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SoundExchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders, has said the ruling was fair and that the rapid growth in advertising revenues from online music broadcasting would more than allow webcasters to cover the new fees.

SoundExchange pointed to research finding that those ad revenues grew from $50 million in 2003 to $500 million last year.

SoundExchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders, has said the ruling was fair and that the rapid growth in advertising revenues from online music broadcasting would more than allow webcasters to cover the new fees.

SoundExchange pointed to research finding that those ad revenues grew from $50 million in 2003 to $500 million last year.

My friend Rolf does this for a living. What he takes depends on how long he's going to be gone and what he's going to be doing, but generally speaking he also doesn't take any of that crap, either. But after a few years in Asia, he found himself in a hotel in Bangkok eavesdropping on someone else's James Brown. Now Rolf very often takes his iPod. He has found it a great way to share culture with other people and avoid serious homesickness.

They're under the Associated Federation of Organizations. You can read about them here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2006/1 2/31/scripts/rhubarb.shtml
--
What are sunshile laws to Solar power? http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

It means that we may have reached the limit of what you can expect out of workers, regardless of the income-level. We've squeezed workers to the point that marriages are failing, children are ignored and people have to be miserable if they want to pay their bills. Workers are made "management" so they can't get paid for overtime. The wonderful 7am "working breakfast" meetings become common. A CEO's effectiveness is measured by how many people he can lay off.

according to marketplace free beer is not free http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/12/2 9/PM200612295.html

the reason you might have to try many oss projects before you find a good one is that places like sourceforge and other big oss places never seem to drop any abandoned projects so they sit around popping up in search results. My theory is that all software starts off bad and gets better over time. Bad closed source is harder to find because they don't release until they think they can sell it or they go out of buisness and nobody is allowed to spread it.

I thought this was the point of Wikia.

I remember hearing a report on NPR on this subject. It mentioned Wikia as a commercial counterpart to Wikipedia. Granted Wikia will probably never have the force of the Wikipedia, but this seems a more palatable approach.

Here's the source:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/08/3 0/PM200608305.html

Any news on how Wikia's doing financially?

Marketplace http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/12/2 9/PM200612294.html No excuse for the Big Media companies not to know - DRM will not work!

They have a podcast, so you can download the segment as MP3 (for now):

12/19/06 Marketplace Morning Report 2

The segment is at 5:40 if you want to skip directly to it.

After all, it's produced using taxpayer money, it better be publicly accessible.

They have a podcast, so you can download the segment as MP3 (for now):

12/19/06 Marketplace Morning Report 2

The segment is at 5:40 if you want to skip directly to it.

After all, it's produced using taxpayer money, it better be publicly accessible.

Marketplace isn't an NPR program; the show is produced and distributed by American Public Media. Though many public radio stations air programs from both NPR and APM (as well as other orgnizations like Public Radio International), the two are distinct entities.

[The White Dolphin's] disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.

Prior to the dispersion of humans across the earth, extinction was a purely natural phenomenon that generally occurred at a continuous low rate (mass extinctions being relatively rare events). Starting approximately 100,000 years ago, and coinciding with an increase in the numbers and range of humans, species extinctions have increased to a rate unprecedented since the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. This is known as the Holocene extinction event and is at least the sixth such extinction event. Some experts have estimated that up to half of presently existing species may become extinct by 2100.

Scientists estimate there are 10 to 30 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them unidentified. Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear. Most die off, Tilman says, because of human activity. "We take natural habitats convert them to agriculture, to suburbia, to roads, to monoculture forestry. We fish the oceans so heavily we literally have these trolling nets that scrape the bottom of the ocean clean," he says.

Pencils? Silly Canadians, ballot marking should be done in ink for fairly obvious reasons.

I've run into two types of ballots in Minnesota, both printed on legal sized light card stock. One where you draw a line through your selection, connecting the triangles on either side. The other is a fill in the bubble type of thing. Both are easily read by human eyes optical scanners. The line through the selection ballot is great for many people with limited mobility. My grandfather only has to bring a ruler to the polling place to place his vote, otherwise he is unable to draw a line that the optical scanner is able to read.

Unfortunately, I think we've done away with the line style ballot in favor of a fill in the oval type ballot as every polling place is equipped with a new Automark device to fill the needs of the differently abled. The Automark device is able to read the ballet in a computerized voice to the visually impaired and displays the ballot on a touch screen with optional magnification. Users use a 4 direction keypad and select key or the touch screen to navigate between candidates and offices. Using the select key marks the ballot for the current candidate (in ink). Automark News Article 1, Automark News Article 2. Thanks to the Help America Vote Act, every Minnesota polling place has an Automark machine.

The AutoMark machine uses the same official ballot as everyone else, and is fed into the same combination optical scanner/secure ballot box that everyone else feeds their ballot into. Voters fill out the ballots, put their ballot in the optical scanner/vote box.

To me, the Minnesota ballot system seems to be the best of both worlds. Votes are tallied by computer, yet there is a full paper trail, and there will be limited a hand counted audit. Most of the voting equipment is cheap. Pens, voting booths, a minimum of one optical scanner and one Automark machine are provided to each polling location. If the optical scanner fails, ballots can be deposited into secure ballot boxes and hand counted or fed into an optical scanner later. If the Automark machine fails, voting judges can still assist voters with filling out their ballots.

No system is perfect, but every election I'm impressed by the thought and good decision making that went into Minnesota's ballots.

Pencils? Silly Canadians, ballot marking should be done in ink for fairly obvious reasons.

I've run into two types of ballots in Minnesota, both printed on legal sized light card stock. One where you draw a line through your selection, connecting the triangles on either side. The other is a fill in the bubble type of thing. Both are easily read by human eyes optical scanners. The line through the selection ballot is great for many people with limited mobility. My grandfather only has to bring a ruler to the polling place to place his vote, otherwise he is unable to draw a line that the optical scanner is able to read.

Unfortunately, I think we've done away with the line style ballot in favor of a fill in the oval type ballot as every polling place is equipped with a new Automark device to fill the needs of the differently abled. The Automark device is able to read the ballet in a computerized voice to the visually impaired and displays the ballot on a touch screen with optional magnification. Users use a 4 direction keypad and select key or the touch screen to navigate between candidates and offices. Using the select key marks the ballot for the current candidate (in ink). Automark News Article 1, Automark News Article 2. Thanks to the Help America Vote Act, every Minnesota polling place has an Automark machine.

The AutoMark machine uses the same official ballot as everyone else, and is fed into the same combination optical scanner/secure ballot box that everyone else feeds their ballot into. Voters fill out the ballots, put their ballot in the optical scanner/vote box.

To me, the Minnesota ballot system seems to be the best of both worlds. Votes are tallied by computer, yet there is a full paper trail, and there will be limited a hand counted audit. Most of the voting equipment is cheap. Pens, voting booths, a minimum of one optical scanner and one Automark machine are provided to each polling location. If the optical scanner fails, ballots can be deposited into secure ballot boxes and hand counted or fed into an optical scanner later. If the Automark machine fails, voting judges can still assist voters with filling out their ballots.

No system is perfect, but every election I'm impressed by the thought and good decision making that went into Minnesota's ballots.

800 lb. guerilla

The following interview with Ralph Girkins, the owner of Universal Tubes, was broadcast on Marketplace - a segment in National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/. A transcript is available at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/10/1 3/PM200610134.html. Makes for interesting readin and definitely changes many of the assumptions that people are making regarding the kind of business he is trying to run. And you can definitely glean his frustration from his comments, at the lack of cooperation from Google/Youtube. So, why not go the American way? Sue sue sue!

All labor unions in China are wings of the communist party, and their primary function is to prevent workers from organizing in any form outside the direct control of the communist party, or trying to gain any sort of political power. The labor unions are more about organizing social outings than advocating for worker.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/labor/ 1016china.htm
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2004/11/2 3/PM200411231.html (audio story)

Walmart is more than happy to have the Chinese brand of labor unions in its stores.

