i thought i would start out the first 'blog' of the new year with a little bit about the last year. i don't remember much. this seems to be the case for me quite a bit lately... maybe it's not that i don't remember, but rather that it just didn't make a big impact, again. it seems like not a lot happened, even if there were some milestones for me.
i feel like i am more or less exactly where i was a year ago, only slightly older, and somewhat more panciky about my imminent death. nothing i wanted to get done this year seemed to happen, and maybe things that i was trying not to do, i did.
certainly, there are a lot of things that i enjoyed about this year. i met some new people, gained friends, lost friends, grew closer to people, grew apart from others. i've realized some things about myself, and still find me to be one of the biggest enigmas ever.
i guess i'm amazed, as always, at how quickly times has flown by. it's amazing how much i wanted time to move faster when i was younger, and now that i'm older i just wish i could stop the clock for a while. there's never enough time in the day to do all the things i want to do. i know i'm not alone in this, but sometimes it sure as hell feels like it.
i'm holding out hope that this year will be better. time can only tell.
i thought i would post a listing of the music that i've been listening to. i exported a list of music that is currently on my harddrive, weeding out many of the single tracks and 'compilation' stuff. keep in mind, this isn't a full list of all the music i've loved, or have owned (or... *gasp* stole). as a matter of fact, there is a lot of older stuff missing. the first reason for this is that i lost a lot of stuff that i'd been trying to keep backed up on one drive, it failed, and i didn't get everything backed up before the main drive failed as well. the main reason, though, is that on feb. 14th, 2005 (yes, valentines day) some kids broke into my car, leaving a ton of damage in their wake, because, i left the trunk unlocked so that no one would damage the car, thinking it would be cheaper to replace the cheap cd deck than get work done in a shop. unfortunately, i'd left the cd's in my car, as someone had wanted some copies of some of what i had. i lost a $100 aiwa deck, a 500 cd case, which was very nearly full, and quite a bit of it i had not yet archived. there was a lot of stuff i just can't find anymore, and even more that i just haven't bothered to replace. which is very sad, to say the least. (in addition, i lost a molskine that was filled and one i'd just started, a good sheaf of other writing notes, one of my daughter's car seats, a half a pack of stale cigarettes because i'd nearly completely quite smoking, but not quite, and a really nice pool cue i'd gotten as a gift, a grip load of tools and a few other various things). anyway, the listing is here. i've done my best to get it to be as readable as possible. we'll see what gets added in 2007.
now, on to the links... (i know that's the only reason you came here... :P)
first... a geostationary banana...
over texas?
i've read some pretty stupid things, but this one is just mind boggling. it's another case of 'things that cost a lot of money that would have been better suited in my pocket', that is, if it's true at all. it's hard not to read about the geostationary banana over texas project and not get that tinge one feels when their leg is being pulled, albeit ever so slightly.
the idea is simple in its construction. they want to build a giant banana, fill it with gas, and put it into the upper atmosphere so that it will float there in 'geostationary' orbit over texas. why? well, i assume its because they can. how much? well, apparently it will run around $1 million dollars. when reading that number, i can't help but to stop and think about what i could do with that much money. certainly, i wouldn't need all of it, just a chunk to take care of my debts, and maybe by myself a go-kart made of solid gold. i wonder, also, when looking at their website, why they feel the need to translate everything from english to not only spanish, but french as well....
anyway, check it out, if for no other reason that because it has some of the greatest photoshopped 'banana in the sky' photos ever. you have my word on that. greatest ever. hands down.
moving on...
does this hdtv make me look fat?
i'm not embellishing, that is the actual title of this cnn.com article. at first, i really didn't think much when i perused over the story, having only clicked the link because, well, it had hdtv in the title, and i like technology things. but, as i read it, i was struck by how amazingly petty the world really is. i mean, they discuss airbrushing make-up onto people so that they look better in high definition. that's just unbelievable.
how sad was 2006?
about this sad. here we have an article on reuters.com, which recaps stories of the last year, most of them so trivial that it makes your head hurt. it occurs to me, though, looking at this, and other lists, some trying really hard at it, that there really wasn't much that happened this year. it was a blur of crap that just sorta rolled foward like a freight train of mediocraty. i'm quite concerned that 2007 will suffer more of the same.
allofmp3.com
you might think that the only reason i'm mentioning this is because it gives me an oppurtunity to present an extremely humorous image from (oddly enough...) the humorist.com, but really, it's also because it involes a lawsuit for $1.65 TRILLION... that's dollars, and trillion. trillion, it's more than a similar word to the name adopted by arthur dent's almost girlfriend, it's a really REALLY big number.
if you aren't familiar, allofmp3.com is one of the most popular music download sites on the internet right now. why, you might ask? not because it's free. it's not like the great file sharing collective, no, you pay for the music. the reason it's so popular is that you only pay about 10¢ per track (2¢ per 1MB downloaded), without any digital rights management. wow, you might say, and how is that possible you'll likely ask, as soon as you get back here from setting up your account there and downloading a few gigs of music...
the answer is fairly simple, but i'm going to make it a complicated explanation. you see, in the united states, and many other well advanced countries around the world, music is in something of an odd state. you see, when an artist makes a cd, and sells it, the money for that cd is split up between more than the artist, his label, and even their manager. no sir, there are many greedy little hands in that pot. most of the money goes to the collection of royalties, which in the u.s. is an almost borglike entity called the riaa. you see, they are the people who get so mad about 'file sharing', 'napster', and anything that prevents them getting a direct cut. they administer the royalties and licensing of music. it's a fairly complex system, but as i understand it, in the end, they make more per album sold than the actual artist that recorded it.
now, that's in the united states. in other countries the laws are quite different. for example: in sweden, copyright laws are such that bittorrent sites like thepiratebay.org can exist without any concern whatsoever.
this brings me back to the issue with allofmp3.com. allofmp3.com is located in the great motherland of russia. in russia, royalties and copyrights are primarily administered by ROMS, who, merely asks for 15% of all sales, which, in this case, they are given gladly. it does not seem to mater how much a song is sold for, as long as they get a 15% cut, which they then, presumably, divy out to the holders of the rights to the songs. ta-da. legality.
or is it.
no. not really... you see, ROMS, the russian royalty collecting firm, does not have the authority, according to russian law, to administer the rights, even though they contend that with their own reading of the law. however, allofmp3.com does not care, because, as long as they pay them, and ROMS says it's ok, everything on their end is copacetic. BUT, this is not the case either. they have been operating under russian law that had decided originally that copyright law did not extend to works on the interwebs, however, that provision expired in sept. of 2005, and recently moscow has decided to go after them. in addition, visa and mastercard stop processing credit transactions for them as well, due to the 'illegality' of the matter.
now, the riaa is sueing media services, the new york based company which owns the russian allofmp3.com. they are asking for $150,000 per download for 11 million downloads, which is where we get that massive dollar figure i mentioned early. it's amazing. i'm really curious to see how it all pans out, because, as much as the riaa seems happy at throwing money at even the most ludicrous of cases for the joy of attacking anyone and everything that stands in its way... it seems like this is a battle that isn't likely to come to much in the end, at least, not near as much as they are asking. as is pointed out in one of the articles, that number is actually slightly, and only slightly, less than the gross domestic product of the u.k. for 2005. huh.
the primary article i read on this was here at zeropaid.com the second one is here and there's actually a decent wikipedia article on allofmp3.com here.
fight on soldiers of cheap music for the masses! :P
and that's it for now...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment