Wub's Ramblings...

Why the record labels are losing the fight against P2P

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:58:56 GMT

I rarely if ever buy music these days. Mostly because I don't listen to much music, but also because I don't think that any money spent on CDs or tracks actually goes to either the artists or to produce better music. I think the industry is corrupt in general, abusive to artists, and it refuses to change with the times and provide services that people want.

Two good articles came to my attention this week illustration why I don't believe that most labels have the artist's interests in mind.

The first is a piece by Steve Albini breaking down what it means for an artist to sign with the label and how big a hole it puts them in. The industry preys on eager young artists desperate to "make it big".
The article has a nice tally sheet showing the questionable accounting the labels do and how a "$450,000 payday" for the band actually will net the band members only $4,000 and leave them in the hole for $450,000 while the label pulls in close to a million and still claims "the band didn't break even".

The second article is from Tim Quirk, the lead singer for one of my favorite early 90's bands Too Much Joy. His article My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement is a perfect follow up to the above article. In it, Tim details just how ridiculous it is that Warner "credited" his account $62.27 for digital royalties and details exactly how unfair the accounting tricks done by major labels are.
(article mirrored at Gizmodo)

The final thing I want to point out is just how badly the labels are refusing to embrace the new times.

I'm a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic. He is one of the very few artists I will consistently buy music for.

He has a new album "The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic". When it was initially released, I followed the link on his home page, intending to buy the digital copy of the album, when I ran into this bit of ridiculousness from Sony Music.

How is it possible that electronic downloads cost more than a physical disc??? The physical disc represents a huge investment and overhead compared to the tiny amount of hard drive space the digital copies "cost".

There is no justification to charge more for digital. In fact, they could charge significantly less for digital distribution and still come out ahead. The fact that they don't charge less only leads people like me to conclude that the labels act only out of greed... and I don't want to support bald faced greed...

Guns 'n Gardens - A How-To show on Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:10:53 GMT

http://www.guns-n-gardens.com/

Wubwife likes home improvement shows so I get to watch too many of them, but I like this one - A home improvement show helping you deal with the zombie apocalypse!

Funnee

Russel's Teapot - Mastering Your Operational Excellence

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:26:06 GMT

I love the logic diagram in the middle... yep, sounds like what those wacky theists believe

Support for Same-Sex Marriage by Age and State

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:12:02 GMT

I've blogged a few times about gay marriage. I know it will eventually be the norm and no one will even blink an eye (and on that day, I would just love for some of the current opponents to apologize and admit they were wrong)

And here's a great study (warning PDF) showing why gay marriage not only will happen, but is inevitable.

The graph (and report) clearly shows that support for gay marriage among 18-29 year olds is over 50% in all but a small handful of states. More than 1/3 of 18-29 year olds who support gay rights is in Alabama (the most backward state).

With each new generation, the percentage of support only grows. So it is only a matter of time before a majority of the whole population realizes what is plainly obvious to so many of us: gay marriage has no impact on the world for most people.

I just hate that it will take so much longer for some people to realize and accept the truth. And I hate to think of how many more people will be subject to hatred and discrimination before that day comes.

Star Wars in Concert was Unforgettable

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:10:55 GMT

Last nite we saw Star Wars in Concert. A live orchestra playing select pieces from the Star Wars movies.

Anthony Daniels was live and narrated the event. He brought charm and wit to separate the individual pieces.
During each piece, huge screens played select scenes from the movies and gave more emotion to the pieces played and brought the music to life.

Nothing could match the adrenaline rush when the orchestra started up.
Blasting drums with the trumpet fanfare. Then the immortal words flashed up on the screen "A long time ago in a galaxy far away..."... a brief pause as the stadium faded to black... the audience held its breath.. and the opening blast of the Star Wars theme filled the chamber with power and emotion. I think everyone in there wanted to cheer and hoot but we were struck silent by the music we all love.

The entire event was absolute mesmerizing blend of music and visuals. We were entranced for the entire show and wished it could have gone on longer.

Solved my proxy posting problem

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:18:46 GMT

Took long enuf... but then again, I wasn't really trying, so not really surprising that it didn't work for so long!!!

Anyway, finally got posting fixed. Now if I'll just get off my ass and post more often, everything would be fixed!

What'd'ya know... TiVo not killing TV...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:22:18 GMT

When TiVo and other Digital Video Recorders were new, the TV industry went insane with lawsuits and hysterical rhetoric about how DVRs were going to destroy the world!!!

Industry analysts claimed that DVR "potentially threatens the very lifeblood of how television is funded and how it's used for marketing and advertising."

Of course, what was really happening is what always happens when new technologies come along that change things: New companies talk about a "brave new world" that the tech offers, old companies fear for their very life and fight tooth and nail to avoid any change.

We saw it with VCRs, cassette tapes, radios, and every new technology to ever come forward.

Via an EFF posting, it seems that once again, history has shown that new technology improves things rather than destroys everything.

This weekend, The New York Times announced that "DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue."

