Slashdot Mirror

Look at who started using Drupal in the last year or two: The Economist, The Grammys, Fast Company, The Examiner, House.gov (and all ~535 house websites) recently moved to Drupal, Energy.gov, WhiteHouse.gov, and here's a list of some 120 national governments using Drupal.

But hey, Drupal only has 2% market share of all sites on the web, is being adopted by government and corporate organizations at a maddening pace, and just had their first major release in 3 years. There's no reason why this Drupal shit should be discussed on Slashdot.

I'm curious what 'relative' applies to.

Eve Collier was able to read off of 50+ year recordings and restore them.

No, the title of the article is correct, this recording did indeed win a Grammy (it won in the category of "Historical"). See more at the Grammy website.

One of my physics professors was interviewed several times with a number of articles written in major newspapers like the New York Times for his physics songs. One such article can be found at http://www.grammy.com/features/2005/0415physics.as px. All his songs can be found at http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/. He usually has a song for each major subject in the syllabus, and, unlike the students in TFA, we were usually quite receptive, to the point where we would write our own songs. Some in the class even cited some of the songs as being extremely helpful during exams, because the equations come easier with a tune behind them. I don't know why there's such a strong connection between science and music, but it certainly seems to be shining through lately.

Actually, it probably didn't even need altogether that much stuff. If you take a look at the I2Hub website, they have a link called Press, which details where the I2Hub software has been publicized online. They list (among other bits) a prior Slashdot listing, a News.Com article and even an article on Grammy.com! So all they probably did was once they were aware of the existance of I2Hub, they talked to the various universities that are a part of Internet2 until they found one who would allow RIAA access to Net2, then deployed the same tools they use against regular P2P applications.

And oh, the articles first appeared on April 29/04, April 30/04 and May 3/04 respectively.

Actually, the porn companies do crack down on file sharers.

Titan Men, a large gay porn video company, is doing serious crackdowns on file sharers and illegal copying of their works.

I would love to post some links to show you, but I'm at work. :) http://www.grammy.com/news/artswatch/2004/0120scre ener.aspx has a paragraph where they briefly mention Titan's feelings on this stuff.

All of their videos start with a message like, "THANK YOU FOR NOT ALLOWING THIS TITAN FEATURE TO BE ILLEGALLY DUPLICATED", etc.

yeah, because u2 isn't still making any headway in the world of music. oh wait, they were nominated for a ton of grammy's and won 7 of them for that album. yeah, you'd probably never hear about their stuff being released... ;P

seriously though, i don't think it is a stunt, but maybe that is wishful thinking.

But ideally they're representing artists rights, put to that position by artists...

That is not correct. The *RI* organizations represent the recording industry, not artists. Recording artists are represented by organizations like the Recording Acadamy and the Recording Artists Coalition --organizations which are often at odds with the RIAA.

So, is there a Project Gutenberg for music? I can find sheet music on Mutopia, but where are the public domain recordings? The Recording Academy has a preservation project to preserve all kinds of recorded music, but no word on whether they plan to make the public domain works available. The RA turned over part of its materials to the US Library of Congress, which does maintain a collection of recordings, but again there is no clear provision for obtaining public domain recordings for pleasure. There is a system for obtaining certain recordings online or as a copy, for academic or research purposes. So, where is our our public domain recorded music archive?

Yes, tape is a "true backup medium", but it is *not* a suitable medium for longterm archival storage - at least, none of the affordable formats up till this point (like the DAT-derived DDS format) have been. There's a big difference between a backup medium (a copy that's probably replaced every day / week / month and is intended for use in the immediate future) and archival storage (a copy that's intended for use 5+ years in the future).

While the failure of a tape drive won't separate you from your data (unless the drive damages the tape at the same time it fails . . .), tapes themselves deteriorate over time. Here's an article about the problems the National Archives here in the United States have encountered with preserving copies of the Nixon tapes on DDS's audio cousin DAT. An excerpt:

"During the National Archives' routine monitoring of the tapes'
condition, the analog reel-to-reel copies have shown no signs of
deterioration whereas there is an estimated 5-10% catastrophic failure
rate among the DATs in the collection. There appears to be no pattern
to the failures. It has occurred on new tapes that were recorded six
months ago, and it has occurred on tapes that were recorded six years
ago. It has occurred on all brands of DAT purchased throughout the
previous seven years. Accordingly, the archivists routinely reduplicate
these DATS on multiple copies. As insurance, archivists also transfer
DAT copies back onto analog reel-to-reel preservation copies. Unlike
the other preservation analog copies, these copies have not been
filtered and closely "mirror" the original tapes. Therefore, in the
future when technology has progressed, the archivists can retrieve
conversations that are extremely close to the original audio recordings
and enhance these with the latest technology."

Leading audio preservationists have issued their own warning. This company deals with audio preservation, and has some interesting things to say about tape formats - analog and digital.

Of course, DDS tapes have supposedly been manufactured to a higher standard than their Audio DAT cousins, sport finer particles and stronger binders, and the format includes additional error correction and redundancy. Still, these issues with a modern tape format like Audio DAT are not an encouraging sign for those seeking to perform archival storage using DDS and it contemporaries. HP for example only claims a 10 year archival life for DDS. Contrast that with the 75-100 year lifespans Kodak and TDK are claiming for CD-R.

These longevity issues won't just be confined to older tape backup formats though, if history is any indication. It's the nature of the medium. I think Sony is currently claiming a 30-year lifespan for AIT, and HP something similar for their new format, but of course we only have a couple of years' experience with them so far, and given the incredible data density of those formats, if something should go wrong with either of them the results could be catastrophic. Unexpected deterioration has certainly happened with tape before - witness this article composer and synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos put on her website, as well as her own experience with her older tape masters.

Hard drives certainly aren't a great archival medium either, but I wouldn't be so quick to assert that tape is superior. At least drives have the advantage of being sealed from the outside atmosphere, and contain within them all the logic and hardware required to extract that information in the future. The only big issues I can see are, will there still be equipment to interface with them in 10 to 20 years (probably, since IDE is so widespread) and will the drives still spin up in 10 to 20 years (who knows). It's that second issue that's the real buzzkill for HD's as a longterm storage medium. Manufacturers won't even issue a decent warranty on drives anymore. What does that say about their planned longevity?

Me, I think your best bet is DVD. But if you really want to be able to read that data in the future, I'd suggest copying it to at least two different formats, perhaps AIT *and* DVD. Don't forget to check on it every few years, too. If there's any sign of deterioration, you'll hopefully be able to make another clone before the failure becomes catastrophic (perhaps to a superior format that hasn't even been invented yet). If you want something you can just throw in a hole and forget about, sorry - that media doesn't exist.

what, you don't like me mocking Recording Academy CEO Michael Greene's speech.

http://www.grammy.com/news/industry/0425riaa.html

'Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves.' Did that CD really need copy-protecting?

With the huge success of a bluegrass music at last night's grammy awards, the demand for country (American Roots/bluegrass/traditional) music will, most likely, increase greatly.

I, as much as any code monkey, love "music to code by" -- especially metal -- but I was thrilled to see O Brother Where Art Thou do so well. It was a great movie with an even better soundtrack.

Yes, it's called the European Union Copyright Directive.

As a future ex-patriot I'm beginning to wonder where I'm going to go.

NARAS

Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell