ith his Internet site of free music, Bob Dylan is certainly far ahead of the crowd in how he treats his music and his legions of fans in the age of the Internet.

Dylan?s site (www.bobdylan.com) is sponsored by Columbia Records, which is amazing given the amount of his music available online. Record companies, as you might have heard, have been unfailingly reactionary to the desire of people to download their favourite tunes over the Internet.

Since they were previously denied the opportunity to purchase music online for a reasonable price, illegal music copying and exchange sites sprung up to meet the demand. After Apple?s iTunes site was launched, legitimate online music sites have sprung up.

You would think that Dylan, therefore, did not have to promote his music by giving it away free, especially previously unreleased tracks. Yet, this is what he has done, one feels not in the interests of self promotion, but as a means of recognising and rewarding his fans.

Central to www.bobdylan.com is the catalogue of officially released albums and songs. There is also a searchable database of Bob Dylan?s published lyrics. You?ll find samples of every track on every album. Click on the ?Performances? section, plus a growing library of otherwise unreleased live music, studio rarities and other hard-to-find recordings.

When I first mentioned the site in this column three years ago there were about 15 tunes available online. Another 30 of Dylan?s songs have been added since then, including live performances as recent as June last year.

There is also a section with Dylan?s covers of songs by other artists and about ten songs available of other artists performing Dylan?s songs. The highlight for me is two songs performed by the Grateful Dead.

The site uses RealAudio technology for its audio files. The music is encoded in stereo and sounds impressive even with inexpensive speakers. You will need some sort of recording program (such as Creative SoundBlaster for example) to record the performance while you play it. You cannot simply download the file.

I am in heaven. It shows that an old dog can learn new tricks and also teach the new dogs as well.

I recently tested Easy CD-DA Extractor version 8.0.1 by Poikosoft (www.poikosoft.com) and found that for $15 the program goes farther than most to ensure you get a clean burn of your audio CD, even if the CD you are making of a copy of is badly scratched or copy-protected.

CD-DA Extractor also allows you to convert files from one format to another and supports MP1, MP2, MP3, Windows Media Audio 8, Windows Media Audio 9, Windows Media Audio 9.1, Ogg Vorbis, MP4, M4A, AAC, FLAC, Musepack, VQF, WAV, AIFF, Monkey?s Audio, and Shorten.

Nero Digital (Nero AAC) is supported if you have the Nero Burning ROM installed on your computer.While I do not have the time or the resources to test all of the vast amount of CD rippers now available on the market, Easy CD-DA gets high marks from other review sites, including CNet.

One reason you should consider CD-DA is the easy interface it presents, especially for those who are frustrated by the often non-intuitive workings of other ripping/burning programs, notably Nero. With CD-DA you can drag-and-drop files to perform many of the tasks.

I do not have a badly-scratched audio CD with which to test the software. If someone tests out Easy CD-DA and manages to save a prized music album then please send me a note. I am interested to know, especially since the software will have paid for itself.

Easy CD-DA has a 30-day trial period so there is no reason not to try it out for your next ripping job. I of course must include this note: or this columnist do not encourage or condone the illegal copying of copyrighted material. Now you know.

Science or weather buffs can do their bit in the doomsday art of calculating global warming by participating in the shared computing project run by www.climateprediction.net. Climateprediction.net is an experiment in weather modelling to try and produce a long-range forecast of the climate. You can help by donating time on your computer when it is not being used to full capacity.

Two years ago I encouraged people to join in SETI, a similar shared-computing project that used computing power to analyse radio frequency data from space in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu).

Climateprediction.net works along the same principle. You download a special program from the site then a climate model. The program will run automatically as a background process on your computer whenever you switch your computer on.

As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns on your, unique, version of the world evolve. The results are sent back to the project via the Internet. You will then be able to see a summary of your results on the web site.

So far the model analysis has produced some sobering results. All models analysed in phase four of the project react very differently to the doubling of carbon dioxide. Most models warm slowly to between 13 and 15 ?C over 15 years. However some get a lot warmer ? up to 22?C, whilst others show a cooler climate.

Remember to implement the Microsoft patches for twelve security holes found in the company?s products. Eight of the advisories are labelled ?critical? (affecting Office, Project, and Visio, PNG processing in Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, and MSN Messenger, Windows and Internet Explorer); three are labelled as ?important? (affecting NET Developer Tools and Platform, and Windows); and one as ?moderate? (affecting Windows and Office). Go to www.SecureBermuda.com for the links to the advisories and patches.