Students not interested in school-sanctioned music downloads: In 2003, colleges began signing exclusive deals with online music services to great fanfare. Nearly three years later, the schools are realizing what we've known all along.(Via Ars Technica.)

Here's the money quote in the original WSJ article:

There is also little consensus among administrators about how successful the services have been in eliminating piracy. Although some say complaints from the recording industry have dropped sharply, no one can tell if that's because fewer students are engaging in illegal file-sharing or if the industry simply doesn't want to go after schools that are spending money to combat the problem. "The RIAA's push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we'll protect you from our lawsuits," says Kenneth C. Green, the Campus Computing Project's director.

The RIAA denies the charge. "We do sue students and send takedown notices to universities that have legal services all the time," says Mr. Sherman. Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property, he adds, because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property." And he disputes the idea that the subscription services have fallen out of favor. The number of campuses that subscribe will increase "pretty significantly" in the fall, he says.

WSJ: Free, Legal and Ignored. The subhead says it all: Colleges Offer Music Downloads, But Their Students Just Say No; Too Many Strings Attached. The article is about the unsurprising-to-anyone-except-Napster miserable failure of subscription based music services to take hold in universities. Compared to the complicated barrage of restrictions on the music offered by Napster, the students come across as models of common sense:

• While Cornell's online music program, through Napster, gave him and other students free, legal downloads, the email introducing the service explained that students could keep their songs only until they graduated. "After I read that, I decided I didn't want to even try it," says Mr. Petrigh, who will be a senior in the fall...
• Purdue University officials say that lower-than-expected demand among its students stems in part from all the frustrating restrictions that accompany legal downloading. Students at the West Lafayette, Ind., school can play songs free on their laptops but have to pay to burn songs onto CDs or load them onto a digital music device.
• "People still want to have a music collection. Music listeners like owning their music, not renting," says Bill Goodwin, 21, who graduated in May from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. USC decided last year that it was finished with Napster after fewer than 500 students signed up...

There’s also a telling quotation from the director of the Campus Computing Project, who says, “The RIAA’s push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we’ll protect you from our lawsuits,” which is one of the kinder descriptions of the unfriendliness of the industry that I’ve read lately.

I’m still waiting for someone in the industry to wake up and understand that their path to profitability lies in supporting good music and making their rich back catalogs available, not in fighting the fans of music tooth and nail. Today, three years after the birth of the iTunes Music Store, there are still many albums and tracks that can’t be found anywhere online—some by major artists (just try tracking down any non-album Sting tracks from before the late 90s), some by minor artists on major labels (Annabouboula, anyone?), and some by great cultural figures (I’d gladly pay through the nose for access to e.e. cummings’s Six Nonlectures as digital files, or even on CD). Instead we get American Idol and Rock Star. What, no one ever told these guys that a steady diet of candy can kill you?

BTW, for a good counterexample, check out Verve’s deep catalog—including a bunch of rare Impulse! recordings—though they don’t quite get it right; they support both iTunes and Windows Media, but no DRM-free offerings. But at least they’re opening up their catalog.

Redacted discourages the press from identifying him, as he told the Philadelphia Inquirer:

... the 47-year-old blogger who goes by the pen name [Redacted] gave an interview on the condition that I not write what I know about him, because the publicity could hurt his blogging or his job. Let's leave it at this: he works in corporate marketing in the Philadelphia area.

He's also an ex-financial journalist, which he likens to being an ex-cop -- 'you never lose your instincts, you never lose the world view. I am privileged to take a certain attitude about the world, which is usually one of bemused contempt. It's a wonderful way to make a living -- if you can find the right organization.'

Expunged threatened to quit blogging when named by a political magazine:

A major Right wing site has chosen to support a troll's campaign started at this site to out me.

The writing is on the wall. I will likely be giving up blogging as a result.

Expunged's 'you won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore' announcement ignores the fact he was outed in other places, presumably with his consent, before the magazine ran his name. He spoke at a technology law conference in 2005 whose organizers identified his job and Kos affiliation, was named on NPR's Morning Edition and has a photo on TPM Cafe that's also on his employer's web site.

He's currently engaged in an effort to put the genie back in the bottle on Wikipedia, which has drawn editors into a page deletion debate that hinges on whether revealing his full name constitutes a personal attack:

The page was used to 'out' the subject, connecting his real-life identity with his username on dKos. He had worked to keep his real-life identity separate from his blogging. Once the page was created, being Wikipedia it became highly visible. It was then picked up by NRO. Since he saw it as a threat to his livelihood, he quit blogging. Using a Wikipedia article to 'out' someone and threaten their livelihood is clearly an attack.

