Yep, another NYT story. This one is a view of how musicians feel about the current situation :

] "On one hand, the whole thing is pretty sick," said John
] McCrea, a singer and songwriter in the rock band Cake.
] "On the other hand, I think it'll probably work."

An interesting point at the bottom of the first page is the industry claim of 31% drop in sales since file sharing started. Directly following that they quote the Forrester reports which shows only 15% decline and attributes only 35% to downloading. It's what we've been saying all along -- that lots of factors have been fucking the music industry recently -- but it's nice to see a respectable analyst say so.

And of course, the main bs RIAA spews ("it's about the artists") :
"Much of the stated concern over file sharing has centered on the revenue that record companies and musicians are losing, but few musicians ever actually receive royalties from their record sales on major labels, which managers say have accounting practices that are badly in need of review."

and

"I don't have sympathy for the record companies," said Mickey Melchiondo of the rock duo Ween. "They haven't been paying me royalties anyway."

indeed.

File-Sharing Battle Leaves Musicians Caught in Middle

Yeah, you need to have a registration, but it's quick and free -- use a hotmail account. Article makes some interesting statements.

First about modern amercan business:
] "The quintessential American company was Enron, which
] made nothing," said Neal Gabler, author of "Life the
] Movie." In today's culture, he added, "the product is
] almost immaterial; it's the consciousness about it."

then touching on digital morality (and then a major reason why being a computer professional has lost it's cache):
] "What the Internet does is, it pries everything out of
] moral context and lets people feel knowing about it," he
] said, because the skills used to cut and paste something
] with a computer are more valued than those used to
] manufacture it.

and we can't forget the FUCKING MORON ON THE STREET section:
] On a recent morning on Canal Street, crowds of shoppers,
] most past their undergraduate years, brought the metaphor
] to life, plucking up fake Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Kate
] Spade handbags. A New Jersey woman named Linda Dorian,
] plumping for two bootleg Vuittons, compared her purchases
] to downloading music. "Somehow everybody seems to be
] making out," she said. "I don't see any poor rock stars.
] I don't see any poor designers."

This lady is why file sharing is as big a problem as it is, not because of geeks and college students. There's no poor rock stars, you moron, because the "STARS" already sold a lot of records. But poor musicians are out of sight and out of mind.

Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers

] Satellites registered a surge of x-rays and gamma-rays.
] Hams experienced another blackout. It seemed like another
] X-class solar flare. Except for one thing: this flare
] didn't come from the sun.
]
]
] It came from outer space.

Cool stuff... I spent 4 years getting a degree in physics and i never heard of a magnetar...

Solar Flares on Steroids

] In two days of discussions, the scientists aim to turn
] into a reality an ambition that has been around for at
] least a century: the creation of a space elevator that
] would deliver satellites, spacecraft and even people
] thousands of kilometres into space along a vertical
] track.

this pops up every few months, but looks like it's getting closer to being realistic. of particular note, to me anyway, is the estimated cost of only 7 billion. That's a lot of cash, of course, but compare it with what the prez asked for last week (eighty-seven billion) and it's not too absurd.
And of course, if the 400-fold decrease in (presumably per pound of payload) cost is accurate, 7 billion should be recoupable in fairly short order.
Color me skeptical, but hopeful.

The cheap way to the stars - by escalator

grand. but, no man, we're totally doing a great job in iraq.

Telegraph | News | US troops ignored pleas as they cut down Iraqi police

] The White House on Thursday threatened to veto a Senate
] proposal that would strike down recently relaxed media
] ownership rules.

Yeah, i mean, who needs media diversity...

Swallow your pill and like it, damn you!

White House Threatens Senate with Veto

ouch.

much as i hate MS a lot of the time, this is pretty freaking irritating. legit, but irritating.

glad my pages are 100% XHTML+CSS.

Still, i think flash has its place, as do most of the plugins we use... i don't like the generality of thier patent.

IE patent endgame detailed | CNET News.com

] The hellish climate of Venus may have arisen far more
] recently than previously supposed, suggests new research.
] If so, pleasant Earth-like conditions probably persisted
] for two billion years after the planet's birth - plenty
] of time for life to have developed.

Venus possibly habitable for billions of years - New Scientist

] The extreme difficulty in discovering a back door hidden
] deep within a complex application, buried among numerous
] modules developed offshore in a global software
] marketplace, is forcing those assigned to protect
] sensitive national security information to take defensive
] actions.

are your international codemonkeys dropping trojans into your software product?

Hidden malware in offshore products raises concerns - Computerworld

Update to the story about little Miss Lahara

P2P group: We'll pay girl's RIAA bill | CNET News.com