I think this would be more interesting if the benchmark included a usabilty benchmark between teh two systems.
Meaning, start to finish, how long it took to setup each computer to be a good digital photography workstation, including color matching, scanner setup, etc. Plus, an examination of workflow on each system. Plus an examination on how much the operating system acted as a hinderance to actually getting work done.
Then I'd trust a benchmark. Processor speed and computational speed only extend so far. Windows vs. Mac is not a speed issue, but a usability and interface design issue. Regardless of speed, Mac OS X is more usable than Windows. It puts less obstacles to getting work done than Windows does.
You can't examine "performance" without measuring the performer's productivity, as that has as much to do with how fast a given system is as the processor speed.
Non-band specific parts of band-specific boards
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Discovering New Music?
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· Score: 2, Informative
You should try this. Go to a site for a band you like, and see if their discussion boards have non-specific music forums.
For REM you have my site, murmurs.com which has a HUGE non-REM music section with very diverse tastes.
U2 has interference.com
Radiohead used to have greenplastic.com for boards, but I think ateaseweb is the best.
Most big fansites have something similar. You'd be surprised what you find.
Ethan
I can attest to the distraction
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Professors vs. WiFi
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· Score: 3, Insightful
When I was finishing my undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, the campus was not yet fully wi-fi-ed. I was bored out of my mind because I had put off my GE's until the last possible time I could take them.
The only thing that got me through it was my Ricochet connection in the class room. However I can say that it did distract me to such an extent in class that my grades suffered because of it. I actually ended up not passing one of the classes.
That being said I'm involved in wi-fi-ing the art department at the university I'm currently at for graduate school.
While it is true that teaching has to adapt to wi-fi usage, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing to force it to adapt. Just like any disruptive technology, the repurcusions outside its immediate sphere usually leads to a balancing effect upon other actants in the network it disrupts.
So basically: everything should adapt to pervasive connectivity, whether it likes it or not.
The discussion board runs vbulletin, and I build proximity awareness on top of it using a headerinclude.php file.
The main site runs a component system of my design, where a page is an object that has various components, each of which returns results.
The problem with this is PHP is not suited to this kind of object orientation.
As for releasing source, its not really ready for any primetime release, as a lot of stuff is hardcoded for the site specifically. I would share (that isn't the issue) but the current codebase is not suitable for sharing, really.
My aim is to redo the site using Java, because it is stateful (which lends it to programming autonomy into individual objects) and it is more robust in terms of object orientation. PHP has problems passing objects by reference for instance.
The Java release should be more "open" and I might even do a sourceforge page for it. Not sure yet, still in planning stages.
To handle the discussion board I'd basically wrap vBulletin 3.0 with a Java API.
You can IM me at EthanKap if you want any more info.
I've explored the concept of proximity and simultaneity of presence within my own work, but do it on a website instead of within an installation.
On my site we basically track where people are, but limit you knowing WHO those people are by using affinity relationships gleaned by your buddy list.
The presentation of this information is in the form of a line similar to this:
"There are 3 people here with you and 5 people near you. BUDDIES: Ethank, Ethank2"
The site is broken down into a series of interconnected and hierarchically laid out "rooms." Rooms don't necessarily correspond directly to a page, but roughly they do. Within the discussion board for instance, a forum is a room and every thread within that forum a room under that room (so the forum is its parent).
The way that the "here/near" works is by looking at not only who is in your current room (page) but also who is in rooms one level below in the hierarchy. Some places on the site have indicators on links showing how many people are currently in the room it leads to (to instigate flocking behavior in things like news stories).
We implemented the system 6 months ago and I'm surprised on how willingly people adapted to it. If you look at an overhead view of the site, its shown that the proximity to other users in many tangible ways dictates usage patterns, as well as makes the site feel less like a ghost town.
So where does this lead us? I want to explore more into this notion of reified third-space that this brings up, collapsing space/time into singularity and exploring the notion not of client-server individual experiential models but more of a shared one.
But, instead of in an installation that distills numerous ingress points into an aural landscape, why not actually make this proximity and user awareness transparent on existing sites?
I'm all for good installations (am doing one in April kind of similar to this, but dealing with the physical layer of the Internet), but as a student am more drawn toward subtle almost performative art within the context of Internet participation.
Being that I'm Jewish, but my father's birthday is the 25th, I am spending this holiday bored out of my mind in Fullerton, CA (referenced in the initial post).
I hate to be a party pooper, but I hate Christmas day. Everything is closed, so there is absolutely nothing I can go out and do. I'm stuck with the food in the house and my choices of entertainment last evening were limited to "speed" on Cinemax.
s it my imagination, or does Michael Crichton now write on the level of a seventh grade english student? Since when does a book that is written in the first person with such stilted prose constitute "good"?
