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Could Napster and the recording industry finally be brought together? The company that purchased the remains of Napster from last year’s bankruptcy auction reportedly is close to a deal to acquire the industry-sponsored online music service Pressplay. Roxio will pay $30 million in cash and stock to Pressplay owners Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, three years after the recording industry sued Napster and eventually forced it out of business in June 2001. Roxio recently hired Napster founder Shawn Fanning to help it launch a new online music service that will be branded under the Napster name. Roxio manufactures CDs for music recording. Pressplay is one of two industry-approved music download sites, along with Musicnet; neither one has been very successful. Universal claimed to have lost $30 million on the venture as of March. Roxio will hope to follow the only successful model for legal music downloads thus far, Apple’s iTunes stores, which have sold more than two million songs in less than three weeks of business.
North Korea readying hackers for cyber-war
It turns out that nuclear warfare isn’t the only type that North Korea has been readying for. New intelligence reports out of Seoul suggest that North Koreans have begun training roughly 100 hackers per year to go cyber-ballistic in a war. As perhaps the most wired nation in the world, South Korea would be especially vulnerable to this cyber-warfare, hence the worried reports. South Korea has begun bolstering its counterattack funds, hoping to increase security. The country already has seen how badly an internet attack hurts. Earlier this year, a computer worm brought South Korean internet service to a crawl, especially damaging in a place where 70 percent of the population is online. Though worms and viruses are nothing new in South Korea, that one was the first to successfully target broadband and mobile internet service.
Windows XP passes 98 for most popular system
Windows XP has become the world’s most popular operating system, according to WebSideStory, surpassing several other versions of Windows as of May. The recent HitBox Statmarket study found that nearly 35 percent of worldwide internet users have Windows XP, 10 percentage points higher than No. 2 Windows 98. Although XP has the most users, it actually has not gained usage as quickly as Windows 98 did upon its July 1998 launch. Within six months Windows 98 had captured one-third of the global usage share. It took XP 18 months, until March 2003, to hit that level.
NPR teams with Slate for new midday show
NPR is going commercial, kind of. NPR News and Slate Magazine will launch a new joint radio newsmagazine, “Day to Day,” starting in July. The one-hour weekday program will air at midday and be hosted by NPR correspondent Alex Chadwick. The show will originate from Los Angeles’ NPR West and feature bits from NPR and Slate contributors, including Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley and editor in chief Jacob Weisberg. Topics will include the day’s news and other issues. This is NPR’s first new newsmagazine since the 1985 launch of “Weekend Edition” and the public radio service’s first deal with a commercial media outlet in its 33 years.
May 19, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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