Sunday miscellany
I'm at the Smelly Cat, reading The Throat and maybe will do some writing. After a week off, it's time to start getting back into routine. Tomorrow, I'll be back at the courthouse. Three day weekend Memorial Day weekend, but the next five days will be an eternity.
I was going to write a longer commentary about this idiotic notion of David Hughes from the RIAA about how the future of music is rentals and DRM (digital rights management). It might be sufficient to point out that Microsoft's decision to close their MSN Music store, leaving users who purchased music from the service stuck with their authenticated machine for the rest of their lives ought to serve as a cautionary tale to consumers: part of the problem with the kind of music subscription model Hughes seems to be advocating is that it makes it quite possible for a customer to lose all the music he's paid for if a company shuts down their music distribution channel. If I buy a CD, I acquire the opportunity to backup or time shift my hard media to other media (e.g. analog tape) or formats (e.g. MP3, FLAC, yet-to-be-invented-codec-v.6.71). (Of course, the position of the RIAA appears to be that my acquired opportunity is an illegal opportunity, since copying my CDs to, say, SHN for some nutty reason, is a violation of my license to listen to the CD holding the audio I've... what, leased?)
A friend sent me a link to this fascinating historic document: a copy of the letter to inform the legendary Dr. Henry Jones that his bid for tenure in the archeology department at Marshall College was again denied.
Today's Astronomy Picture Of The Day suggests that gold may be formed by the collisions of neutron stars. The mind boggles. I'm not sure I'll be able to look at Flavor Flav the same way ever again, now that I know his mouth might be full of debris from strange stars.
Boing Boing recently featured this video from Manchester, England's The Get Out Clause, who apparently decided to let the government fund a video for them by performing in front of CCTV security cameras and then obtaining the footage through the British equivalent of the FOIA. I'm not really sure I really buy the whole story, but it turns out the song is really, really good, so if the "Big Brother shot our music video" gimmick works, good for them. We'll let the video... I don't know what this is. What is that? I can't read that! There's no words on it! "To play us out"--what does that mean? I don't know what that means! I can't do it! We'll do it live! Fuck it! Do it live! I'll write it and we'll do it live! Fucking blog sucks!Have a nice day.
Anyway, here's a hodgepodge of things for Sunday that I could turn into longer posts, but... meh. Time to clear out some Firefox tabs and sweep out some mental dust bunnies.
I was going to write a longer commentary about this idiotic notion of David Hughes from the RIAA about how the future of music is rentals and DRM (digital rights management). It might be sufficient to point out that Microsoft's decision to close their MSN Music store, leaving users who purchased music from the service stuck with their authenticated machine for the rest of their lives ought to serve as a cautionary tale to consumers: part of the problem with the kind of music subscription model Hughes seems to be advocating is that it makes it quite possible for a customer to lose all the music he's paid for if a company shuts down their music distribution channel. If I buy a CD, I acquire the opportunity to backup or time shift my hard media to other media (e.g. analog tape) or formats (e.g. MP3, FLAC, yet-to-be-invented-codec-v.6.71). (Of course, the position of the RIAA appears to be that my acquired opportunity is an illegal opportunity, since copying my CDs to, say, SHN for some nutty reason, is a violation of my license to listen to the CD holding the audio I've... what, leased?)
A friend sent me a link to this fascinating historic document: a copy of the letter to inform the legendary Dr. Henry Jones that his bid for tenure in the archeology department at Marshall College was again denied.
Permit me to list just a few of the more troubling accounts I was privy to during the committee's meeting. Far more times than I would care to mention, the name "Indiana Jones" (the adopted title Dr. Jones insists on being called) has appeared in governmental reports linking him to the Nazi Party, black-market antiquities dealers, underground cults, human sacrifice, Indian child slave labor, and the Chinese mafia. There are a plethora of international criminal charges against Dr. Jones, which include but are not limited to: bringing unregistered weapons into and out of the country; property damage; desecration of national and historical landmarks; impersonating officials; arson; grand theft (automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and watercraft in just a one week span last year); excavating without a permit; countless antiquities violations; public endangerment; voluntary and involuntary manslaughter; and, allegedly, murder.
Funny, and timely just before May 22.
Today's Astronomy Picture Of The Day suggests that gold may be formed by the collisions of neutron stars. The mind boggles. I'm not sure I'll be able to look at Flavor Flav the same way ever again, now that I know his mouth might be full of debris from strange stars.
Boing Boing recently featured this video from Manchester, England's The Get Out Clause, who apparently decided to let the government fund a video for them by performing in front of CCTV security cameras and then obtaining the footage through the British equivalent of the FOIA. I'm not really sure I really buy the whole story, but it turns out the song is really, really good, so if the "Big Brother shot our music video" gimmick works, good for them. We'll let the video... I don't know what this is. What is that? I can't read that! There's no words on it! "To play us out"--what does that mean? I don't know what that means! I can't do it! We'll do it live! Fuck it! Do it live! I'll write it and we'll do it live! Fucking blog sucks!
And that is it for us today. I'm Eric at Shoulders of Giant Midgets, and we'll leave you with The Get Out Clause and their new music video, "Paper":
Comments