Much like Airframe, the book would benefit by just giving up the ghost and being in screen-play format. If you read it like that, it is pretty much about a minute of screen time per 3 pages. The leading and typography are huge, so the book is filled out, but really its very fluffy.
I'll plod through, because I can't stand not finishing books.
A good book on nanotechnology? I'll take the Diamond Age and Neil Stephenson's subpar ability to end a book over Crichton's halting prose any day.
Who is the asian man with black glasses and headphones? He's always in print ads.
And on the same note as stock photography, the David Byrne book "Your Action World: Winners Are Losers With a New Attitude" features a hilarious comic strip done entirely with bad stock photography and thought bubbles.
Not my taste in music, but its nice to see Stipey and the bunch practicing what they've preached in interviews with me and others.
In addition, REM did "pre leak" these songs on various peer-to-peer networks to see the rate of propagation.
This is the second time REM's put free tracks online for fans. The first was Peter Buck putting some tracks he did for a play's soundtrack up. In an interview last year he said he wants to do this more frequently with the "leftover" tracks from recording sessions.
This was covered in major media, but not as extensively as a one dollar MP3. Sad.
I have run and developed communities online based on offline communities formed by media properties for a good number of years.
The common problem I have found is that the traditional media product failed to solidify a community itself, which inherently lead to difficulties reaching a critical mass in an online community.
As well, the community online needs to be able to solidify itself in various facets in order for it to be successful. For instance forming a community around Athens, GA wouldn't work as well as forming a community around Athens, GA and then a subcommunity in it based around the music scene.
So, in my experience, solidifying an online community around a regional media presense, or even a region is difficult. What I think would be more successful, and what is going to be my next project is forming the online community around national matters of interest (linked in with the national parent media company), and segmenting subcommunities based on regional interest, offering a kind of hybrid of regional/national topics.
REM has reportedly the second largest recording contact in the planet with Warner Bros records. They're good friends with Wilco, who were dropped from Warners when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn't "commercial" enough. Some quotes from recent interviews with REM. Only posting because it shows in some ways that one of the biggest bands on the planet (which they, along with U2 are), doesn't give a shit what the RIAA says:
"MS: Well the industry as we've known it is dead. Gravitational shift, complete upheaval and extinction. It makes way for the stuff I just mentioned, and kind of settles the "art versus commerce" dilemma. Where it will go from here I can't say, but it is certainly exciting to watch." - Michael Stipe
"MW: What are your thoughts on the Napster issue and free music over the internet, because it really annoys me.
MS: I'm fine with it..
MW:...Really (looking surprised)?
MS: I like anything that shakes up the status quo, and in the entertainment industry, not just music, file sharing has certainly done that. We'll see where it goes from here. I have a few ideas of where it's headed." - MS = Michael Stipe, MW = a country singer from Atlanta.
"Q: How do you feel about people trading R.E.M.'s music for free over the internet?
A: People that are looking for live & rare tracks online, well, that doesn't bother me at all. People that are too cheap to buy the CD's and decide to get them for free (online), well, I personally would feel bad about doing that. I feel like I would be taking something from someone, and I don't believe in that. When you break it down it's stealing, and there's no other way to look at it." - Mike Mills
And of course the Yogurt man, Peter Buck talking about Wilco and the industry as a whole:
"ERK: Well, you have to look at the music industry right now. Its not conducive to artists like R.E.M., Wilco or anybody with remote talent (laugh).
PB: You know, that's the thing. Warners has been in chaos in America for five years and, you know, I just think they might have dropped the ball a bit this year, and not just for us either. That Eric Clapton record sure disappeared pretty quick.
ERK: Seems like every record they put out disappears...
PB: Linkin Park is the only thing that sold. You know, there are new people coming into Warners this week and next week, and people will probably get fired. It's a constantly changing company and we feel that, well, we have a commitment to them. They have done great jobs for us outside of the United States, and in America, who knows what went on. I certainly wouldn't point my finger at anyone.
ERK: The state of the American music industry, I think, is in a huge flux right now. Grant Lee Phillips is getting more promo for Mobilize than you did for Reveal, and you're on Warners and he's on Rounder. There is something not right with Warners.
PB: Yeah, well, put this into perspective. Aimee Mann sold a quarter of a million of her records out of her apartment with a guy helping her mailing it out. And Warner Bros sold 330,000 of our record in the States, with all the might of Warner Bros behind it. I love the Aimee Mann record, but I don't think there is a huge amount of quality difference between the two. I think her record is really great, she deserved it.
