BunkBlog

In order to avoid folks “accidentally” finding something surprising on my Friends page, I’ve changed the style to link to either “people” or “communities”, rather than the all-inclusive “friends”. So, feel free to click on People at work, not much smut there. hehe

Saturday

bq. Sorry if this isn’t 100% coherent. I just realized I’ve got thoughts about the RIAA, Napster and other music-related things spread out across too many sites to follow. Here’s a relatively complete posting of what I think about the whole mess.

Those silly silly people running the music "industry" (like there are factories and stuff?) just can’t figure out how to not blow themselves up. Napster offered them 200 million dollars per year for the next 5 years, if the RIAA would just not try to destroy Napster, and maybe even try to play nice with them.

The RIAA, being the old greybeards they are, couldn’t bring themselves to approve such a scheme, so they’ll probably end up winning the court battle and shutting Napster down. Of course, since Fanning and Co. have a deal with BMG records, they’ll stick around as the front end for ONE record company’s electronic distribution system.

Meanwhile, the other companies in the RIAA are working on their own systems, which they’ll probably screw up royally. Anyone else remember the awesome Personics systems from the 80s? You could go to a record store kiosk, choose your personal favorite songs from the playlist, and have a cassette created with only music you wanted, with a nice laser-printed jacket and labels. The record companies made royalties, and the consumer got a product they truly wanted. Of course, the industry let that system die from lack of attention, and it was too late anyway, with the CD revolution in full swing.

This past week, the RIAA started going after OpenNap servers, which are equivalent to Napster, but without any company to sue. Next, I’m sure they’ll attempt to sue the users of Gnutella, who are individuals operating out of their own homes. This is basically the music companies suing their own customers. I wonder how they justify that business model.

Really should have made that deal with Napster, RIAA. It was the best chance of getting any money at all without suing your own customers. This should be an entertaining year.

Just saw the RIAA representative talking outside the courtroom on CNN. She really sounds petulant. Of course, Napster can stop people from trading songs based on a simple filter. But, you willfully ignorant twit, that doesn’t mean people will not just rename files with funky characters to get around the filters. Here, try this example: Prinse n da rebolushun - Boyz und Girlz.mp3 would slip right by the filtering system, but would still be a pirated song. The latest info says the Napster folks will be using "fingerprinting" technology to check on songs regardless of filename. So, if I rip a song at 192kbps, is that the same fingerprint as someone who ripped it at 64kbps or one of the VBR algorithms?

Of course, the RIAA also claims they had a horrible 39% decline in CD sales last year, but it was actually a 39% decline in CD single sales. Um, who buys CD singles anyhow, especially with the ability to preview individual tracks at CDnow, Amazon, or Tower Records stores? Slashdot had a great story that tore apart the RIAA numbers.

Oh, and Courtney Love, after how record companies screw artists, is suing her record company for the indentured servitude forced on her, as with any other artist. But, she can afford to make noise about it. Cool.

According to this article, many car CD players will refuse to play new copy-protected CDs, as will all "multimedia PC" systems. So, let’s assume I’ve got my big Altec Lansing subwoofer hooked up to my PC, and it’s the only CD player I own (not really, but many of my friends in the army only have their PCs to play CDs on, to save space). Now, I can’t play any new CDs on this machine, because I MIGHT copy them? Well, I can’t even listen to them "wherever I like" so I’m not going to buy them either.

If I put this CD in my new RioVolt MP3/CD player (the only CD player in my car), will it cease to function? Now, I’ve got a portable CD player (RioVolt) that can’t play audio CDs of the new style, I’ve got a home audio system (MPC) that can’t play the new CDs. And, this somehow does NOT infringe on fair use?

I know plenty of college students and soldiers that don’t buy stereos, because they have computers. These happen to be the ages that buy the majority of popular music as well. I imagine the RIAA is not so smart on this one.

OK, here is MY EXPERIENCE with MP3s. I can’t possibly speak for everyone, but this is me. I am 30 years old, I was a soldier for 12 years, and I have been a computer geek since I was 10. I listen to MP3s, mainly from Usenet postings of unreleased albums. If I like the album, I buy the CD.

As an example, when the last "No Doubt" album was released, I was at the store on the first day of issue, so I could buy one. Three weeks earlier, I would never have imagined I would buy it, but it was a damned good set of songs. If I had not sampled it via Usenet, I would not have bought the CD. Seriously.

