Thursday , March 28 2024

Culture and Society

Official Scalpers

The capitalist in me says why not to this – why should brokers and scalpers be able to get what the market will bear but not the venues or the performers? Yet I don’t trust Ticketmaster any farther than Pearl Jam could throw them. I fear it will help drive …

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R.E.M. and Wilco Webcast Live Tonight

R.E.M. began their six-week North American tour last Friday at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver, where they have been working on their next studio album. They have a new collection, In Time: The Best Of R.E.M., 1988-2003, coming out in October. The second show of the tour, tonight in Missoula, Montana, …

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Massive Minnesota Miscreant, Blaster Worm Culprit

The FBI arrested a Minnesota teen for creating a variant of the Blaster internet worm: Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minnesota, a middle- class suburb west of Minneapolis, was arrested on one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a computer, according to a St. Paul …

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Oh Yeah, And the Blackout Too

The RIAA is providing fodder for conspiracy theorists for a generation to come – you think the Blackout of ’03 was caused by a catastrophic chain of grid failures begun in northeast Ohio? Ha ha, duped again!: The recording industry is providing its most detailed glimpse into some of the …

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RIAA – Making Friends and Creating Smiles

Our friends at the RIAA seem hell-bent on ramming their worldview down every customer, former customer, or potential customer’s throat. I see this as a problem from a marketing, customer service and legal standpoint since their methods infringe upon the privacy and civil liberties of everyone who uses the Internet, …

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DVD Decryption Ruling Ambiguous

It’s ALL ambiguous right now. Hollywood asked that the DVD decryption code be declared a trade secret and banned from the Internet – they got part of that: The case has pit freedom-of-speech arguments against an entertainment-industry effort to protect what it says are trade secrets. Hollywood is happy because …

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Can TiVo Compete With “Free”?

One of the recurring arguments that the music industry makes about its legal campaign against file sharers is that they can’t compete with free. This is, of course, crap, because you can compete with free with a superior product, service, convenience, etc. Now in the arena of DVR’s, TiVo must …

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Aliens Among Us

Don’t look now, but the woman in the sidebar ad over there on the left for FriendSurfer.com just grew antennae with Christmas bulbs attached to them. I think I am more than six degrees separated from her.

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Brave and Anonymous, “Jane Doe” Fights the RIAA in Court

Into the ring to take a swing: The first individual to fight back against a flood of subpoenas issued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lodged a motion in the name of ‘Jane Doe’ with a Washington court on Thursday, seeking to prevent her ISP handing over her …

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Your President Doesn’t Do Tech

Since the president relies on aids to do everything but wipe his butt, (one assumes, no pun intended), it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that he doesn’t have much hands-on experience with tech gadgets: No pager or PDA hangs off his belt and there’s no cell phone in his suit …

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