ERK: I've been following the whole debacle since Grant left WBR.
PB: Now, with Wilco gone too, what is happening is that these record companies are doing these huge conglomerations and essentially what they then do is drop half their acts. So instead of having what used to be 8 record companies with 60 acts, it's gotten to 3 record companies with 15 acts.
ERK: Then you have people like Rounder picking up what's left.
PB: When you consider, it doesn't make business sense to drop someone like Wilco, who makes the record company money. They are recouped, they don't owe Warners any money, they make records inexpensively and tour their asses off. They make critically acclaimed records, and sell half a million world wide. And there is always the chance with those guys that Jeff is going to turn out a Top 20 single that will blow one of their records wide open and sell eight million copies. You know, when I heard that they got dropped, I just thought it was the most insane thing I had ever heard. One of the things we signed with Warners about and we were so excited about was catalog, you know, people like Randy Newman for 25 years. Those records are in print. They held onto some really great artists and that is disappearing, and disappearing everywhere, not just Warner Brothers. There is no such thing as signing someone and they do great work and they back them. Now it's, you get one record and you're out.
ERK: Do you think there will be a resurgence or upheaval in the music industry like 91?
PLB: What I think is going to happen is that the major record companies, and they are in this position, where they are run by accountants and promo people who don't know about music. So they're just imitating each other. The promo people go, "We've got to have a boy band" and the accountants go, "We need to sell a few more records."
ERK: I think that is causing a huge thing for record labels. Websites have eliminated the need for distribution deals for some artists.
PB: When you're talking about Destiny's Child, where you can sell 10,000,000 more records if you get the right video and promotional push, that is when you need a major label. If you're talking about someone who is playing...a smaller artist, there almost is no need for a record company. Essentially, I think a lot of things are going to go through MP3, the net. You know, the play music I put up for free. Have you downloaded it?
ERK: Yeah, it was great!
PB: It was something that I wanted to put out there. It was only 7 minutes long. I trimmed it down to what I liked the best. I wanted it out there and didn't want to press it, choose a cover, a title, charge people. Essentially, I just wanted it out there. I'm into the idea of spreading things in that way. Eventually, I'd love to download whole concerts that way."
Something similar to this was posted a bit ago on Slashdot, but what the hell.
With a turbine engine, kinetic energy is extracted by hot-air through turbines, which in turn suck in air, compress it, combust it, etc. Cyclic compression and expulsion creates thrust, or rotational energy on the turbine shaft (which is what turbo-prop airplanes, APU's, helicopters and generators use).
This technology might have applicability for turbines which use rotational energy from the shaft. For instance, the APU on a 777 is a fairly large turbine engine. Would it be possible to lower its running RPM by using converted heat from the exaust stream as a secondary source of power? This would of course lower fuel consumption while the APU is running, as well as extend the time between overhaul for it.
Anyhow, essentially: this technology, if viable, could have serious use within turbine engines, since they waste a significant amount of heat in operation.
These might be of interest to some. This is what Peter Buck said about MP3 sharing:
ERK: Do you think there will be a resurgence or upheaval in the music industry like 91?
PLB: What I think is going to happen is that the major record companies, and they are in this position, where they are run by accountants and promo people who don't know about music. So they're just imitating each other. The promo people go, "We've got to have a boy band" and the accountants go, "We need to sell a few more records."
ERK: Seems to be kind of what the mid 70's were like.
PLB: Yeah, and it needs to be that...I never held a huge distinction between major labels and minor labels. I'd buy things on Warners and Columbia and things on Dragcity and Bloodshot. Nowadays, I buy records and I don't ever see myself buying a major-label record unless Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen come out with new ones, which they are. There is just nothing on a major label that interests me anymore, and I'm like a lot of people. I'm assuming that for the rest of my record-buying career, I'll be buying records from independent labels, and that will be great.
ERK: Or self-published artists like Aimee Mann.
PB: I just got the four Roger McGuinn CDs you get through his website.
ERK: I think that is causing a huge thing for record labels. Websites have eliminated the need for distribution deals for some artists.
PB: When you're talking about Destiny's Child, where you can sell 10,000,000 more records if you get the right video and promotional push, that is when you need a major label. If you're talking about someone who is playing...a smaller artist, there almost is no need for a record company. Essentially, I think a lot of things are going to go through MP3, the net. You know, the play music I put up for free. Have you downloaded it?
ERK: Yeah, it was great!
PB: It was something that I wanted to put out there. It was only 7 minutes long. I trimmed it down to what I liked the best. I wanted it out there and didn't want to press it, choose a cover, a title, charge people. Essentially, I just wanted it out there. I'm into the idea of spreading things in that way. Eventually, I'd love to download whole concerts that way.
