This Used to Be Me

If you remember BBS's, read this.

Great (non) Nerd Reading #3

From time to time, I offer you the opportunity to read pieces written by others that either explain complicated situations beautifully so that "non-nerd" people can finally understand them, or show off new ideas/directions/explorations of technology that excite and hold great promise for the future.

Today's Great (non) Nerd Reading recommendation takes the thorny meeting of technological and moral quandries most of us simply refer to as "the RIAA versus Napster mess" and shines the harsh light of Truth on both parties, with startling results. If you've ever wondered what all the fuss was about regarding Napster, why the RIAA seem to work so hard when they've not made even a tiny dent in music piracy,* and why the so-called "copy-protected CDs" are not only not proper CDs, they also aren't uncopyable.

*Eminem's new album is #2 on the "most listened to" web charts, and it isn't even out yet.

So what, you might think to yourself. Doesn't affect me, you might think. Wrong. The technology they employ won't stop piracy, but it will harm your rights as a law-abiding consumer far more severely than you think, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You need to read this article.

From the get-go (and in several past postings to this blog and elsewhere around the Net) I have said that the goal of the RIAA isn't really to stop piracy, it's to completely re-define what rights the consumer actually has.

This Mathew Ruben fellow has boiled it down and summed it up far better than I could have possibly hoped for. He eloquently and concisely shows that both "sides" of this debate are up to their ears in hypocrisy, and and that it is this hypocrisy itself that is rapidly deteriorating the situation, and consumer rights are caught in the crossfire. Sony, the corporation that went to court on behalf of consumers being allowed to use copies of broadcast material as they saw fit in 1983, now takes the exact opposite agenda:

It might seem like Sony is shooting itself in the foot by omitting the official "CD Digital Audio" badge from its copy protected discs. But to my eyes it's the opposite: Sony is weaseling out of the truth, which is that its discs are in fact Blue Book-compliant CDs that are not out-of-spec but rather are defective, and have intentionally been made defective, using the Blue Book format as a trojan horse to disable the user's hardware when that hardware is a computer.

Insofar as these discs damage or disable computers, they operate like computer viruses, except that instead of working on the software side, they attack via hardware and firmware. Their method of copyright protection is less like MacroVision and CSS (the copy protection mechanisms used on VHS and DVD), and more like the "zapping" techniques used by cable companies to disable cable boxes in homes where cable service or premium channels are being received illegally. In those cases, however, there's a way of distinguishing between legal and illegal activity. Legal cable setups don't get their boxes zapped. With Key2Audio, the technology behaves as though inserting a CD in your computer makes you a criminal.

And believe me, as Ruben goes on to reveal Sony's (and the other members of the RIAA's) ultimate ambition, your hair will stand on end. But don't say I didn't warn ya.

After you're done reading that article, move on to this one, written by noted indie film director Alex Cox. He questions who the pirates really are, and I think makes the point beautifully.

CD Update #1 -- 2002 So Far (Part 1 of 2)

I'm appalled to say that the following long-delayed update represents nearly every single music CD I've bought this year. I used to average 300 CDs a year. Do you know what changed my ways? Was it Napster and things of that nature? No, not a bit. If anything, they made me buy more CDs than normal. I loved the convenience of hearing (or reading) someone rave about a track or a band, downloading it to check it out, then buying the entire CD (if warranted). I remain convinced that this is how the vast majority of Napster users utilised the service, because speaking for myself there is no way an MP3 takes the place of a CD, either in quality or in "extras." MP3s are damn handy little things to have around, but they are just not good enough (apart from rare occasions) to do the job in critical-listening situations.

So was it economics? No. Was it a declining interest in modern music? No, because there are still plenty of worthwhile artists around (harder to find these days, of course), and a ton of re-issues to keep us busy in the meantime.

It was the ever-increasing price of CDs. It's really just that simple. I don't respond well to naked greed -- one of the few naked things I don't respond well to :).

As much as I like some of my favourite artists, there are very few for whom I'd routinely shell out nearly $20 a CD, particularly when the money goes mainly to the record company and not the artist. CDs should cost around 10-12 bucks. Period. If they would price CDs at 12 bucks and split it four ways ($3 each for the record company, distributor, reseller and artist), who would complain? Not me, definitely not the artists. Okay, so maybe the record company takes $4 and the distributor gets $2. Fine. Whatever. But you get the idea.

BUT FIRST, A LITTLE BACKGROUND
For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm blessed to have shopped for music at many of the finest record stores on this earth in dozens if not hundreds of cities and towns. I'm doubly lucky to have an array of friends whose musical tastes are nothing short of exceptional. My CD collection is vast, and while the bulk of it is geared towards 80s Punk/Ska/New Wave/New Romantic music, there is plenty of stuff from many other genres, from country to Icelandic Folk. At last count, the collection had well over 1,500 CDs in it for which I paid of average price of $6.50 a disc. You do the math.

I primarily buy my discs in one of three places:
1. Park Avenue CDs, an independent CD store in Winter Park, Florida. If you are in the Orlando area and love music, you must visit this store.

2. Rock n Roll Heaven, an independent VINYL store in Orlando. They have tons of CDs too, and a treasure trove of cultural icon stuff, from Dark Shadows board games to Pee Wee Herman dolls and a whole lot more stretching back to the 1950s. Ironically, much of it is not for sale -- it's their own private collection, put out for you to love as they do. If are in the area and you love music and pop culture junk you must visit this store.

3. GEMM.com - a remarkable online resource that can find virtually any music, books or videos ever made. They are particularly good at finding obscure and foreign material the Americans pretend doesn't even exist. If you can't locate in using GEMM, take it as the first sign that you should give up.

BEGIN THE BEGUINE
The following list does not include CDs purchased by Heather to supplement her growing interest in classical and Northern European music, or our mutual interest in sci-fi audio-drama CDs by Big Finish. This is just music CDs I purchased since January, and I probably missed one or two but on the whole this is it. Most of you will have no idea how sad things have gotten for me to have so few new discs to talk about.

We'll start with my visit to the incredible, amazing, heaven-esque Amoeba Music in Hollywood, CA. This place has been voted the Best Music Store in California for 10 years running, and once you visit (or look at the pics on the web site) it's easy to see why: there's just SO MUCH STUFF. On my visit I didn't even try to go upstairs to the vinyl and DVD sections ... must ... save ... the brain!!

We limited ourselves to only 90 minutes inside this gigantic emporium of wonderfulness because we were limited on funds (having already blown huge chunks of cash on Doctor Who-related goodies at The 13th Floor of Gallifrey One in nearby Burbank) and because to stay there much longer would have resulting in paralyzing choice-overload insanity. Suffice to say that this store has so many CDs that over 25,000 of them are under THREE DOLLARS.

Despite my best efforts at self-control, I spent $50 and got four CDs. If not for one $20 import single (hey, what did he say earlier about not paying $20 for a full CD anymore?!), it would have been four CDs for $30. Try that at your local Omniglomerate Corporate Music Only Outlet. And now:

1. Blondie - Eat to the Beat
Another new version of one of my all-time favourite albums. This one takes the basic masterpiece (probably the best record of 1979, and that's saying a lot because 79 was an incredible year for music), throws in some bonus tracks and new liner notes from producer Mike Chapman, adds a touch of 24-bit remastering and Amoeba lets it go for $9.98. If you've not heard this one, it's Blondie's pinnacle of poppiness. Not the one with the most hits, but in my opinion the best all-around record they did. I was quite surprised to learn (via the new production info notes) that legendary 60s songwriter Ellie Greenwich and child flop Lorna Luft contributed to the backing vocals!

