rip-Off". He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble - and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text. He said: "The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that."

Scientist Says Texting is More Expensive Than Downloading From Hubble

Does your cell phone bill ever reach astronomical proportions? Maybe you're doing too much texting. One space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Nigel Bannister from the University of Leicester looked at the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble and compared it with the cost of sending a text. His calculations? “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that."

Rewriting journalism's rules

More than 800 e-mails about all kinds of consumer horror stories pour into the editor's inbox at RipoffReport.com every day. A staff of freelance editors briefly reviews every one and adds most to the public database of more than 323,000 accounts assembled over 10 years. “We don't add or remove anything other than obscenities, personal information and stuff like that,” says founder Ed Magedson, who's been sued more than 35 times, never successfully.

SMS costs more than using Hubble Space Telescope

Teenagers. Harder to reach than distant galaxiesA British boffin has calculated that text messages are a horrendously expensive method of handling information, costing many times more than it does to access data from the Hubble Space Telescope.… .

Mars Harder and Colder Than Previously Thought

coondoggie writes "Turns out that the surface of Mars is stiffer and colder than previously thought. New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water would be located deeper than scientists had suspected. NASA made the discovery while using the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument on the Orbiter, which revealed long, continuous layers stretching up to 600 miles, or about one-fifth the length of the United States. The radar pictures show a smooth, flat border between the ice cap and the rocky Martian crust, NASA said. On Earth, the weight of a similar stack of ice would cause the planet's surface to sag. The fact that the Martian surface is not bending means that its strong outer shell, or lithosphere, a combinati

Can a Windows PC Really Be Cheaper Than a Linux Box?

A Windows machine that's cheaper than a roughly equivalent Linux version? How could that be? That's the question making its way around the Linux blogs these days as Asus has begun selling a version of its Eee PC with Windows installed that costs $50 less than the one with Linux preinstalled. That was all the fodder the commenters needed.

Can a Windows PC Really Be Cheaper Than a Linux Box?

A Windows machine that's cheaper than a roughly equivalent Linux version? How could that be? That's the question making its way around the Linux blogs these days as Asus has begun selling a version of its Eee PC with Windows installed that costs $50 less than the one with Linux preinstalled. That was all the fodder the commenters needed.

LINUX BLOG SAFARICan a Windows PC Really Be Cheaper Than a Linux Box?

A Windows machine that's cheaper than a roughly equivalent Linux version? How could that be? That's the question making its way around the Linux blogs these days as Asus has begun selling a version of its Eee PC with Windows installed that costs $50 less than the one with Linux preinstalled. That was all the fodder the commenters needed.

Randolph College in Virginia gets more than $7M for painting at auction to raise school funds

LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) - The first of four paintings auctioned by Virginia's Randolph College to raise money has sold for more than $7.2 million, more than double what school officials had estimated.

Rogers defends iPhone data: 'better than some'...

Rogers Wireless is justified in its limited data plans as many other iPhone-carrying nations are doing the same or are more restrictive, a company spokeswoman tells Electronista. The Canadian company argues that a "majority" of international iPhone carriers have capped data and believes its plan to be better than these, citing as example Orange France plans that include a 500MB 'reasonable use' limit versus the 2GB maximum on Rogers' best iPhone plan. The company also tries to justify the caps by claiming that unlimited use would require customers pay for more than they need.

Art Auction at Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap raises more than US$ 10,000 for Local Community Projects

A silent auction of sculptures by the renowned architect behind Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap raised more than $10,000 for local community projects on an opening night that drew more than 200 guests to the hotel’s trend-setting Arts Lounge.

The C-16 Telescope

The telescope is more than 2,000 times better than the human eye at capturing light, which astronomers consider more important than magnification. The C-16 has a useful magnification range of 60 to 900 power (determined by dividing the focal length of the telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece).

Rise in attendance at International LinuxTag

Berlin, June 3: LinuxTag is attracting greater attention than ever before. This year 11,612 visitors from 31 countries came to Berlin to visit Europe's largest event for Linux and open source software, around 18 per cent more than last year. The number of visitors from abroad was 12 per cent higher than the previous year. Professional users, experts and interested visitors from all over Europe, Africa, Asia and North America were gathered at the international meeting place for business and the community, which ended last Saturday.

Rise in Attendance at International LinuxTag

BERLIN --(Business Wire)-- LinuxTag is attracting greater attention than ever before. This year 11,612 visitors from 31 countries came to Berlin to visit Europe's largest event for Linux and open source software, around 18 per cent more than last year. The number of visitors from abroad was 12 per cent higher than the previous year. Professional users, experts and interested visitors from all over Europe, Africa, Asia and North America were gathered at the international meeting place for business and the community, which ended last Saturday.