Marketplace had a nice (and humorous) segment on this about a week ago.

On the Internet?!
I thought that was in Minnesota.

When it's got a looser planting on it, then it's protected from neither. It ends up in rivers, where it washes out to the coast and creates anaerobic conditions there; this kills sea life, especially in harbors, river mouths, bays, et cetera. This also harms the community of plants along the coast, and it's one of the reasons why New Orleans got run over by the weather last year - the natural windbreaks are pretty much nonexistent today.

This whole discussion is filled with so much misinformation...

With respect to New Orleans, the opposite is true. The flooding of the Mississippi is what replenished the wetlands and protected New Orleans from storm surge. The creation of the levees prevented the river from flooding and ironically prevented new soil from maintaining the wetlands. Check out this for more information.

As for windbreaks, I doubt the wetlands have much effect, but any effect is diminished as the wetlands shrink due to lack of replenishment.

If he had put his text on a regular webpage with the one pic of the boat's blind spots it would have saved bandwidth, and wouldn't put his face and voice out to be recognizable to thousands of people.

Though perhaps he used Youtube because it's the latest happenin' thing, the "new media."

I just checked a URL that came to mind, there IS a website at whistleblowers.org but there's no mention of any youtube video. Maybe next week they'll get the word. I already heard the story on the radio four hours ago:

"Whistleblower takes his case to YouTube"
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/

Amen to that. I've been listening to only public radio now for about 3 years. NPR, APM, etc.

I love listening to classical music, A Prairie Home Companion, and From the Top.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/
http://www.fromthetop.org/

In your quest to avoid clear channel, I would like to make a suggestion for you: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/th e_current/

Thanks for the tip! I like what I hear so far, but it keeps rebuffering on my DSL connection! I'll try again at another hour, maybe it's a server problem on their side.

Click listen now and you can get either a mp3 stream or wma of the live on the air station. This station is positively amazing, it is a minneapolis station operated by minnesota public radio. It is different though in that public radio is almost always focused on news and classical music, this station plays a HUGE selection of modern non-classical music. A lot of local and independant artists as well as highly tallented artists that can be heard elsewhere (but usually not the "hit single" that you might here)...if you request it, they can play it even if its not in their typical type. They also do a lot of in-studio preformances which are all archived and available for play from their site. An added bonus is that they employ two of the most talented dj's I have ever heard (one was a long time music expert dj at the U of M's college station and the other is just a great dj who got bounced around a lot as non-cc stations got taken over by clearchannel). The two are usually back to back weeknights from around 3:00-10:00 IIRC (thier names would be Mary Lucia and Mark Wheat).

Give it a shot, and try it at a few different times because sometimes you can pick up on djs in a wierd mood (doing a themed set or something) or shows you might not be into: for example, I believe late saturday nights get deep into underground hip-hop and rap which may not be everyones cup of tea or right now as I post this they are playing a DJ Sasha set recorded sometime this week in california.

Ask and ye shall be given

The public broadcasting here is actually pretty damn good (to to mpr.org and find the streaming version of 89.3 The Current) but outside of exceptions like the aforementioned station, nobody listens to it compared to commercial radio or commercial broadcast/cable TV. For education...there are a ton of state owned schools and community colleges...most of them suck. The good ones are actually quite good (a lot of the flagship state universities in the midwest and on the coasts are very highly regarded) but they arent free and often arent even that cheap. They are cheap compared to the top private institutions but they also cant give you the same thing as 40+ thousand dollars a year can do. There are a lot of cheaper private colleges that are worse than the state schools though...just like there are a lot of terribe terrible radio stations that people insist on listening to.

While I am at it, let me just give you a link to The Current because it is simply amazing. The content varies by DJ (they pick what they play unlike the corporates) but it is usually quite good. They also have a large archive on their site of great in-studio preformances. All of it freely available without advertising to people like me and you.

