Category: outside

Allofmp3.com has been selling unrestricted music downloads in a variety of formats for about 4 to 10 cents per song for a few years now. It’s a Russia-based business which claims to have legal rights to sell the music in this way to Russian citizens for personal use. Of course, they don’t do anything to verify that their customers are Russian and the site is available in English and fully usable by any English-speaker. It looks like the Russian authorities may drop the proverbial hatchet on the service and force them to pay copyright fees for the music they have sold. It will be interesting to see how this plays out!

If you feel like you are falling farther and farther behind your children in your understanding of technology and the Internet, you probably are! The first step in understanding the kids of today is learning to communicate with them. This guide should help you get started by revealing some of the common slang used in reference to computers and the Internet. It explains the meanings of coded words like !337$p34k and pwn3d and provides a clear description of key ways to decode other words and make up your own new ones.

My first real computer was a Commodore Amiga 500 way back in 1988 or so. At that time I had no idea about the underlying technical awesomeness that was the Amiga, but I did know that all of my friends’ PCs and Macs looked pretty stupid compared to my Amiga. I remember wondering why anyone would buy anything but an Amiga. My family never bought another Amiga after that first one (though that one did last something like 7 years!) and pretty much no one else did either and the Amiga platform has been basically dead ever since. There have always been rumors that it might return one day and now it seems to have actually happened. The whole history of the platform is pretty amazing even if you don’t read through the whole article. I’m not quite ready to be an early adopter, but it sure is tempting. Anyway, read on.

The bankruptcy and closure of what may be the last pro-level manufacturer of analog audio tape in the world may be the beginning of the end for analog audio. The plant employed about 250 employees and in its heyday employed around 1,800 workers. Musicians and producers all over the world are scrambling to stockpile the last reels of unused analog tape available. I’ve never used analog tape much myself, but this may be the end of an era and that’s always accompanied by a bit of sadness. The ramifications of this go beyond music, too. Here’s more from NPR.

Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who reported on the connection between the CIA and the crack trade in Los Angeles, shot himself a couple weeks back. Those articles he wrote back in 1996 struck some nerves and several notable newspapers worked hard to discredit him and his reporting. They succeeded and his career was destroyed. Since then the bulk of his findings were have been admitted to by the CIA itself, but the LA Times completely failed to mention that in his obituary. Instead they took the opportunity to discredit him further. Sad sad sad.

Yamaha, known for making motorcycles and jetskis, as well as lots of musical instruments and professional audio gear, is buying Steinberg, the company behind music software Cubase and Nuendo. Cubase and Nuendo are notably the last cross-platform PC and Mac digital audio workstation (DAW) applications out there, other than the venerable ProTools which can only be purchased along with their hardware. The other two major audio and midi applications (Logic Pro and Digital Performer) are both Mac-only. There’s some other notable applications that are cross-platform, but Cubase/Nuendo, Performer and Logic are the ‘Big 3’. This move puts Yamaha directly in competition with Apple, who owns Emagic and their Logic software (now called Logic Pro and branded as an Apple product). I suspect Yamaha wants the software technology as a complement to their range of digital audio hardware, but we’ll see what happens!

Bill Moyers recently received the fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (wow, that’s a mouthful), and in his acceptance essay he paints an interesting and somewhat infuriating and a bit depressing picture of the grip Christian ideas has on today’s America. Go read it now and tell everyone you know!

An interesting article that breaks down the red state/blue state concept we’re all so familiar with into red county/blue county terms. If you’re too short on time to read, it turns out that most blue states are actually predominantly red when viewed by county. Likewise, most red states have some large blue sections. The blue sections turn out to be mostly the major cities. The author then argues that the Democrats need to focus more on ‘urban issues’. It’s worth reading even if you don’t agree with all of the points made. I think there’s some real wisdom in there.

Oh, and by the way, I’m really sick of all these “It’s the [Blank], Stupid” slogans and titles. It wasn’t that funny or insightful the first time.

Liberal intellectual types have begun the hunt for the conspiracy that resulted in Kerry losing to the silly little man we call Bush. I enjoy entertaining these notions that the system is corrupt and Americans as a whole don’t really prefer morals to facts just as much as the next guy, but what’s it really going to change even if it is true? Idealists of today do not push changes through the system. You have to be a realist or a pragmatist or whatever you want to call it. The American world is governed by fear and greed, plain and simple. Reason does not generally come into it. It’s easy to sit here and talk about past events in this abstract nature without proposing any sort of action, and that’s just what I’m going to do. I’m not the guy you should be looking to for suggestions of action, anyway.

Bill Gates seems to think interactivity will save the television industry. He seems to think splitting the television screen and showing text ads on one part and the program itself on the other will make everyone happy. Uh, wot? Like the writer of the linked article, I would be appalled at such a monstrosity. I already have trouble standing most tv programming and the times when I do watch TV, it is generally to NOT make any decisions. I already have to navigate endless ‘interfaces’ just to get through my day now. I don’t want to have to work for my mindless entertainment. I mean, c’mon. Like the article says, only better programming will save television. I feel like there has already been a bit of an improvement in the past few years, perhaps pushed along by HBO, and hopefully the trend will continue.