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andy (mrbabyman on digg), reg (zaibatsu on digg), and i (msaleem on digg) have been working on a technology-focused podcast for the past few weeks and i’m happy to announce that it is finally live! the podcast is hosted on podshow and you can subscribe directly through itunes as well. all comments and critiques are welcome, and we all hope you will enjoy the show.

The Legend of The Drill Down:

Regular hosts Andrew Sorcini, Muhammad Saleem and Reg ‘Zaibatsu’ discuss the week’s most intriguing issues in technology and on the internet.

p.s. if you really want to show your support, please join our facebook group.

a friend just informed me that the nytimes premium service, timesselect, is now free for students or faculty members with a valid college or university email address.

A university subscription to TimesSelect includes:

• OP-ED COLUMNISTS Enjoy exclusive online access.
• NEWS COLUMNISTS Explore the perspectives of select columnists from Business, New York/Region, Sports and The International Herald Tribune.
• THE ARCHIVE Explore The Times archive back to 1981. Access up to 100 articles per month.

of course you don’t have to be a current student or faculty member, you just need to have an email address ending in .edu. just keep in mind to fudge your graduation date if you’ve already graduated.

the confirmation email takes about 10 minutes and once you get it, click the link to continue the sign up process and click upgrade on the sign up page to register.

apple announced the downloading of the 3 billionth song from itunes today, and i can’t help but wonder who all these rich fools are, that are downloading and paying for songs. i would love to see statistics on how many people make up what percentage of downloads from the itunes music store, and what percentage this figure is of the total itunes install base. here’s what im looking for:

let’s assume there are 100 people in the world. let’s assume 85 of them use itunes. now, let’s assume 20 of them download music from itunes, and 3 of those 20 download 75% of the total music downloaded. according to my made up figures,

85% of the world uses itunes
23.53% of the users download music from the itunes music store
15% of the downloaders (3.5% of the users) account for 75% of the music downloaded

note: i just made up these numbers.

does that sound like a good number of rich fools (3.5% of the total user base)? while i have no doubt that 3 billion songs have been downloaded, i’m having an incredibly hard time believing that this number is spread nicely over all the itunes users. it makes more sense that a small number of deep-pocketed fools are doing most of the paid downloading from the itunes music store, while everyone else uses p2p software to download music and itunes to manage it and sync it with their ipods.

neil cavuto is some chump writing for fox news who was an awful student in school, making C’s at best, and was a habitual liar when talking to his parents. that said, some how he managed to get a job at fox news (perhaps i shouldn’t be so surprised) and has the audacity to give apple marketing advice.

here’s what i have to share with you cavuto:

On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple Comouter, Dell founder and then CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly, “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

A little more than a month later, on November 10, 1997, new Apple iCEO Steve Jobs responded, speaking in front of an image of Michael Dell’s bulls-eye covered face, “We’re coming after you, you’re in our sights.”

Today, after a little more than eight years of hard work, Apple Computer, Inc. passed Dell, Inc. in market value. That’s right, at market close Apple Computer ($72,132,428,843) is now worth more than Dell ($71,970,702,760).

source: mac daily news

having previously ‘banned’ the use of the word ‘nigger’, new york is now trying to ‘ban’ the words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ to discourage their use in music and among young people. of course this ban isn’t legally binding, because of something known as the first amendment. it’s clear that new york hasn’t heard of it so here’s the gist of it: the amendment grants absolute freedom of speech and of press (among others) and places upon the state, the burden to prove that a limitation of any of these freedoms is necessary.

because there is no way the state could make a case to justify limiting the freedom of speech for these words, just like the ban on the word ‘nigger’ the ban on the words ‘ho’ and ‘bitch’ would also be completely symbolic. this is the part that displays the idiocy of new york. because the ban wouldn’t be legally binding, the state won’t be able to enforce the ban and it would be up on individuals to decide whether they respect the symbolic ban.

i just have this feeling that rappers and young people aren’t going to uphold the symbolism and these efforts are just a waste of time for the officials backing it.

found in the front lawn of the nashville parthenon on a drainage cover by a friend of mine:

i had a talk with the person who had posted hateful messages on my digg submissions yesterday and we cleared it all up. it was just a miscommunication coupled with a bad day at work. we had a talk and it seems that some people think my posts on this site make me seem arrogant and conceited which is not at all the case.

anyway, we talked, he apologized, and we sorted everything out.

i noticed that a user has started posting hateful comments on a number of my digg submissions because he thinks im arrogant and because many of my submitted stories reach the front page of digg. i haven’t responded to any of his comments in the threads because i know those of you who have ever had a conversation with me know that i am not arrogant and don’t mean any harm.

anyway if anyone ever feels that i have done them any wrong, please feel free to contact my using the contact form on this site. i always encourage conversation over hate and i hope this user will also get in touch with me too.

thanks.

i graduated from the university of chicago with a b.a. degree in economics and a minor in slavic languages and literature today. yay!

pc world has named the netscape navigator (browser, 1994) to be the number one tech product of all time.

Netscape was the reason people started spending hours a day on the Internet, leading to the boom (and bust) of many a Web site.

check out the browser archive (and the rest of the list).