Natural-foods grocer Whole Foods Markets Inc. on Wednesday said that it agreed to acquire smaller rival Wild Oats Markets Inc. for about $565 million, beefing up its store base as it grapples with competition from larger conventional supermarkets.
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Cool. Maybe they can get their supply chain scale of economy thing kicking and get some of the outrageous prices down. Love my Wild Oats but definately don't shop there exclusively because it is so expensive.
SierraNightTide wrote: Haven’t we all heard that romance at the office is a bad thing? Well, a high profile South Korean bank has put new meaning into office romance. ...why can’t American corporations take notice and start offering some "full life service" to they’re employees? Date My Co-Worker!
Interesting concept. My employer offers discounts on things like movie and themepark tickets, auto sales at select dealerships, and gym memberships. Makes sense that other companies may offer discounts on things like dating services. Definately a different twist though with the subsidized airfare. I'd think of that as a perk, but it's probably not viewed that way since obviously not all employees are single. Wonder if the company will also offer subsidized airfare for married individuals under the auspices of "relationship strengthening" to be balanced.
RE: Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times
Topic: Arts
3:24 pm EST, Feb 20, 2007
Rattle wrote:
Read this whole article...
Read it. Here's my take. I touched on something similar before with respect to a store in Indianapolis that was raided for selling mixtapes.
Bottom line: If you make deals with the devil, get the details in writing. It's hard for me to feel any sympathy for these guys. The word "entrapment" does come to mind, but as much as they are ballyhooed as being such genius businessmen, they should definitely know the value of a contract and insist on one.
The economics of mixtapes appeal to XL, and so do their politics; as he sees it, mixtapes undermine the power of major record labels and radio stations. "Most artists can't afford to get their music on the radio, but an artist has the right to let his fan base hear what he's done," XL said. "Who is the label to dictate how to feed the fan base?"
An artist does have the right to get his fan base hear their music. There are a myriad of ways this can be accomplished. These days the barrier to entry is as low as it has ever been. If you play hard, you can be heard. Mindshare is the toughest nut to crack. But, sorry, you have to play the game by the rules. If the rules seem a little too tough, those are the breaks. To answer the question, "Who is the label to dictate how to feed the fan base?" the answer is very simple if the artists has signed a contract with the label: Whatever the contract dictates! To add to what I said before, if you do decide to make a deal with the devil, be prepared to live with it.
Before DJ Drama went to jail, no mixtape D.J. had been the target of a major raid; busts had been directed at small retailers, like Mondo Kim's in New York's East Village. Jonathan Lamy, a spokesperson for the R.I.A.A., said the raid on Drama's studio represented no official change in policy and had been undertaken only at the behest of Atlanta law enforcement. But for many in the industry, the focus on a single prominent figure seemed like no accident. "Arresting them criminally under RICO was firing a warning shot at anyone who has mixtapes," said Walter McDonough, a copyright lawyer who has negotiated with the R.I.A.A. on behalf of Jay-Z.
Given the context of the previous bust on the bootleggers that also yielded a drugs/weapons cache, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a touch of "profiling" involved in this case as well. The Aphilliates boast at length how they lace their CD's with "gangsta" culture drops, even though they do not partake in the lifestyle themselves. But whatever you want to call it: guilt by association or 'where there's smoke there's usually fire' they painted themselves as targets for suspicion. The RICO law infraction was probably just used as a wedge, a foot in the door, in order to possibly find other associated contraband. I see that as more of a motivation than a warning shot ... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]
Zbigniew Brzezinski's Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony, 2/1/2007
Topic: Current Events
1:39 am EST, Feb 20, 2007
Testimony from Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, 1977-1981. Original is a PDF. Also available via Google in HTML.
I've quoted four contiguous paragraphs below. Interesting words from one of the architects of the Mujahideen resistance forces in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. When he says that "most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism," he's probably in a position to know something about the subject.
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If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.
This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran, though gaining in regional influence, is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.
Its worth noting that the law doesn't require ISPs to screen traffic. It merely authorizes the sharing of child porn images for this purpose. Presumably there are ISPs lined up who want to do this but presently its illegal. Soghoian's perl script is a simple example of a myriad different things that can be done to data to make it invisible to this sort of screen. But Soghoian, having already had the FBI break into his house in the middle of the night for pointing out naked emperors, thought better of publishing the code.
