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Also, it's not like I'm all that upset about it. I just decided to not give them $80 bucks or so of my money, as did a couple of friends. I didn't pirate or even download for free their music. I didn't take a single thing away from Radiohead. I just chose not to support them because I feel they weren't totally on the up and up about the whole thing. I'm also saying that only doing 160 kbps cost them money. That was just low enough to piss off some of their fans, and it accomplished nothing. A higher quality version was bound to be pirated and it was. So Radiohead not only did something a little shady, they did it for no purpose because they still have enough of the old mindset to think that they had something to gain by doing this.

Well, I'm sure a lot more people will flame me now with vitriol and four letter words rather than merely disagreeing with me and saying why. To them I say ahead of time that there are many decaffeinated coffees on the market and they taste just as good as the regular ones. Cheers.

Given that the download was at a low bitrate, especially for a purchased product, it was guaranteed to be pirated. They really only saw the download as a promotion for the CD, not as a new business model approach. Radiohead never intended to allow people to download a full 320 kbps (CD quality) version of their album. They really weren't quite as forward thinking as they were given credit for.

Sorry... I couldn't help myself: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1560413&vid=15096 8

they [hardcore gamers] aren't the problem, although they may admittedly not be very good at predicting market movements. what do you even mean when you say they're the "problem", that doesn't make sense.

and the 360 is doing pretty well as i understand, sure not as well as the Wii but, so?

My experience with health care in the U.S. is both as a patient and a health-care provider. Since graduating college 20 years ago, there has not been a single year that I have not been covered with some type of health insurance, even though I was a poor graduate student for 4 of those years.

Regarding elasticity of healthcare pricing, I guess Simon suggests that healthcare pricing does not reflect the balance between supply and demand. I don't think you can make this statement. Demand for healthcare is very high. I see patients constantly escalating the severity of their relatively minor problems so that they can obtain coverage via their HMOs. I can say that regarding physician charges, when there are an excess of physicians, their charges drop. I see it daily where I live - the least in demand surgeons take the poorest reimbursing insurances. I believe the same is true of hospitals.

I have met a nurse who previously worked in the NHS, and a patient previously treated in the NHS. Both agreed that healthcare in the U.S. is much better. It is clear in talking to them that healthcare in the U.S. is more highly regulated than in GB. Objectively, I don't think we have good metrics for evaluating the performance of health care systems - life expectancy and infant mortality are plagued by confounding variables.

You may wish to check out the editorial at MTV: http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1563758/st ory.jhtml for an alternative viewpoint on Universal Coverage and Single-Payer Healthcare systems.

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18 million people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. . . . That last statement is even truer than you'd know from watching "Sicko." In the case of Canada -- which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation -- a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist: . . . James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." Last month, the Associated Press reported that Gordon Brown -- just installed this week as Britain's new prime minister -- had promised to inaugurate "sweeping domestic reforms" to, among other things, "improve health care." . . . Moore's most ardent enthusiasm is reserved for the French health care system, which he portrays as the crowning glory of a Gallic lifestyle far superior to our own. The French! They work only 35 hours a week, by law. They get at least five weeks' vacation every year. Their health care is free, and they can take an unlimited number of sick days. It is here that Moore shoots himself in the foot. He introduces us to a young man who's reached the end of three months of paid sick leave and is asked by his doctor if he's finally ready to return to work. No, not yet, he says. So the doctor gives him another three months of paid leave -- and the young man immediately decamps for the South of France, where we see him lounging on the sunny Riviera, chatting up babes and generally enjoying what would be for most people a very expensive vacation. Moore apparently expects us to witness this dumbfounding spectacle and ask why we can't have such a great health care system, too. I think a more common response would be, how can any country afford such economic insanity? . . . Having driven his bring-on-government-health care argument into a ditch outside of Paris, Moore next pilots it right off a cliff and into the Caribbean on the final stop on his tour: Cuba. Here it must also be said that the director performs a valuable service. He rounds up a group of 9/11 rescue workers -- firefighters and selfless volunteers -- who risked their lives and ruined their health in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attacks. These people -- there's no other way of putting it -- have been screwed, mainly by the politicians who were at such photo-op pains to praise them at the time. (This makes Moore's faith in government medical compassion seem all the more inexplicable.) These people's lives have been devastated -- wracked by chronic illnesses, some can no longer hold down jobs and none can afford to buy the various expensive medicines they need. Moore does them an admirable service by bringing their plight before a large audience. However, there's never a moment when we doubt that he's also using these people as props in his film, and as talking points in his agenda. Renting some boats, he leads them all off to Cuba. Upon arrival they stop briefly outside the American military enclave on Guantanamo Bay so that Moore can have himself filmed begging, thr

Kurt Loder of all people had a pretty insightful analysis of Moore's film. It's well worth the read.

