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If anyone has noticed the dearth of posts lately, let me chalk it up to end of semester crunch time. Paper and exams fast approaching leaves little time for blogging even the most trivial.
In addition, I’ve been helping a friend install Ubuntu for AMD64 on his new beast of a computer. Got the standbys working, along with Counter-Strike:Source, Day of Defeat:Source, and Ventrilo so he can get his game on. I walked him through some of the more showstopping difficulties, but overall, he’s really enjoying the experience. He’s thrilled that he doesn’t need an anti-virus, and some things he’s already noticing are easier than Windows. But I digress.
Back to my post scarcity. Posts should resume their usual frequency in about a week. Until then, don’t think that I’ve disappeared entirely, I just have some real work to do for a while.
Well, here we are. The conclusion of my four part promotion of indie music. It was sparked by a remarkably braindead move by Sony. A move so remarkable that it received quite a few unwelcome remarks.
A few people dropped the “boycott”-word and even more jumped on the wagon before the story came to its bittersweet yet gratifying conclusion.
But this just made me think even more of how we are all at the mercy of four mega-corporations who have most recording arts at their discretion. My thoughts? Sony might have been the evil one this time, but the next time this happens it could be Warner, EMI, or Universal. If two or more of these companies introduce an invasive DRM strategy, things might not be as simple as “Boycott Sony.” My solution? Spread the wealth. Support a local band or a small label, and develop a taste for music outside the mainstream. In doing so, your tastes will become more eclectic, you won’t be tied to an oligopoly, and you won’t have to see all of your favorite bands in an arena or an amphitheatre. Smaller band = smaller audience.
It’s telling that as these large mega-corporations buy and merge and eat their young in one takeover after the next, they keep the names of the original labels intact. The labels seem small and independent, when in fact they’re under the same umbrella. Under this type of situation, finding a real indie artist can be a bit of work. I’ve tried to do some of the work for you.
It’s with that in mind that I’d like you to listen to a band called The Go! Team. If you crave theme songs out of the 80s, you’ll probably find the experience of listening to The Go! Team nostalgic. A dash of Magnum P.I. blended in with The A-Team and you can approximate the acoustic stylings of this unique ensemble.
All of this is proof that purchasing good music doesn’t have to come at the expense of your free choice as a consumer. Sure, it can be fun to boycott a company until you get what you want, but events like the Sony debacle will keep happening until we as consumers can step up, show some backbone, and demand real choice in the music industry. I think this was my point from the beginning, and it only took me a month to make it.
Yes, that’s right. The only Thanksgiving tradition that vegetarians are capable of truly observing with gusto.
You know the one I’m talking about. Waiting in the dead of night, loitering in the cold dark for the midnight opening of CompUSA, just to be the first geek to walk out of the store with 420 GB of cheap storage. When phrases like consumer confidence linger only briefly in your mind and your previously spotless credit score once again goes on the bottom line.
Little Bro (who is by no coincidence far cooler than me) and I stormed CompUSA at midnight to snag those Pavlovian deals. After a few short sleep cycles, we regrouped, attacked International Plaza, and Little Bro scored a trendy iPod nano, which he took back to my condo and promptly filled with hip hop of the Kanye West and Common variety. He’s a baller fo’ sho’, or something like that. I should just avoid slang altogether.
Okay, this means very little to my readers, generally speaking, but from all appearances it doesn’t seem like high gas prices made much of a dent in the swarms of consumers on Black Friday. Is this a sign of an upswing in the economy, or just that people who can afford huge hard drives and trendy music players aren’t really suffering from the impacts of a flattening yield curve?
Okay, that was too cerebral for the day following Thanksgiving. How about this: forget the cheap prices or the mobs of people. I’m always delighted to spend some quality time with Little Bro, whatever the context.
Don’t let the seasonal softness fool you though. Some more hard-hitting anti-Sony rhetoric is in the pipeline. I should also mention that I’m thankful for all my readers, however few you may be. I’ll keep on writing as long as you consider my drivel interesting. Thanks for your interest and your time every day. I hope you all enjoyed the weekend as much as I did.
