·:[ Stream of Consciousness… ]:·
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Sorry about that folks -- Live365 did a bit of system maintenance and it brought down my stream.

All better now!

Do you remember that scene for Jurassic Park where they are wandering through the jungle and find dinosour eggs? “How did they do that, we’ve made them all females?” one of the party asks incredulously… “Nature always finds a way.” answers the sage Dr. Grant.

Such is the case with DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems.

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Wow! (Yes, I do say that a lot) This is another of those wonderful surprises I get now-and-then. The latest from NYC based Sweet Suzi Smith, Unbroken, came across my email inbox today.

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I've just finished uploading the last of 584 new tracks into the Dreamland Blues Radio playlist. This is a complete rebuild of the playlist from scratch. I've re-encoded all the tracks and 'normalized' the levels. What this means to you, dear listener, is a consistent volume level of all the music tracks. I can't speak for the 'ads' because I don't control those. Take a second and let me know what you think! I value your input! Thanks for listening! T.

Yes, I know the Now Playing list over at Dreamland Blues Radio is in reverse order. ;-) I've just been too busy to have a look at fixing it. This 'serial startup artist' stuff is really time-consuming, sleep-depriving work! T.

WOW! I was lead to the Detroit group Atomic Fireballs by a post on one of the 'geek news' sites I frequent. I thought it odd that they would post something like this so it must be impressive. Wow. read more

The movie studios have traditionally spread out the release dates for PPV, cable, DVDs and download in an effort to maximize the dollars they are able to extract from customers. Apple have announced that they have agreements in place to allow them to offer movie downloads via iTunes coincident with the DVD release.

I believe that this is the first step towards the compression of this timeline. The endgame being only one or two release dates for movies; theatrical and all others. As the entire movie industry moves to digital techniques from camera to screen there is little impediment to a ‘big bang’ release methodology. Mark Cuban has been advocating this for some time.

http://gizmodo.com/386026/apple-to-sell-movies-on-dvd-release-day-confirmed

UPDATE: Here is a piece from Variety with a bit more background.  I especially like the quote at the end from a Fox exec.; ‘What we do want is pay-per-view to replace rental.’…  Interesting…

Sony has completed the DRM-free MP3 trifecta (Warner, Universal and Sony/BMG) for Amazon; they now have all the major labels, along with a significant number of indie labels, available for download.

This is clearly a move on the part of the labels to balance the field a bit against Apple’s iTunes Music Store; something that must be giving His Steveness a bit of bile to vent.

Frankly, I don’t give a dingo’s kidney what Hist Steveness vents, as long as we have a credible source of DRM-free music.  It’s been a long, painful, frustrating road but it appears that the labels have finally seen the error in their ways (treating customers like criminals) and given those of us that enjoy our digital music on something other than an iPod a marketplace.

Now, if we can just get them them to provide it with a lossless codec encoding…

It’s Official: Sony BMG Delivers MP3s to Amazon — Digital Music News

I've just updated the software that drives the site. Despite the lack of posts, things are churning under the covers at Dreamland Blues!

Please let me know if things aren't working as you expect.

In other news... I have several photo galleries from shows over the summer that I am preparing to post. Stay tuned!

This shot of Quincy Jones that I took at the 2006 CES show was recently selected to illustrate his Wikipedia entry.

I learned a bit about Wikipedia in the process. I tag all my Flickr photos as CreativeCommons:Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs which, in English, means you can use my photos in original, non-commerical works as long as you give me credit. However, Wikipedia allows only Attribution and/or ShareAlike licenses. ShareAlike allows a use as long as the work in which it is included is also licensed as ShareAlike. Basically, if I share with you then you must share with others.

I can understand the NoDerivs (No Derivatives) liscense being a problem since in this case the photo was to be a part of a larger article. The part that confuses me is the requirement that I remove the NonCommerical limitation. Last time I looked (about 4 seconds ago) Wikipedia did not include ads, nor does it charge for access to the site. Perhaps they are girding themselves for the day when they will.