Another example is Metallica. Except for a track here and there, I’ve never been a huge Metallica fan. I grabbed about 3 or 4 tracks from the S&M album off Usenet, and then bought the double-CD set. Even Metallica has made money from MP3s.

If the RIAA would consider MP3s to be advertising, or radio-like, they may have a chance to make money off them. So far, the digital distribution schemes seem to involve charging as much or more for the privelige of downloading the tracks, rather than going to the store and getting cover art and a jewel case. Personally, I’d be very inclined to use an industry-approved download system, if they guaranteed quality-of-service (not an option with the P2P systems obviously), and if they charged LESS than the physical CD.

As it is now, I tend to listen to music from internet radio stations, check out random tracks from Usenet or Gnutella, and buy CDs from CDNow.

I buy a lot of CDs, and I burn many of them to MP3 format to listen to in my MP3/CD player, so I can have 10 or 12 hours of music on one disc. Makes those cross-country car drives much nicer.

So, don’t paint everyone with the same brush, but realize that at least some of us are really not just out to be thieves. YMMV

After a conversation with an old friend today, I revisited Gnutella. There’s a program called BearShare that acts as a frontend for Gnutella, and allows searches to be performed without the pain of a few months ago. Just played with BearShare tonight, looking for common and obscure tunes, including some George Carlin and Bill Cosby tracks. Great selection, which indicates that all the publicity that CNN et al have given Napster has raised awareness of such things to the point that Gnutella is actually useful finally. They have definitely hit the critical mass needed to be a decent search tool.

Even better, the RIAA can now only sue individuals, cuz there’s no server. So, the record companies are going to take their own customers to court? Hehe

As of the middle of April 2001, many (maybe even most) radio stations that stream their signal on the internet are silent. The AFTRA is demanding 300% more money for the stations’ sending audio outside their broadcast area. I don’t get how that makes sense, and it was obvious to anyone that the only result that such a threat would have is the complete shutdown of those streams, meaning that AFTRA members don’t make any money from them anyhow. I’d think you’d negotiate from a position that seemed at least close to reasonable? More here.

It’s not completely new, but I know not everyone reads and pays attention to the latest news from techno-geek lands like Salon and /. Anyway, there’s a new music distribution format that the RIAA (motto: we’re not an evil entity, but we play one on TV) actually likes for a change: Dataplay.

Basically, the DataPlay disks are 500 megabyte CD-R disks that are downsized to a miniscule 1-inch wide platter. BUT, what the RIAA wants to do with them is to put not 500 megabytes of actual CD-DA audio on them, but 500 megabytes of compressed audio, with most of it encrypted when you buy it. Say you buy the latest Madonna album on DataPlay disks (let’s call them DP for short :)). It may well include the Immaculate Collection on it as well as Like a Virgin. But, you can’t hear those other albums until you pay the label for them. You connect the DP to your computer, and send an electronic funds transfer to Warner Bros. In seconds, your DP has had a few more bytes written to it, and now you can listen to all three of those albums, from a disk the size of a quarter. Pretty neat, in my opinion. Obviously, with compressed music you get some lower sound quality, but not enough to hurt sales. After all, MP3 is amazingly popular, and you can fit about 8 albums in 500 megs with that format.

Here’s the deal, though: chicken and egg. When CDs replaced LPs (don’t complain, the vinyl record is as near dead as makes no difference), they had the benefit of being smaller and better-sounding, with no pops or hisses or crackles. They are also, of course, much more durable than vinyl. Although many don’t take care of their CDs very well, if you remember to put them back in their jewel cases instead of using them like coasters, they should last much longer than vinyl would under normal usage. Where are the players for the DP disks? If you look at the DP site, it seems that all the players are portables, and most are made in Korea (whatever that means).

So, is the rationale here that we would use CDs at home, and then burn our own DPs with 5-6 albums on them for our portable use? The RIAA makes money on the blank DPs, I’m guessing, just as they do on blank DAT tapes (a great format that the RIAA nearly killed 15 years ago). (They must, if the disks are going to cost 5-12 bucks each for blanks. Of course, remember when CD-R disks were that expensive?) Sounds good to the RIAA, and maybe it will even work out ok for consumers, so long as we can burn whatever we want to the DPs and not need permission for each file, etc. I’d hate to be strangled by Windows Media Player (wimp) or the abominable SDMI when I just wanted to take my entire Concrete Blonde collection on one disk when I went for a bike ride. Perhaps this is an idea whose time never quite came, and is long since past?