I'd just like point out this link: http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1563758/st ory.jhtml

From MTV no less. But its worth a read. In short, you can't mandate access to a scarce resource without rationing. The best course of action (IMHO) is to reduce the cost of healthcare. And no, I'm not talking about making health insurance charge less by some law, I'm talking about reducing the real costs. The cost of malpractice insurance is one area that creates a big impact on the final cost of health care. Also moving more of the development of new drugs into public institutions and making sure that the results aren't privatized. Even patent reform could help in this area.

There are underlying realities in the health care industry that can not be changed. You can't increase the number of EFFECTIVE doctors and you can't make them work for peanuts. You can drive down the costs of education, equipment and drugs through the use of public funding though.

Ray Bradbury said it best: the remedy to speech you don't like is more speech. (As opposed to censoring the speech you don't like.)

A Google person is offering to help health care organizations tell their side of the story, and this is "evil"? If you think this is "evil" then I guess you think there is no room for debate here.

Personally, I think health care issues are not so cut-and-dried as that. For a look at the other side of the story, consider this editorial from MTV:

'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, By Kurt Loder

steveha

I have found the following links still working at the moment for aspects of this story:

Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.
Link.

Apparently, dressing like a pirate could be seen as showing loyalty to the school: The Millersville U. mascot is a swarthy, eye patch-wearing pirate named the Marauder, with a colorful sidekick parrot who goes by the handle Skully.

"Nine Inch Nails will not be performing at the MTV Movie Awards as previously announced. We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop," Reznor wrote. "Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me. See you on tour this fall when we return to play in America."

"CD sales are down, but that could be due to people buying the single digital tracks they want instead of entire albums. Other than that, the demograhic with the time and money to waste on music - teens and 20 somethings - just don't care." Good point. But there is something else that I think is overlooked all too often, and has more of an impact than this. Have you seen the amount of utter crap in the charts these days? It's horrible. I hate walking anywhere near music stores today, simply because of the crap that is played there is either extremely vulgar or offensive, or just downright bad music. Just look at the top 20. http://www.mtv.com/music/charts/#/music/charts/bil lboard/singles.jhtml Most of it can be described as "Yo, girl, I'm so hot, I'm going to make love to you, yeah, hoes and bitches and gangsters is my life" And what the hell is with them labelling it Rhythm and Blues? Its not Rhythm. It's not Blues. If anything, it's about 15 year old girls whining that their 25 year old boyfriends won't pay their $800 phone bills. ARGH! BZ

The sane amongst you might prefer the plain HTML version: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1548258/20061218/ id_0.jhtml

Time for a little party? Who's up for mortgaging their house to fund it?

These devices are a great step forward and I challenge criticisms of them. These are things in their infancy but with our economy as it is, I'll bet there's a few early adopters out there for this technology.

The only valid criticisms might be cost & intrusion. They are both fairly large devices from what I can tell. In order for them to last a while, I would assume they are made out of solid steel that would be ever present in a living room. Frankly, I'm surprised that they went the bike/running route when it would have been easier to set up a rowing or "hand cycling" device instead. I don't think this device is for the gamer who is looking to tone his already rock hard body so I wouldn't be so concerned which muscles the device works out, only that they achieve a cardiovascular exercise when they use the device. I can think of a contraption for rowing that is quite small (hooks to your feet and has a t-bar for your hands to pull) or a hand peddle device with little more than a base to stabilize it.

I like the FP GameRunner much more than the Geek-A-Cycle which simply powers the computer ... after all, it's competition that drives the gamer. Hell, if you can make these cheap and very competitive in nature, I'm sure many schools will be interested in using them for gym class. The only requirement is that you have a healthy mix of strength versus strategy, I doubt that simply pumping your legs for five minutes and the fastest wins will draw many people. Provide a live course that adjusts for the path you take on the trail and penalizes you for falling and I think you're definitely headed in the right direction.

These are good starts at addressing a growing problem, but I'm hoping innovation kicks in as this market grows. In college, my roommate would watch TV and fix an device to his arm that sent electric shocks to his muscles. He would sit there and twitch and twitch and I just could not stomach that. These are, in my opinion, better that the over medication and electrocution I've witnessed some people put themselves through.