The bonus tracks included on this one are as follows:
Die Young Stay Pretty (live BBC, previously unreleased in the US)
Seven Rooms of Gloom (live BBC, previously unreleased in the US)
Heroes (live w/an uncredited Robert Fripp!)
Ring of Fire (live)

2. The Tourists - Greatest Hits
Not to be confused with the crappy 1984 comp Should Have Been Greatest Hits, this one caught my eye because it was much newer (1997) and had twice as many tracks, roughly an equal number from each of the three original Tourists studio albums (and one bona-fide rarity, the b-side to the free 7" that came with LD, a song called "Strange Sky.")

The Tourists, in case you don't know, were a new-wavey but derivative powerpop band who had two members that would go on to be big, big, big I tell ya! ... Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. The only other thing I have on CD from this band is a Japanese issue of their final album, Luminous Basement. They were great and, given the later interest in powerpop, quite ahead of their time. Annie was a strong but passionless singer back in those days, more interested in being Grace Slick than Grace Jones, if you see what I'm saying. Pete Coombes, the lead singer and songwriter, went on to form Acid Drops with Eddie Chin, then promptly vanished from the face of the earth.

Believe it or not, VH1.com has a page on the band, and here's a very very good discography.

Damn I'd love to get those three back together and make them play some of those old songs. HA!

3. Ultravox - Rage in Eden
I didn't have the album on CD, and this Nordic version (what with it's three bonus tracks) seemed to fit the bill. I've since discovered that of all the CD versions of this album, mine happens to be by far the ugliest. Oh well.

Rage in Eden was described in reviews at the time as "a transitional work" but I have always disagreed; Vienna set the stage for their hook-laden, emotionally detached, gothic/new romatic style of synthrock, and RiE just carries that on (as would their following albums). If it's flawed, the flaw is that they might have overreached on the pretension front at the expense of memorable lyrics, but that would be rectified by the time Quartet came out. RiE is a satisfying, sophisticated piece of polished pop from electronic elitists.

If you're reading this and you don't know who Ultravox are, just go shoot yourself. You missed the New Romantic movement, and thus your life has little meaning. I pity the man who has never worn makeup!

Of course (he said, putting on his elitist snob hat), this album is merely one of the better works of Ultravox Mark II. The original Ultravox lineup featured vocalist and songwriter John Foxx, and in my mind was an act that reached even greater artistic heights, if nowhere near the level of commercial success that the Midge Ure-led era did.

The bonus tracks:
I Never Wanted to Begin
Paths and Angles
I Never Wanted to Begin (12")

4. The Trash Can Sinatras - Snow (single)
Among all my friends, I think I'm the only one with a real passion for this band. They are obscure even in their native Scotland, though highly influential because they were out there writing intricate, clever, soul-stirring pop songs long before your Belle & Sebastians and your Starlets and your Appendix Outs.

Simply put, I think this band have been consistently amazing. They are not one of those groups that will wow you on first listen -- they creep into your brain like a safecracker, and their gentle (but definitely not snoozy) pop and extra-clever lyrics tickle the dials of your psyche (or, at least, mine) just so. If you ever see a copy of their hard-to-find third album, A Happy Pocket, just buy it. It's a masterpiece.

"Snow" was probably originally meant as a "tide-you-over" single till the fourth album came out, but it's been over a year since this was released and no sign of a new record (they are, at last report, still recording it). "Snow" is also an excellent way to test your subwoofer, as they really went low on the bass parts for some reason. If you enjoy B&S and The Beautiful South, you will probably like the Trash Can Sinatras.

Part 2 will cover my 2002 Park Ave CD purchases. Gosh, this is riveting, isn't it?? ;)

Fun With Flash #2

Oh dear god. Don't tell Heather about this, any of you! ;)

Virtual Bubble Wrap is here!

Interesting Updates #1

Just thought you'd like to know ... Chas's Curse has struck again. Whenever I write about a specific version of a product, it immediately gets revised, so Mozilla is of course now at 1.0rc3. Apparently they squashed 139 bugs. So if you took my advice and downloaded rc2, head back over to Versiontracker.com or Mozilla.org and grab the new one ... or just wait till 1.0 final comes out.

I note with delight that IE's browser share continues to fall to reasonable levels, at least as far as this site is concerned. I want to make it clear ... I don't have anything against IE, it's a very nice program -- it's just that diversity is good. Since I published my various rants promoting browser alternatives, IE has gone from being the "browser of choice" of 89-90% of you to it's current 62% "marketshare." That is absolutely amazing, and yet the other statistics (like how many of you run Windows, Mac or UNIX) hasn't changed. As Doctor Evil would say, "EGG-cellent."

"Netscape 5" (my site log's code for Netscape 6 and/or Mozilla) is up from less than 10% to 38%. This is healthy, people, and it portends good things should AOL decide to take the bull by the horns. It also indicates that people are still willing to try something new if a) they're allowed to know about it and b) it offers some substantive reason to switch.

You and Me ... MS Free

Will somebody please write this book already?

Though I have a strange love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with MS, I will in fact probably never be MS-free myself ... there is exactly one website I regularly visit (a very poorly-written private company's secure site) that fails to function properly in anything but IE. And I own a copy of Office 2001 (given to me by Microsoft for training purposes, I do public demos of Mac stuff and at the time they felt that I ought to know MS Office as well. I agreed with them then, and still do now).

So while I can't be MS-free, you could be. And it's really not very hard. More on that in a bit.

First, I need to explain the "love" part of the love/hate relationship. Sure, it's easy to hate MS regardless of what platform you're on -- they're an abusive monopoly, they hold back standardization and innovation, they suck at security and most of their PC products are at best mediocre. They engage in all manner of low-life, low-class and downright illegal marketing tactics, they sit on competitors until they die, their advertising sucks wind, and Bill Gates' wife dresses him funny. And then, there's Monkey Boy, who has done more all by himself to force people to investigate the Mac than all those "Think Different" ads combined.

But the funny thing is, they treat their Mac customers great. If you want to see what Microsoft can really do when they actually try, run down to your local Apple Store or CompUSA and give the Mac version of MS Office v.X a spin. Particularly Entourage, a Mac-only product that every PC user I've shown it to drools over. It's downright cool.

Mac customers are largely immune to the security problems, virus problems and forced-registration, forced-disclosure, no-privacy policies that outrage and plague users of Windows. The Mac Business Unit of Microsoft, which is to Microsoft as Taiwan is to China, takes its time and does it right. The products run very well, are 100% PC compatible/interchangable, and work seamlessly with Apple's technologies (such as drag-n-drop and Quicktime) and those of other companies (such as Palm). (MS products playing well with others?! I hear you cry) None of this "must-use-Hotmail," "must-use-Passport," "must-use-Dot-Net" crap for the likes of us. If the lack of Office compatibility is what's keeping you from buying a Mac, there's no stopping you now.

In all, the Mac version of Office boasts dozens of features that simply do not exist on the Windows version, in addition to be virus-free and more secure. The products are by and large -- Jobs save me -- actually pretty cool and fun to use. There, I said it.

But even though Mac users enjoy a superior version of most MS products, there are still many of us -- particularly, it seems, Windows users -- who would like to be as MS-free as possible. There's a longstanding belief that the fewer MS products you have on your hard drive, the fewer crashes (and in the case of IE, I can testify to the truth of that). And more than a handful of people have "issues" with MS's appallingly poor corporate behaviour (they make Enron look simply childish by comparison). And yet more are just tired of seeing "MS We Own Everything and it's Still Not Enough" (tm) at every turn.

Indeed, it's highly ironic (but nonetheless true) that the single largest factor pushing PC users off Windows and into the arms of Linux or UNIX isn't those platforms' particular strengths, but simply a desire to get out from under the all-consuming shadow of the Microsoft juggernaught. Ironic because Microsoft repeatedly says it sees these platforms as the single biggest threat to their monopoly, and they are right.

But I digress.

So, you're read this far (thank you) and you're wondering how to be (more) MS-free. Well, friends, I'm happy to say that there are several good answers to that question, and one of them doesn't even involve much effort on your part. This will be old news to some of you, but I recently discovered ThinkFree Office (because they finally put out a Mac OS X version). I've been using it for a few days now, and I'm here to tell you -- it's MS Office, written in Java, at 1/10th the cost. Interested? Read on.

ThinkFree Office is real software. It comes in a box, on a CD. Or you can download a FREE 30-use trial and give it a spin yourself, which I strongly encourage you to do. It will not mess with, interfere, or otherwise muck up your system in any way. It's completely self-contained, so if you decide it's not for you, just drag the ThinkFree folder to the trash and you are done with it. But I doubt you'll do that if you give it an honest try.

This product reads and writes natively in MS Office format, and runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. In my few days of testing I have yet to encounter one problem or serious quirk. The program is very polished and gives you every feature of Word, Excel or Powerpoint that 99% of Office users actually use. I'm sure it's missing more than a few things that the $599 MS Office application has, but I haven't run across anything that I need, and my Office needs are what I'd call "typical." This is far and away the best all-Java program I've ever seen.

The best part is the price. It's $50. Let me repeat that: FIFTY DOLLARS, with the catch that you really should (but do not have to) renew your "subscription" to their "Cyberdrive" service (basically offline storage, upgrades and support) each year (another $50). That means you would have to use this program for more than 12 years for it to be less worth it than buying a copy of MS Office. Geez.

Did I mention that the $50/year includes all upgrades? Geez-O-Pete.

This program is perfect for individuals who need Office compatibility but don't need every bell & whistle MS stuffs into its package (which is, basically, all of us). It's affordable to everybody and yet nobody will ever know you're not using an MS product.

It's also a viable alternative to small businesses, schools and other institutions that cannot afford either a substantial outlay for software, a large ongoing service and training commitment, or who find Microsoft's new licensing terms onerous (and they are, btw).

Best of all, you're not a slave or a sheep anymore. Believe me, it's a good feeling dragging MS stuff to the trash ... sorry, recycle bin. You feel good because you're not pirating, you're supporting a small company and rewarding excellence and true innovation, you are helping lessen the dependency on Microsoft, you are holding MS's feet to the fire and promoting healthy competition and sane software prices. There are so many pluses to using ThinkFree Office I was beginning to think my modem got disconnected (obscure geek joke from the olden days).

Incidentally, there are other options as well. OpenOffice and StarOffice are out there, also offering MS Office-compatibility at a tiny fraction of the cost. The only reason I don't talk about them equally at length is because the former requires (at present) running an entirely different and much more complex OS than most of you Mac/Windows users would want to run, and because StarOffice ($80, supported by Sun, runs great on Windows) is not Mac-compatible (that's what OpenOffice will be trying to address) and so I've not been able to try it out. I hear it's great, but maybe a little too cutting-edge for most casual users.

Combine this with my sterling recommendation on Mozilla (Netscape 7 is out based on it, and looks to be a contender as well) as an IE-killer, and you are looking at not only a fairly easy and painless way to be largely MS-free, but one that offers numerous and substantial advantages over sticking with MS. You put absolutely nothing at risk by downloading these products and trying them out, and you stand to save yourself or your business literally hundreds of dollars per year, to say nothing of increased productivity due to less virus/hacking susceptability.

ThinkFree, StarOffice et al may not be the right thing for everyone, but I'm quite confident that most users of MS Office would find them worthwhile and attractive alternatives that allow them to keep their MS-compatibility with "the rest of the world" while offering them affordability, enthusiasm for upgrades and benefits undreamed of. Even if you don't find ThinkFree to be quite right for your needs, do a mitzvot (a Good Thing) and donate a copy to your local school, church/synagogue/mosque or charity. Donated software this good -- and a few minutes of your time training a staff person how to use it -- will be both appreciated and used, since it carries none of the legal or licensing baggage of MS.

Think (Different) about it.

See, We Can Make a Difference

Last week, I asked for your help in saving Internet Radio webcasters from an unfair and overbearing royalty scheme. Our efforts appear to have paid off, according to the Washington Times. Thank you very much for your help.

According to the story, the Librarian of Congress has a month to come up with something better (or different, anyway). We will need to be vigilant to make sure he doesn't come up with something worse. I'll keep you posted.

Fun With Flash #1

The Orgasmic Calculator. Do I really need to add "Adults Only?" :)

Colour Me Impressed

Last week, you'll recall, I posted a lengthy diatribe about Microsoft and their bug-ridden and insecure brower Internet Explorer. I also noted that according to my site stats, about 90% of you were using some version of that browser.

A day or so later, I posted a note letting you know that Mozilla 1.0rc1 is out (they've now released a second release candidate, and another one may be on the way before we get to 1.0 final) and works well enough that I can finally, honestly, and completely say there's something out there that trumps IE.

I'm pleased to report that in just the past week, "Netscape" (which covers Mozilla as far as my stats site is concerned) has gone from about 4% to 22% "marketshare," and IE (all versions) has dropped from 90% to 76%.

Let's hope it's a sign of things to come. AOL seems to think so -- I have received word from a source there that not only will the next version of AOL for Macs (running OS X) dispense with the built-in IE browser in favour of one based on Mozilla, but that this could happen for PCs in the not-too-distant future. Talk about instant marketshare -- woah!

Geez, maybe web designers will have to go back to actually designing sites that adhere to Internet standards!

I love it when people have a choice. :)

How About Something Nice For a Change

A few nights ago Heather (my lovely wife) and I did something many people never get to do anymore ... we watched a movie outdoors. If you're old enough to remember the drive-in, you might have been conceived in one! :)

This wasn't a drive-in, but a more pleasant and particularly Floridian sort of affair. Near us here in Maitland is a village called Winter Park, an affluent bedroom community of old money and european shopping. In the center of this village is a train station and a modest community park, with a small stage at one end. Our local art-house movie theatre and cultural institution the Enzian Theatre has, after years of me badgering them, taken up a suggestion: showing classic old movies in non-traditional settings, for free, so that people could see them again the way they were meant to be seen. I guess they needed a sponsor/partner to finally implement the idea, but I'm glad they finally got around to it.

They got some really good-quality projection and sound equipment, a DVD player, some classic movies and a screen and put it on the stage, then invited people to just show up and watch in the evenings just after twilight. While it's already unbearably hot in the days now, we still have the balmy breezes in the evening so it's quite pleasant. Last month it was Some Like It Hot, this month it was The Palm Beach Story. Great old movies both of them, both with a prominent Florida connection.

