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Now not only do the non industry musicians suffer from a non level playing field but the industry musicians get their songs taken, their ability to perform their songs for money taken, their ability to play with each other under their chosen name can even be forfeit.

I don't know if you were referring to to the recent plight of Young Buck or not but it is a good example of just what you are referring to. The guys nickname has been Young Buck his entire life and now he is going to lose the right to use it as his stage name because he owes somebody some money.

LINK - The quote from Starks/Helios is about halfway down. http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/digitalsavant/entries/2008/12/11/breaking_local.html

As a bicyclist (and driver. Remember that- most of us who ride our bikes ALSO DRIVE), I find it very difficult to sympathize with your viewpoint.

When is the last time you read, "motorist killed by bicyclist"? Bicyclists always lose in car-vs-bicyclist.

Now, look at the face of cyclist road deaths: Kylie Bruehler, orphaned when both her parents were struck by a truck. Go on, LOOK, Mr. Self Righteous. Look at the face of a 7 year old girl as she buries her parents. Look at her grandfather walk down the line of hundreds of cyclists who showed up to honor them.

Do you know what usually happens when a motorist kills a cyclist? Absolutely nothing- and this case is not the exception but the rule. Time and time again the cyclist community fumes when another person is struck simply because the driver wasn't paying attention to where they were going, the police call it a "terrible accident", and the driver walks off without so much as a manslaughter charge.

I'm glad you used sound reasoning and solid argumentation and did not resort to baser things like guilt-trips and emotional appeals. Well done, sir.

As a bicyclist (and driver. Remember that- most of us who ride our bikes ALSO DRIVE), I find it very difficult to sympathize with your viewpoint.

When is the last time you read, "motorist killed by bicyclist"? Bicyclists always lose in car-vs-bicyclist.

Now, look at the face of cyclist road deaths: Kylie Bruehler, orphaned when both her parents were struck by a truck. Go on, LOOK, Mr. Self Righteous. Look at the face of a 7 year old girl as she buries her parents. Look at her grandfather walk down the line of hundreds of cyclists who showed up to honor them.

Do you know what usually happens when a motorist kills a cyclist? Absolutely nothing- and this case is not the exception but the rule. Time and time again the cyclist community fumes when another person is struck simply because the driver wasn't paying attention to where they were going, the police call it a "terrible accident", and the driver walks off without so much as a manslaughter charge.

and thousands of hippies descended upon Woodstock for 3 days of peace & music,

Except this year it was called the ACL Music Festival.

Time Warner completed it's "spin-off" of Time Warner Cable in mid March. Couple that with what Time Warner Inc. execs are saying about "TV Everywhere". With that in mind as well as the rise of streaming video services such as Netflix it is hard to not see these ridiculous bandwidth caps as an attempt to hang on to their current Cable TV business model. Especially since they are charging about the same for a full TV, Phone, and Internet package now (almost $140 a month after taxes) as they will charge for an Internet only connection with a 175 Gig cap (100 cap for $75 and $75 more gigs over that...). I live in Austin and honestly I am looking at AT&T (who only offers a 3 Mb downstream in my area) as a viable option. At least they are talking about caps of 150 GB a month... and that speed is only a a third of what I usually get from TWC. On the up side at least 2 mayoral candidates here have issued statements against the caps. While that is encouraging I am not sure if it will still be an issue after the election but it is nice to live in a city where this issue gets noticed by the politicians. The thing about this though that really gets to me is that it isn't a consumption model. After all one of the main points is that there will be NO rollover of unused bandwidth. To return to the over used analogy of a restaurant for the consumption model. If I pay you for a plate and don't finish it... give me a doggy bag! I understand if it is a buffet and I don't get one, but to have someone pay for a plate of food and then snatch the plate away after half an hour regardless of whether or not they are finished... that's just cruel! Now, can we all agree to NOT use the restaurant analogy again?

Just found an attempt at investigating by an Austin360 blogger. I quote:

> "Gray Salada, the executive director of technology for the Austin Independent School District, said he was 'Kinda embarrassed, actually,' when he read Web posts about a local middle school teacher who was said to have confiscated Linux operated system discs from a student, then fired off a an angry e-mail to Austin HeliOS founder Ken Starks.

> As of late Thursday afternoon, it was not clear who the middle school teacher was who created a chain events that has led to worldwide publicity about the exchange. Salada said he has spoken to Starks, but as of yet, AISD did not know the identity of the middle school teacher or, in fact, whether the incident occurred as described on Starksâ(TM) blog. Salada says he was only told that the teacher doesnâ(TM)t teach technology.

