Archives for April 2007

The Daily Loper – April 4, 2007

April 4, 2007 by Lopy

The Hour is Getting Late Edition

Todays links of interest:

R.I.P. CDs?
As downloads exceed CD sales, the industry prepares for the funeral. Another in a long series of "death of CD" reports.
FBI checks gambling in Second Life virtual world
It turns out that when you give people a world where you can build anything most choose to build casinos. The rest gamble. The FBI is just catching on to this. Wait till they find out about the pyramid schemes.
Keith Richards snorted dad’s ashes with cocaine
This is such a perfect headline that it kinda feels like an April Fools joke.

Hell Feezes Over: A Major Record Label Does The Right Thing

April 4, 2007 by Kirk Biglione

By now you’ve all heard that EMI has finally agreed to allow Apple to sell DRM-free downloads through the iTunes service. While the agreement has been widely publicized, the details of the negotiations behind the scenes are generally not known. To hear EMI CEO Eric Nicoli tell it, you would almost think that Apple has been preventing EMI from selling DRM-free music.

As Nicoli told the LA Times yesterday:

We’ve always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and conveniently. And we take the views that we have to trust the consumer.

The Daily Loper – April 3, 2007

April 3, 2007 by Lopy

She’s No Fun, She Fell Right Over Edition

Todays links of interest:

Something Old, Nothing New: WKRP DVD Not OK
First, we thought that it was never going to happen. Then we got excited that it was going to happen. Now, we find out that the list of music that was cut is so extensive — from a show about a radio station where the music played was often a plot (or at least a joke) point — that we’re probably not going to purchase it. Booger!!
After search, Google finds snake in NY office
It turns out that search engines aren’t much good at finding live snakes.
Adam’ [Read more…] about The Daily Loper – April 3, 2007

Why “Vote For The Worst” Just Might Work

April 3, 2007 by Jim Connelly

In the past couple of weeks, an interesting phenomenon has been happening in American Idol. A singer named Sanjaya Malakar has been surviving the popular cut despite the fact that he seems to have no vocal talent whatsoever.

A lot of people have been attributing this to a groundswell made up of people who either really don’t like American Idol, or just want to mess with it. Cool! This has been crystallized by a website called Vote For The Worst, which (along with a host of morning show DJs) has thrown its backing behind Sanjaya week after week after week.

I fully support this. Partially because its fun to frack with something as ubiquitious as American Idol; partly because its funny, but mostly because if he somehow wins, it would go a long ways towards proving a theory that I’ve had since the early 1990s. I call it the Theory of Popularity, and it goes a little something like this:

In a culture defined by niches, the more popular something is purported to be, the less popular it actually is.

The Daily Loper – April 2, 2007

April 2, 2007 by Lopy

Fire Bad Tree Pretty Edition

Todays links of interest:

Cheney to Join Wolfram & Hart
We weren’t fooled by this "April Fools" joke. It’s just a misdirection in order to disguise the fact that he is obviously already a Senior Partner there.
The Cure team up with Ashlee Simpson
Noted only for the silly headline. Everyone needs a laugh now and then.
Poetic appeal to transform Luton
We are resisting urges to make jokes as we have met people from Luton and find them to fine world citizens.

DuroSport and Star Trek: The Party’s Over

April 2, 2007 by Medialoper Review Labs

Yesterday, we posted our review of the Star Trek / DuroSport Video Download Service. As is usually the case with things involving the DuroSport Electronics Company, we thought that it was ill-conceived and kinda amateurish.

Today, the link to the service has been removed from the Star Trek website. While we don’t think that our review had anything specific to do with the removal — officially, that is — it seems like the people over at Star Trek came to their senses, and cut their losses pretty swiftly.