I'm proud of what we do, and I respect people like the Grateful Dead and Pearl Jam who put out every show for the tour. I'd just assume people do it for themselves. Bootleg it and everything. I like the fact that we've done this huge mountain of work, that every now and then I'll find the bootleg of some '85 German TV show.
ERK: With the promo tour, after every promo performance, we basically had MP3s up right after.
PB: I think that's cool. I like the idea that if you're a fan... You know, I'm a Dylan fan and I have hundreds of Dylan bootlegs, some of them I play a bunch, some I never play again. I like the idea that this eliminates the mafia middleman that has pressed these CDs or vinyl.
ERK: I've noticed that, since I've been doing the fansite-type thing, that your involvement with the Internet has increased exponentially. Do you see any more of that in the future? Exclusive stuff on HQ?
PB: You know, I personally would love to. I'd love to put up whole shows, make them available. Limited pressing CDs in the future. For the last record, Reveal, there is a whole CD of instrumental stuff that is pretty interesting.
ERK: There is Shine, and the Electrolite-sounding one.
PB: Yeah, yeah. There is a whole four days of recordings from Athens where there are eight things we never bothered to record again. That kind of stuff would be fun for fans to have available. Right now, we're still too forward-thinking to think about the catalog, but I think I guarantee that sometime through the website or fan club or both, we'll make available in a commercial or noncommercial manner some of the archive stuff.
I run a website called Murmurs.com, which is for the band REM. We run a Napster-clone on our servers using SlavaNap as the main server (Windows yes, I know, but it was more stable than OpenNap). The desired client is WinMX.
REM has a kind of blind-eye mentality toward the sharing network, so long as what is being shared is live or unreleased tracks. As well, we allow sharing of other bands which support this mentality (Wilco, Pearl Jam, Patti Smith, Radiohead, U2, etc).
A lot of the files are sourced by someone running a free FTP server (called ThinkTankDecoy, which makes sense if you know REM history). People download from that server and it permeates through the shared server.
Ice Magazine recently ran a feature on our sharing system, a U2 one and Pearl Jam. Here's a quote:
"At www.murmurs.com, www.fivehorizons.com and www.u2bloodredsky.com- three unofficial but overt REM, pearl Jam, and U2 sites- one can easily nevigate past message forums and band news to locate mp3 concerts uploaded by fans. The U2 site is set up like a database, and provides tips for people un familiar with PTP. The REM site requires user registration, and directs how to install its own custom file-swapping software. It also recently featured an exclusive interview with guitarist peter Buck. when told that both a rare 1980 show and thhe entire, unedited portion of the recent MTV "Unplugged" broadccast had been posted to Murmurs.com, he replied "I like the fact that we've done this huge mountain of work, and that every now and then I'll find a bootleg of some 85 German tv show...."
Ice Magazine is maintstream industry press.
Considering the size of U2, PJ and REM, its nice to see that at least some big bands don't listen to the RIAA's squawking.
I'm currently using double sided DVD-RAM media on my Panasonic DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive to do backups.
Its not the fastest, but its great for doing backups of my web stuff and important files at night.
DVD-RAM media is pretty pricey. I think my 9.4 gig disk was 25 bucks or so. Not bad all things considering though. The media lasts for a long time and is durable (in a non-removable caddy).
I actually SCP from my web servers and back up the SQL dumps to DVD-RAM nightly too. DVD-RAM has 100,000 rewrite capability. Using UDF formats, you can format it FAT32 and it is recognized just like a zip disk.
A question for someone more knowledgable in physics. Would this technology make it smarter to use gas-turbines in hybrid cars rather than reciprocating engines, since the waste heat is at a much higher temperature?
And could this be used to augment power used with gas turbine generators at hospitals, on ships and oil platforms or even APU's in airplanes?
I've managed an online community for the past couple years, and spun-up a few in the past year for other companies as a consultant. I bought the book with a lot of expectations that ultimately weren't fulfilled.
My problems with the book is that it takes a superficial look at aspects of an online community and tries to distil them down into antecdotes without really examining the deeper implications of them.
As well, the writing put me off, as its a bit self-serving. I much prefer Amy Jo Kim's book to this one, as she removes herself from the equation when looking at other communities. Design for Community is just a bit too much ego stroking for me really.
Thus, the book has been put on the shelf, while Amy Jo Kim's book and Howard Rheingold's books are still on my desk. They are just deeper in content and less gloss.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this would be more interesting if the benchmark included a usabilty benchmark between teh two systems.