> 'He doesn't want any harm to come to the teacher and the district,' Salada said of Starks, 'he won't give me the name or the school.'"

Now, does that smell fishy? You'd think if it was important enough to make this big stink over, it would be important enough to tell what would be the teacher's boss about it? After all, Starks was originally saying when he first posted about the story:

> "I have placed a call to the AISD Superintendent and cc'd him a complete copy of your email. It looks like we will get to meet in his office when School starts again after the holiday. I am anxious to meet a person who is this uninformed and still holds a position of authority and learnedness over our children."

Quite a change of tune, there!

Here's a video of the interview: http://www.austin360.com/news/mplayer/sxsw/73367

http://www.austin360.com/news/mplayer/m/73367

Los Lonely Boys? What a coincidence, I was just reading an article that mentioned their last album as a victim of the loudness war. No matter how good the music itself is: if you overcompress the audio to make it "loud" (as it is fashionable these days), it sounds like shit.

If music is compressed, limited and clipped like it is on many records today, there really isn't much argument for the need of an extra quality carrier. The quest of the artists, producers or record labels to GET THEIR MUSIC LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE, causes the dynamic range of music to be sacrificed in order to bump the sound as close as possible to the zero dB boundary. This loudness war causes severe digital clipping, and the distortion you get from it is much MUCH worse that what you get from the MP3 conversion with a decent bitrate.

Not only that, but the music loses every punch, melding all elements in one flat sound, tiring your ears. It's the same with the super audio CD. why needing a carrier with more bits and higher sample rate if you're even using what's available on a CD today?

• Loudness War
• everything louder than everything else

No, I'm not talking about "loudness". Dynamics. You can't have quality sound without dynamics, just like you can't have quality photos with 4 bit colours. On the other hand, most modern pop is mastered for radio and car stereos, so the recording is already compressed to minimise dynamics. The most obvious effect of this is that the recording is perceived as louder, not quieter, since everything is equally loud. This is also why commercials sound louder than all other radio and TV programming: it's compressed even more.

Here is a nice article which explains why your flimsy speakers sound OK at low volumes playing contemporary pop. It's because they are mastered to sound equally crap on all equipment.

"Dispelling the perception of being simply a "gay western", the film doesn't really wholeheartedly fit into either category. Although it is socially important that a gay love story is enjoying a mainstream airing rather than being an arthouse film, it transcends the issue of sexuality. Rather, it is an excellently-told tale of two lovers whose love cannot be fulfilled, which can be universally related to and enjoyed by anyone regardless of sexual orientation."

And yeah, the review was written by a straight guy.

And from the Crimson Harvard Review, another five star review:

I've always been a fan of the devil's advocate position, but I'm a greater fan of honesty, and in that vein I have to say it: "Brokeback Mountain" is an absolutely phenomenal film, a sublime work of beauty with an ache at its core so enveloping you hardly notice it until you try to stand up at its somber end.

I would have imagined difficulty in praising the film this much, considering the gooey and ridiculous media discourse. But upon finally seeing it, all the talk seems trivial. It's an unexpectedly complex rumination on love and sexuality in a uniquely American context, where the tangible beauty of our mythic West collides with the hidden sores of a repressive social order. Lee's film is incredibly literary, stunningly photographed, and features flawless performances from its typically unimpressive cast.

And from a Texas paper, where they know cowboys, another 5 star review:

"Bet you didn't know that the American-Statesman uses a five-star system to rate movies. That's because our critics rarely -- almost never -- confer the highest rating, which is reserved for movies that will be viewed and discussed for years to come.

"Brokeback Mountain" is one of those movies.

A slow-moving, button-lipped Western romance, Ang Lee's wide-screen version of Annie Proulx's quick-moving, stub-tongued story worms its way into the viewer's consciousness, to remain there, a shifting, analog reality, for days or even weeks.

...

The media has fastened onto "Brokeback" as a "gay cowboy movie," and it will likely attract backlash from social conservatives. Some of this might be attributed to the movie's subtle social commentary. The fact that Jack and Ennis, under an ultra-violent Western code, could not seriously consider settling down bears on the current debate about gay marriage.

However, "Brokeback" goes beyond transitory opinion-making. Its relaxed storytelling, naturalistic language and just-out-of-reach characters draw the viewer into an inescapable romance. Due to the inscrutable logic of popular culture, it will appeal especially to women, surely one of the first Westerns to do so.

Is it a masterpiece, a "Casablanca" for its time? Perhaps not. Yet it's hard to question its status as one of the year's top movies. And it's certainly worth the kind of discussion a five-star review inevitably will provoke."