In Africa, they're using cellphones for personal banking, which is a pretty good way to move money without the hassle of checks an credit cards. I'm not sure I like this 30 cent fee, given that most parking isn't all that expensive.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/02/1 6/PM200602166.html

You mean they handled the situation (and the laptop) with a single three-fingered hand? That is quite impressive.

Creepy though.

An illuminating look at how the Indian techs on the other end of the line are told about Americans. It was on Weekend America this week: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/ind ex_20060429.html Both "Dial 'I' For India" and "God Calls the Call Center" are good pieces. "God Calls" is especially enlightening, as it's an interview with the author of "One Night at a Call Center." He advocates some chitchat with the tech support person as a way to break the ice, and talks about the formula "10=35," taught to workers to make them patient with the Americans, as a 35-year-old caller supposedly has the IQ of a 10-year-old Indian.

In short, he thinks small icon advertisements (eg. "drink coke") should be put in the corner of a TV show, and then the TV show should be freely distributed on bittorrent. Everyone wins.

I'm also a fan of product placement, so long as its done tastefully. Products are a part of our culture, we use them all the time. Its unlikely that a billionaire business tycoon on TV would drive a 1976 Pinto. Why not have Ferarri or some high end/high dollar car manufacturer compete for having this new billionaire business tycoon drive one of their products instead of the Pinto?

Probably the most successful product placement campaign in history was by the De Beers diamond cartel. In a few decades they were able to convince much of the world that their rocks were always something involved with love and marriage, especially those failed Hollywood marriages, and you too should participate and give them money in the name of love.

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features /diamonds/mystique1.html
http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/thismonth/artic le.jsp?cid=90486&mainArticleId=118128
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debeers#Marketing

Despite the complete marketing con and manipulation by De Beers, it does not really bother me because it was tastefully done. Diamonds are a girl's best friend is a cute song, and metaphorically it sums up a majority of Eastern European derived women.

Life is better when you have a child's understanding of the world. Beyond that, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Or just like Silvio Berlusconi:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/04/0 6/PM200604066.html

Or Bart Simpson:

Homer: Bart, you're grounded for a year.

Bart: I'll just pay the fine.

Homer: That'll be $3.

Thats a true and appropriate critique. Although I think they do a good job mixing in a few electronic songs into the mix. You should listen late at night and on the weekends, there tends to be a lot of it on then. Which I guess means that its pretty marginalized. For instance I really like the late night stuff, so I actually put their stream on through winamp, output to mp3, load up my ipod and take it with me to work. It is a great system especially since they now again have the 128bit stream. You could send the DJs an email or start a thread on the forum, they seem to be pretty responsive to users. http://kcmp.forum.publicradio.org/

Health care isn't that expensive, the industry is simply corrupt like so many others. Ever wondered about commercials for drugs that require a perscription that say "Ask your doctor"? Your doctor knows better than you which meds to try, if you just keep up good communications they'll offer to switch you over to new drugs if your current ones are having problems. The drug companies want you to bully your doctor into perscribing their medications over another and will raise the price of the drugs to extreme levels to pay for the advertisements.

As for actual procedures, these cost much less than people are billed for. You know how stores will raise their prices then lower it to the original and mark it as a sale increase profits? (especially car and furniture business) This is was hospitals do with health insurance companies. They give the insurance companies discounts on their procedures. How do they afford to do that? Simple, raise the price of procedures so the discounted price is the original price. If you don't believe me, know this: If you pay for a medical procedure out of pocket, you pay anywhere from a small amount more to several times what the insurance company pays the hospital for the same procedure. Here's a citation: MPR

Now here's another fact: If you pool together all the money that everyone in the US pays for medical expenses, you have enough money to buy everyone in the US the medical procedures they need. Duh? No wait, let's say 100,000,000 people paid for medical procedures and 150,000,000 needed it. I'm saying that the amount paid by the 100,000,000 is enough to cover the additional 50,000,000 that need it, just the original people were overcharged. I'd give you a citation for this one but I don't know how to arrange the search terms.