I am a big movie buff, and enjoy old movies and new pretty much equally. It's really hard to describe how ... er, nice this all is. Sitting out on a blanket with some wine and cheese (or fried chicken and soda), running into old friends, watching an old but really well-made film that at least half the audience has never seen before and hearing them laugh or clap or gasp in the right places. Watching a movie alone on your TV compared to watching a film projected properly in a theatre full of movie fans is like wolfing down cold pizza compared to eating a full-course, gourmet meal. It's just that much better. Even films that are not particularly epic or "cinematic" gain immeasurably from the large projection and the sound of the crowd. The audience are an important and often-overlooked part of the whole moviegoing experience, and I absolutely revel in it. I keep one eye on the crowd at all times.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that every now and again you need to turn off the Playstation (or fill in your technological addiction of choice) and harken back to the simple pleasures (but don't go Amish on us or anything, okay?). Luckily for us here, the Enzian allows us this particular one.

Next month's feature will be the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. I can't wait.

The Assault Continues

The genius that is Tom Tomorrow.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Those Microsoft fellahs may be kings of marketing to suckers, but their slick misrepresentations seem to be falling a little flat in court.

By the way, I notice yet another security patch for IE on PCs. This one claims to fix six serious security flaws. That's on top of the three from last month, the two from the month before, and the three from the month before that. There is an alternative.

Our [Stupid White] Men in Washington

From today's news regarding the Senate's debate of an internet privacy bill:

"A bill that would allow consumers to sue Internet companies that mishandle their personal information moved a step closer to passage today, despite staunch opposition from Republicans and business groups."

Well, that about sums it up, really. How many times have we seen similar openings to news stories?

"A [Patient's Bill of Rights] (1) that would allow consumers to sue [HMOs] (2) that mishandle [their cases] (3) ran into staunch opposition from Republicans and [industry lobbyists.] (4)"

For (1) you could easily substitute "product liability laws," "environmental regulations," "guaranteed minimum wage laws," and of course "the Equal Rights Amendment." For (2) you could save time and just substitute "big soulless corporations who don't give a toss about anything except your money." For (3) I think "the life, health and well-being of you and your loved ones" will cover it nicely. For (4) just put down "their masters."

So somebody please tell me: why are they like this? Did nobody show these people A Christmas Carol when they were young?

By the way, don't think I'm letting the Democrats off, either. They have a completely different (all right, not really that different), but no less disappointing, set of ethical and reactionary problems. I'm just tired of the Republicans defining themselves, over and over again, as the no! no! we're not listening! blahblahblah can't hear you! party in the eyes of normal Americans. And by "normal" I mean real people, who may vote Republican ... or not. Not the weirdo idealogues who always seem to do well in politics.

More on the subject below.

I almost forgot a trio of points I should have incorporated into my main screed below. First off, this is an extremely on-target and entertaining rant from a fellow blogger who berates the real villains in this whole deal -- the geeks that allow the RIAA to screw the rest of us.

Second, I want to make clear that although I mention (below) telling the record companies you will steal copy-protected music, my position on Napster, AudioGalaxy, KaZaa, et al has traditionally been to ask that you not steal music, and I continue to hold that view: I just want you to lie to the record companies. I wouldn't listen to most of that crap if you paid me, much less steal it. As a copyright holder myself, I respect intellectual property rights and support the idea of artists and copyright holders (including those greedy record companies) getting paid. The law needs updating badly, but until that happens ... please don't steal music.

Finally, for those of you who might think that we kids are all just getting our just desserts in payback for that whole Napster thing (thinking it was just a huge den of thievery rather than an illegal but noble "try before you buy" service), let me leave you with two interesting facts:

1. From summer 2000 to summer 2001 -- when Napster was in full swing -- CD sales went up 30%.

2. From summer 2001 to now -- a year in which Napster was hobbled to the point of irrelevancy -- sales are down 15%.

Coincidence? I think not.

Fight Anti-American US Corporations

My, I have been on a militant kick of late haven't I?

Oh well. The problem is that this crap is all coming to a head lately, and it keeps coming back to the same damn point every time -- evil corporations are not only suck, they are rapidly becoming un-American. Sure, every big business you can think of was wrapped all over the flag post-9/11, but more than a few have used that tragic day to advance a seriously anti-Constitutional agenda.

At the moment, the worst offenders (though by no means the only offenders) are the RIAA and the MPAA. Together and separately, they have launched a full-scale assault on one of the most basic tenets of copyright law (which is seriously underrated as a law that helps our economy function smoothly), Fair Use.

Now, I know some of you are thinking "there's no guarantee of Fair Use in the Constitution" and you are right. It ain't there. But maybe it's time it was, along with a serious strengthening of the right to privacy, now large eviscerated by these same corporations. I maintain that the erosion of the Fair Use protection, like the serious dismantling of our rights to privacy and protections against unreasonable search and seizure, are direct attacks on a key phrase of the Constitution, and the very bedrock of our society -- "the right of all people to be secure in their persons" and "the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Fair Use largely came into it's own in the mid 70s with the advent of cassette tape. Suddenly it was easy for people to make copies of the music they heard on the radio, or that they had bought, and trade it among friends. Sound familiar?

I know that for me and my friends, tape trading was rampant. It wasn't just a local thing, either ... we'd mail "cassette letters" to each other, full of home-grown humour and "what's playing on local radio" (with comments) and songs we'd bought that we particularly liked and wanted to share. It was really important to us, it kept us connected to each other, and for me in particular it was a salve on an isolated and lonely point in my young life. Those tape letters saved my life, man, to say nothing of opening my eyes to a very wide world of music beyond Top 40 tripe.

Despite the incredible popularity of cassettes (cheap, easy to carry and mail, ubiquitous), the music industry completely failed to collapse. Indeed, it thrived. Even though we tape-traded like fiends, each and every one of us had (and continues to have) a sizable collection of legally-purchased music, most of it stemming directly or indirectly from those tapes.

Of particular concern to the moneygrubbing record companies were illegal recordings known as "bootlegs". What they didn't tell people was that bootlegs actually helped them figure out who was really "connecting" with their audience, and who wasn't. The record companies also had no answer to the charge that they had no intention of ever releasing most of the music on bootleg records (ie mostly live performances) anyway. Further, bootlegs helped bands that were not radio-friendly find an audience. As the music mag Goldmine figured out years ago, bootlegs are primarily bought only by people who had already bought every legitimate release available.

When CDs appeared, people started making tapes of those, mainly to listen to in the car ... though many "compilations" started appearing in everyone's tape collection. The record companies again did not do much other than complain at length about the "lost revenue" (ha!) of "piracy." They were mostly stymied by the 1983 Home Recording Act, passed in late 1983 and bolstered by a January 1984 Supreme Court decision that said, to the emerging home video industry's surprise, that making a copy -- for personal use -- of things you have paid for is perfectly okay. This was incorporated into later revisions of the copyright law as "Fair Use." Tape compilations you passed out to your friends were still technically illegal, but were overlooked since it usually resulted in sales of full CDs/records/tapes to people who got "hooked" on the tunes provided on this "homebrew" compilations. A small levy on blank tapes was agreed on by all parties as way to compensate record companies for their largely-imaginary "losses due to home taping."

