Rolling Stone is chronicling the fall of the record industry. At the same time as you think “I told you so” and “serves them right” you have to feel at least a bit sad that it took the industry dinosaurs so long to figure out that things were changing that tons of people had lost their jobs in the process. Is there any saving the industry? Many people in the business apparently think the answer is no. To what extent is losing the big labels a loss to music lovers?
Monthly Archive for June, 2007
Wed
Jun
27
2007
Life at Google 0 cmts
An internal Microsoft email about “life at Google” is highly informative about the Google culture. Some of it I suspected, some of it is fairly well known, and some of the perspective is new and quite interesting. Like every job there are good and bad things, and it sounds like some of their structure and biases lean towards “bad”, while a lot of the perks and technical competencies tend strongly towards “good.”
The story of Blink 0 cmts
The marvelous _Doctor Who_ episode “Blink” is based on a short story published in 2006 called “What I Did On My Christmas Holidays, by Sally Sparrow.” The BBC, in its wisdom, made it available online, for free.
New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left – New York Times 0 cmts
The _Times_ reports that younger Americans are more likely to support universal health care, gay marriage, and the Democratic party. “But when it came to the war, young Americans were more optimistic about the outcome than was the population as whole. Fifty-one percent said the United States was very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, compared with 45 percent among all adults. Contrary to conventional wisdom, younger Americans have historically been more likely than the population as a whole to be supportive of what a president is doing in a time of war, as they were in Korea and Vietnam, polls have shown.”
Mon
Jun
25
2007
Constitution 101 0 cmts
As a prelude to the (no doubt awful) slew of decisions coming down from the Supreme Court today, Prof. Walter Dellinger offers a five minute crash-course on the constitution which ends with this simple — yet strangely elusive in government — explanation of the problems with “strict construction”:
Senators especially like it when a nominee says a judge’s role is just to be an “umpire.” But broad constitutional phrases are different from sports rules, so a judge would be like an umpire only if the game — instead of having a strike zone and a set number of balls, strikes, and outs — provided instead that “each batter shall have a fair chance to hit the ball” and “each team shall have a reasonably equal opportunity to score runs.” Key language of the Constitution is that broad, meaning that men and women appointed to the bench must necessarily exercise judgment. Which is, of course, why they are called judges, and not umpires.
Fri
Jun
22
2007
Vampires Are Alive 1 cmts
I just can’t stop watching the Swiss Eurovision entry from this year, “Vampires Are Alive” (Live Version – Music Video). Damn you, Isaac!
Stories from Iraq: Truffles 0 cmts
Stories from the “Iraqi Blogodrome” on the most recent Global Voices Iraq round-up contain some interesting thoughts, including one post suggesting that the country would be better served by a military government, at least in the short term, to bring peace and stability with a firm hand. Another less political post is a bit more uplifting:
I once paid a fortune in an Italian restaurant to eat samples of few truffles brought all the way from Tuscany in Italy, and were served to me in such a fuss as if I was about to eat pieces of gold!
Oh my dear Iraq, if only they’ve tasted your muddy truffles that we used to buy in big sacs and spent ages to clean.
We the people of Iraq are exactly like our crops! Rough, tough, harsh and scarred, but once you open them up, you see the real flavour of kindness, generosity and genuineness.
Wed
Jun
20
2007
Built-in speakers stopped working on a MacBook or MacBook Pro 1 cmts
Today, utterly randomly and with no provocation, the built-in speaker output disappeared from my System Preferences on my MacBook Pro and the speakers would no longer work, except for the boot-up chime. All that I could get was digital audio out and the red light coming out of the speaker port. Searching online turned up nothing until the right combination of words led me to this Apple support message board thread. While Apple does not have a solution for this problem and tries replacing the board with the audio port, you can solve the problem by sticking a toothpick or a paperclip into the slot (preferably while the red digital audio light is on) and at around the 5-o-clock position there is some sort of switch or rocker that needs to be gently pushed. There will be a bit of a click. After a few seconds your audio will start working again.
Mon
Jun
18
2007
Michael Moore’s Sicko available online 1 cmts
Michael Moore’s new film about American health care, Sicko, is online in its entirety on Google Video. A good follow-up to this brief discussion here.
Sat
Jun
16
2007
Computer for sale 0 cmts
I’m thinking of selling my Linux box and replacing it with a dedicated NAS. It’s a fairly decent machine for MythTV or similar usage, with 4×300GB SATA drives, two TV tuners, and various other specs that I’d have to go look up. Anyone interested?
Edit: Details inside
I'm
Latest Comments
DaveW, steven
Aaron B
JK
Mat
Yoni, JK, Danny Silverman, JK
Danny Silverman, JK