Meaning, start to finish, how long it took to setup each computer to be a good digital photography workstation, including color matching, scanner setup, etc. Plus, an examination of workflow on each system. Plus an examination on how much the operating system acted as a hinderance to actually getting work done.
Then I'd trust a benchmark. Processor speed and computational speed only extend so far. Windows vs. Mac is not a speed issue, but a usability and interface design issue. Regardless of speed, Mac OS X is more usable than Windows. It puts less obstacles to getting work done than Windows does.
You can't examine "performance" without measuring the performer's productivity, as that has as much to do with how fast a given system is as the processor speed.
You should try this. Go to a site for a band you like, and see if their discussion boards have non-specific music forums.
For REM you have my site, murmurs.com which has a HUGE non-REM music section with very diverse tastes.
U2 has interference.com
Radiohead used to have greenplastic.com for boards, but I think ateaseweb is the best.
Most big fansites have something similar. You'd be surprised what you find.
Ethan
When I was finishing my undergraduate degree at UC San Diego, the campus was not yet fully wi-fi-ed. I was bored out of my mind because I had put off my GE's until the last possible time I could take them.
The only thing that got me through it was my Ricochet connection in the class room. However I can say that it did distract me to such an extent in class that my grades suffered because of it. I actually ended up not passing one of the classes.
That being said I'm involved in wi-fi-ing the art department at the university I'm currently at for graduate school.
While it is true that teaching has to adapt to wi-fi usage, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing to force it to adapt. Just like any disruptive technology, the repurcusions outside its immediate sphere usually leads to a balancing effect upon other actants in the network it disrupts.
So basically: everything should adapt to pervasive connectivity, whether it likes it or not.
The technical backend is such:
The discussion board runs vbulletin, and I build proximity awareness on top of it using a headerinclude.php file.
The main site runs a component system of my design, where a page is an object that has various components, each of which returns results.
The problem with this is PHP is not suited to this kind of object orientation.
As for releasing source, its not really ready for any primetime release, as a lot of stuff is hardcoded for the site specifically. I would share (that isn't the issue) but the current codebase is not suitable for sharing, really.
My aim is to redo the site using Java, because it is stateful (which lends it to programming autonomy into individual objects) and it is more robust in terms of object orientation. PHP has problems passing objects by reference for instance.
The Java release should be more "open" and I might even do a sourceforge page for it. Not sure yet, still in planning stages.
To handle the discussion board I'd basically wrap vBulletin 3.0 with a Java API.
You can IM me at EthanKap if you want any more info.
Ethan
I've explored the concept of proximity and simultaneity of presence within my own work, but do it on a website instead of within an installation.
On my site we basically track where people are, but limit you knowing WHO those people are by using affinity relationships gleaned by your buddy list.
The presentation of this information is in the form of a line similar to this:
"There are 3 people here with you and 5 people near you.
BUDDIES: Ethank, Ethank2"
The site is broken down into a series of interconnected and hierarchically laid out "rooms." Rooms don't necessarily correspond directly to a page, but roughly they do. Within the discussion board for instance, a forum is a room and every thread within that forum a room under that room (so the forum is its parent).
The way that the "here/near" works is by looking at not only who is in your current room (page) but also who is in rooms one level below in the hierarchy. Some places on the site have indicators on links showing how many people are currently in the room it leads to (to instigate flocking behavior in things like news stories).
We implemented the system 6 months ago and I'm surprised on how willingly people adapted to it. If you look at an overhead view of the site, its shown that the proximity to other users in many tangible ways dictates usage patterns, as well as makes the site feel less like a ghost town.
So where does this lead us? I want to explore more into this notion of reified third-space that this brings up, collapsing space/time into singularity and exploring the notion not of client-server individual experiential models but more of a shared one.
But, instead of in an installation that distills numerous ingress points into an aural landscape, why not actually make this proximity and user awareness transparent on existing sites?
I'm all for good installations (am doing one in April kind of similar to this, but dealing with the physical layer of the Internet), but as a student am more drawn toward subtle almost performative art within the context of Internet participation.
Being that I'm Jewish, but my father's birthday is the 25th, I am spending this holiday bored out of my mind in Fullerton, CA (referenced in the initial post).
I hate to be a party pooper, but I hate Christmas day. Everything is closed, so there is absolutely nothing I can go out and do. I'm stuck with the food in the house and my choices of entertainment last evening were limited to "speed" on Cinemax.
Eh.
Ethan
s it my imagination, or does Michael Crichton now write on the level of a seventh grade english student? Since when does a book that is written in the first person with such stilted prose constitute "good"?
