Monday 4 February 2002

Michael Jardeen: This has never been about protecting copyright. It has always been about money, the money you steal from copyright holders to protect your companies financial racket. In 1984 when CDs were young, we were all told that the reason you were charging $4-$8 more for CDs than LPs was because they were so new, and that prices would come down when CDs became more common. Well, it never happened, because you got attached to the teat.[Skywave] [Adam Curry: CurryDotCom] Way to go! It's an open letter to the recording companies, and expresses my views perfectly. 11:42:05 AM  Your view

Something strange is definitely going on wirh Radio. I'm on OS X, and generally the experience is fine, but since I set up a second Category I've had numerous problems wirh upstreaming. Basically, the problem seems to occur most regularly when I decide to post to the Category only, and not to the home page.       As a case in point, I posted an item to my Apple Category at 11.00 pm last night (in round figures). I checked several times since that time, but there was no sign of the item appearing on my live site. I subsequently posted two items to my home page and had thought that this would trigger upstreaming for the Category page at the same time: it didn't. I checked out the Discussion Board and downloaded the beta of 8.03 as recommended. This did force uploading of a reluctant home-page posting, but had no effect on the Category page. Now -- twelve hours after my original posting, I 'edited' my original posting by also selecting the Home Page for posting . . . and, like magic, as soon as I clicked the 'Post to Weblog' button my item appeared on my Apple Category page (though not on my home page).       On the same thread in the Discussion Group I admittedly spotted a reference to AirPort being a potential cause of these upstreaming problems. Since I'm a dedicated AirPort user I will now continue to experiment further by setting AirPort to distribute 'real' rather than local IP addresses. 11:34:05 AM  Your view

Skywave is a great Radio blog, I didn't know until today it was edited by a famous blogman. For 10 points, guess who?  [Scripting News] Well, no points for me, I'm afraid. But this certainly was a good read. You've got to agree about the iTunes Radio Tuner -- great stuff. The author comments on the lack of NPR sites in the iTunes list and recommends WUNC as one of the few stations doing MP3 streaming of NPR. While this isn't one of the included stations in iTunes, it's relatively easy to maintain access to it if you're interested. Just click on the 'Tune in' link on WUNC's site, iTunes will launch and open the stream in its Library. Set up a new play list (call it 'Radio' perhaps?), drag the new stream here and -- voila, permanent access. I'm listening right now and it sure is good. 4:24:54 AM  Your view

Michael Fraase: "That CD you just bought? It might not be a CD at all according to Philips, the Dutch company that specifies just what, exactly, is and is not an audio compact disc."  [Scripting News] This is very similar to an earlier post on the same subject, and actually refers itself to the San Francisco Gate article, but it has some further interesting things to say on the subject. For instance (which I wasn't aware of before) 'In practice, it turns out that while your computer's CD player probably can't play the disc, your computer's DVD player probably can.'       It also refers to the introduction of the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act, 1992) at the behest of the recording companies, which 'made it illegal to manufacture Digital Audio Tape (DAT) recorders that didn't prevent serial tape copying.' and effecttively sounded the death knell for DAT machines. A significant point about this Act (and the other equally intrusive Digital Millennium Copyright Act [^] DMCA) is their tendency to influence the lives of millions of people outside the US.       At least, that was my feeling until I just now did a bit of research to firmly establish the name of the DMCA. A Google search brought up this interesting site. It states in part that 'The DMCA seeks to update U.S. copyright law for the digital age in preparation for ratification of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties.' I must admit that I knew nothing previously about an international connection, so perhaps I should do some more research before getting fully on my high horse! 3:56:14 AM  Your view

		© Copyright 2002 Jim MacCormaic . Last update: 29/09/2002; 06:01:08 am .