Redacted hasn't hidden his identity much better than Expunged. He was a long-time reporter at a national newspaper, blogged from Davos in 2004 and writes under an abbreviated form of his name.

I can understand the urge to blog under a pseudonym to protect your privacy and avoid job-related hassles, but when you reach a point where you're fielding speaking offers and press calls, you have to make a choice. You can either bask in the Sally Field 'you really like me!' glow of mainstream media coverage, thus inspiring more people to seek your name and background, or turn away the press and do everything in your power to become a less-interesting blogger.

The ability of people to be both famous and attention-repellent has not survived the web, even in the tiny bubble of celebrity currently enjoyed by political bloggers.

Actually, I lied when I said there's a choice. Anything Redacted or Expunged could do at this point to obscure their identities would only make them more interesting.
read more:

I've always owned Canon cameras and was looking around for a new small digital camera and decided on the Canon SD500.  I haven't had a small camera for a few years - the last being a Canon S100 (the original digital Elph/Ixus) which I enjoyed using.  My goal with this camera is to be a companion to my digital SLR mainly for use when carrying the SLR isn't practical, so this is more of a backup camera.

First, the basics.  The SD500 is small.  It's about the size of a deck of cards.  Small doesn't mean featureless though, it has a resolution of 7.1 megapixels and a 3x optical zoom.  Storage is via an SD card.

What's in the box?  Just the basics that you would expect, a USB cable, battery and an A/V cable.  There isn't an included cases which is a shame as the camera looks like it could get scratched easily and it would be nice to have something to protect the large LCD on the back of the camera.  Canon do sell an accessory kit though which is highly recommended as it includes a case and a battery which can often be purchased for less than the cost of the battery.

Canon include a 32 megabyte SD card with the camera which will store just 9 photos at the highest resolution and quality. A 1 gigabyte card will hold about 360 images.

The camera is pretty easy to use with an intuitive menu system operated with the buttons on the back of the camera.  When turning the camera on you'll be greeted with an irritating noise from the internal speaker, thankfully this can easily be disabled in the customization menus, which also allow you to change the noise made when a photo is taken (a shutter sound is just fine thank you) and the background picture displayed when turning the camera on - not a feature I'd ever care about.  Startup time is good, the camera is ready to be used almost straight away, which wasn't the case for earlier models.  The LCD displays is large and bright and gives a good impression of the final output of a photo.

The camera has a 3x optical zoom and a digital zoom which much to my surprise was disabled by default on the camera.  I've never been a fan of digital zoom and it's nice to see Canon encouraging people not to use it by disabling it by default.  It's far better to zoom and crop on a computer than it is on the camera.

Picture quality is impressive so far.  I haven't taken many pictures yet, but I have no complaints with the output.  The camera supports USB2.0 so transfers to a computer are nice and fast - just as well with the size of the files produced.

There are a few features I want to also mention:

Stitch assist mode.  This is a great feature.  When activated the camera gives you the option of taking photos from left to right or right to left; after the first photo is taken the result is shown on the LCD display, but shrunk so you can frame your next shot against the previous shot. The camera does not attempt to stitch the photos together for you, but guides you so that you can see what you've taken so far and don't miss part of the panorama you are shooting. 

Scene assist mode.  There are a number of presets pre-programmed with general styles of photo such as 'night' 'portrait' etc.  The camera adjusts the settings automatically to be the best for that style of shot.  Useful for quick photos that you don't have time to manual configure settings.

That's it for my first thoughts; I'll post some more once I've used it a bit more. 

An update, at last! :-P

Anyway. Last weekend Jen and I went with some friends to see Over The Hedge. Jen and I both had qualms about seeing it; from the trailers, we both expected it to be not-very-good. We were wrong. It was said afterwards that it’s the best animated movie Dreamworks has made; better than Shrek, and while I don’t know that I’d necessarily give either the nudge myself, OTH is definitely a worthwhile viewing experience. The Grand Theft Auto sequence in particular is awesome, as is the movie version of Ben Folds’ “Rockin’ the Suburbs”. And stay through the credits—it’s worth it (partially because the end credits themselves are well-done and interesting), unlike the ending of X-Men 3.

