Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog on Tuesday said Apple Computer Inc., the digital music market giant that popularized the sale songs online for 99 cents each, would be, er, ignorant of a shift in the market if it fails to start selling monthly or annual subscriptions to its iTunes service.

“I would be absolutely shocked if they (Apple) did not enter the subscription business. It would be idiotic not to,” Gorog said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

Napster, which runs a subscription-based online music service, has one of the best known names in the business but has failed to put a dent in Apple’s 80 percent market share.

The CEO of the reinvented Napster also defended Steve Jobs’ line against the record labels on pricing for digital downloads.

Listen to Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog call variable pricing for music and downloads “a bad idea. Period. Full stop.”

Psssst! Got $2 and looking for a copy of, say, “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” on DVD?

If you are shopping in China, where widespread piracy of software, music, films and other goods has provoked constant complaints from multinational companies and governments alike, you might be able to beat that price, a Time Warner senior executive confessed on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit on Tuesday, Jeffrey Bewkes, chief operating officer of Time Warner, whose recent blockbusters include “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Syriana,” said the company battles the street market for DVD’s in China by “offering legitimate products, in the right time period at the right price.” That price is about $2 or $3.

Still, he admitted that the New York-based company, whose revenues topped $43 billion in 2005, is battling, for example, a guy selling “DVDs on a blanket for $1.”
He was then asked if he thought selling DVDs for $2 or $3 was cheap enough.

“Probably not,” he said. 

Breathe easy, residents of Corning, New York — your biggest employer is staying put.

Peter Volanakis Chief Operating Officer, of Corning Inc., on Tuesday said the company, which makes fiber optic cable and liquid crystal glass used in TVs and computer displays, has no plans to leave the small town it has called home for some 130 years.

Asked if the comany, which earns two-thirds of its revenue outside of the U.S., was considering pulling up its roots, he said “No, that is our home.”

“That’s our headquarters, that’s where our laboratory is,” he said on Tuesday at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York. “All roads for us lead back to our central laboratory (there).”

The vote of confidence for New York’s “Crystal City” comes as other household names in the state in recent years have significantly pared thier workforce, most notably camera and film maker Eastman Kodak and printer and copier maker Xerox Corp.

Harold Goddijn, Chief Executive of navigation systems maker TomTom, says the the GPS-based navigation systems are “still very much a guy thing.”

BT Group’s take on broadband broadcasting is enthuisastic. At the summit today, the chief executive of BT Group’s consumer arm said of broadband TV, “We have spent tens of millions of pounds on it and we will spend more tens of millions of pounds.”

On Monday, Qwest CEO Richard Notebaert told the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecom Summit his company was in no rush to make the Internet TV push.

The good news is, The Rolling Stones are finally going to rock China.The bad news is, there are four songs the Chinese government doesn’t want to hear, and promoters say the Stones will probably go along with the request to omit those numbers from their shows. Here is the story:

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones performs during his “A Bigger Bang tour 2006″ concert at the Foro Sol in Mexico City February 26, 2006. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Ever wonder what you will look like a decade from now if you keep drinking nine beers a night? Accenture Chief Technology Officer Don Rippert has a view. Listen to him talk about Accenture’s idea for the “Persuasive Mirror.”

Read more about the Persuasive Mirror here.

These guys in southern Hungary are wearing fur coats and scary masks to frighten away the winter and usher in the spring. Indeed, as our video shows, they could scare away just about anything.  See for yourself.

Accenture’s Chief Technology Officer Don Rippert gives his views on what are some hot areas for investment in the tech sector. Open source looms large in his predictions… interesting because Accenture has long been a big promoter of Microsoft technologies. Follow the link below to hear his discussion or read the Reuters story.

Richard Notebaert, CEO of Qwest, gives his views on the company and the industry outlook. Here is the full audio of the interview with a panel of Reuters journalists led by Sinead Carew…. Listen to the interview

For more on Qwest, check out our video interviews with Qwest’s Notebaert and Sinead Carew report, Qwest CEO looks at deals outside telecom