Growing numbers of fans are protesting online when labels delay the digital release of hit radio singles. But these consumer complaints are doing little to stop record companies from deferring the availability of downloads.

Source: Reuters

Mozilla Corp. on Thursday gave users a first look at the next version of its Thunderbird e-mail client by releasing an alpha of v. 2.0.

Thunderbird 2.0 Alpha 1, which can be downloaded in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X editions, is suitable for developers only, Mozilla said on its Web site, although there are no actual barriers that block others from trying the software.

Among the new features being tested in the client are message tagging, enhanced mail notification alerts, updates to the program’s extension model, and a “Conversations” view mode (similar to the grouping used in Google’s Gmail).

Source: Yahoo

Microsoft plans next week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads, in a move that runs counter to the practice held by most software companies.

Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged $1.50 per download, beginning next Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT, a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

“Since the end of May, Beta 2 has been downloaded more than 3 million times…That’s 500 percent more than what was expected,” the spokeswoman said. “The fee helps offset the cost of downloading from the servers.”

Source: News.com

Lockheed Martin to Design Nano Air Vehicle to Monitor the Urban Battlefield

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) a $1.7-million, 10-month contract to design a revolutionary remote-controlled nano air vehicle (NAV) that will collect military intelligence indoors and outdoors on the urban battlefield.

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) leads a team that will design a remote-controlled NAV, similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed. A chemical rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing will power a sensor payload module more than 1,100 yards. Delivered from a hover and weighing up to 0.07 ounces, the module will be interchangeable based on mission requirements. Besides controlling lift and pitch, the wing will also house telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors, and battery power.

The NAV will be about 1.5 inches long and have a maximum takeoff weight of about 0.35 ounces. In typical operation, a warfighter will launch the NAV and fly it toward the target by viewing its flight path through a camera embedded in the wing. Like a maple tree seed, the one-bladed device will rotate in flight, but its camera will provide a stable forward view and transmit images back to a small, hand-held display.

As the system matures, a simple autopilot aboard the NAV will provide limited autonomous operations. Once the NAV delivers its payload, it will return to the warfighter for collection and refurbishment.

According to James Marsh, ATL director, designing and building such a small device will require revolutionary manufacturing technologies to integrate near-microscopic components into the airframe. But even the airframe will require a challenging combination of new and emerging technologies.

A new research project aims to harness search engine Google to find security flaws in open source code. Bugle identifies common vulns using a (thus far) limited set of Google queries. So far the search queries look for cross-site scripting, SQL injection and buffer overflow flaws, for example.

Source: The Register