Much like Airframe, the book would benefit by just giving up the ghost and being in screen-play format. If you read it like that, it is pretty much about a minute of screen time per 3 pages. The leading and typography are huge, so the book is filled out, but really its very fluffy.
I'll plod through, because I can't stand not finishing books.
A good book on nanotechnology? I'll take the Diamond Age and Neil Stephenson's subpar ability to end a book over Crichton's halting prose any day.
here you go
:)
As you can guess, the green curtain is a "female" influence
Who is the asian man with black glasses and headphones? He's always in print ads.
And on the same note as stock photography, the David Byrne book "Your Action World: Winners Are Losers With a New Attitude" features a hilarious comic strip done entirely with bad stock photography and thought bubbles.
http://www.remhq.com/html/remix/remix.html
A full CD of remixes, with album art.
Not my taste in music, but its nice to see Stipey and the bunch practicing what they've preached in interviews with me and others.
In addition, REM did "pre leak" these songs on various peer-to-peer networks to see the rate of propagation.
This is the second time REM's put free tracks online for fans. The first was Peter Buck putting some tracks he did for a play's soundtrack up. In an interview last year he said he wants to do this more frequently with the "leftover" tracks from recording sessions.
This was covered in major media, but not as extensively as a one dollar MP3. Sad.
Ethan
I have run and developed communities online based on offline communities formed by media properties for a good number of years.
The common problem I have found is that the traditional media product failed to solidify a community itself, which inherently lead to difficulties reaching a critical mass in an online community.
As well, the community online needs to be able to solidify itself in various facets in order for it to be successful. For instance forming a community around Athens, GA wouldn't work as well as forming a community around Athens, GA and then a subcommunity in it based around the music scene.
So, in my experience, solidifying an online community around a regional media presense, or even a region is difficult. What I think would be more successful, and what is going to be my next project is forming the online community around national matters of interest (linked in with the national parent media company), and segmenting subcommunities based on regional interest, offering a kind of hybrid of regional/national topics.
REM has reportedly the second largest recording contact in the planet with Warner Bros records. They're good friends with Wilco, who were dropped from Warners when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn't "commercial" enough. Some quotes from recent interviews with REM. Only posting because it shows in some ways that one of the biggest bands on the planet (which they, along with U2 are), doesn't give a shit what the RIAA says:
...Really (looking surprised)?
"MS: Well the industry as we've known it is dead. Gravitational shift, complete upheaval and extinction. It makes way for the stuff I just mentioned, and kind of settles the "art versus commerce" dilemma. Where it will go from here I can't say, but it is certainly exciting to watch." - Michael Stipe
"MW: What are your thoughts on the Napster issue and free music over the internet, because it really annoys me.
MS: I'm fine with it..
MW:
MS: I like anything that shakes up the status quo, and in the entertainment industry, not just music, file sharing has certainly done that. We'll see where it goes from here. I have a few ideas of where it's headed."
- MS = Michael Stipe, MW = a country singer from Atlanta.
"Q: How do you feel about people trading R.E.M.'s music for free over the internet?
A: People that are looking for live & rare tracks online, well, that doesn't bother me at all. People that are too cheap to buy the CD's and decide to get them for free (online), well, I personally would feel bad about doing that. I feel like I would be taking something from someone, and I don't believe in that. When you break it down it's stealing, and there's no other way to look at it."
- Mike Mills
And of course the Yogurt man, Peter Buck talking about Wilco and the industry as a whole:
"ERK: Well, you have to look at the music industry right now. Its not conducive to artists like R.E.M., Wilco or anybody with remote talent (laugh).
PB: You know, that's the thing. Warners has been in chaos in America for five years and, you know, I just think they might have dropped the ball a bit this year, and not just for us either. That Eric Clapton record sure disappeared pretty quick.
ERK: Seems like every record they put out disappears...
PB: Linkin Park is the only thing that sold. You know, there are new people coming into Warners this week and next week, and people will probably get fired. It's a constantly changing company and we feel that, well, we have a commitment to them. They have done great jobs for us outside of the United States, and in America, who knows what went on. I certainly wouldn't point my finger at anyone.
ERK: The state of the American music industry, I think, is in a huge flux right now. Grant Lee Phillips is getting more promo for Mobilize than you did for Reveal, and you're on Warners and he's on Rounder. There is something not right with Warners.
PB: Yeah, well, put this into perspective. Aimee Mann sold a quarter of a million of her records out of her apartment with a guy helping her mailing it out. And Warner Bros sold 330,000 of our record in the States, with all the might of Warner Bros behind it. I love the Aimee Mann record, but I don't think there is a huge amount of quality difference between the two. I think her record is really great, she deserved it.
