Daily Archive for June 28th, 2005

as if the RIAA and MPAA aren’t suing enough

Published
by
kevin
on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
in Articles and Opinions
. 0 Comments

here’s one opinion on the matter
Grokster Ruling Delights Entertainment Industry

Basically the supreme court ruled that in fact peer-to-peer filesharing networks can be sued if the users on them are sharing illegal files. Supposedly, they can only be sued if the networks in question have not taken any measures to stop people from sharing illegal files and are basically “promoting its use for copyright infringement”. Seems to me that the MPAA and RIAA are losing money out the ass and trying everything imagineable to recover some of their lost assets. Well, here’s a tip…. how about having artists put out CD’s that are more than just one or two decent songs and 12 songs of worthless filler bullshit? Sorry, but I’m not paying $17 for a CD that has two good songs on it. Not to mention I don’t even own a CD player anymore. I’d have no problem purchasing music if the music was actually worth purchasing. Granted, some online music stores have started to crop up now that actually allow you to purchase just one or two songs off a given CD but the big problem there is that there is still a decent portion of music that isn’t available digitally. Not only that, there’s restrictions on some of the music (mostly the “subscription” type) that says you can only use it on a certain number of PC’s, can’t burn it to CD if you want, etc. Also, if I’m going to purchase music online, I’d prefer it to be in something like FLAC because it’s completely lossless and true CD quality stuff. As it is, Yahoo offers the best quality @ 192kbps WMA. I did purchase one track off Yahoo Music for $0.79 because it was a great song and an artist I really liked. Also, it was the only way I could transfer it to my portable mp3 player. However, it still says it is “protected content” in the license info screen. I bought the music, why is it protected and from what is it protected? Am I not free to use do as I please with the song? As such, I think that’s still the issue with purchasing music online. It’s still not as “free” as buying a CD. Also, what if your hard drive crashes? You have to buy all your music all over again if you haven’t managed to back it all up. Ouch!

47 aimless miles

Published
by
kevin
on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
in Life
. 0 Comments

So today I decided I’d just go riding around until I didn’t feel like riding anymore… 46.95 miles later, I finally came home mostly due to the impending thunderstorms. It just kept randomly raining off and on and it looked as though it was going to storm pretty hard core so I decided to cut it short of 50 miles for the day. I’m not a big fan of riding my new bike in the rain unless I absolutely have to, either. My total riding time was just over 3 hrs even though I was gone for nearly 8 hours. I ended up stopping for food twice, random rest stops because my ass hurt and a few other stops at the bike shops and whatnot. I still think before this summer is out I’d like to get a century (100 miles) in. My only problem is that I’m not really sure my ass can take it. Then again, today I was wearing my least comfortable and most annoying shorts. As it stands, I’m at 560 miles this month with a few days left to go. My initial goal was 500 miles this month and once I realized I would have no trouble with that, I was shooting for 600. Looks as though I should do just fine getting that as well. Maybe next month I’ll hit 700! :-P I’d really like to do a 1000 mile month but I’m not really sure I can pull that off. That’s averaging over 30 miles per day! Who knows… we’ll see how it goes by the end of summer. After all, I’m going to start working 3a-11a starting next month so I’ll actually have more time to ride. Given that schedule, I’ll actually be able to ride either before or after work… or both. On top of that I’ll have weekends off, which will rock.