Keep an eye on the DataPlay format, it may turn out to have better legs than MiniDisc and DCC (anyone besides me remember that one?)

Is it possible to actually be without for 3 weeks? Where oh where is my woman…

Yet another Osprey crash, again attributed to pilot error. So, either the Marine Corps is putting really stupid pilots in their newest, most high-profile aircraft, or the investigators are full of it. Which seems more likely to you?

I know, it’s shocking, but I’ve actually added a Random Meandering Thought to my site, the first this year.

I guess I’ve not felt the need to add too much to that portion of my site, with LJ embedded in my homepage. 🙂
current_music: Shaggy – Wasn’t Me

So, here’s my thoughts on maturity and sexuality. Anyone who has let their children grow up to be teenagers, let me know if I’m in the right ballpark here.

When kids are little, they don’t understand sex and it is a non-issue to them.
As pre-teens, they know it’s something icky and don’t want to get involved, hiding their eyes during kissing scenes on TV and such.
As pubescents and throughout high school, sex is something they know is supposed to be the biggest deal in the world, but it’s all supposed to be secret knowledge. Anyone trying to be less than 100% reverent of all things regarding nudity and sexuality is automatically icky. Reverting back to being eight years old.
Between (varies by person) 17 and 24, sex is a great toy and one yearns for quantity and variety over quality. Relationships are secondary to physicality.
Around 25 or 30 (some of my friends ain’t there yet), human behavior is realized to be much greater than one particular facet, and then truly adult attitudes form about things in life, to include but not limited to sex and nudity etc.

So, how’s that? Seems to match my observations of people through life, and just a little inspired by the children populating the adult sections of LJ this week…
current_music: Uncle Kracker – Follow Me
current_mood: tired

OK, I try to have a little fun (on a dare from my SO) on the NP community, and some jackass has to spend the greater part of her day harassing me for what she perceives as my physical defects. Why join a group that you think is (in her creative words) lame? Further, why bother engaging in a battle of wits when you are obviously unarmed? I just checked her LJ page, and it’s friends-only. Probably tired of the people she harangues jumping back on her. True cowardice…

This is just my first entree into the constantly waging battle between mean-spirited losers and the (thankfully much more numerous) loving free spirits seen on LJ way too frequently. Apparently there are a large number of people, all of them about 15 years old it seems, who don’t feel as if their day is complete unless they can abuse a random human that crosses their path. I’m astounded at the level of immaturity that people have, and yet they are just barely smart enough to run a computer. Amazing.

Anyway, I’m not gonna play over there anymore. I don’t want to stop getting email notifications of post responses in my journal and others, but I’m not going to subject myself to some little kid’s hyperactive attacks against me either. Maybe this little girl will find something else to amuse herself with soon, like illegal drugs or something. Ah, the idea of some snotnosed brat getting arrested and hauled off to prison sure does brighten up one’s day, doesn’t it?
current_mood: angry

Just found out about the Naked Parts community. I guess Lianna doesn’t need to coordinate an XXXMas 2001 celebration, eh?
current_music: Shaggy – Wasn’t Me
current_mood: horny

What’s the good of having a significant other if they’re 800 miles away? Grrr…

I really do plan to update my website someday soon, as soon as I can get my brand-new, not-even-paid-for, computer to WORK reliably for more than 10 minutes at a time. (At that point, I will get around to re-installing my programs for web wonderment. I actually have a RIAA piece I’ve been planning, composed primarily of old LJ posts rearranged in a coherent narrative.) Gee, wonder why Micron is getting out of the computer business? Windows ME blows chunks.

Speaking of unreliable, I really miss my broadband internet connection. Dialup blows almost as much as WinME.

New job is interesting, but could we cut down on the acronyms, please? Hell, there are acronyms composed of other acronyms, some of which are in turn acronym-laden. WTF?

Tomorrow morning, chai at work. Only way to make it through those regulations and powerpoint presentations. Powerpoint is evil.

Why do so many people have webcams to show off their home life, including copious nekkidness, to thousands of strangers? MAJOR exhibitionist tendencies. Calling Dr. Jung, calling Dr. Freud…

I really need to stop drinking Mountain Dew at 10 pm.

I like horizontal rules.
current_music: CNN Headline News
current_mood: tired

So, on the way home today, going about 10 mph over the speed limit, some moron Marine roars up behind me in his ricey Acura, and before I can change lanes (duh wonder what that blinker means), he speeds around me, passing on the right. Second guy (soldier type) does the same thing right on his tail.

