Blog Archive 2007 January February/March April/May/June 2006 December November October

by George Ziemann July 2007 July 12, 2007 ~~ Don't know how I missed this, but apparently there are lesbian gangs terrorizing the entire country. Live Earth Viewership Up and/or Down On One Hand... On the Other Hand... From the New York Times: The Live Earth concert... wasn't a big television draw. NBC's Saturday-night highlights show was seen by 2.75 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research, or fewer people than watched the soccer match between Argentina and Peru that night on Univision. The Live Earth showing is slightly under the 2.9 million who watched the Live 8 concert on ABC in 2005, Nielsen said. ''I don't think it was the kind of thing where people were talking like they had to get home to watch it,'' said Marc Berman, analyst for Media Week Online. From Tech News: Last weekend's Live Earth Concerts... broke the record for live video streams of an event, according to MSN, which had exclusive Web-broadcasting rights to the shows. Live Earth -- a series of nine concerts held in cities across the world and streamed live across the Internet -- exceeded its founders' most ardent expectations. The event... drew in more than 10 million video streams, and had the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever, according to MSN. IN SEARCH OF COMMON SENSE Stereotypes and The Simpsons July 16, 2007 ~~ Happened across an article in the Guardian about "The Apu Travesty", further defined as "A promotion for The Simpsons movie exploits a crude racist stereotype that insults South Asians living in the United States." Apu?? But Dr. Nick is okay? First of all, some of you don't get the whole idea of cartoons because, well, Apu rocks. And if you've played the Simpson's games Road Rage or Hit and Run, so does his TransAm. Sure, he talks funny, but that really only adds to his appeal. Besides, every character on The Simpsons talks funny, every character is a stereotype and most of them are white. Chief Wiggums, Groundskeeper Willie, Mr. Burns, Quimby the politician, Moe, the drunk guy at Moe's, Principal Skinner, the religious zealot that lives next door, the sea captain, Snake, and the Comic Book Guy, not to mention Marge, Bart, Lisa and Homer. They all have funny voices and they all have their own way of mangling the English language. So if one particular character offends you more than another, you're simply taking it too personally. If anyone should be pissed, it's working class, Middle America, middle-aged white guys. Who's representing the average Joe? Homer Simpson, that's who. D'oh! Whereas Apu is a hard-working, reasonably intelligent guy, who cares deeply about his family, Homer is a balding, fat guy, living with his wife and 2.5 kids (Maggie is .5) in a suburban split-level home with a dog and a white picket fence. In addition to being a rotten parent, Homer is not hard-working. He tries to get by each day doing as little as possible. He doesn't care about his job or the quality of the work he does, which is just as good because he's a total moron who spends most of his time thinking about donuts, beer and the TV set. Homer is a crude, racist stereotype of middle-aged white guys everywhere. But do you hear us bitching about it? Not till the beer runs out, anyway. July 29, 2007 ~~ An old (Sept, 2005) but fascinating article about how the FBI went wrong trying to get a new case-management database built, spending more than $100 million and ending up with unusable software. August 2007 August 2, 2007 ~~ While there has been no big story in the music biz lately, there have been several smaller items which add up to a significant enough pile of stupid to talk about. RIAA Lawsuits -- Since the RIAA started suing people, P2P use has increased, CD sales have decreased at a faster rate, and the lawsuits are costing them money. Thousands of people who didn't know what the RIAA was five or seven years ago now actively despise them. So the RIAA is going to keep that up -- because they can. Besides, it's time for another semester to start. Webcasting -- Last I heard on this issue was that SoundExchange wanted the webcasters to block people from being able to record audio streams. The RIAA's Mitch Glazier verified that this was definitely not a problem at this time, unlike those damn third graders who keep stealing their stuff. But SoundExchange still wants this feature, merely to inconvenience the webcasters as much as possible and make sure they know whose ass they have to kiss. Attempted Copyright Infringement -- The RIAA hasn't been able to prove actual infringement in court, but some yahoo introduced a bill to create criminal punishments for attempted copyright infringement. This leads me to imagine multiple silly ways to run afoul of the law, like: a paper jam at Kinko's a faulty CD-R running out of gas on the way to buy CD-Rs running out of toner running out of printer ink breaking the lead on your pencil misuse of the Copy and Paste functions actually buying a CD buying CD-Rs and having your credit card declined Of course, what I suspect is that the RIAA wants to set up a p2p site