Slashdot Mirror

Am I the only one waiting for Mr. Hall (aka Moby) to make an appearance on Slashdot in his defence, as per his participation in the "Moby sucks because he uses DAT backup for his live shows" on USENET in 1993. (has it been that long? /me checks watch)

Moby did a similar challenge some years ago. On an album, there was an accapella of "everytime you touch me". But the mixed song wasn't released. Moby asked people to do something with this accapella. Then, the "everytime you touch me" single was released, with Moby mixes and contributed winner mixes.
Also, a bunch of Moby fans worked on a compilation of remixes called "Thanks" (find my "emptiness" remix there) . Moby got a piece of that compilation, enjoyed it, and proposed his help (original samples) for "Thanks 2".

-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.

In 1997, I registered the domain name moby.org for my unofficial, noncommercial Moby fan site. It is not for profit, but it is not a nonprofit corporation. Should I be worried that this domain may be taken away from me in the future because of a tightening of .org rules?

Or how about Delerium? These folks put about 3 album's worth of MP3's on their webpage, and now their songs are appearing in movies and television ads, which generate a lot more money for them ... It's a darn good cooincidence to me...

Exposure. Thats what generates money in this age, and nothing does it better than the Internet. Its a perfect parallel to the 1980's casette tape (please tell me you know what these are) craze , where everyone and their neighbor traded their favorites. To the record companies, it's short term loss for long term gain.

And ever notice who's doing all the complaining? Its the old-school groups like Metallica and Dr. Dre, who realize that, hey, if the public can listen to new bands that do the same genre we do, then they might not listen to us anymore, so lets kill off their means of exposure, since we already have ours.

Why the rucus? Because the establishment isn't making money. They realize that the MPAA/etc. can't be the middle-man anymore, so they don't get a cut of the profit. It used to be that MTV and the Record Labels told us what we could listen to, but it doesn't have to be that way anymore, and they're scared.

Without MP3's, how many of you would even know that Techno (all the flavors) and/or Goth exists? Or would you still be listening to InSync and Backstreet Boys, because thats all the Radio tells us is out there?

A week and a half ago, I began converting my site from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0. Thanks to the W3C's validator, it was pretty easy to do.

Aside from changing the DOCTYPE and adding an XML declaration, all I had to do was make all elements and attributes lowercase, quote all attributes, and close all standalone tags (<br/>, <hr/>, <img src="tweet.jpg" ... />, etc.). It only took a little further tweaking to make it display nicely in Netscape 4.7, IE 5, and even lynx!

Unfortunately, it seems that XHTML chokes Mac IE 4.5 (and presumably surrounding versions). That browser just displays the page source without rendering it. Since I want my site to be viewable by anybody on any platform (and IE5 is not yet out for Mac), I had to go back to HTML 4.0. Argh!

I really like XHTML so far, though, and will probably convert to it as soon as Mac IE supports it (4.5 users: tough luck). If you want to see one of my preliminary XHTML endeavors, go to moby.org's mailing list archives page. Try it with any browser. AFAIK, it works fine with almost all of them.

A week and a half ago, I began converting my site from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0. Thanks to the W3C's validator, it was pretty easy to do.

Aside from changing the DOCTYPE and adding an XML declaration, all I had to do was make all elements and attributes lowercase, quote all attributes, and close all standalone tags (<br/>, <hr/>, <img src="tweet.jpg" ... />, etc.). It only took a little further tweaking to make it display nicely in Netscape 4.7, IE 5, and even lynx!

Unfortunately, it seems that XHTML chokes Mac IE 4.5 (and presumably surrounding versions). That browser just displays the page source without rendering it. Since I want my site to be viewable by anybody on any platform (and IE5 is not yet out for Mac), I had to go back to HTML 4.0. Argh!

I really like XHTML so far, though, and will probably convert to it as soon as Mac IE supports it (4.5 users: tough luck). If you want to see one of my preliminary XHTML endeavors, go to moby.org's mailing list archives page. Try it with any browser. AFAIK, it works fine with almost all of them.

Over the past couple years, hundreds of emails have piled up that I should have replied to and handled in some way, but I didn't because I was both busy and lazy. At the same time, I've been accumulating quite a few books about things I want to learn. They sit on a shelf or the floor, mostly unread. Sometimes I look at all that I am supposed to be doing and want to do, and it's just overwhelming. My time management is severely lacking. The dawn of the 2000s (with the 3rd millennium / 21st century now less than a year away) provides an excellent opportunity to get my life in order.

I've given some thought to how I can learn and do more while enjoying a less chaotic life. Rather than just semipassively dealing with things as they come, I need to set specific goals and outline incremental steps toward their achievement. These steps should be mapped into a timetable that I will make a sincere effort to follow. This will not and should not be rigid, but should allow flexibility and changes as appropriate. I'm not going hard-line on myself -- just trying to apportion my time in an optimal manner.

Here's an example of how I intend to work this: I would like to learn Perl in the first half of this year. I own O'Reilly's Learning Perl book, which has 19 chapters. I'm in chapter 2. All I need to do is read at least three chapters per month (trying for one a week), and I should have enough basic skills to make my website more dynamic. It's easy to allocate an hour here and there for a trivial chunk of reading. What's important is that I stick to it.

I'll probably read several books concurrently so I don't get bored or frustrated with one while another one like Java beckons enticingly. No log jams here. :)

I'm not limiting this time management approach to just books, either. There are some things I seriously need to work on IRL. Exercise is just one of these. I've found it hard to drag myself to a nearby health club for a few minutes every week. Well, I'm going to step it up, because a healthy body leads to a healthy mind... or at least a better lifestyle.

But the point of this message is that I believe that self-discipline is the key to achieving goals and making the most of the time and resources God has given us.

Happy 2000!