Twenty seconds later, I’m right behind them at a stoplight. Yeah, the extra wear and tear sure is helping you get home faster, putz boy.
current_mood: amused

Just found a cool site, that apparently has been around for years. Anyone who has been to Asia has undoubtedly seen examples of nonsensical English phrases plastered on buildings, packages, and advertisements. Someone has built a website to hold examples: Engrish. Here’s one to enrishes everyone and take the everyday time to thirst level!!! (or something)

current_mood: amused

Finally, the corporate bureaucracy I’m voluntarily joining has deigned to give me official notice of the job offer. I can resume a relatively normal existence, soonish.

Of course, by normal I mean living in an apartment much too large for my stuff while waiting for my lovely partner and monster munchkin to join me a couple months down the line, with more stuff. At least I can have my computer on a desk again, although I will sadly be sans broadband internet for a while longer.

Money, I want money. Whole lot of spending money…
current_mood: relieved

So, Salon has joined the ranks of sites that have given up on being free. Unlike many, though, Salon isn’t closing down, just offering two tiers of service. According to a recent press release, Salon will implement a $30 annual subscription to nuke ads and get more content. The “light” version of the site will continue, with larger ads than currently in use (and presumably less content than current).

So, unlike the Wall Street Journal and other sites, which require $60 annual subscriptions or more, the Salon site will cost about as much as 2 magazine subscriptions. Is the content worth it?

How much would you pay for CNN’s site, if they went to a subscription model?

I love small town mentality. For the past 3 years, I’ve lived in a city of 100 thousand people that seems to think it’s still a small town. Makes for some surreal things at times.

I want to make deposits at the ATM, much as I did in 1985 with my first bank account, and as I did in Korea and Tacoma and Boston. C’mon, I could deposit in KOREA! But, when asked about the possibility of making deposits someday in the ATM here in BFE, the response is generally vague and usually ominous. Today’s was the best:

“I wouldn’t if we ever allow it even. When I worked at the bank in Austin, they pulled an ATM out to replace it and found a deposit made 3 years earlier that had been lost all that time.”

Yeah, and ten years ago, Chicago postal workers burned mail rather than deliver it. Does that mean I shouldn’t use the postal service anymore? Mistakes happen, but I’ve never had a problem with an ATM deposit in nearly 20 years.

Another fun item: Banker’s hours. You have heard of them, but unless you are older than 40 or live in a tiny town, you think of them as quaint stories. Not here. Until Wells Fargo merged with Norwest, the local bank closed its doors at 3 pm every day, and was not open at all on Saturday. Coupled with the inability to make deposits at the ATM, people had to race around on lunchbreaks or take time off from work to deposit their paychecks. Duh?

I’m sure I’ll think of others soon enough. Where y’all from?

Following in the footsteps of so many corporate mergers online lately, the mighty Winfiles (nee Windows95.com) has ceased to be. It is an ex-site. After Cnet bought them out a long time back, they continued existing as a separate entity, but now they are gone, folded into the vast faceless, unfriendly Download.com site. Worse, the files that were indexed on Winfiles don’t seem to have migrated. I know my two tiny “desktop enhancement” products are no longer listed. Way to lose functionality.

Reminds me of the way Yahoo ate Four11 and reduced its usefulness a while back. Or when Yahoo ate Geocities and broke most of its functions for months on end. Or or or…

I’ve been online too long.
current_mood: wistful

After a conversation with an old friend today, I revisited Gnutella. There’s a program called BearShare that acts as a frontend for Gnutella, and allows searches to be performed without the pain of a few months ago. Just played with BearShare tonight, looking for common and obscure tunes, including some George Carlin and Bill Cosby tracks. Great selection, which indicates that all the publicity that CNN et al have given Napster has raised awareness of such things to the point that Gnutella is actually useful finally. They have definitely hit the critical mass needed to be a decent search tool.

Even better, the RIAA can now only sue individuals, cuz there’s no server. So, the record companies are going to take their own customers to court? hehe

It’s not completely new, but I know not everyone reads Slashdot and pays attention to the latest news from techno-geek lands like ZDNet and CNet. Anyway, there’s a new music distribution format that the RIAA (motto: we’re not an evil entity, but we play one on TV) actually likes for a change: DataPlay.