I actually work with a lot of MySpace artists with my site (I have a MS account, but I mean popexperiment). Ya, ripping off 96Kbps @ 22050Khz will really help you satisfy that need. Nothing like kicking back and taking in the hiss.

The only thing I really don't like about this is a lot of musicians and labels have come to depend on MS (say what you like, I work in a web-services company, I know Coldfusion and MySpaces scales poorly) and they might start pulling content. MS is actually the best resource out there right now for finding new work (since mp3.com really, which is shit now). Thats a simple fact. And artists can be very, very sketchy about 'lossing control' of their content. Another fact I have to contend with regularly (I run an internet radio channel/show on the previously mentioned site).

Lets hope they plug the hole quickly before knees start to jerk.

More interesting is the pending MySpace downloads. Assuming they don't build it out themselves (which the article seems to suggest isn't the case) this could be great for a lot of independant/international artists and even better for the listeners. Because MS encoded files are great for a quick taste but garbage to really listen to.

Anyway, as usual, we'll see how the chips fall. The net is pretty orgainic.

Playa Rater: The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time

You think you are the first to think of this? If so, you haven't been paying attention. Remember 1986 when Run D.M.C. had the hit My Adidas? You think no one else got the hint over the last 20 years?

You think you are the first to think of this? If so, you haven't been paying attention. Remember 1986 when Run D.M.C. had the hit My Adidas? You think no one else got the hint over the last 20 years?

These are huge companies we're talking about. On that scale, creative design is very hard while marketing is much easier.

If you could get the same number of sales either by creating a new quality product or by giving "Malibu Stacy" a new hat, which would you do? Consider that people prefer familiarity, and the sales figures for that new product will probably not even come close to that of the rehashed one. Overall, the risks involved in the rehash concept are much lower.

Lastly, the quality issue is a completely subjective one. Sometimes, the lack of quality is the actual driving force. Anyway, contracts become insanely difficult or impossible to manage if they rely upon important non-quantifiable variables. Also, doing so in such an industry can destroy you.

Check out http://www.mtv.com/overdrive

It's pretty good. Thousands of videos. Quality is as good as what you usually find on YouTube.

Not sure why nobody knows about this. I mean, at 37, I'm now outside MTV's target demographic (but I was 14 when I GOT MY MTV in 1983, the weekend that the Thriller video was released in it's 14-minute glory.)

But anyway, since MY generation was the one that actually watched videos on MTV for about 6 hours a day instead of listening to the radio, I'd think they'd find a way to market this to the 30-45 year age groups. *shrug*

Rather than read an article about an article why not just go directly here? It's a very informative interview, I really look forward to Super Mario Galaxy and how the Wii controller will work in that type of game.

[My music is] definitely not public domain. I have a publisher and I make money from the publishing of the songs. That's a big part of an income, so I'm not going to pretend that I'm that socialistic about my music. But I'm not so possessive about it that I would sue anyone who misused it. If someone were to sample my work, I would have a hard time seeking payment for that. I don't even have a problem with people illegally downloading that stuff.[emphasis mine]

http://videogames1.mtv.com/pages/news/story.php?id =6150056 Draenei :( Not ogre. Now all the change in the ogre artwork is worthless. They were much better as big fat ogres.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Oops right there. Didn't they just take down a bunch of DC hubs last year for "facilitating piracy". Raids, seisures, big announcements and all that jazz...

You seem like an idealist... and there is nothing wrong with that. It's an admirable trait. Unfortunately even idealism needs to acknowledge the facts.

FISA clearly says a President can only go 15 days without warrant.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/u sc_sec_50_00001811----000-.html

FISA is currently dead in the water.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,178893,00.html

A multibillion dollar NSA exists.

http://nsa.gov/
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1520551/20060111/ index.jhtml?headlines=true

The Patriot Act exists which allows government to get information at will.

http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

The government CAN and DOES use this power.

The sooner Americans can wake up to this fact, the sooner they can make informed decisions if they wish to eliminate the forth

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.billofrights.html

in the effort to gain a little security.

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/000974.html

    ~ Please convince me I'm wrong. I truly wish I was just another foolish crackpot conspiracy theorist as opposed to the alternative

Yes, but celebs also usually take dumps on golden toilet seats...

Well, except for Dave Matthews...

