There is a crisis facing internet radio: new mandatory royalty rates are so high that they will force most or all independent internet radio stations off the air.

Rusty Hodge of SomaFM, which has been my favorite internet radio station for years, speaks out on the threats posed by the new webcasting royalties.

For SomaFM, this means our royalties for 2006 will be increased retroactively from about $20,000 to about $600,000. That's more than 3 times what we made in 2006. And our royalties for 2007, based on our current audience size, will be over $1 million dollars, and over $1.5 million by 2009. That's if our audience size stays the same.

For historical reference, all of the small webcasters were shut down due to a similar dispute from June until November, 2002. Congress didn't listen that time until it was too late. Near the end of the negotiations RIAA CEO Hillary Rosen said:

This is like trying to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.

There has been no moment in the history of the Internet that the total lack of understanding of the economics of new media on the part of the music industry was more clear. If you fools had built a participatory culture around music when you were busy trying to destroy it you wouldn't be watching your revenues drop hand over fist today. When will you get a clue?!

Rusty on Radio: The crisis facing internet radio

Jack Valenti, the urbane Washington lobbyist who served as Hollywood's public face for nearly four decades and was best known for creating the film rating system, died this afternoon, according to Warren Cowan, his longtime friend and publicist for the MPAA. He was 85.

I disagreed with Jack Valenti on many levels, but he was a great American nonetheless.

Jack Valenti, 85; former Hollywood lobbyist pioneered film ratings system - Los Angeles Times

It’s official - the first single by Logickal is hitting the streets on dPulse! It’s slowly creeping out to thee Internets by way of some of your favorite download services, with more to come in the next few days.

Big thanks go to the remixers - BlueDeceiver and Maurice Syntax provided their own personal interpretations of the title track, which is in some ways an homage to some of the sounds of my heroes - take 2 parts SP/Doubting Thomas/Download and mix with mid-period Coil and blend with some old-fashioned Logickal layering. Both remixes add take the formula and discard it completely, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Speaking of remixes, we decided to feature Randy Garcia’s Polar Attractor remix from Krushjob on this single, so big thanks to him for the stellar track as well.

I should also note here that Sugarknife features the sugary voice of Angelique Fisher, the knife-edged tones of John Sharp and the wonderful contact-mic’ed skulduggery of Mr. Natural on the sugar bowl and chef’s blade. Hints may also be heard of young Master Ryne lurking about in there somewhere as well. Thank you, my wonderful friends and collaborators.

Rounding out this single release are new improvisations called Students Fear The Three Cs (the stylistic partner to Krushjob’s Feels Atomic which is also included here) and the soothing Lullabye 43. I do hope you all enjoy - I have included a player from last.fm here for your listening pleasure, but please don’t forget about the download links below. If your favorite service isn’t yet listed (and I can think of a certain largeish service that is so far conspicuous by its absence), do not despair - I have been assured that they will be available shortly!

Definately digging the new single!

Introducing: Sugarknife at FlightDynamics

Neurobiologically realistic, large-scale cortical and sub-cortical simulations are bound to play a key role in computational neuroscience and its applications to cognitive computing. One hemisphere of the mouse cortex has roughly 8,000,000 neurons and 8,000 synapses per neuron. Modeling at this scale imposes tremendous constraints on computation, communication, and memory capacity of any computing platform.

We have designed and implemented a massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and (c) axonal delays.

We deployed the simulator on a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer with 256 MB per CPU. We were able to represent 8,000,000 neurons (80% excitatory) and 6,300 synapses per neuron in the 1 TB main memory of the system. Using a synthetic pattern of neuronal interconnections, at a 1 ms resolution and an average firing rate of 1 Hz, we were able to run 1s of model time in 10s of real time!

I'm sorry Dave....

Open the Future: The Early Signs of the Long Tomorrow

April 26, 2007

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

Sounds like someone needs a refresher course on constitutional law, which should be coming by directly.

Student Writes Essay, Gets Arrested by Police

...
Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us "safe."
...

Here is the AP report.

Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect

The intelligence of various posters on the Volokh Conspiracy varies, but certainly, you've got to have a better than average number of neurons firing to even read this blog and understand the issues being discussed. You are smart people. And yet, here we have smart people honestly advocating the humanity of putting a gun to the back of someone's head and blasting their brains and blood all over the wall.

Crossposted.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Scientific Studies and Media Coverage of the Death Penalty:

Nano has been talking about this one...

Best joke ever...and so true

The parliamentary report featured a handful of cases of mistaken identity, the most prominent of which was the ordeal of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen suspected of terrorist ties and packed off to his native Syria in 2002.

“But the Canadians say there’s absolutely no evidence,” countered Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

“I would certainly not apologize to him, sir.”

The CIA, he added, is not “in the business of cleaning up afterwards. We’re in the business of pre-emption.”

But, Delahunt persisted, “What about those who are clearly eventually determined to be innocent?”

“Mistakes are made, sir.”

“Mistakes are made.”

“That’s right,” Scheuer said. “They’re not Americans, and I really don’t care.” He spread his arms, smiling. “It’s just a mistake.”

Maybe I can't handle the truth, but is it really necessary for you to be an asshole?

CQ Homeland Security - A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions

A new project from the author of Witko.

Who at the NSA uses Gmail?
Which NASA employees are using Myspace/LinkedIn?
Which people in Kabul are using Skype?

This is some interesting code.

He also claims to be working on an automated identity hijacking capability.

Evolution