April 28, 2004

Apple Sells 70 Million Songs in First Year of ITunes Service New York Times - Apple Computer said Wednesday that it had sold more than 70 million songs during the first year of its online iTunes music service. The company, which struck a landmark deal with record companies last year to permit iTunes users to download copyrighted music, had originally said it believed it would sell 100 million songs during the first year of the service. At 1 buck a song that is 10% of 2002 album sales!  One company, one distribution system carrying 10% of the entire sales load... Still, my favorite place to download music is puretracks.com. 9:20:31 PM

Democracy for the Middle East links to a witness account to the claim that the Arabs were brutally driven from their land. 2:35:12 PM

Politicians on the take, arms dealers getting paid, government representatives receiving bribes… sound like a great story, too bad it's true, and it happened under the watchful eye of the UN. Were these really the people we wanted permission from in order to go to war with Saddam?  Looks to me like Saddam was running the UN.  1:51:09 PM

If this had happened in Gaza, al-Reuters would be screaming massacre. 107 "bandits" and five soldiers had died in the fighting, which started when gangs of mainly young men -- some wearing Islamic slogans -- launched dawn attacks on army and police posts across the predominantly Muslim region. However it happened in Thailand, so it was just the police doing their job. Reuters is not even really sure why they attacked.  I mean they were wearing black and dark green uniforms with bright red headbands that had Islamic slogans.  They lived in a region that saw a Muslim separatist rebellions in the 1970s and 1980s. BUT Reuters actually  says "Their motive remains a mystery".  Really? A mystery to whom? 10:44:44 AM