Yes, new technologies disrupt things and sometimes business models have to change, but I, for one, am getting tired of the moral panic, doom-and-gloom we hear from the likes of MPAA, RIAA, TV and Movie studios and basically anyone wrapped in the old industry. History has shown them time-and-time-again to be wrong.

Some fun quotes below the cut

From ars technica

"I forsee a marked deterioration in American music...and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines..." -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)

"The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials." -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925)

"But now we are faced with a new and very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder." -MPAA on the VCR (1982)

"When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape [but] the innocent public will be made an accessory to the destruction of four industries." -ASCAP on the Cassette Tape (1982)

Judge in Interracial Flap Resigns

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:52:58 GMT

Follow up to my earlier post: Judge won't marry interracial couples...

A Louisiana justice of the peace who drew criticism for refusing to marry an interracial couple has resigned, the secretary of state's office said Tuesday.

Of course, the racist doesn't think he did anything wrong

"It's kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven't done wrong," he said.

Luckily he didn't try to defend himself after his earlier comments

"I'm not a racist," he said. "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house.

Evil - Booby Trap a Bathroom

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:25:58 GMT

via Show Me Now

Work complaints - Got to gripe somewhere

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:06:45 GMT

I don't like sounding like a petulant child, but I tend to like working with intelligent people and when the people I work with do dumb things, I tend to lose respect for them (we are not talking dumb things like a bad cut and paste error, we're talking dumb things like not realizing that they could use cut and paste in the first place).

Last week, I finally got around to making a visual change to one of our landing pages. Screen real estate is fairly valuable. You only have a certain area to work with, so you want to put important features high on the page and less important features on sub-pages or where the user has to scroll down to see them.

On one of our landing pages, there were a series of links that represented functions that will only be exercised occasionally by some of our users. They won't even be visible to most of the users (just blank spaces for them). These links were products of very early "sketch" layouts done by a cow-orker who is no longer here and they are absolute prime candidates for moving to secondary pages, so I moved them. In their place, I put functions that will be used daily by a majority of our users.

Now, another thing about landing pages and things like that. You do not want to make changes to them too often. As any developer can tell you, users are dumb. They do not like change and will be confused even if you remove a link they don't use.

I wanted to make the layout change before delivery of the final code because to make the change later will generate confusion among the end users. I would have made it a long time ago, but I was busy designing the back-end code that actually runs the site and didn't have enough time to fix all the little visual improvements that the site needs desperately.

So I made the change to the layout and our testers complained (note: we have 2 testers, not a whole suite of them).

They had pages of scripts that were "invalid" because the links were now wrong. These are not automated scripts. These are hand scripts that they follow. i.e.: Go to this page, click this link, on the next page, enter 12 in the text box, etc...

The change I made would mean that they would have to adjust their scripts to click an intervening link on one page. Something most people can get used to. And again, this is a distinct improvement that will have very positive improvements for our real end users.

I was overridden by my boss who sides with the testers because he doesn't want to "invalidate their scripts"???? (remember, these are NOT automated scripts).

So we are going to deliver a bad layout to users who will not want it changed after delivery, all to keep two testers (who are supposed to be intelligent, remember) from having to mentally add one step to some of their tests.

So, yes, my respect for some of my cow-orkers just went way down. And what really bugs me is that to lots of our in-house engineers, I am the face of this tool even if it is mostly a team-effort. So this bad-design very directly reflects on me and I don't like it.

So now I am very pissed and don't feel like coding today... which is not good since we do not have many days left before we go live...

Blowing Things Up in a Good Way - Launching Anvils 200 Feet in the Air

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:22:41 GMT

What a great way to spend an afternoon... blowing anvils into the sky!

via boingboing

Irony Alert: Taliban promises to blow up buildings if the media doesn't stop calling them terrorists

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:22:36 GMT

These people can not possibly understand the meaning of irony

Meanwhile, a Taliban group also sent two letters to the Lahore Press Club - one on October 12 and the other on October 14 - warning that if the media “does not stop portraying us as terrorists ... we will blow up offices of journalists and media organisations”.

Just keep killing people until they stop calling you a terrorist... good plan...

86-year-old WWII vet on gay Marriage: "what do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?"

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:29:08 GMT

A good reminder that we didn't fight for some people's freedoms, we fought for everyone's freedoms.

via: boingboing

Judge wont throw out challenge to Prop 8

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:24:12 GMT

Finally someone asks the wingnuts the right question:

A federal judge challenged the backers of California's voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday to explain how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional unions, a demand that prompted their lawyer to acknowledge he did not know.

Most sane people know that gay marriage is not a problem. But wingnuts keep sticking their head into the debate with crazy claims that gay marriage will somehow destroy heterosexual marriage. But when challenged to explain how gay marriage will cause all this damage, wingnuts can't really explain

"What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?" [U.S. District Chief Judge] Walker asked.

"My answer is, I don't know. I don't know," Cooper [lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8] answered.

Cooper didn't know because the only "evidence" wingnuts have is anecdotal and based on prejudice, fear and primitive superstitious nonsense not on any real facts or rational explanations.
I readily admit that society has a valid interest in supporting the raising of children, and that marriage is a very good institution to raise children in. However, that interest is not in any way diminished by couples who do not raise children (or cannot raise children). Children are not a requirement of marriage, so the idea that "procreation" is the only reason for marriage is simply not valid.

