response 102 of 163:

Feb 25 03:52 UTC 2003

Oh, good grief-- you've really got to get over yourself.  Those acts 
are following established formulas than have been around since at 
least the 1950's.  What's equally true is those same formulas appeal 
to kids and seem to aggravate adults.  I think Ken was on to something 
in the "Geezer Rock" item: no matter how youthful the boomers think 
they are, they're bound to follow similar paths as their folks.

I laugh when I hear folks disparage the Britneys, Christinas, and 
other R&B-influenced pop acts out there.  It may be true that their 
voices could use a bit more room for refinement.. but, listen to the 
wannabes out there.  I catch American Idol occasionally, or listen to 
some chick off the street (on the radio, out and about, whatever) and 
I find many sadly lacking.  So many people trying to duplicate the 
vocal gymnastics of these performers without accomplishing the 
basics.  Breathy, whiny.. no diaphragm support, no intonation (off-
kay).. you get the idea.

I've studied voice a bit.  It is so less tangible than instrumental 
study; you've just got to try things out.  It helps to have a tonal 
memory (remember how things sound/like of like a memory tape 
recorder).  A personal voice coach is invaluable.

Come now, do you really want Madonna ruling the airwaves again?

response 104 of 163:

Feb 25 08:11 UTC 2003

  > and [DVDs are] so easy to rip and burn copies of

  they are?

response 106 of 163:

Feb 25 15:03 UTC 2003

RE#104 - Yeah.

response 108 of 163:

Feb 25 18:28 UTC 2003

  re #106:  the grocery store a few blocks from my house rents DVDs for 
  $0.79 during the week (Monday through Thursday nights.)  If I'm looking
  for something a little less mainstream than their selection, I can find
  it for at most $3.00 at a full-service video store.  Considering the 
  cost of blank DVDs I just can't imagine that it's cheaper and/or easier
  for students to copy them than to rent them. 

  Even if we're talking about not fully duplicating the DVD but just
  swapping a lower-quality video encoded as, say, DIVX, I still find it
  hard to believe that finding and downloading a full-length film on the
  Internet is easier and cheaper than renting it at a nearby video store
  unless the person doing this places no dollar value on their free time.

response 110 of 163:

Feb 25 21:09 UTC 2003

Videotapes were time-consuming to copy, though, and once you were done you
couldn't use your copy to give someone else a copy without serious quality
problems.

I suspect that what's happened is all the DVDs on in the on-campus video
store have become avaliable as DIVX files on the campus LAN.  A trip around
Michigan Tech's LAN with Network Neighborhood would net you all kinds of
audio and video files while I was there, and that was a couple years ago. 
I'm sure the selection has only gotten bigger since then.

I'm reminded of a friend of mine who joked that he was doing Blockbuster a
service by making off-site backups of all their Playstation games. ;)

response 112 of 163:

Feb 26 05:27 UTC 2003

USA Today has a puff piece on the Rhapsody authorized download
service.  It includes some customer numbers on the major 
authorized services:
 
  "Sony and Universal's Pressplay, and Rhapsody, have about 50,000
   subscribers each, and MusicNet, owned by Warner, EMI and BMG Music,
   has 10,000, says Phil Leigh of research firm Raymond James.
   The numbers are low, he says, because few people are aware of 
   paid alternatives to pirate swap sites.
 
  "That could change Wednesday, when a revamped MusicNet will 
   be launched on America Online and marketed to its 35 million
   members..."    ((most of whom still use dialups  -- KRJ))
 
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-02-25-rhapsody_x.htm
 
Also widely reported is that Roxio (the makers of Easy CD Creator)
are planning to relaunch the Napster brand as an authorized pay
download site later this year.   The business plan, from one of
the stories I read, seems to be depend on the courts killing 
Kazaa; they realize that selling downloads will be tough while 
free ones are used by millions.  (But killing Kazaa is going to 
take years of international legislation.  And then there's 
Gnutella, and eDonkey, and heaven knows what else...)

response 114 of 163:

Feb 26 21:31 UTC 2003

From Declan McCullagh on Cnet:  A congressional committee calls for 
file sharing at Universities to be treated as a serious Federal 
crime.  (It is already defined as such under the NET act, which 
nobody seems to want to use to prosecute users, as the law is 
intended.)  One congressman makes an analogy to assault and murder.
 
The general demand is that the Universities stop their students from
running file sharing.
 
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-986143.html?tag=fd_top

response 116 of 163:

Feb 27 00:24 UTC 2003

  Just wait until the "assault and murder" P2P clients are released and
  then we'll really see some legislative panic!

response 118 of 163:

Feb 27 00:43 UTC 2003

I wonder if Congressmen have any idea of the technical challenges
involved.  Attempts to block instant messenging in corporate
environments are instructive -- they've merely resulted in instant
messaging clients that create network traffic that looks very much like
web browsing, to firewalls.

response 120 of 163:

Mar 1 15:50 UTC 2003

Here's a fun new essay, from a print media guy's perspective, about
the reactions of the music and movie business in the face of the 
Internet driving the value of *all* media towards zero.
 
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_8384/ind
ex.html
"Stop, Thief!"  by Michael Wolff
 
   "For one thing, it is very strange to have entertainment executives--
    generally regarded as among the most amoral, conniving and venal 
    of all businessmen -- taking the high ground.  And yet here they are
    delivering heartfelt defenses of artists, and even art itself--they
    see the very essend of the nation's cultural patrimony at risk.
    And you really don't sense a phony or opportunistic note.  
    Rather these guys actually seem to be losing sleep over this.
    It's right and wrong they're arguing about here.  Good character
    versus a virtual barbarian deluge.  They believe, with feeling,
    that bad or sadly misguided people do this digital pilfering...
 
   "The other odd thing is that these guys who have built their careers
    and their industry on trying to give an audience exactly what it 
    wants -- no matter how low and valueless and embarrassing -- are 
    now standing with a high-church rectitude against the meretricious
    desires of this same group.  It is a bizarrely out-of-character
    role: holding the line.  Censuring the public.   *Suing* the public!
    Indeed, branding the great American mass-media audience as a 
    craven and outlaw group."
 
    ...
 
   "...*everybody* can't be an outlaw.  If everybody does it, it's 
    normal rather than aberrant behavior.  It's not so much the consumer
    who is on the wrong side of the law, but the entertainment industry
    that's on the wrong side of economic laws."

response 122 of 163:

Mar 4 14:31 UTC 2003

Some are.  We haven't tried, for the most part, where I work.  Some
places view it as either a major time-waster, or as a threat to
security.  Not only have many IM packages turned out to have significant
security holes, IM traffic is much harder to log than email.  That can
lead to legal exposures or risks of people leaking trade secrets undetected.

response 124 of 163:

Mar 5 01:34 UTC 2003

Keystroke loggers do not discriminate.  Logging everything is more 
insecure than not logging important conversations.  Besides, a keystroke 
logger will only record the outgoing half of the conversation.