with dummy files and sues anyone that tries to download them. Eminem Sues Apple -- Eminem has decided that he never gave Universal the right to sell his songs as downloads, so he's suing Apple for selling them. Apparently, this is his way of punishing Universal. All the industry does is bitch about Apple, even though it's really the only place able to sell any damn music. They should start their own record labels and just sell music by artists signed with them. Universal can build its own music store and sell their songs for whatever price they feel is appropriate. All of the labels can. Okay, "can" was probably the wrong word to use there. There is nothing stopping the labels from making their own download sites, as far as I know, other than their own inability to grasp technology. Or is there? Maybe there is some kind of agreement with the RIAA and NARM (National Association of Retail Merchants) that the labels would not sell direct to the public. I'll have to go check on that... AmieStreet Sounds Like a Good Idea August 9, 2007 According to their recent (August 6) press release, "AmieStreet.com is the first digital music store propelled by social networking, where members of the community drive the discovery, promotion and pricing of music. All songs on AmieStreet.com start at a price of zero cents. As more people download a song the price rises, capping at $0.98." The press release was actually about how Amazon just shoved a pile of money their way, but I liked the idea from the start, probably because it is so similar to what I described in "Building a Practical Cyber-Jukebox." At least the "every song starts out at zero" part. But AmieStreet has a twist I hadn't considered. "For recommending their favorite songs to their friends, members are rewarded by receiving credit for the purchase of additional music on AmieStreet.com. The more popular a song becomes after a member has recommended it, the more credit he or she receives to spend on music." Anyone can upload their music to AmieStreet.com, and all songs are downloadable in DRM-free mp3 format. Setting up an artist account and getting your music online is relatively pain-free, which I verified by creating an account and uploading the Hayden's Wall CD. So go listen to the songs and drive up the price. Follow-Up -- August 20 -- So far, the CD has earned $3.74 in revenue, which is exactly $3.74 more than I've earned selling physical copies off of this site so far this year. Song price is up to 14 cents each, which seems reasonable. Fast Times at Universal, Google, AT&T August 12, 2007 ~~ While the folks at the RIAA are being educated about routers and IP addresses, Universal Music's Doug Morris is on a serious campaign to become the new stereotype for the deranged record industry exec that wants everyone to think he's tough and unyielding when maybe he's really just being stubborn and vindictive. Morris hates Apple for keeping the standard download price at 99 cents. He would rather see a $3.49 price tag on each tune. And he loves DRM because he doesn't trust you. Apparently not having pissed off enough customers already, this week Universal announced they were going to go DRM-free and start selling unprotected mp3 files. With audio watermarks, not actually DRM, but still a way to find out who the evil pirates are, like it will make any freakin' difference. They'll be available pretty much everywhere except at Apple's music store, even though Steve Jobs will let Universal charge $1.29 for unprotected files. In the long run, it's going to cost Universal a lot more not being on iTunes than Apple loses by not having it there. Plus, Steve Jobs doesn't have to listen to Morris bitch any more. Meanwhile, Google Video customers, as in those who spent money to purchase videos, are discovering that they never really bought anything at all because by this time next week, those vids will be vapor, er, unavailable. Not yours. One of the hidden benefits of DRM is that when you discontinue a version, all your customers have to re-purchase what they already bought. Of course, this trick will only work five or six times before the public starts to get a clue, even if your motto is "Do No Evil." But this week's leader in customer dissatisfaction has to be AT&T, which got caught censoring a webcast to remove an Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) rant about Bush. It wasn't the first time; probably won't be the last, considering how AT&T has proven their willingness to sacrifice the privacy of their customers.

Quotes "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" -- Robert Heinlein (in Logic of Empire) "I don't want to go out and see Bob Dylan. I don't want to go out and see the Stones. I wouldn't pay money to go see the Who, not even with new songs." -- Pete Townshend, 2006 "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." -- Albert Einstein "A watched pot never boils over. " -- GZ "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising." -- Reuven Frank, NBC News President, 1968-72 "I live in my own little world. It's nice there." -- Deborah Harry "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." -- John Lennon