Then, along came DAT. The RIAA and the Electronic Industries Association swung into full gear, and with the help of Al Gore (yes, that Al Gore), passed legislation barring tape-copying on DAT machines, which the RIAA saw as a major threat. Unfortunately for them, the technology was shown to be a fraud that protected nothing, and so the Copy-Code system (as it was called) was dropped. In 1989, the US Office of Technology Assessment released a report that showed the RIAA and their ilk were over-reacting buffoons. Home taping, they showed, had no detrimental effect on sales, but rather a positive one.

Oops.

The existing rules of thumb were then codified into law in 1992 as the Audio Home Recording Act, signed by George Bush. It screwed DAT fans to the point where it pretty much killed the future of the format, but at least home tapers knew their rights were secure.

Oops again.

In late 1998, a completely industry-written wet dream of anti-consumer propaganda, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, is passed by Congress. Like the RICO act, which subsequently got much abused, the DMCA has since been discovered to be a catbox full of stinky little anti-consumer pellets, and will -- I have confidence -- ultimately be dismantled. It is another in Congress' long history of over-reactive bills, compensating for minor infractions by completely selling out the public to the corporations.

It took a while, but the effect of the DMCA are now being fully felt.

First it was DVDs. For the first time, the industry asked for and got an absolutely-no-copying encryption method approved. The DMCA said that even if you paid for this DVD, even if you just wanted to copy a still shot for your computer wallpaper or to use as an illustration for an article, or just wanted to "rip" the audio so you could listen to it in the car -- all previously a-ok under the Fair Use provision -- you no longer could. Not only that, but even attempting to defeat the "region encoding" or the encryption of the DVD -- or even possessing the software to do so -- was illegal.

There are two issues there -- region encoding and encryption -- and that's an important distinction to make. There's lots to say about that, but this article is long enough already, so I'll just entreat you to Slashdot's "Your Rights Online" pages for a depressing, nay terrifying look at where we're headed.

Emboldened by the (mostly) successful effort to prevent people from copying DVDs in any way whatsoever (legal or otherwise), it was just a matter of time before the RIAA tried the same stunt. So now we have what they call "copy protected CDs" (which are not, in fact, Compact Discs at all!) that not only claim to be "un-rippable", but are actually unplayable on a wide variety of equipment. That's right, you can't even play these discs on a computer ... or a DVD player ... or most car stereo players ... or some home CD players ... or many portable CD players.

Wow, I want to spend gouging amounts of money on CDs that don't actually work on many types of equipment! But wait, there's more!! It turns out that on some computers, these copy-protected pieces of crap actually damage the machine, rendering it useless! (most reports of this have been from owners of slot-loading iMacs, but there have been reports of irreversible damage on PCs as well.)

Luckily, so far the only audio discs that have this incredibly stupid and dangerous copy-protection are pure shit, and therefore easily avoided. I'm almost tempted to say that anyone moronic enough to actually pay retail for Celine Dion's new album or Jennifer Lopez's new remix collection deserves what they get, but it's really not a joking matter.

Naturally, computer manufacturers are hopping mad about this, and are forced to engage in very bad public relations by not covering this rape of their systems in their warranties. Hopefully the accidental destruction of thousands of computer systems by ignorant consumers will force Apple and others to take the RIAA to court and stop this madness.

In the meantime, you the poor consumer (or "assumed criminal" as the RIAA would have it) will just have to be extremely cautious in what you stick into your computer, or better yet actively boycott titles and companies that engage in this highly-deceptive and dangerous practice. Sue the bastards if they ruin your machine, write nasty letters to record stores that carry copy-protected audio disks (and be sure to point out that they are neither technically nor legally "CDs"), let the artists and record companies know via their "fan sites" that you will not stand for this and will simply steal the copy-protected music via services such as AudioGalaxy rather than risk your expensive personal computers (that oughta annoy em!) and most importantly write your congressperson and tell them to act NOW.

There are other things you can do as well -- support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the few large organisations going to bat for consumers, and thank Philips, the one electronics maker (and inventor of the CD format, by the way) who is willing to stand up to the MegaCorp Mafia.

Oooh, I love it when I invent a turn of phrase! :)

Dude, you're getting Hell!

Dell have decided that Americans are even stupider than they previously believed, and have started to offer Steven "Dell Dude" accessories, according to this story.

This is great news. Now, finally, we'll all know exactly which kids to kick the crap out of.

Great Nerd Reading #2

Introducing Xserve.
Oh wait, they've added a video for you to watch. Whee!

Save Internet Radio!

Friends, we are in the midst of a lifetime-full of bad laws floating about. As long as I've been alive, I can always recall a handful of examples of laws that had unintended or harmful consequences, and needed to be protested vigourously. But in the year 2002, we have our hands full of these idiotic laws, and by every indication it's just going to get worse.

I will have more to say on this later, but in the meantime there is a pressing issue that needs to be addressed. Save Internet Radio.

By the time you read this, barely six days will remain until the CARP decision goes into effect, and basically shuts down most small and medium-sized internet broadcasters and the services that help them such as SomaFM or Live365.com.

Call me old-fashioned, but for me music is really important, and Internet-based radio stations have been nothing short of a godsend, opening a world (literally!) of diverse new offerings I couldn't find anywhere else, to say nothing of helping me discover new artists or genres I can become interested in. And they do this mostly ad-free!

The new and onerous restrictions on licensing (in a nutshell, way more $$ than even huge commercial radio stations pay!) have already forced almost all major professional radio stations to shut down their internet broadcast, and if this thing goes through there will be hardly anyone on the Net with the funds to broadcast. A single person broadcasting a stream to himself would owe almost $200 a year! A small "station" broadcasting to let's say 1000 users hour (on average) would face fees of almost $200,000 a year. You do the math, because they certainly won't. Not only will commercial broadcasters like Live365.com be driven out of business (and just to make a point, they already pay license fees for all the music broadcast to ASCAP and BMI -- this new fee goes directly to our "friends" at the RIAA!), there would be NO college station or community radio station (NPR or otherwise) that could afford this.

All those wonderful streams that you either currently enjoy or were trying to get broadband so you could enjoy them ... gone. Sure, the cubicle prisoners will rise up in disbelief and anger, but by then it will be too late.

Here's what you can do right now.

First, visit SomaFM so you get a really good idea of what this is going to do to both them and to you. After that, head directly here to have a fax in your name dashed off to your congresspeople.

DO IT NOW. It's important. Thank you.

There is a Better Way to Browse -- At Last!

As I noted below, something like 88% to 90% of you are using some version of Internet Explorer to websurf, according to this page's webstats. Now, while IE does a very good job of rendering pages -- the PC version is particularly snappy, and the Mac version offers features and standards-compatibility far superior to the Windows version -- there is a big problem with IE that many of you are probably not aware of.

Actually, it's two problems. The first is that, of course, this very fine browser is made available by Microsoft. Many of us in nerd-land have "issues" with MS's business practices and corporate morality (wow, there's a phrase you never hear anymore -- it's damn near a mutually-exclusive term, like "military intelligence"). See below or the archive for more of my thoughts on that.

The second problem is that MS has leveraged IE's near-total dominance of the web browser market to introduce it's own "standards" and "extend" the agreed-on code interfaces that make up the Internet in ways that have proven to be generally bad. This ranges from features that only work on IE browsers -- leaving people with not-up-to-date machines (or non-MS platforms) merely inconvenienced -- to serious breaches of security and privacy that have basically engineered the whole identity-theft industry and cost the US economy billions -- actually, more than $1.5 trillion -- in lost revenue.