I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?)

One interesting side issue in all this concerns how marketing organizations can exploit CDs like these to end-run the do-not-call rule in telemarketing. In later comments by the original Minnesota Public Radio author http://www.publicradio.org/columns/minnesota/polin aut/ he cites an executive at the firm that developed this CD who talks about how marketers can use this approach to establish a "prior relationship" with people that can then be used to justify calling them for marketing purposes. I'd be curious if marketing versions of this CD make any of this explicit. Apparently the only terms of use on the MN Republican CD enforce the rights of the software developers.

Note that this doesn't apply to the Minnesota Republican Party's use of this technology since political solicitations are explicitly excluded from the do-not-call law (wonder why?).

Something is not right with the so-called 'packet captures' provided by the person that wrote the article on the Minnesota Public Radio site (http://www.publicradio.org/columns/minnesota/poli naut/):

  And let's assume -- and remember this is a hypothetical here -- I had enough intelligence to decompile the program and figure out what data is being captured and sent. Could I do it?

Yes. Someone did.

No.", "Time", "Source", "Destination", "Protocol", "Info" "1", "17:11:52.780492305", "192.168.125.128", "10.2.2.81", "TCP", "1106 > http [SYN] Seq=0 Ack=0 Win=64240 Len=0 MSS=1460" "2", "17:11:52.794481754", "10.2.2.81", "192.168.125.128", "TCP", "http > 1106 [SYN, ACK] Seq=0 Ack=1 Win=64240 Len=0 MSS=1460" "3", "17:11:52.799275636", "192.168.125.128", "10.2.2.81", "TCP", "1106 > http [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=1 Win=64240 Len=0" "4", "17:11:52.806763172", "192.168.125.128", "10.2.2.81", "TCP", "[TCP segment of a reassembled PDU]"
Now that's pretty basic stuff: what your IP is, what your CPU is, what your operating system is. But is it possible to find out what your answers are to the questions? Including your phone number, your address, your name, your spouse's name and how you vote?

Yes. Someone did.


The IP addresses listed in the snipet above are both part of IANA-reserved ranges for internal use.
So, until they show the real packet contents, I'm calling bullshit on the conspiracy theory, and tell refer them to the first post on this thread.

You have to consider that the personal information, such as name and phone number, are probably there to keep people from voting more than once. Also, if you're filling out a form about your opinions and submitting it - whether it says you're sending it elsewhere or not - you're submitting it, for crap's sake. To submit means to turn something in. It's common sense, really.

Without a privacy policy, the state party can tell your views to anyone at all. If you give the "wrong" answers on abortion or other issues, they can tell your boss, members of your church, or anyone else. In fact, these answers could get distributed to campaigns in your town during get-out-the-vote efforts - precisely the place where "wrong" answers can be most damaging.

I'll believe it when I see it - if anyone really did that, it would be on the news in a heartbeat anyway. And - once again, common sense - it's just not going to happen.

What's worse. That information is on a public Web site. I'm not going to tell you what site we found it on, just to let you know that the data is there. And it can be found. Easily so. In fact, the experts I talked with suggested that having it so readily available is "amazingly stupid" of any data mining company.

Well that doesn't sound all so credible to me, but it does beg some consideration. It does sound like a privacy issue to me. But wait a minute - look at that image a little more closely. All I see is a bunch of names and dates and numbers - no opinions. If someone can prove that the opinions are shown, it's fairly serious. Otherwise, although many people may feel uncomfortable or intruded upon for it, it's only names. So do us all a favor and don't get the wrong impression.

MPR post with screenshots

Original MPR article

MPR post with screenshots

Original MPR article

From part of his story at Minnesota Public Radio.

BEGIN QUOTE:

I wrote:

I really enjoyed the production work on the CD for the marriage amendment. It was first-rate stuff and as a Flash novice, made me a little bit envious. The copy that Tom Scheck gave me required an access code. Do all the CDs being mailed out come with an access code? If so, I'm curious as to why that is and wondering if the "votes" I'm asked to take during the presentation are reported back to the MN GOP? And, if so, are they matched to the access code and do you keep a record of what code is mailed to what person?