Noticed this today while learning myself some Firefox extensions:
xmlns=”http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul”
That’s why I love Firefox developers. Because one time, I turned into a dog and they helped me. Thank you.
I’ll start off by saying that Sony is finally falling in and doing what they’re supposed to. However, if the experience has left a bad taste in your mouth, feel free to boycott Sony all you want. In fact, you’re even free to boycott the Big Four in the world music market.
To aid you in this task, I’ve decided to recommend a different completely independent artist every week for a month. Last week it was Nickel Creek, prior to that it was Laura Love.
This week, it’s The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble. Drawing on a heavy New Orleans second-line influence, they stir together the backbeat of funk with distinctly Latin-flavored horns. It’s an amalgamation of genres, but the music is always clear and precise. If you dig it, check them out.
If you missed Nickel Creek last night, I’ll only rub it in thusly: Boy, did you miss it. It wasn’t difficult to miss this show, though. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.
An impromptu mandolin duet with Mike Marshall was among the many highlights. I won’t gush about the Dead-esque jams and improv riffs, nor will I talk at length about several very amusing covers.
Let me suffice it to say, if you didn’t see it, you should buy this album. Now.
The USF men’s soccer team faces off against the Stetson Hatters tonight in the first game of the NCAA championship tournament. This is Stetson’s first NCAA game ever, and South Florida’s first appearance since 2001.
During the main season, USF defeated Altantic Sun Champion Stetson 2-1 during the main season. However, Stetson is on a four-game winning streak.
Go ahead, it’s a Friday night, make an appearance at what promises to be a very exciting game.
While you’re at it, set aside some time tomorrow afternoon to come see the USF Bulls trounce Cincinnati tomorrow at 12. If you can’t make it over to Ray Jay, be sure to catch the game live on Catch 47. Three more and it’s hello BCS bowl game!
The details have yet to be released, but it appears Sony has finally buckled under the pressure of public outcry.
As Eric Goldman puts it, “The outrage reflects frustration with software vendors deciding what’s on your computer. People are beginning to say, ‘Stop it. Give me my hard drive back.’ “
The story is far from over however. There is still definitive evidence that Sony is violation of the LGPL. The fact remains that this software was in distribution for over four month before it was discovered. Only after it was discovered and under legal and economic pressure did Sony backpedal, attempt to cover, apologize, and after everything else failed, recall the 2.1 million albums with rootkits on them.
Still no written promise from Sony regarding future use of privacy-violating technology to control honest consumers.
The terms set out by the Boycott Sony petition have been met, to a degree. Feel free to hold out and continue boycotting, though. I’m personally waiting for a grovelling disavowal of these tactics and a legally binding promise to never use them again. Hence, I’ll continue the “Sony Detox” program that I started two weeks ago with Laura Love and continued last week with Nickel Creek. Listening to Indie music is good for you, boycott or no.
Alternate Title: “That’s One Big Lawsuit”
Since this Sony Rootkit Phones Home, security expert Dan Kaminsky decided to use a technique called Reverse DNS cache snooping to find out approximately how many systems were phoning home. The results weren’t pretty. Over one half million (568,200 to be exact) nameservers said that they’d been used to phone home.
This means that at least one computer behind each of these nameservers is infected. But since we all know that nameservers usually field requests from many computers, this number could be much higher.
Perhaps the mythical Warhol Worm, isn’t actually a worm at all.
There have been times that flu symptoms have made me consider jumping out a window, but I’ve never actually done so.
The BBC reported this morning that the popular flu drug Tamiflu may cause delusions. Scientists are saying that this is not a problem with the drug, and that delusions are a typical symptom of influenza. Some are seeking to evaluate these claims more closely and change the product warning information. With all the precautions about preparing for a potential flu pandemic this is just the kind of report that really interfere with things.
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