Basically, the DataPlay disks are 500 megabyte CD-R disks that are downsized to a miniscule 1-inch wide platter. BUT, what the RIAA wants to do with them is to put not 500 megabytes of actual CD-DA audio on them, but 500 megabytes of compressed audio, with most of it encrypted when you buy it. Say you buy the latest Madonna album on DataPlay disks (let’s call them DP for short :)). It may well include the Immaculate Collection on it as well as Like a Virgin. But, you can’t hear those other albums until you pay the label for them. You connect the DP to your computer, and send an electronic funds transfer to Warner Bros. In seconds, your DP has had a few more bytes written to it, and now you can listen to all three of those albums, from a disk the size of a quarter. Pretty neat, in my opinion. Obviously, with compressed music you get some lower sound quality, but not enough to hurt sales. After all, MP3 is amazingly popular, and you can fit about 8 albums in 500 megs with that format.

Here’s the deal, though: chicken and egg. When CDs replaced LPs (don’t complain, the vinyl record is as near dead as makes no difference), they had the benefit of being smaller and better-sounding, with no pops or hisses or crackles. They are also, of course, much more durable than vinyl. Although some people don’t take care of their CDs very well, if you remember to put them back in their jewel cases instead of using them like coasters, they should last much longer than vinyl would under normal usage. Where are the players for the DP disks? If you look at the DP site, it seems that all the players are portables, and most are made in Korea (whatever that means).

So, is the rationale here that we would use CDs at home, and then burn our own DPs with 5-6 albums on them for our portable use? The RIAA makes money on the blank DPs, I’m guessing, just as they do on blank DAT tapes (a great format that the RIAA nearly killed 15 years ago). (They must, if the disks are going to cost 5-12 bucks each for blanks. Of course, remember when CD-R disks were that expensive?) Sounds good to the RIAA, and maybe it will even work out ok for consumers, so long as we can burn whatever we want to the DPs and not need permission for each file, etc. I’d hate to be strangled by Windows Media Player (wimp) or the abominable SDMI when I just wanted to take my entire Concrete Blonde collection on one disk when I went for a bike ride.

Keep an eye on the DataPlay format, it may turn out to have better legs than MiniDisc and DCC (anyone besides me remember that one?)

—–
Update: Yeah, I was obviously way off on this one. DataPlay never really even hit the market before it died.

This isn’t all new material, and I just got it from the HumourNet Newsletter, so I’m even plagiarizing old jokes, but I just thought it was perfect:

You are 100% Texan if…

1. It doesn’t bother you to use an airport named for a man who died in an airplane crash.

2. You use the phrase “fixin’ to” almost daily.

3. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.

4. You’ve ever been excused from school because “the cows got out.”

5. You can properly pronounce the town Mexia, Waxahachie and Mesquite.

6. You can remember the name of the last state legislator to introduce a bill involving castration and he didn’t mean farm animals.

7. You know exactly what calf fries are and eat them anyway.

8. You can recall really hot summers by the year they happened easier than you can remember your mother’s birthday.

9. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies.

10. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door but the availability of shade.

11. You have owned at least one belt buckle bigger than your fist.

12. A bad traffic jam involves two cars staring each other down at four-way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the other one go first.

13. When you hear a tornado siren, you go out and look for a funnel.

14. Your “place at the lake” has wheels under it.

15. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, and bait all in the same store.

16. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F350 4×4 is.

17. You know that everything goes better with Ranch.

18. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.

19. You know that “y’all” is singular and “all y’all” is plural.

20. You are 100% Texan if you have ever had this conversation:

“You wanna Coke?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“Dr Pepper”

current_mood: amused

OK, so this week they’ve been playing The Day After on cable quite a bit. I can only assume they’ve run out of material. BUT, how many people under the age of 30 know this movie? And, how many people 30 or older do not think of it as an important and powerful film from the Cold War?

I swear, the difference in 10 years was astounding. Everyone just knew, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, that we were seconds away from nuclear conflagration. We had songs (99 Luft Ballons, Russians, etc.), we had movies (Red Dawn, etc.), we couldn’t escape it. Hell, we had air raid drills when I was in elementary school. Like hiding in the school basement would have made a damned bit of difference.

I think this is somewhat more significant a difference than my generation’s veneration of Levi’s 501s, don’t you?
current_mood: contemplative

Here’s a great quote from Survivorsucks:

I think in a few years they’ll actually start executing people who are voted off, because that will increase the drama. As is, I think people who are banished should be allowed to form their own vengeful “ghost tribe” to harass the other tribes and pull all kinds of spooky Blair Witch pranks on ‘em. That’d add greatly to the show, seriously.

current_mood: amused