IE is part of a whole string of MS privacy/security failures that have had serious ramifications that for reasons I cannot fathom never result in the company getting sued. There is more than enough evidence to show that MS's deliberate negligence led to the widespread virus/hacking problems, and that MS could have foreseen -- and in some cases had significant advance warning of -- the dire consequences. This stuff isn't abstract -- it causes real problems that can result in life-threatening situations.

So, do we blame IE for this? Is that fair? And if we do, what alternative do we have? MS usually does a good job of killing competitors stone dead, leaving users with little choice -- and in the case of Windows XP, actually forcing them to have no choice -- so what else is there?

Luckily, Netscape isn't quite dead, doesn't want to go on the cart, and thinks it will go for a walk. (Monty Python reference, for the unenlightened.)

It's kind of sad that our main refuge from the evil perpetrated by a huge souless omni-glomerate like MS is to run to yet another huge souless omni-glomerate, but through a series of deals too complicated to get into, Netscape -- the company that basically made the World Wide Web what it is today (warts and all) -- is now owned by AOL TimeWarner. In a dying move before this happened, the company released the source code for it's browser to the nerd community in a desperate bid for a comeback. It took too long to save Netscape (the browser, not the firm) from oblivion, but after four years, the Mozilla browser rises from Netscape Navigator's ashes to breathe once more and -- first order of business -- wreck the downtown Tokyo of MS's internet-dominance dreams.

I've been using the Mozilla browser throughout its beta period, a period that is almost over now. A second release candidate (ie a not-quite-final version) of the free program has just been put out there, and finally I can say without reservation that people should make the switch. It's painless, the browser works great, and apart from one or two minor nitpicky issues (no way to make it use your preferred email program rather than it's own very nice one -- yet), it's near-flawless. The ability to completely stamp out pop-up ads alone should be enough to convince you to at least check it out.

Mozilla is not to be confused with the disasterous Netscape 6.0, which when released was the last nail in Netscape's browser coffin. Even the current version of Netscape Navigator (6.2, a vast improvement) is nowhere near as far along as the current Mozilla.

There are other alternatives -- the very nice but ad-laden Opera, the incredible OS X-only Omniweb and Chimera (the latter actually a cousin of Mozilla), the Mac-only iCab and so on ... but nothing with the features, standards-compatibility and comprehensiveness of Mozilla (or Moz as it's usually known).

Moz runs on every platform under the sun, is completely free of charge and runs great. It's a large program, true, but it handles browsing, mail and newsgroups with fabulous aplomb, fast as lightning and with a feature called "tabbed browsing" -- basically a way to open many windows/sites at once -- that you will be immediately and permanently hooked on the moment you see it in action. It has all the features you like in Internet Explorer (and more) with none of the evil. In short, it's a nearly-guiltless pleasure, and proof that open-source can work and is good for the community as a whole (which is, of course, blasphemy as far as MS is concerned).

As Webb Wilder would say, "pick up on it." Oh, and a tip: download and use the GrayModern "skin." The others are, well, kinda ugly.

Diversity is Good

My lovely wife and I were watching a bit of VH-1's "One Hit Wonders" special, which is of course a guaranteed source of groans, sighs and cries of injustice. Being a person who spent a lot of time outside America, I naturally protest the inclusion of a lot of these artists as "one hit wonders" because many of them did have other hits, sometimes lots of other hits. A number of really seriously great artists who contributed a lot to music, such as Ian Dury or Madness, get tarred with the shameful scarlet letter of "one-hit wonder" because only one of their songs ever managed to crack the American charts.

(at first I thought the definition was merely cracking the Top 40, but artists I know had follow-up hits were included, so apparently VH-1's definition of OHW is pretty strict.)

At least they usually mentioned when an artist was, in fact, a very long-standing and hot-selling commodity in countries outside the US (such as Gary Glitter).

What I did like about the countdown was that they made no attempt to pass judgment on the songs or the artists (for the most part), and that the eras covered (VH-1's usual territory of the 70s, 80s, and 90s) were given roughly equal footing. Then of course there was Shatner as the host. I love Shatner. I seriously love Shatner. I particularly love the way his hair changes with each new appearance.

But I digress.

There are a ton of really, really fine songs on the OHW list, including my all-time favourite in at #100 even, "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas. Serious genuises who are defamed on the list include Bow Wow Wow, the Tom Tom Club, the Proclaimers, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Big Country, The Vapors, Buster Poindexter, M, Devo, Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, A-ha, Toni Basil and Soft Cell.

Guilty Pleasures on the list (for me, anyway) include the aforementioned "Kung-Fu Fighting," "Harper Valley PTA" (#95), "I Know What Boys Like" (#82), "867-5309" (#59), "Smokin' in the Boys Room" (#57) ... somebody really needs to do a documentary on that particular sub-genre of rebel rock! ..., "It's Raining Men" (#55) (what can I say, I like gay disco), "Rock n Roll pt. 2" (#47), "Rock Me Amadeus" (#44), "Me & Mrs. Jones" (#38) ... it was the anthem of a specific time ..., "Too Shy" (#25), "Tubthumping" (#23), "Play That Funky Music" (#22), "We're Not Gonna Take It" (#17), "Groove is in the Heart" (#14), "99 Luftballoons" (#10), and "Come On Eileen" (#3). Amazingly, they left off "Disco Duck!"

(By the way -- if you're reading this, I'll bet you know the melody to every song I've mentioned. Admit it!)

The greats and the groans live side-by-side on this list. "Tainted Love" lost out to "The Macarena," and the brilliant "Take On Me" sits between "Rico Suave" and "Ice Ice Baby" (!!) here. And only here, thank goodness. :)

This got me thinking ... the eras that produced the most one-hit wonders were specific periods within their respective decades. Looking over the list, you see that 73-76 was a very fertile period, along with 79-84. Of course the disco period had a huge string of one-hit wonders, but VH-1 rightfully counted only the most popular of these (but did mention a whole bunch of the better disco songs, such as "Knock On Wood" and "Ring My Bell" and "Rock the Boat"). These were two particular eras where musical tastes were all over the map, and record companies had little control over what became popular. There was a lot of crap in the charts then, but at least there was a lot of diversity too. Another such period was the early 90s, when college radio came into its own. Sure enough, most of the 90's OHW entries are from the first half of that decade.

I guess what I'm saying is that maybe one-hit wonders are a good thing. They shake things up, come from nowhere, keep the record companies on their toes, surprise and delight the audience. With only the dozen or so radio-favoured acts out there now and the tight control media congloms put on our entertainment, we don't get much of that anymore. I think it's hurting music's reputation as something to be really passionate about.

Oh, the Irony

Just noticed -- as sort of a prelude to the story below -- that 90.5% of my visitors are running some version of Internet Explorer. So any email that challenges me to prove that MS is a monopoly is going to get ignored. :)

Holy Freakin' Crap #2

This story and this story add up to big trouble for Microsoft. Although the public at large think the continuing court case is (depending on who you ask) either over already or irrelevant, the fact of the matter is that MS are not doing very well, and if they lose this one there will be major changes for PC users and everyone else affected by MS, which means virtually anyone less isolated and technophobic than the Unibomber.

The first story (from Reuters by way of Yahoo.com) tells how Judge Kathleen Kollar-Kotelly is going to allow James Bach, a former MS contractor, to demonstrate what MS claims is impossible -- a modular version of Windows XP with features removed. What's more, he did it using MS's own technology -- a version of XP called XP Embedded that allows niche developers to customize Windows so it works better in limited or custom environments (such as ATM machines, for example) where the bloat of all those "bonus" features can't be utilised.