If, by some fluke, such a system as this is implemented, they should at least force ISPs to disclose whether they use the service. Would make ISP shopping easier.
I don't see the system as particularly effective in doing what it sets out to do. It may have a chilling effect on the casual runner, but someone dedicated will just circumvent and take further precautions.
What it puts in place is, as noted in the discussion, a technical means to enforce flagging the passage of any "interesting" combination of bits. Definately seems like there would be potential to cast the net wider than the original intention, unless specific language is put into the legislation that prohibits the use of the system for anything except catching child porn. Stipulations would need to be put in that in the event it is abused to catch copyright violators (or someone circulating subersive lit for example) that the evidence cannot be admissable in a court.
Also don't see how the system would scale. How will it handle video? Thing about the IDS signature problem times n.
They both use the same laser technology. They both support the same audio and video codecs. They both support 1080p. I can only discern two major technical differences:
* Blu Ray discs have a higher capacity than HD-DVD discs. * Blu Ray offers an extra copy protection layer beyond AACS.
It seems to be a marketing game at this point. What's really funny to me is how the sales staff at the major retailers spin Blu Ray over HD-DVD. I usually politely avoid sales staff. Nowadays I make an effort to hang out around the DVD player section and wait. I have a 100% track record of having the staff recommend Blu Ray. This is non-scientific, but comprises at least 15 different occasions among 4 retailers in 3 states.
At an FYE in Missouri over Christmas, I wanted to purchase an HD-DVD for a friend who just got the Xbox HD-DVD add-on as a gift. When I asked where they were, one salesperson went so far as to say, "HD-DVD is over there, but if you want to step up to the better technology, I'd go with Blu Ray." When I said, "It's not really better, they both use the same codecs and support the same resolution, Blu Ray just has a higher capacity," he didn't respond. I guess if you are running a tit for tat counter based purely on tech specs and avoiding cost, Blu Ray would seem to have the photo-finish edge thanks to the capacity. But that isn't compelling enough to me to state that it is unequivocally a better technology.
I can't prove it, but based on looking through ads from the major retailers each week, and based on the consistent recommendation of Blu Ray over HD-DVD in person, Sony must really be paying big dollars to mold perception. I don't think it is wrong for Sony to directly pay retailers to train their staff to recommend Blu Ray over HD-DVD, it's just a very interesting play. Some may call it marketing. And I believe they are winning the game for mindshare at this point.
Tis a shame really. I loathe Sony after the rootkit debacle. I've been on a personal Sony boycott since that time. It's easy not to buy Sony consumer electronics. I even replaced a perfectly good DVD burner in my computer just to say that I have divested myself of Sony products. It's not as easy to avoid Sony's media presence. I've forgone a few good movies I wanted to see because it was either put out by Sony or one of their subsidiaries. Same with music. But principle is principle. I am not going to support a company that approved and implemented the surreptitious installation of software on consumers' PC's, then played the spin game and drug their heels on rectifying the situation when they were caught.
If Blu Ray "wins" the format war, I guess I will just be waiting for the VOD / direct download future to arrive before I get to enjoy HD content on a regular basis. I'm not very hopeful about that future either based on some of the early incarnations of video download I've seen. More and more I see the consumer being perceived as criminal by the content producers. With that view comes the mechanisms of control.
I hope Steve Jobs' "heart is pure" in his attitudes towards DRM that he recently expressed. It is strange to see Jobs and Gates fundamentally agreeing that DRM is a broken/flawed solution for the problem of piracy. If the industry visionaries and leaders such as these two say it is so, maybe the content cartels will listen.
A set of long exposures that were taken while playing video war games of the 80's, created by Atari, Centuri & Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while playing the games. By recording each second of an entire game on 1 frame of film, captured complex patterns were captured not normally seen by the naked eye.
This happened summer of 2001. 23 people killed, 100's injured. Building in Jerusalem was built using a building practice that was banned. Too many people on the dance floor.
A rare Squarepusher TV appearance aired in the UK on 14th October 2006 by BBC2's 'The Culture Show'.
Features Andre 3000 of Outkast fame talking about Squarepusher's music alongside an interview by Lauren Laverne, an endorsement from Thom Yorke and an exclusive solo bass performance by Squarepusher.
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Another one of my fav's. Needs to tour the US more!