Mark was kind enough to respond promptly:

Thank you for the kind words regarding the high tech merits of the cd. Like any political survey done by the Party, it is our hope the cd will help us recruit more volunteers, provide valuable voter ID information and hopefully allow us to raise money so we can continue to send the cd out to more Minnesotans. On Friday, the cd will be released to the public. The cd's packaging will make clear that the cd is interactive in nature.

A follow-up e-mail from me:

So by interactive in nature, do you mean the results are being reported back to the GOP and, if so, are they identified by the access code?

And a response:

Yes- very similar process to if you got a free AOL cd at the grocery store.

Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio has recently launched an alternative music station called The Current. Though they are, at heart, a terrestrial broadcast station, they also stream on the web. Given their target demographic (i.e. young people), I'm guessing that a significant number of their listeners tune in over the web and that their fundraising successes thus far have relied at least partially on convincing internet listeners to donate.

Is it inconceivable that this model could work just as well for an internet-only station? I don't think so, but it isn't easy. Minnesota Public Radio has been in the public broadcasting business for a while and in addition to producing excellent radio shows with talented staff, they are experts on fundraising. It's not enough to just throw some music on their internet and hope people will send you checks, but I think The Current proves that the possibility is there for this model to work.

Here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio has recently launched an alternative music station called The Current. Though they are, at heart, a terrestrial broadcast station, they also stream on the web. Given their target demographic (i.e. young people), I'm guessing that a significant number of their listeners tune in over the web and that their fundraising successes thus far have relied at least partially on convincing internet listeners to donate.

Is it inconceivable that this model could work just as well for an internet-only station? I don't think so, but it isn't easy. Minnesota Public Radio has been in the public broadcasting business for a while and in addition to producing excellent radio shows with talented staff, they are experts on fundraising. It's not enough to just throw some music on their internet and hope people will send you checks, but I think The Current proves that the possibility is there for this model to work.

I hate to say it, but I'd rather not have the content than be forced to look at ads. I refuse to watch most television because I hate the commercials (if I do watch TV, I mute the ads). I wouldn't be so adamante about this issue... but, the commercials all suck, in general. Every once in a while I see one tha captures my attention and will enjoy seeing once or twice after the first time.

The same applies to radio. I stopped listening. I hate the commercials (I really draw a line at Diamond commercials, I'll fly across a room faster than light to switch the station, or turn it off). I do support MRP and the local jazz station, as well as the local christian radio station when I have the funds. They all offer content that I really enjoy, and am willing to pay for. I would be sad to see Slashdot go to pay only, but as it is, I can't even afford internet at home (yup, I'm slacking off at work).

Guess again. The midwest doesn't hold a candle to the Pacific islands in terms of Spam consumption, thanks to WWII. They actually serve Spam and rice for breakfast at McDonalds here.

It's more of a staple food and part of island culture. Hawaii leads the nation in per capita Spam consumption.
We actually make particular can just for Guam, that's called hot and spicy.
All-Spam restaurant is serious business for the Philippines

If you don't live here, try 89.3's live stream.

So said Future Tense, when it covered the Pew survey last night.

I live in the public radio heaven: Twin Cities, MN. Not only we have a classical and news channels but also an alernative/eclectic/rock/whatever station with 0 commercials: check it out sometime http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/th e_current/. Not to mention an independent jazz (Jazz88) and community (KFAI) stations.

Minnesota Public Radio launched The Current about a year ago and it's fantastic. It's like having a good-quality college station, but with better production values.

I switch between The Current and MPR's "news and information" station. It's rare I don't find something worth listening to on either.

I can't listen to commercial radio any more.

According to Marketplace on Thanksgiving, the failure rate of the Xbox 360 is about 15%.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/11/2 4/PM200511242.html