I also watched the first part of Robots this week. Despite the program guide’s generous four star rating, I found it completely uncompelling and deleted it after about twenty minutes. I, Robot, on the other hand, was entertaining if not particularly thought-provoking. It’s Will Smith, what do you want? ;) Constantine was not terrible, for a comic-book movie. If I see it in the $5 bargain bin at Wal-Mart, I might pick it up. I’m a sucker for storylines involving an eternal war between Heaven and Hell with humans as proxy combatants, though. Tomorrow should result in Resident Evil: Apocalypse (which I had watched approximately half an hour of, while programming on a laptop in a client’s home at my previous job) as well as The Maltese Falcon (which I’ve never seen, but I like noir and Bogart, so…) and even more excitingly, the first episode of the new season of Deadwood. I’ve missed Al Swearengen’s poetical utterances, truly I have. I find it interesting that Robots was something I deliberately Tivoed, while I, Robot was a Tivo Suggestion—I submit to you that perhaps the Tivo knows me better than I know myself. Of course, it also recorded Prince William and Hide and Seek—so perhaps not, after all.

This week we also moved Jenny to College Station for the next two months, more or less. Which isn’t much fun. I have plenty to keep me busy, including lots of work stuff (enough that I worked for a few hours today, which is not usual for me at all) and yet more home improvement Activities™, but I am accustomed to intense Jeopardy duels, and it takes all the fun out of an entire category devoted to the Oz books (not the movie!) if Jen’s not here. :-P

Our parents banded together and gave us an anniversary present of a digital camcorder (for obvious reasons), so if I can manage to lay hands on a DV cassette sometime soon perhaps I will encourage the pets to do goofy things I can put on the site. Or something. I dunno. It seems like a wonderful piece of equipment, though; I can understand why people do things like this or this, when digital film technology is so accessible. I even know a few people who I’m sure would be happy to be extras in a Firefly fanfic… ;)

The hockey draft was this last week as well. One of the players from my spring team is a captain in the summer league, and had intended to try to keep the team together as much as possible. This is complicated by the fact that aside from himself, he only gets to “protect” a single player, and further by the fact that three of our players got drafted into the next league up (including my defensive partner, all unwitting). Still and all, it looks like the core is there, and it should be fun regardless. I got a little bit of an ego boost when I found out that apparently I was selected in either the third or fourth round of the draft, which seems fairly early for someone in their second season. Not that any OHL or NHL scouts are likely to be darkening my door anytime soon. And it’s only a small ego boost, as I can depend on Jenny for a realistic (by which I mean occasionally depressing ;)) appraisal of my “mad hockey skillz”, as it were.

This weekend’s project, aside from “entertaining the dogs” (via early morning trip to the dog park) and “dealing with crunch time” (viz., working today) is “cleaning the garage”. Anyone who has lived in a house with a garage for more than ten minutes knows precisely what I mean by that. :)

Last night I had a bout of insomnia, and ended up out on the hammock in the back yard at about 2am. It’s worth noting that, by 2am, the mosquitos appear to have quit for the day and, in June in Austin, the temperature is literally perfect. I almost slept out there, but it on further reflection I supposed that to be a bad idea and merely enjoyed it until I felt sleepy. :)

A final thought: reading the Baroque Cycle sure does turn me into a wordy son of a gun, doesn’t it?

The final afternoon of the Business Leadership Forum focused on the big picture -- of both global political factors and technology. A panel included Karl-Heinz Grasser, Federal Minister of Finance for the Republic of Austria. He spoke about how governments can not only avoid being an obstacle to innovation and growth but also encourage competition thereby creating more jobs. The panel was bullish about how the information revolution -- ushered in by the microprocessor in the early 1970's and the Internet of the 1990's -- has led to an explosion of new products and new business models, However, there was a consensus that retaliation from poor economies and over-regulation by some countries could stymie the growth. 

