More and more universities are signing on with Napster to provide legal digital music download service to their students. The fees going to Napster are being drawn from student fees and are mandatory. It doesn’t seem fair to tax all students for a service that only some will use… and even less fair to impose a tax of this kind on all students because of the illegal actions of a few. I don’t like the smell of this.
July, 2004
22
Jul 04
iTunes Pricing
I’m getting increasingly annoyed with the high pricing of albums on iTMS. Albums at $9.99 is pretty good… good enough that I’ll buy them quickly. But the latest N.E.R.D. album was released above $9.99 (it’s now $13.99) so I decided to not buy it at all (the CD still costs lots more). Now, the new Beastie Boys album is $14.85! I’m torn!
If I buy the CD, the labels just make more money off the purchase and it slows down the adoption of the digital distribution model (which I’m a big fan of), but if I pay the $14.85 on iTunes it encourages the labels and Apple to start pricing more digital albums higher than $9.99 (which is basically as high as they can reasonably go in my opinion).
So, I guess I might have to just steal it instead. Hrmph. They’re not making this easy on me. When are the labels going to get a clue?
UPDATE: I’ve now learned that the Beastie Boys CD has stupid ass copy protection on it, so I definitely don’t want to buy it. Celine Dion doing this I could live with, but the Beastie Boys? Man.
UPDATE2: The Beastie Boys album “http://www.beastieboys.com/news.php”>does not actually have copy-protection in the US or UK versions. The European version does because EMI releases everything in Europe with this particular copy-protection…. not just this one.
21
Jul 04
Russian Scientists Turn Blood into Chocolate
Some scientists in Russia have figured out how to use all of that blood thrown away by slaughter houses all the time. They have a process to turn blood into imitations of foods like coffee, chocolate, and milk. They apparently do not differ in taste from the originals and they can be metabolized twice as fast… hmm.
20
Jul 04
Microsoft Backs off of Lindows Suit
Microsoft was suing Linspire, a company making a Linux distribution aimed at being a full Windows replacement, over their use of the name ‘Lindows’. Microsoft didn’t like how much ‘Lindows’ resembled ‘Windows’. During some of the ensuing court battles some judges started to question whether or not ‘Windows’ is even a viable trademark AT ALL. For instance, the original Macintosh was out before Windows 1.0 and it already had visual screen representations of applications and folders that were referred to as ‘windows’. It looks like Microsoft has decided to decline to follow up that line of debate any further and has settled with Linspire fairly nicely. Score one for the little guy?
16
Jul 04
Happy Birthday, Atomic Bomb
According to my computer, today is the anniversary of the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, NM, 1945. Next year is the 60th anniversary… and the world sure has improved since then, eh? Yeah…
14
Jul 04
The RIAA is Bending the Truth
The RIAA claims that record sales are down 7% since last year and claims it is due to filesharing and is using that information to lobby for legislation that would help them maintain their position. However, according to Soundscan, the company that tracks sales of albums at the register, music sales are up by almost 10% since last year. The discrepancy seems to be the result of some creative accounting and some blatant attempts to manipulate the situation. Tssk tssk.
8
Jul 04
MS’s Slate Recommends Switching Away From IE
Microsoft’s own Slate online magazine is now recommending that people switch to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. They mention security as well as usability concerns. Seems like as good a time as any to me!