I know it's a pipe dream, but I hope that one day some of these wingnuts will have the guts to come forward and admit they were wrong...

also via the AP and here

Judge won't marry interracial couples

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:23:16 GMT

I know there is still prejudice in the world, but I keep hoping we are over the worst of it when some redneck wacko goes off and proves me wrong again.

Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.

Of course its in the south, where ignorance is a virtue and stoopidity rewarded. But one would hope that state officials would at least show a modicum of decency or intelligence.

But you just have to love the take-away quote:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

How very white of him!! He lets black people use his bathroom!!! How practically 1920 of him!

I think I'm going to be sick :-/

via Pharyngula

Are Americans Faking Religiousity??

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:13:56 GMT

Interesting piece from Reason Weekly

Close to 1/2 of the people in America claim to go to church every week. The problem is, there aren't enough seats in all the churches in the country to seat even half that number:

Assuming that all are filled to capacity, that even the smallest of them can accommodate at least 400 people, and liberally adding 20,000,000 extra seats, the total number of available seats in churches across America is 59,045,600. That is just little over a half of what would be necessary to accommodate all the people who claim to go to church weekly.

So its interesting to see that not nearly as many people who claim to go to church actually do. And more interesting to see that so called church goers seem quite content to lie to pollsters.

I'm guessing most of these people lie because they feel they wont appear to be "good" unless they can show they go to church regularly. It will be a good day when people don't feel the pressure to lie to pollsters in order to seem like they are one of "the good guys".

The Onion once again nails it

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:06:58 GMT

In one simple article, the Onion nails wingnut's opposition to gay marriage:

If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting Of Gays, He Would Have Given Me The Warmth And Compassion To Do So

It is nearly impossible for me to pick a choice quote from the article. Every line is absolutely perfect.

...I know that if it were part of God's plan for me to stop viciously condemning others based solely on their sexual preference, He would have seen fit - in His infinite wisdom and all - to have given me the tiniest bit of human empathy necessary to do so.

and

Compassion, tolerance, understanding, basic decency, the ability to put myself in another person's position: God could have endowed me with any of those traits and yet - here is the crucial part - He didn't. Why? Because the Creator of the Universe wants me to demonize homosexuals in an effort to strip them of their fundamental human rights.

Just briliant...

One Nation Under Cthulhu

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:15:19 GMT

My Little Golden Book About Zogg

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:40:36 GMT

One of the funniest geeky comics I've ever read

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:32:14 GMT

Penis Pictures Crash Servers

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:28:56 GMT

Hahahaha... AT&T finally got round to turning on MMS for iPhones late last month. And according to their reps, iPhone MMS penis pictures crashed their servers

“Within the first few minutes, our network was flooded with nearly 3.4 million MMS messages and the early data shows that almost 98% of those were pictures of our male customers’ penises,” stated Ronald MacArthur, head of data traffic for the company.

Apparently I was missing out the bandwagon by not sending out pics of my privates... :-)

Finally!

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:25:32 GMT

Finally got round to cleaning up my wildlink.com website... It actually looks somewhat respectable now.

Signs of the end of civilization

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:50:23 GMT

On the way to work, I saw yet another sign of the end-of-civilization.

I saw a group of kids waiting for the bus... right across the street from the school.

Note, this was a residential street, not a major thoroughfare. I would trust just about any 6 year-old to know how to safely cross this street. But here was a group of kids waiting to be picked up so the bus could pull into the parking lot across from their bus stop where the kids started and then let them off.

Imagine the situation. The kids have to get out there 5-15 minutes early to catch the bus, and it takes them longer to get into their seat than it takes the bus to get to its destination.

I blame the parents for being insane and not just letting their kids walk the extra 30 feet to get to school (remember, this is _not_ that dangerous a road. The kids are likely in as much danger walking to the stop as they are from walking across the extra road).

But I blame the school more for encouraging this kind of insanity.

In an age where we are worrying about overweight kids, surely walking should be _encouraged_ not discouraged. Especially when the distance is the width of one minor road.

If your house is directly across from the school, you shouldn't expect a bus to stop for you. And the school shouldn't provide one.

And if a kid did get hurt and a lawyer tried to sue the school for causing it, the lawyer should be disbarred for being too stoopid to practice law.

PSA: Don't trust anyone you meet online

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:34:58 GMT

update:

Iowa: 92% say gay marriage hasn't affected their lives

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:34:19 GMT

In a poll whose results were plainly obvious to proponents but must be shocking to opponents of gay marriage - the wildly vast majority of people find that their lives are utterly unaffected by gay marriage. And I bet most of the remaining 8% are gays who had their lives positively impacted.

Unfortunately, there are still 41% who would vote to ban it, even tho it clearly has no real impact on anyone. So I guess the mindless fear mongering is still getting to someone.

I just hope that by the time the issue gets on a ballot, people will have had enough time to come to the realization that it is not the end of the world. The longer it goes with gay marriage existing, the longer people will come to grips with it and stop being terrified of it.

via huffpo