I couldn't find the interview you referenced, but if it's factual than his view has changed. Don't believe half the stuff you read on wikipedia. http://www.mtv.com/bands/a/a_perfect_circle/news_f eature_040122/

Since the article (which was little more than the summary) sucks at least as hard as the actual game, I went ahead and found an equally less revealing post by Ian Bogost who seems to be the programmer. Additionally I found an MTV review (no need to thank me; it was linked from the first article) which has the enlightening quote: "We're hoping this experience is a gateway drug to more sophisticated critique."

Although somehow I have difficulty imagining a serious discussion relating a video game to a gateway drug.

Oh, also you can download it for (amazingly enough) FREE, from here or here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go bathe after being such a dirty karma whore.

I doubt it, as the Smashing Pumpkins are (for now) disbanded. The GP was perhaps referring to their last album, called "Machina: The Machines of God."

Just like MTV Overdrive, I bet this URGE is only going to work in Explorer.

1) Television usage has plummeted. Advertising dollars are slowly moving toward the Internet. Due to competing medias, people are watching less and less TV. Those who think HD is to the TV what Color TV was to Black TV do not get this. For many people, there is NO REASON to go re-buy their TV.

2) Xbox 360 and PS3 are the very first consoles (that I know of) that are requiring the consumer to CHANGE their TV to get the most out of the console. No console has ever done this. This means many people will not think it worth buying a Xbox 360 or PS3 if they don't have HD TV. And face the facts: not too many people do.

3) HD increases development costs. From Gears of War developer, Cliffy B, said, "What other entertainment medium that's mass market is at $60 a pop?" said Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer at developer Epic's 360 title "Gears of War," due next year. "If video game pricing continues to go up, we will crash." http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1515122/20051128/ index.jhtml?headlines=true) To those who say, "development prices don't go up with HD", Cliffy B says the opposite. Nintendo says the opposite. Look at the prices for Xbox 360 games at $60 and you can see which direction this is headed. Even Electronic Arts has complained about the higher development costs. This means that all we can expect from HD games is LESS RISK. Since the market for HD games is much lower than normal TV games, they must either sell more games or price them higher.

4) Americans are obsessed with upgrading their televisions (they also have more money to do it). With the exception of perhaps a few other western nations, HD television is not catching on ANYWHERE in the world soon. While the American Market is very important to the games industry, we live in a global age. A console must work globally, not just in the American Market like the Xbox primarily has done.

5) The integration of 3d helped immersion. Rumble feedback helped immersion. Surround sound helped immersion. But how in the world does HD help immersion? While prettier pictures helped a LOT back in the 80s and during the adaptation of 3d, this was due to the console game industry being young (in the 80s) and adapting to 3d (in the 90s). Simpler a prettier image does not make the game more immersive but rather, less. This is why movies like Toy Story did not show the Humans in computerized graphics. It is the Uncanny Valley problem.

There is only ONE purpose of the HD console: that is to be 'technologically' elite with your HD TV. The problem is that video game console is based on bringing cheap entertainment to the masses. You get rich by selling to the poor, you get poor selling to the rich. This is why HD gaming is not important and, and why it will not catch on (at least this new generation).

You misspelled "Ludacris."

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?name=games - Absolutely amazing to watch firsthand. Twitch doesn't even begin to describe the action, and even more amazing is that the announcers do a good job of covering the action! Worth checking out, however it does require IE and MS.

For those interested, the CPL World Tour Finals are currently taking place in New York City at the Web2Zone Cyber Center. $500,000 is being handed out, $150,000 going to first place.

MTV is following the event and you can watch the matches take place over the Internet live via MTV Overdrive.

MTV will be showing a segment featuring Fatal1ty on Wednesday (11/16) entitled "15 Minutes With... Fatal1ty" @ noon. Then on Saturday (11/26) at 8PM (EST?), the CPL World Tour Finals' match will be rebroadcasted on MTV in which he is expected to be a part of.

To anyone curious as to what professional gaming is about, I highly recommend watching a match or two.

For those interested, the CPL World Tour Finals are currently taking place in New York City at the Web2Zone Cyber Center. $500,000 is being handed out, $150,000 going to first place.

MTV is following the event and you can watch the matches take place over the Internet live via MTV Overdrive.

MTV will be showing a segment featuring Fatal1ty on Wednesday (11/16) entitled "15 Minutes With... Fatal1ty" @ noon. Then on Saturday (11/26) at 8PM (EST?), the CPL World Tour Finals' match will be rebroadcasted on MTV in which he is expected to be a part of.

To anyone curious as to what professional gaming is about, I highly recommend watching a match or two.