ERK: I've been following the whole debacle since Grant left WBR.
PB: Now, with Wilco gone too, what is happening is that these record companies are doing these huge conglomerations and essentially what they then do is drop half their acts. So instead of having what used to be 8 record companies with 60 acts, it's gotten to 3 record companies with 15 acts.
ERK: Then you have people like Rounder picking up what's left.
PB: When you consider, it doesn't make business sense to drop someone like Wilco, who makes the record company money. They are recouped, they don't owe Warners any money, they make records inexpensively and tour their asses off. They make critically acclaimed records, and sell half a million world wide. And there is always the chance with those guys that Jeff is going to turn out a Top 20 single that will blow one of their records wide open and sell eight million copies. You know, when I heard that they got dropped, I just thought it was the most insane thing I had ever heard. One of the things we signed with Warners about and we were so excited about was catalog, you know, people like Randy Newman for 25 years. Those records are in print. They held onto some really great artists and that is disappearing, and disappearing everywhere, not just Warner Brothers. There is no such thing as signing someone and they do great work and they back them. Now it's, you get one record and you're out.
ERK: Do you think there will be a resurgence or upheaval in the music industry like 91?
PLB: What I think is going to happen is that the major record companies, and they are in this position, where they are run by accountants and promo people who don't know about music. So they're just imitating each other. The promo people go, "We've got to have a boy band" and the accountants go, "We need to sell a few more records."
ERK: I think that is causing a huge thing for record labels. Websites have eliminated the need for distribution deals for some artists.
PB: When you're talking about Destiny's Child, where you can sell 10,000,000 more records if you get the right video and promotional push, that is when you need a major label. If you're talking about someone who is playing...a smaller artist, there almost is no need for a record company. Essentially, I think a lot of things are going to go through MP3, the net. You know, the play music I put up for free. Have you downloaded it?
ERK: Yeah, it was great!
PB: It was something that I wanted to put out there. It was only 7 minutes long. I trimmed it down to what I liked the best. I wanted it out there and didn't want to press it, choose a cover, a title, charge people. Essentially, I just wanted it out there. I'm into the idea of spreading things in that way. Eventually, I'd love to download whole concerts that way."
http://www.massmultiples.com
For sale through various OEM's, including Dell. Cheaper too. Three screens for 2000.
Ethan
Something similar to this was posted a bit ago on Slashdot, but what the hell.
With a turbine engine, kinetic energy is extracted by hot-air through turbines, which in turn suck in air, compress it, combust it, etc. Cyclic compression and expulsion creates thrust, or rotational energy on the turbine shaft (which is what turbo-prop airplanes, APU's, helicopters and generators use).
This technology might have applicability for turbines which use rotational energy from the shaft. For instance, the APU on a 777 is a fairly large turbine engine. Would it be possible to lower its running RPM by using converted heat from the exaust stream as a secondary source of power? This would of course lower fuel consumption while the APU is running, as well as extend the time between overhaul for it.
Anyhow, essentially: this technology, if viable, could have serious use within turbine engines, since they waste a significant amount of heat in operation.
ERK: Do you think there will be a resurgence or upheaval in the music industry like 91?
PLB: What I think is going to happen is that the major record companies, and they are in this position, where they are run by accountants and promo people who don't know about music. So they're just imitating each other. The promo people go, "We've got to have a boy band" and the accountants go, "We need to sell a few more records."
ERK: Seems to be kind of what the mid 70's were like.
PLB: Yeah, and it needs to be that...I never held a huge distinction between major labels and minor labels. I'd buy things on Warners and Columbia and things on Dragcity and Bloodshot. Nowadays, I buy records and I don't ever see myself buying a major-label record unless Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen come out with new ones, which they are. There is just nothing on a major label that interests me anymore, and I'm like a lot of people. I'm assuming that for the rest of my record-buying career, I'll be buying records from independent labels, and that will be great.
ERK: Or self-published artists like Aimee Mann.
PB: I just got the four Roger McGuinn CDs you get through his website.
ERK: I think that is causing a huge thing for record labels. Websites have eliminated the need for distribution deals for some artists.
PB: When you're talking about Destiny's Child, where you can sell 10,000,000 more records if you get the right video and promotional push, that is when you need a major label. If you're talking about someone who is playing...a smaller artist, there almost is no need for a record company. Essentially, I think a lot of things are going to go through MP3, the net. You know, the play music I put up for free. Have you downloaded it?
ERK: Yeah, it was great!