Mario Monti, President of Bocconi University and commissioner in the European Union for ten years, was quite optimistic about the EU -- a market of 480 million people -- and said that the EU itself is an innovation. He said that Europe is much more like the U.S. than it was. It is now a single market, has a single currency, and has been expanding market reach around the world. The shortcoming is that Europe, unlike America, does not yet have a constitution. This results in an economic disadvantage because the European community can not make a decision for the total. The European economy is not innovating quickly enough and in fact some countries are protecting the past at the expense of the future. Mario says it is time for "naming and shaming" the laggards through peer reviews. Then he got more specific -- "Germany, France, and Italy are behind on liberalization of service markets and have resisted initiatives to increase competition". These three countries will have a negative impact on the Euro which in turn will hurt the rest of Europe. Mr. Monti's presentation was sobering but hopeful. He said the EU has a lot of good features, that it can protect intellectual property but also move against monopolies such as Microsoft. The key to get innovation going in Europe is for the EU to innovate itself by completing it's constitution.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger kicked off the final segment of the forum, which focused on the future. IBM supports Linux because it is a great operating system for computers. Irving introduced Linus Torvalds the developer of Linux which he published as a student in 1991. Don Tapscott, a widely acclaimed author, who invented the term "paradigm shift", then moderated the final panel which included Linus, Nick Donofrio, executive vice president for innovation and technology at IBM, and Ann Mettler, executive director and co-founder of The Lisbon Council. It was a wide-ranging discussion. Linus is an incredibly humble guy. He said he has no vision, just looks 5 cm ahead before each step, and loves to solve technical problems. Linux is successful, he says, because both the development and the decision making are distributed -- a "built-in meritocracy". Don asked why volunteers worked on Linux for no economic return. Linus said, "if you were all engineers, you would not be asking that question". Open source software is viable in most all software areas, with the only exception being niche markets which are too small to get adequate collaboration. "Open source will take over most all infrastructure".

Ann said there is a huge gap between businesses which are moving ahead rapidly and societies which feel left behind. The key problem is that the economy is 70% services but the regulations and governance are still based on an industrial model. She believes that government should learn how to innovate from businesses. "Politicians are clueless about the discussion of the past day and a half". She says that businesses need to share their leanings with society. The labor market in Europe is flat because companies do not want to hire and that is because the laws are so onerous. "You can hire but you can't fire". Labor reform is needed desperately.

Nick says' It' s all about change". IBM is doing a balancing act by supporting both open things and proprietary things. The company is generating a lot of patents but also giving away a lot of patents to move the ball forward in key markets such as healthcare and education. "The world can move ahead faster if the OS is Linux -- it is good enough and a "blow for freedom". A California venture capitalist asked about business ethics and Nick was very aggressive in his response saying it was not optional for companies to be totally and completely ethical in every respect. (Having been at IBM for 38 years, I can say I never ever had a  concern about ethics at the company). Nick summarized that anyone can innovate if they are willing to change. "If nothing changes, nothing changes". Sam wrapped up the conference by saying corporations need to be transparent. Their ultimate responsibility is to create value for the constituencies: stockholders, customers, employees. He walks the talk.  

Intro to Roman Rendezvous Stories
Index to Roman Rendezvous stories

Rep. Kucinich: Why I'm running for President
By Joshua Scheer

The six-term Ohio congressman and 2004 presidential candidate, who has been one of Congress' most vocal and longstanding opponents of the Iraq war, tells Truthdig why he again has his sights set on the Oval Office:
Rep. Kucinch spoke with Truthdig research editor Joshua Scheer*.

TRUTHDIG: What made you decide to run?
KUCINICH: Someone has to rally the American people, to let them know that the money is there right now to bring our troops home. Democrats were put in power in November to chart a new direction in Iraq. It's inconceivable that having been given the constitutional responsibility to guide the fortunes of America in a new direction, that Democratic leaders would respond by supporting the administration's call for up to $160 billion in new funding for the war in Iraq.

For me this is a call of conscience to stand up and speak out about what's going on-to let the American people know that the money is there to bring our troops home now, that we need to begin now to take a new direction in Iraq, and that to pass a supplemental in the spring for another $160 billion would keep the war going until the end of George Bush's term. Someone needs to stand up and speak out, and I decided it was my responsibility as the person who has been consistently opposed to this war since its inception, who has been a leader in challenging this thinking that led to war, that I would stand up and rally Democrats to change the course that the party has embarked on with respect to continued funding of the war.

TRUTHDIG: This is obviously your major issue, but what other issues are you going to base your campaign on?

KUCINICH: We have to take these things in sequence. From now until the spring, this is the issue: $160 billion is more than three times what the federal education budget is. This is a huge amount of money, and all the other hopes we have as Democrats to create a new agenda for the American people in housing, in healthcare, in education, are going to be destroyed by the administration's request for $160 billion.

So does that mean I'm a one-issue candidate? Of course not. I'm prepared to lead this country forward to create a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit healthcare system. I'm prepared to lead the way towards policies of environmental sustainability, to develop advanced technologies for alternative energy, for clean energy.