I'm 29, and I think Brian Williams is a fantastic anchor. I also saw him as a guest on The Daily Show twice. The impression I got is that he's incredibly sharp and has a very quick wit. The first time, he went toe to toe with Jon Stewart and they were both hilarious. The second time was much more serious, and I was quite impressed with what Brian had been through covering Hurricane Katrina from inside the Super Dome and around New Orleans. Brian is no talking head. He could be replaced by a Gideon Yago type anchor, but the quality of the coverage would surely suffer. Making their newscasts available online is a good step to increasing their viewer base without pandering to meaningless Hollywood gossip, or other gimmicks.

JOhn

> If they cut off the air supply to Itunes ...

Frankly I'd support it if the music execs cut Air Supply out of iTunes.

Last night I decided to check out the MTV VMAs because I saw a commercial on MTV that said you can watch online, on demand, in total control.

Well I fired up FireFox on my Linux desktop and went to http://overdrive.mtv.com/ and low and behold it said: "We're sorry, you're running a Unix system.".

Well, ok, let me go over to the wifey's XP desktop and fire up FireFox. Low and behold it says you must be using IE.

Well unfortunately IE has never worked properly on my wife's computer. So I'm basically SOL as far as MTV is concerned. Oh well.

What would help me would be a plug-in for FireFox that sends a custom post/get header thingy that let's me tell the web server that I'm on a Windows OS running IE (even though it's FireFox on Linux). I know Opera let's you say you're IE but it doesn't let you change your O.S.

Sorry to respond to my own post, but here's a followup article.

Why would Sony give money to a recording artist if not for the rights to the recordings?

Um, to sell them?

Generally yes, signing a record label means giving up recording rights. However the record label doesn't always win and it isn't like exceptions to the rule are impossible. Even in popular music in the U.S. you can find examples of artists who were able to wrangle distribution contracts rather than recording artist contracts, or contracts which are nonexclusive in the sense of allowing the artist to release for competing record labels, or which only cover existing publishing mediums but grant the band the right to re-negotiate on future mediums (I am pretty sure Boston pulled this off with compact discs?).

The article only says that one Sony artist is publishing his work against Sony's will on the iTMS, and only one. Given the existence of multiple wierd exceptions to normal contract rules in American popular music alone, it does not seem at all unrealistic to suppose that there is at least one Japanese popular musician who has a contract wherein he retains some degree of copyright control or contract nonexclusivity.

These days there is very little need for the majors. Everything that musicians need to produce, promote and distribute music is cheap. But the majors have a stranglehold on the media - it's far harder to get mainstream exposure when you aren't playing the payola game (e.g. Sony).

Still unless musicians stand up to the majors and say no to crap contracts, and unless fans start supporting musicians that go the tougher indy route (by not stealing their music when they should be buying), things will move slowly, if at all.

Amen to that. I remember seeing some videos of her getting royally pissed at a game, but can't seem to find em.

"Toward that end, the label group agreed to companywide reforms to detect and prevent future abuses and is making a $10 million donation to local charities to fund programs aimed at music education and appreciation."

That quote is from this link:

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1506321/20050725/ index.jhtml?headlines=true

So, was ti a $10 million fine with a $10 million donation thrown in for good measure?

all the best,

drew

Maybe Sony should just have those "independent promoters" run eDonkey clients instead. It'd be much cheaper.

Regular guys prefer brunettes, gentlemen prefer blondes, but guys like me only accept red.

The Chicken of the Sea thing blew it for them. No blonde kids coming from any future wife of mine--not after that.

http://www.mtv.com/games/video_games/xbox/index.jh tml

Note - requires nasty proprietary combinations of Windows, Media Player, Internet Explorer, and DRM. I've seen the future, and it is locked down. They're also, oddly enough, significantly longer than what was shown on MTV.

These videos do show an impressive amount of physics, which is really what is missing from gaming currently. The graphics don't seem to be enough to wow, and I'm not looking forward to how much that much content will cost to develop, but certainly having that much extra processing power will come in handy. Hopefully it will go to making a better gaming experience rather than just a higher-poly, more normal mapped / enviornment mapped one. Condemned didn't give much hope, but the draw distance and physics in the other games was impressive.

Unfortunately, the most impressive things on new systems seem to be the tech demos. I remember the Xbox ping-pong demo was just stunning, probably moreso than the first round of games, as was the detail on the Dolphin for the Dolphin, or the PS2 shell screen. I'm kind of sad that there aren't any really "wow" demos for the Xbox 360, as a good tech demo is always an impressive, if pointless piece of eye candy.