Bach claims his version of XP is stable and robust (which will come as a shock to users of the rather buggy XP Home Edition) and will demonstrate it in court May 15. Mark your calendars to watch the media fireworks and PR spin after that happens. As if that wasn't bad enough, the demo will come after MS has rested it's case. This move clearly caught MS by surprise, and having the judge allow it is a huge tactical victory for the states, and gives some indication that Kotelly may favour the states' plan.

The second story covers this too, but then goes on to talk about today's ludicrous testimony from top MS barking dog Jim Allchin. Allchin (who really should know better) swore in court today that if MS shared it's hidden APIs and other information about how Windows actually works with (gasp) Windows developers, that security would be compromised. He painted a picture of virus writers, pirates and hackers running amok.

Yeah, that's why there's so many viruses that only attack open-source software. That's why MS wouldn't dare do something as crazy as use a poorly-modified version of Kerberos, an open-source security standard, to beef up their horribly insecure OS. That's why Apple and others, who do not hide APIs from developers and base their OS on open-source code, have the same hideous reputation for complexity and vulnerability that MS does. Geek community to Allchin: Riiiiight. At least he admitted that MS "needs to work on their reputation for security in the marketplace," which must be the understatement of the year.

All this on top of an earlier story where MS admitted in court that IE6 does in fact overrule customer preferences and often plays media files using Windows Media Player even if the user has specified something else.

The sad part of this is that if Enron executives got out there and admitted similar sorts of anti-competitive tactics, they'd be burned alive at the stake by angry consumers and competitors, instead of just being drawn and quartered by angry stockholders (who will probably never get the chance to do either). But since it's MS, and we're all completely dependent on them, we sort of shrug and kinda wish they'd reform themselves, but can't bring ourselves to care enough to really punish them. We -- as a society -- are rapidly becoming pathetic in our inability to care about much of anything. Cynicism is fun when it's just you and your friends (I try to be cynical, but I just can't keep up), but as a model for society behaviour it's pretty ugly.

Holy Freakin' Crap #1

Check out the news from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. Once again, Apple does the R&D work for the entire industry, combining new technologies and long-standing standards with stylish aplomb, all while putting out killer cool machines, transitioning to a completely new OS, yet still being reasonably competitive on price. If Dell or Gateway or HP/Compaq et al had to do this kind of groundbreaking innovation instead of just slap pre-fab boxes together, their prices would double overnight.

I know a lot of you out there use Windows, and I'm not trying to put you down or belittle your choice (and perhaps you didn't have any) of platform. I'm not one of those people who believes that the answer to every computer problem is "Buy a Macintosh." I'm just saying that Apple really should get more respect from the non-Mac community for the contributions it makes to the direction of the industry as a whole. In short, Apple's innovations and reinventions of existing technology benefit users of all platforms. Thassallamsayin'.

Great (non) Nerd Reading #1

It is important -- even vital to the healthy evolution of our society -- that the almost-completely separate worlds of nerd and non-nerd come together more often. The disconnect between the nerd and non-nerd worlds causes no end of problems, and worse, now at least 5% of the population are incomprehensible, insufferable smartasses.

It's particularly important to me because I am among the few self-described "geeks" that is able to successfully straddle both worlds, and (this is the rare part) not have secret contempt for either. I am extremely social, and yet complain that the questions on Beat the Geeks are way too easy.

Thus, periodically in this space I will entreat nerds and non-nerds alike to go and have a look at text, pictures or URLs I think manage to bridge that gap effectively. Today's debut comes from the fine folks at O'Reilly Publishers, who print very nerdy (and highly-regarded) books with (for no apparent reason) line art of animals on the cover. Oh well, it beats being called a dummy before you've even paid for the thing, or having the buyer of the book equated with a chimpanzee.

(Yes, non-computer-book buyers, this is really how the nerd book industry presents its non-programmer type tomes to the masses.)

In attempting to write up an introduction to a book very few of my readers would be particularly interested in, Cocoa Applications (I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Apps, myself!), authors Simson Garfinkel* and Michael Mahoney have accidentally -- accidentally, mind you -- written the true history of personal computing. Because the book this article is intended to set the stage for is aimed at programmers, not John Q. Public, the tone and pace are intelligent but easy to understand, exactly the way most tech books aren't. Obviously, as the book is about Mac OS X and programming, the history starts off with a lot of Mac talk, but don't worry Windows users ... the facts are still the facts. Stick with it. I think anyone who, like David Byrne, often wonders "well, how did we get here?" when it comes to technology would do very well to start here.

*remind me to bitch-slap his parents for naming him that.

Requiem for a Record Store

Gather round, kids, and let Uncle Chas tell you about ... (gets misty eyed) the Good Old Days of the early 80s. Ah yes, those were the days ... my friends and I would eagerly haunt any and all record stores in the area. Due to our ultra-refined tastes, however, we were mainly interested in any store that carried "offbeat" or "import" albums (we'll get to what "albums" are in a minute, kids).

We would very often buy these things sound unheard, based on the cover or the label (if it was Stiff or Sire or IRS or Factory or Beggar's Banquet, you knew you probably had a good 'un), pay upwards of $12 for it (don't laugh -- this was a long time ago and that was like $25 at least in today's dollars) and take it home to see if we got a dream (ahhhh) or a dud (awwww). I personally discovered loads of great bands this way -- Lene Lovich, the Romantics (hey, the first album kicked ass and remains a classic, ok?), Heaven 17, Roxy Music and many more.

There were a bevy of these little record stores, mini-havens from the crap that littered the mainstream music bins of the malls -- the king was of course Record City in Fern Park, followed closely by Waxtree, Retro Records, Rock n Roll Heaven, and even the closest one to our neighbourhood at the time, East-West records on S. Orange Avenue. Heck, we'd even deign to check out Peaches from time to time thanks to their dedication of maintaining a separate "Imports" bin (though their prices were always too high).

What brings back this flood of wasted-youth memories is that East-West Records, after 34 years in the biz, is officially gone. The last Going-Out-of-Business cd is gone, the racks are gone, most of the signage is gone. Naturally, E-W moved over to CDs a long time ago, but the last time I checked the Orange Avenue store, they still had oodles of interesting discs, indie labels and bargains ... if you looked hard. The mainstay of the store was, of course, the crap and mediocrity that have long since flooded the industry, along with a healthy dose of nobody-wants-these sale discs (East-West was one of the few indie record stores that still bought CDs).

With CD prices now completely out of line with reality, I rarely purchase new CDs anymore, and limit my purchases of reissues to those I can find on sale. For me -- and I think I speak for a lot of my friends on this one -- $10 or seems to be about the right "price" for a new CD. I mean, come on. These things, all expenses included, cost about $2-3 to make. Charging nearly $20 as they do now is nothing but highway robbery. Who out there remembers that when the first CDs came out and were outrageously priced at $15, the record companies promised the price would come down as soon as their investment in CD-creating factories was recouped. Insert your own bitter "HA!" at being taken for such a fool.

Consequently, I focused my CD buying mainly to one store -- the indie store closest to me now, Park Ave. CDs. Those of you reading outside central Florida, this is a great shop, the best I've found in the state for used and bargain CDs, collector's edition CDs and a surprising array of music styles, from alterna-shit to classical. They even have new vinyl (indie record companies, you gotta love em)!