This campaign is about three imperatives: It's about the imperative of human unity, of recognizing that this is one world, that we are all one, that people all around the world have an underlying connection, that we are interconnected and interdependent. And we need policies that act that interconnection. We need to affirm institutions which support the idea of human unity. And that means that we support the United Nations. It means we support treaties in working with other countries. It means we support the rule of law internationally.

The second imperative is human security, and that security has to deal with basic needs: Each person in the world has a right to survive, a right to
food that is fit to eat, and water fit to drink, and air fit to breathe. Each person has a right to a roof over his or her own head. Each person has a right to have clothes on their back. Each person has a right to some means of being able to make a living. Each person has a right to be free of the fear of violence. We have a responsibility to work to secure the world from a nuclear nightmare. We need to look at what we can do to protect peoples everywhere by working for not just nonproliferation, not just disarmament, but nuclear abolition, which in fact was the promise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The third imperative I'll discuss in this campaign is the imperative of peace. There are those who believe that war is inevitable. A belief in the inevitability of war makes war a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to be convinced in our innate capability to create structures for peace in our society. We need to be convinced of our potential as a nation to make nonviolence an operating principle in our society. This is the motivating reason behind a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, which addresses directly, in a practical way, the challenge of domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, violence in the school, racial violence, violence against gays,
community relations disputes.

The imperatives of human unity, human security, peace, all create a context for human prosperity. We have the potential to create heaven on earth. New Jerusalem is within our reach. It's waiting to be called forward through the power of courage, emanating through our hearts, through our dreams, which come from the longing of our souls. This truly is a time where we can change the world and create the world that we long for.

TRUTHDIG: You obviously have issues that you care deeply about, and it doesn't
seem like you're going into this as a sort of popularity contest, but do you think you can win? Do you have a plan to win, say, the South, and parts of the Midwest?

KUCINICH: Yes. The very fact the people put Democrats in power in November over the issue of Iraq means that there exists a tremendous amount of support for affirming the will of the people to set a new course, not only for Iraq but for all of U.S. international policy. That percolation, which resulted in the Democrats gaining control of Congress, is still there. It is fairly astonishing that Democrat leaders would forget that only a month ago we were given the control of the Congress because of Iraq. It is fairly astonishing that less than a month after being given that constitutional obligation to assume a coequal position in the government, [we] would
capitulate on Iraq by publicly declaring support for up to $160 billion in additional funding to keep the war going.

I've said it before, I've said it again: It is not credible to simultaneously say you are opposed to the war and continue to support funding for the war.

So these are some of the reasons why I'm running for president. And I believe that I will win, because people are truly looking for a new direction. Not by incrementalism, not by capitulation, but people are looking for real leadership, people are looking for foresight. And I've demonstrated foresight by moving out front very quickly when the administration was talking about attacking Iraq-warning the country that this was folly, warning the country that we needed to avert this conflict, letting Americans know that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein
and 9/11 or Al Qaeda's role in 9/11, that Iraq did not have WMD, did not have the intention or capability of attacking the United States.

Everything I said turned out to be true. People want leaders who know what the right thing is to do in the moment of crisis, not people who will say, years later, 'Well, you know, I agree, this is what should have been done.' This is a call for clearsightedness for foresight and for action, and in each case I've demonstrated an ability to step forward. And I'm going to do it again, and I expect that the American people are going to respond very powerfully to my candidacy.

TRUTHDIG: John Kerry got tarred with the 'flip-flopper' label in 2004 for his perceived wavering on the issue of Iraq. Do you think you're going to have a better chance than someone like Kerry-or Clinton, who's also been wishy-washy on some of the issues?

KUCINICH: I haven't talked about any other candidates, and I'm not going to now. I think that my consistency speaks for itself, and I think that my opposition not only to the authorization for the war but continued opposition to its funding puts me apart from all the other candidates. I'm the only member of the House and Senate who has consistently voted against continued funding for the war.

TRUTHDIG: I saw Stephen Hesse of the Brookings Institute on CNN saying that candidacies like yours are just an ego trip. Is this an ego trip for you?

KUCINICH: I've spent the last five years of my life warning our nation about the path to war and about our occupation of Iraq. There are probably easier ways to pamper oneself.


*Truthdig interviewer Joshua Scheer worked as an entry-level staffer on Kucinich's state Senate campaign and was later a summer associate in his congressional office. In this weekly interview series, Rep. Kucinich gives his take on the goings-on in Congress in the wake of the Democrats' victory.