Bytes

Andy Oldfield
Sunday 16 May 1999 19:02 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

GRATEFUL DEAD fans can now legally post and swap MP3 recordings of live performances over the Internet, Eric Doney, a spokesman for the band, said last week. The move is being heralded as further proof of the unstoppability of the format. The Grateful Dead are the biggest band to commit to the new medium. "They don't want to leave their fans in a technological backwater," Doney said. Support for MP3 will be further boosted tomorrow when Public Enemy pre-release their album, There's a Poison Goin' On, in MP3 on AtomicPop.com and Amazon.com a month before it reaches the shops. Indie band They Might Be Giants are also planning an MP3-only album at GoodNoise.com.

u

IDLE PCS can help the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) with free software, released last week. Rather than switching on a screensaver after a period of inactivity, Seti@home software will instead direct PC processors to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for regular radio patterns that might be from other life forms. The software downloads small packets of data from Seti each day, analyses them when the processor is not being used for other tasks and sends them back to Seti at the University of California, Berkeley. By using hundreds of thousands of PCs, Seti hopes to process more data more quickly than by using dedicated supercomputers. The software is available for PC, Unix and Mac at http:// setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.

u

SUN MICROSYSTEMS has said it will reorganise in July. Its three software divisions will be merged into a software products and platforms division controlled by Alan Baratz. John McFarlane will leave the Solaris group to become president of a new division aiming to get Sun hardware into Internet services. Doug Kaewort will lead a combined developer relations and market development division.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in