The entire point of this post being, maybe you're not giving the movie a chance, and maybe straight guys can find something worthwhile in this as well (all the above reviews being written by straight guys, and hell, even Ebert and Harry Knowles of "Aint it Cool" fame loved the movie).

Sometimes our prejudices get in the way of letting us discover things we might actually enjoy. I guess I know too many guys who were dragged kicking and screaming to see this movie by their girlfriends, who ended up really liking the movie. It's so silly and childish when you think about it. Every once in a while,

Although WB expressed some concern, this was done with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in NY, Boston.

about Jacqueline.

UT Austin Hit By Massive Security Breach
Posted by
timothy
in The Mysterious Future!

from the wonder-if-they-got-mine dept.
mrpuffypants writes "Reported in the Austin-American Statesman: The University of Texas' security was compromised over the weekend, leaking out nearly 60,000 records on students, staff, and faculty. Official word from the school can be found here. Most troubling of all is that, like most schools, UT still uses SSNs for student ID numbers, and that was part of the information taken from them in the attack."

The inch-thick tiles, made of pyrolized carbon, are amazing in two respects. They can be several hundred degrees hot on one side while remaining cool to the touch on the other. They do not boil away like the ablative heat shieldings of capsules and modules; they can be used indefinitely. But they're also a bit of a letdown in another respect--they're so fragile you can hardly touch them without shattering them.

But then again, maybe he did??

For those not familar: Leslie is a (pseudo) homeless cross-dresser in Austin. He/She has run for mayor in every election I've witnessed, and consistantly pulls in some votes. He/She is a true example of how Austin still holds on to some of what makes it special. For a little slideshow of leslie, go to this slide show

You mean like this Framing our country's fight against terrorism? It's all about the presentation of information, not the content. We're sheep, we don't want to think.

Next thing you know, the 'Girls Gone Wild' will sue the video producers for getting them drunk and making them flash the camera...

Oops, guess it already happened: Girl Gone Wild Sues, Wins

Obviously, IANAL

The link to the story is now here, since "today" is no longer "Monday". Looks like it will only be good for a week.

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Of course, police never aim for the eyes with non-lethal weaponry. Didn't just happen this week in Austin, possibly partially blinding a bystander with his arms raised in the air. nope. right?

The end result is probably something like:

• AOL Quality with Microsoft ethics
• MS Quality with MS Ethics

The only counter I can imagine to this right now comes out of those occasional rumors of AOL developing their own OS. I am sure everyone is just thrilled by that prospect.

We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs.

What makes this all the more believable are little details like this AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:

``In the new century, the Chinese people will build our very own information superhighway,'' the Xinhua report declared. ``The current one by itself has too many faults and is incapable of satisfying the needs of the Chinese government and companies as they enter the digital age.''

The .net as proposed by Microsoft is selling this to us. But maybe it is still only one fence on the wild frontier. Or maybe Microsoft is the fence company, selling us the barbed wire.

One interesting correlation between hi-technology and the people who live in them is the tolerance of the area for alternative lifetsyles according to a recent article in the Austin American Statesman. Apparently both groups of people, gays and hi-tech workers, are looking for the same type of place to live.

In addition to being a painstaking reporter, Tarbell was a moralist. She viewed anti-competitive practices as corrupting as well as unlawful. Here are a few of her comments on the intertwined oil and railroad industries -- as exciting, novel and wildly profitable in the early 1900s as computers and the Internet are now.

Success is sanctified. If all the country had suffered from these raids on competition had been the limiting of the business opportunity of a few hundred men and a constant higher price for refined oil, the case would be serious enough, but there is a more serious side to it. The ethical cost of all this is the deep concern. We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce. As a consequence, business success is sanctified, and, practically, any methods which achieve it are justified by a larger and larger class. All sorts of subterfuges and sophistries and slurring over of facts are employed to explain aggregations of capital whose determining factor has been like that of the Standard Oil Company, special privileges obtained by persistent secret effort in opposition to the spirit of the law, the efforts of legislators, and the most outspoken public opinion.

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Was surprised to see intelligent remarks about Slashdot and Linux in a front page article.

Was surprised to see intelligent remarks about Slashdot and Linux in a front page article.

AMD lost $1 billion last year.
We know from an earlier slashdot article that they will lose about $200 million Q1 1999
They will make back some of that from selling a part off (I forgot which part, might have been done by now), and tax/accounting tricks.
We need to support AMD to keep it going so chip development will continue at a rapid pace.