eMusic Spotlight – Classical Music, Welcome to the MP3!:
[D]ownloading has liberated the single, allowing listeners to pick their favorite songs without paying for an album’s worth of Hamburger Helper.
Category: Uncategorized
quote of the day
The Music Industry Doesn’t Seem to be Able to Sell CDs Anymore:
[I]t’s hard to have sympathy for anyone who’s both stupid and evil.
is this supposed to make me feel safer?
NWAnews.com :: Northwest Arkansas’ News Source:
“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,” Milligan said.
We need more civilian deaths to make us appreciate George Bush’s leadership? Wouldn’t competent leadership make more attacks an impossibility? And if there were serious attacks, would having a significant portion of our national guard, along with a lot of their equipment, in Iraq make it difficult to respond to a major disaster?
[via]
links for 2007-06-04
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don’t these boys have sisters or mothers? would they appreciate someone saying “i’d hit that” about them or their daughters (assuming they can attract a mate)? Gaah.
book recommendations
nostalgia
According to public opinion polls, most Americans feel the U.S. economy has been moving in the wrong direction. Indeed, an analysis of several important economic indicators shows they’re right. In apples-to-apples comparisons of annualized data, these indicators of the country’s economic well-being show mostly negative change during President George W. Bush’s administration, compared to mostly positive change during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Presidents obviously do not control everything that happens on their watch. But it is fair — and entirely appropriate — to judge how they play the economic hands they are dealt. Bush’s economic policies have diverged dramatically from Clinton’s, and PPI believes the disparities in economic outcomes under each administration are attributable at least in part to those policy choices.
links for 2007-06-03
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“Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog (www.thenewsblog.net), passed away early this morning. He was 41.” Wow, I knew he was in for a fight. His voice will be missed, in quality and quantity.
links for 2007-06-01
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watch the video and see how easily and how long that kid stays unsupervised. No surprise he would do something like that.
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“Even Evangelical Teens Do It: How religious beliefs do, and don’t, influence sexual behavior” or how talking morals, instead of mechanics, undermines the message.
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Some facts (wine is easier to make than beer), some projection (baseball, a game of skill and power, is somehow more populist than bocce?), but interesting nonetheless. I like both, for what it’s worth.
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I […] went to university in the twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, home of the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany. (surely he could have mentioned that Kitchener was known as Berlin, prior to WWI?)
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“Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer who returned last week from his wedding and honeymoon trip through Italy, the Greek isles and other spots in Europe” was quarantined — the first since 1963 — for this.
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Much ado about nothing: it’s a demo. The iPhone, with it’s gestural touch screen interface, ships next month. Who knows where it will be in a year? And MSFT has a concept that you can’t buy a
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William Gibson the vanished treasures of Toronto and every city: what’s been ‘re-gooded’ in your town?
quote of the day
Whoever has to take over next is going to be sooo in the dark they’ll need flashlights just to find their own fingers.
New iTunes steals your ability to turn Apple music into iPod-friendly MP3s: or does it?
New iTunes steals your ability to turn Apple music into iPod-friendly MP3s:
Cory Doctorow: If you’re thinking of downgrading to the new iTunes, stop! The new iTunes breaks the ability to convert the music you’ve bought — even “DRM-free” songs sold at a 30 percent premium — into MP3s that will play on your iPod.
I dunno. I just converted a track I converted from iTunes to iTunes Plus into an mp3 and I don’t see what I’m being warned about. For one thing, as reported elsewhere, the new files have your name encoded in their meta data (I expect there is a simple text replacement to be done there, to replace your name with “Steve Jobs” or “Edgar Bronfman.”) I see that just fine. Don’t like it all that much.
But the mp3 doesn’t have that information.
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Dukes of Stratosphear/Chips from the Chocolate Fireball paul$ strings 13\ Shiny\ Cage.mp3 | grep name
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Dukes of Stratosphear/Chips from the Chocolate Fireball paul$ strings 13\ Shiny\ Cage.m4a | grep name
namePaul Beard
I wonder if there is a clean way to transcode these files to remove any other identifying cruft.
And curiously, because I sometimes do things I don’t expect to work, I tried converting this week’s iTunes free single to mp3: it’s doing it right now, no warning, no problem.
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Kooks/Ooh La – Single of the Week paul$ file *
01 Ooh La.m4a: MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding file (AAC)
01 Ooh La.mp3: MP3 file with ID3 version 2.2.0 tag
white:~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/The Kooks/Ooh La – Single of the Week paul$ strings * | grep name
namePaul Beard
Go figure. Looks like another arms race issue to me.