Thursday , March 28 2024

Culture and Society

The Juice Bows Out

With his typical class, cutting through the nonsense, Jan Herman is leaving MSNBC today: Some media observers have pointed out the absurdity of that claim. What’s not absurd, though, is the occupational hazard. It grows on bloggers like a fungus. Show me a blogger and I’ll show you someone who …

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Spread the Word – But Who’s Going to Pay For It?

The thunderstorm currently pummeling the environs feels like the wrath of God – perhaps He is angry with file sharers: Does “thou shalt not steal” mean “Thou shalt not download”? Just like other computer-savvy listeners, evangelical Christians swipe songs off the Net – and Christian labels have watched their fortunes …

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Great Tunes

Professor Barnhardt’s Journal poll’s several writers for best songs of the last 25 years, in response to VH1’s take on the same. Here are the top 5 of each listed – see the site for each writer’s top 20 and the VH1 100: VH1 1. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” …

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Amazon Confirms Online Music Interest

Amazon.com senior vice president Diego Piacentini said: The online retailer said it sees future opportunities in digital music download offerings, similar to Apple Computer Inc’s AAPL.O online music service, iTunes, which lets users download some songs from major record labels for less than $1. “You should definitely expect Amazon to …

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“Trusted Computing” Shouldn’t Be

Properly, trust is a two-way street – this isn’t that: Your next personal computer may well come with its own digital chaperon. ….Silicon Valley – led by Microsoft and Intel – calls the concept “trusted computing.” The companies, joined by I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and others, argue that the …

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“Yuki, check out groovy doo!!”

I find this hilarious, combining about five different stereotypes – I love the image of hordes of Japanese girls snapping away on “backwards” magazines, sending the pics out to their digital buddies. And as always, the assumption by content owners is that information shared is a sale lost. It’s a …

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Bloggy Court Ruling

An appeals court says you are not libel for information you republish on the Internet: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can’t be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself …

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