Faster Forward - Technology News, Observations and Occasional Rants by The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro - March 29, 2009

Cable, Satellite TV Bundles Near a Breaking Point

The scheduling of today's column is new; its content, however, should seem familiar. First, that timing: The piece is on our Web site today, but it won't appear in print until Sunday, when it will grace the Business section along with my Help File Q&A column. The idea here isn't...

Will Tru2way Open the Cable Box? Tune In Later...

I spent yesterday afternoon wandering around the Washington Convention Center looking in vain for one thing: a digital video recorder that you could buy in a store, then use with the cable service of your choice. This unsuccessful search took place at the Cable Show, a convention organized by the...

April Foolin': The 2009 Edition

It's time, once again, for things to look a little strange on the Internet for a day. I mean, stranger than usual. Consider, for instance, the news at Google, which announced the debut of a new artificial-intelligence project, CADIE (short for "Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity"). This new entity, naturally, immediately...

Conficker Removal Reminders

If you've only just now heard of the Conficker worm -- which may or may not do some very bad things to Windows computers tomorrow, causing a non-trivial Internet traffic jam in the process -- I suppose I should compliment you for managing to avoid this topic for so long....

Microsoft Closes the Book on Encarta

Microsoft will shut down its Encarta online encyclopedia on Oct. 31. That move will end one of the Redmond, Wash., software firm's most ambitious ventures into digital publishing -- and mark one of the most dramatic victories of user-generated content over traditional, top-down media. For those younger readers who may...

Sound Ethics: What To Do With Music CDs After Ripping Them?