Archives for June 2006

Bare Bones “Backups” For Your Digital Music

June 27, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Yesterday, Kirk wrote a great post delineating four ways of protecting your digital music collection. His overarching rules of maintaining a mindset of total paranoia and redundancy redundancy redundacy are absolute gospel truth.

If you don’t know where or how to start, or don’t have the time, money or tech-savvyness to do things like store your music offsite in a safe-deposit box, or build a RAID, here are a couple of strategies for incorporating back-ups into your natural music-geek lifestyle. None of these are are foolproof, nor should they replace the methods that Kirk proposed. But they might be natural offshoots of things that you are already doing with your music.

You Can’t Take It With You

June 26, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

Right now, the various motion picture studios are debating the various issues surrounding mobile and digital media. They are trying to slot new distribution streams into existing boxes. At first glance, this is a fairly simple process. It’s not. Trust me. The New Media Wars are just starting to heat up in Hollywood and they’re going to be very expensive for the studios, but I think there’s another war a’ brewin’: consumers versus content providers.

What? You’re saying this is an old war? Au contraire, mon frere. The consumer wars have barely begun.

The Daily Loper – June 26, 2006

June 26, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

Slate’s New Look – Introducing our redesign
Ack! What genius decided to make the list of stories user unfriendly by making the Dept, Headline, Sub-Head, Author and Date Posted all variations on the same color!?!
Scientists Triple Your Ability to Rock Out
This gets our vote for headline of the year. By the way, the amp goes to 33.
FOX Gets Desperate
So desperate they plan to have Laura Ingraham anchor a conservative Daily Show rip-off. If you’ve ever listened to Laura Ingraham you’ll know why this is so funny – and not in a good way.

Four Ways To Protect Your Digital Music Collection

June 26, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Since the beginning of time music collections have been subject to all manner of catastrophes. In earlier centuries the risk was to the music itself. The singer might die, or worse, someone might sit on the lute. In more recent times we’ve been faced with the prospect of warped records, snapped cassette tape, and scratched CDs. While the risks have changed as media has evolved, one thing remains constant — true music geeks live in fear of a nightmarish event that could wipe out their entire music collection in one broad stroke.

You might think that digital music would eliminate most of the physical risk to a music collection, but that’s not the case. In fact, music collections are arguably at more risk now than ever before. While the traditional risks of theft, fire, flood, and sunlight still exist, they’ve been augmented by new risks including power surges, faulty backup media, and unstable operating systems. Not only are these new risks more likely to actually occur, when they do they’re likely to wipe out more music.

We’ve heard a lot about how media companies are trying to protect their digital assets, but we rarely hear anything about what consumers should do to protect theirs. That’s not surprising considering that major computer failures and broken iPods could ultimately lead to increased music sales.

The Daily Loper – June 25, 2006

June 25, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

A Dream Come True For 80’s Video Fans
A nightmare come alive for others…We know Jim has been watching the Pitchfork list. Here’s another time waster.
The Daily Show makes kids cynical about politics? OMG!
The best line we’ve heard recently is that the Daily Show isn’t funny unless you know what they’re talking about — it’s not the show that’s making kids cynical about politics…it’s politics making kids cynical about politics.
The Future of Publishing
One of our favorite sites talks about one of our favorite subjects. Tell us that’s not the coolest thing ever (also, new design or do we need to get out of the RSS feeder more?).

The Weekly ‘Loper – June 25, 2006

June 25, 2006 by Jim Connelly

While you were trying to score, you know, just one lousy goal, here’s what we were looking at:

More RIAA Madness: Part 1, In League With The Terrorists? – Some people might wonder why the RIAA hates normal, ordinary Amercans so much.
Naked DSL and Beyond – My VOIP Adventure: Part I – Kirk wonders: why pay four times more for his phone service when he can go with VOIP? It used to be because DSL was bundled with the land line, but not anymore. So he’s switching to Vonage.
Nickling and Diming New Media – None of those payments are exactly “micro.” And they add up pretty quickly.
More RIAA Madness: Part 2, The All-Seeing Ear The All-Seeing Ear hears all. And it’s coming for you . . .
It’s Not A Pirate’s Life For Them – Oh Disney, why do you insist on continually fracking with our collective childhoods?
That’s What I Like: Google – We sometimes forget just how life-altering Google really is. Kassia reminds us.
Thank You For Choosing AT&T – My VOIP Adventure: Part II – In which AT&T thanks Kirk for disconnecting his service. And Kirk uses Vonage to order Indian food.

The Daily Loper – June 24, 2006

June 24, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

Apple Hypocrisy: “MacBook NOT a Laptop”
Those new Apple’s are "notebooks" not "laptops". If you insist on using one on your lap you’ll need to sign a release first.
Religious video game leaves spyware behind
Now why would God need spyware?
PBS toughens policy on cursing in its shows
Uh, huh. Because people go to PBS for the swearing.
TV Producer Aaron Spelling Dies at 83
It is officially the end of an era.

Thank You For Choosing AT&T – My VOIP Adventure: Part II

June 24, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Earlier this week I decided to dump one of my AT&T land lines and transfer my main phone number over to Vonage. While I’m excited by the idea of taking a leap forward into the world of VoIP, and happy to be taking some of my business away from AT&T, the move is not without risks.

The Daily Loper – June 23, 2006

June 23, 2006 by Lopy

Today’s links of interest:

Comedy Central Revives ‘Futurama’
It’s always good to see that poor, struggling Matt Groening catch a break. So I just have one request for "Futurama 2.0": can it be funny this time?
Robots Doing Security Patrols at World Cup Matches
Damn. If we only coulda gotten one of the models that look like humans to play Striker for the U.S. Team . . .
Shyamalan Book Tells of Breakup With Disney
Your typical messy divorce — the tears, the recriminations…the gossip.

Are Downloads Licensed Music or Traditional Record Sales?

June 23, 2006 by Jim Connelly

According to at least one major label, they are both!! It just depends on whether you’re an artist or a consumer . . .

I know that it’s old news that Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers are suing Sony over download royalties: a while back, Kassia did an excellent analysis on it.

The other day, however, I came across a posting on P2Pnet.net (love that name!) that discussed this very topic. The posting had an excerpt from an article in the Internationl Herald Tribune that reminded me just how two-faced the record companies really are when it comes to this issue, and why you have to take it with a grain of salt when they say that they’re (all together now) “just trying to protect the artists” with their draconian download restrictions.