For vinyl, you actually have more choice in trying to avoid the evil corporate rock shops that you do in CDs. Aint that a kick in the pants!

Rock N Roll Heaven are good friends, good people and one of the all-time best record stores ever. The place is dripping with vinyl and pop-culture memorabilia. Retro Records keeps a very low profile, but you find em at record-collector shows -- the owner's a true believer. And of course, somewhere between the Golden Era and the mid-90s, there was Don Gilliland's legendary Murmur (later Alobar) record store. Don was a clerk at Record City and struck out on his own -- and hit gold. We loved that place. I once saw Love Tractor there on a freezing November night.

Anyway, this is meant to be a tribute to East-West Records and Tapes, but of course you can't really separate all these other elements -- at least in the minds of people my age. In a nutshell it was thanks to independent record stores like EW and the others -- so many of whom have been forced out by the corporate whores, sorry stores -- that spawned one of the last generations of kids for whom music was the #1 thing in their lives. I thank them for their help in shaping me into the person I am today -- and the 1500+ CDs directly behind me bear witness to their former power. Fare thee well.

Sick. Mean. Cruel. Awful. I laughed, anyway ... #1

Microsoft = Liars (there, I said it!)

Well, here's something new ... MS caught lying again on the stand. This article clearly catches MS trying to mislead the court that RealPlayer and RealOne "rely on [Windows Media Player] to function and would not work if it was removed."

"Oh really?" replies the VP of Real, who added that his company would be "happy to show Microsoft how to remove [WiMP] if they need us to."

They and all the other articles covering the hearings show clearly that even MS's "expert witnesses" are repeatedly forced to back down from MS's stock claim that a non-monopolistic Windows is "impossible" when the states so brilliantly point out -- again and again -- that MS has already created it.

Is Microsoft so stupid that they did not think the states would ask Real if this was true or not? What the hell is wrong with them? And more importantly, what the hell is wrong with the consumers of this country who continue to support a company that clearly thinks it's above the law? Are people just mindless sheep beaten into submission, or have they been successfully hypnotised to believe that there is no real alternative, or are they just completely bereft of any ethics at all anymore and don't care what MS does to both them and others?

There are over 70 million people in this world running Macs. There are several million (could be as low as 2 mil, or as high as 10 mil, depending on who you ask) running Linux, UNIX, OS/2 or some other non-MS variant. Strangley, these people do not, by and large, feel like they are missing anything. Except viruses, massive security problems, corporate contempt, corporate crime, etc etc etc.

Look, if you think you need Windows because you legitimately can't find an alternative that does what you need to do, or even if you just don't want to move because your horde of pirated software won't work on another platform, that's fine by me. Really.

But for the love of all that's decent, you owe it to yourself -- especially if you're in a position to set policy on this sort of thing -- to look into alternative OS's and do an honest appraisal of whether they might offer any advantages. And to keep on investigating. It's the only way to keep MS's evil in check.

If I were using a PC, I would -- on principle -- buckle down and learn Linux just so I could be free of being treated as unbelievably shabbily as MS treats it's non-Mac customers. As a Mac user, I can't believe how much better MS handles us than they do their own customer base, and I'm deeply grateful that they do so. If the MS Macintosh Business Unit was a separate entity, I'd gladly buy most everything they put out. But they aren't, so I can't in good conscience.

It's waaaay past time MS was put down like a rabid Rottweiler. If Judge Kathleen Kotellar-Kelly has any sort of BS detector, MS is in deep trouble. Just like they were last time, when their obvious lying and rigged demonstrations made Judge Jackson order them to be split into two companies. I thought at the time it was a bad punishment that wouldn't work, and I still think that way, but it's become clear that MS must be hit and hit hard, which is the exact opposite of the so-called "settlement" they reached with 18 states earlier. I'm so glad I don't live in one of those states. My state apparently gives a damn about companies that openly screw both consumers and other businesses. Who knew?

And now for something ...

BBC America has been airing a recent special called "The Monty Python Story," and all I can say is it's about damn time. My wife and many of her contemporaries, like most other people under 30, do not see the full impact of Monty Python, because they have always lived in a post-Python world. It's like going back in time to the Dawn of Man and stepping on a butterfly -- when you came back, only you would know that the world had been completely changed by your innocent act. Everyone else would only assume that the world has always been that way.

When Python hit the scene in 1969, I was in England, but I was never up that late so I didn't see it till it came to America via PBS in the mid-70s. Simply put, it bent my brain, like your first view of Un chien Andalou or Metropolis or any of Mike Jittlov's short films or a Dali painting -- or MST3K, come to that. Here was not just comedy, not just brilliant comedy ... it was a re-imagining of what comedy was.

Now, of course, I know that the Python kids were helped along by people like Spike Milligan, but the original TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus still managed to take it's own path and remains one of the very few examples of a television show that had nearly-total creative freedom. For years I was in love with it on so many different levels that I actually found it hard to articulate to people (folks who know me will tell you that expressing an opinion is rarely a problem with me). Having lived in England, I got a lot of the BBC-oriented jokes, the parodies of programmes that were running at the time, the references to historical and current figures in British culture -- a lot of stuff my American friends didn't know or care about. To them, it was just funny, and they didn't have to be aware of the crimes of the Spanish Inquisition to find it hysterical. To this day I can quote large chunks of Python sketches, and at one time my friend Bill Krubsack and I could, on demand, recite the entire Holy Grail movie (including the Moose subtitles!).

There have been several documentaries on Python, but all were more-or-less hit parades of clips from the TV show. Recently, though, we Python fans have been getting a bit more to chew on. A few years back, the group (yes, everybody, even the deceased Graham Chapman) reunited in Aspen, Colorado of all places to submit to an interview by the painfully unfunny Robert Klein (guest appearance by Eddie Izzard, who is in fact fuckin' funny). Nice.

Now comes The Monty Python Story, which finally gets around to interviewing the Pythons in some depth about the origins of the show, their lives together and apart, and what the future holds (not much, if you're hoping for another movie or a reunion). While the selfish part of me is disappointed that they don't keep dusting off the Parrot Sketch and putting it on the road, the better part of me agrees with Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, who said there's nothing more pathetic than a bunch of middle-aged men struggling to recreate the halcyon days of their lost youth. Now will somebody tell this to The Rolling Stones?

Smuggle back some real fish 'n' chips for me

Well, my brother-in-law Mark is off to England for a few months. Good time to take a break from America, that's for sure. He'll be working for the Tories at Parliament, which I'm sure will be an eye-opening experience in a number of ways. I wonder if he'll gain some wisdom by comparing and contrasting the Conservatives to the Republicans back here?

Anyway, we wish Mark well and hope he'll send back a few digital pictures and updates (hint, hint).

Speaking of Republicans ... no, let's not go there just yet. This is a new blog and I want to futz around with it for a while before I sully it with political commentary (read: shoot my mouth off too much). If you'd like to see a visual aid that will quickly tell you where I'm at politically, just read Tom Tomorrow's site. I'm usually in accordance with him.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank the guy who inspired me to start this blog in the first place -- Rich Grula, owner/operator of The Suburban Limbo. I knew about blogs before Rich told me about his,but his is so gosh-darn good that I was inspired to find an outlet for my late-night ramblings. I'll put up a permanent link to it in due course.