PB: It was something that I wanted to put out there. It was only 7 minutes long. I trimmed it down to what I liked the best. I wanted it out there and didn't want to press it, choose a cover, a title, charge people. Essentially, I just wanted it out there. I'm into the idea of spreading things in that way. Eventually, I'd love to download whole concerts that way.
I'm proud of what we do, and I respect people like the Grateful Dead and Pearl Jam who put out every show for the tour. I'd just assume people do it for themselves. Bootleg it and everything. I like the fact that we've done this huge mountain of work, that every now and then I'll find the bootleg of some '85 German TV show.
ERK: With the promo tour, after every promo performance, we basically had MP3s up right after.
PB: I think that's cool. I like the idea that if you're a fan... You know, I'm a Dylan fan and I have hundreds of Dylan bootlegs, some of them I play a bunch, some I never play again. I like the idea that this eliminates the mafia middleman that has pressed these CDs or vinyl.
ERK: I've noticed that, since I've been doing the fansite-type thing, that your involvement with the Internet has increased exponentially. Do you see any more of that in the future? Exclusive stuff on HQ?
PB: You know, I personally would love to. I'd love to put up whole shows, make them available. Limited pressing CDs in the future. For the last record, Reveal, there is a whole CD of instrumental stuff that is pretty interesting.
ERK: There is Shine, and the Electrolite-sounding one.
PB: Yeah, yeah. There is a whole four days of recordings from Athens where there are eight things we never bothered to record again. That kind of stuff would be fun for fans to have available. Right now, we're still too forward-thinking to think about the catalog, but I think I guarantee that sometime through the website or fan club or both, we'll make available in a commercial or noncommercial manner some of the archive stuff.
I run a website called Murmurs.com, which is for the band REM. We run a Napster-clone on our servers using SlavaNap as the main server (Windows yes, I know, but it was more stable than OpenNap). The desired client is WinMX.
REM has a kind of blind-eye mentality toward the sharing network, so long as what is being shared is live or unreleased tracks. As well, we allow sharing of other bands which support this mentality (Wilco, Pearl Jam, Patti Smith, Radiohead, U2, etc).
A lot of the files are sourced by someone running a free FTP server (called ThinkTankDecoy, which makes sense if you know REM history). People download from that server and it permeates through the shared server.
Ice Magazine recently ran a feature on our sharing system, a U2 one and Pearl Jam. Here's a quote:
"At www.murmurs.com, www.fivehorizons.com and www.u2bloodredsky.com- three unofficial but overt REM, pearl Jam, and U2 sites- one can easily nevigate past message forums and band news to locate mp3 concerts uploaded by fans. The U2 site is set up like a database, and provides tips for people un familiar with PTP. The REM site requires user registration, and directs how to install its own custom file-swapping software. It also recently featured an exclusive interview with guitarist peter Buck. when told that both a rare 1980 show and thhe entire, unedited portion of the recent MTV "Unplugged" broadccast had been posted to Murmurs.com, he replied "I like the fact that we've done this huge mountain of work, and that every now and then I'll find a bootleg of some 85 German tv show...."
Ice Magazine is maintstream industry press.
Considering the size of U2, PJ and REM, its nice to see that at least some big bands don't listen to the RIAA's squawking.
Ethan
I'm currently using double sided DVD-RAM media on my Panasonic DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive to do backups.
Its not the fastest, but its great for doing backups of my web stuff and important files at night.
DVD-RAM media is pretty pricey. I think my 9.4 gig disk was 25 bucks or so. Not bad all things considering though. The media lasts for a long time and is durable (in a non-removable caddy).
I actually SCP from my web servers and back up the SQL dumps to DVD-RAM nightly too. DVD-RAM has 100,000 rewrite capability. Using UDF formats, you can format it FAT32 and it is recognized just like a zip disk.
EThan
A question for someone more knowledgable in physics. Would this technology make it smarter to use gas-turbines in hybrid cars rather than reciprocating engines, since the waste heat is at a much higher temperature?
And could this be used to augment power used with gas turbine generators at hospitals, on ships and oil platforms or even APU's in airplanes?
Ethan
I've managed an online community for the past couple years, and spun-up a few in the past year for other companies as a consultant. I bought the book with a lot of expectations that ultimately weren't fulfilled.
My problems with the book is that it takes a superficial look at aspects of an online community and tries to distil them down into antecdotes without really examining the deeper implications of them.
As well, the writing put me off, as its a bit self-serving. I much prefer Amy Jo Kim's book to this one, as she removes herself from the equation when looking at other communities. Design for Community is just a bit too much ego stroking for me really.
Thus, the book has been put on the shelf, while Amy Jo Kim's book and Howard Rheingold's books are still on my desk. They are just deeper in content and less gloss.
Ethan