For cult artist Banksy, the buzz of creating graffiti murals is "better than sex, better than drugs."

But as pop singers and Hollywood stars clamour to buy his paintings at skyrocketing prices, the reclusive Banksy resolutely refuses to play the celebrity game and give up his anonymity.

Bee species outnumber mammals and birds combined

Scientists have discovered that there are more bee species than previously thought. In the first global accounting of bee species in over a hundred years, John S. Ascher, a research scientist in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, compiled online species pages and distribution maps for more than 19,200 described bee species, showcasing the diversity of these essential pollinators. This new species inventory documents 2,000 more described, valid species than estimated by Charles Michener in the first edition of his definitive The Bees of the World published eight years ago.

Intel unwraps 8GB SSD for handhelds

Alongside its new chipsets, Intel on Tuesday has also unveiled the Z-P230, a new version of its ultra-small solid-state drive. The flash disk is roughly four times smaller than a 1.8-inch hard drive found in an ultraportable notebook but holds either 4GB or 8GB of storage on chips that are no larger than a penny, as much as quadrupling the storage available through the Z-P140 introduced less than a year ago. The added capacity makes the drive a good match for handhelds as well as extremely low-cost desktops and notebooks, according to Intel.

ARTS Big showsstill havecrowd appeal

DESPITE rumours of its impending death the blockbuster exhibition is alive and well on Australia's eastern seaboard. On June 9, Picasso and His Collection opened at the Queensland Art Gallery's Gallery of Modern Art. It includes more than 100 works from Pablo Picasso's personal art collection, as well as more than 80 by the artist. With more than 44,000 visitors in just 25 days, gallery director Tony Ellwood says: "The place is pumping."

AP Quotes Blogger In Discussing Bloggers Quoting AP; Hilarity Ensues

The ongoing ridiculous situation brewing between bloggers and the Associated Press has now taken a turn towards the enjoyably hilarious. We had already mentioned the fact that, despite the AP's complaints that bloggers quoting less than 100 words were violating fair use, the AP had a long history of quoting more than 100 words from bloggers -- and not even linking back to the original blog. Now, in a bit of ultimate irony, the AP's own article about this brouhaha quoted (without linking) twenty-two words from TechCrunch. That's 18 words more than the supposed four word "limit" the AP has suggested. With an ironic chance that wide, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington couldn't resist, and asked his lawyer to send a DMCA takedown notice to the Associated Press, along with a bill for $12.

Microsoft's New Search Business Model: Cashback Rewards

Microsoft announced it would begin offering ad-funded cash rebates to customers who find and purchase their favorite products through a new program called Microsoft Live Search cashback. Key partners include eBay, Barnes & Noble.com, Overstock.com, Sears, Zappos.com, and WPP. The complete Live Search cashback product portfolio includes more than 10 million product offers from more than 700 merchants, including more than 13 of the top 40 U.S. retailers.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta and Extensions Show Strong Momentum; Office Productivity...

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta and Extensions Show Strong Momentum; Office Productivity Suite Delivers Document Accessibility for Mac Users with Disabilities Advanced Integration of OpenOffice.org with Apple VoiceOver, ODF Editing is Now Accessible on All Key Desktop Platforms; More Than 100 Extensions Available for OpenOffice.org BERLIN--(Business Wire)-- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA), the leading Open Source company, and the OpenOffice.org(TM) community today announced the availability of more than 100 extensions in the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository with the most popular ones achieving downloads of more than 200,000. Extensions are additional components downloaded on top of an existing OpenOffice.org installation to add extra features, templates, languages and dictionaries to the software.

Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads

jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.

EDI Still Dominant in B2B

Despite the advances in B2B integration technologies such as XML, a recent Forrester report by Ken Vollmer showed that EDI still accounts for 85-90% of B2B transactions. However, the growth projections of other forms of B2B including stateful and stateless XML is expected to grow faster than EDI. Surprisingly, the survey indicated that 61% of respondent trade electronically with less than 10% of their customers. This is due to the fact that cost of EDI prohibited it being implemented with the smaller partners, suppliers and customers. However, time and resources for remediating errors of manual transactions is motivating companies to take a more comprehensive approach to their B2B solutions. Generally speaking, manual transactions are an order of magnitude more expensive to process than automated transactions.

The State of X.Org

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has up an article looking at the release of X Server 1.4.1. This maintenance release for X.Org, which the open-source operating systems depend upon for living in a graphically rich world, comes more than 200 days late and it doesn't even clear the BugZilla release blocker bug. A further indication of problems is that the next major release of X.Org was scheduled to be released in February... then May... and now it's missing with no sign of when a release will occur. There are still more than three dozen outstanding bugs. Also, the forthcoming release (X.Org 7.4) will ship with a slimmer set of features than what was initially planned."

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