Scooter's Blog

Bush

The NY Times has a column discussing the debacle in Iraq; cronyism at its worst (Who's Sordid Now?). Is the horrible mismanagement and war profiteering of this situation enough to defeat this stupid, corrupt, insignifican little twerp of a president? I goddamn hope so. Eight years of this fucking self-serving family is quite enough for me.

Anger Journal Entry

Not much to report. It was Rosh Hashanah over the weekend, so we all got dressed up to go to temple. No problem there, but my wife's aunt was over at her parent's house, and just the sound of her voice instantly gets me to a 2; she's the most annoying person imaginable, and she inserts herself into every family situation and doesn't shut up for a second.

9/30/03

Chose the wrong elevator. About 150 people (okay, maybe 10) were waiting at the bank of elevators. One blinked, and most people headed for it. I waited a second, figuring another one would light up, and it did. Only 90% of the schmucks somehow ended up on it. Some came back from the other one, and some never made it. So, the original elevator ended up with only a couple people on it, and mine had the rest. And one lazy bitch was going to the second floor. So it stopped twice before my floor. Annoyance level at 2.

Anger Journal Entry

This is tough, keeping track of all this stuff. Anyway, last night I had a 1, or maybe 1.5 when I had to get up to turn on the light in the bathroom for Allison. She had gone about an hour earlier, and I had deliberately left the light on, in case she had to go again. But in the interim, Beth had to go, and she turned the light out when she'd finished. So, I was a little peeved when I had to get up and once again turn on the light for my daughter.

There were a couple of other minor annoyances, too insignificant to even remember, throughout the course of the day and evening and this morning. Occasionally I get a bit irritated by Jesse (our dog), for some stupid thing he does. Maybe one or two of those over the past 24 hours -- but probably not even a 1 on the scale.

Baseball

I love baseball and the season is winding down. Throughout the season, I was consistently in 1st or 2nd place, but for the last month, I've fallen to 4th or 5th. After 1st place, we're all packed in very tight -- within a couple of points. But I have by far the best starting pitching: Mulder, Zito, Harden, Hudson from Oakland, and Nomo and Moyer. Jason Giambi has let me down, as well as Bobby Abreu. And when Mike Lowell went out for the seaon, that cost me as well.

Read an article by Michael Rogers at Newsweek, Why the Record Companies Have to Play Hardball. Posted a comment about file sharing:

As Apple's iTunes has shown, most people will gladly pay for music; better download experience, better quality product, good feeling from compensating the artist. Yes, some people will still download for free. Reduce the price and enlarge the selection of music available for download, and more and more people will use the service.

But as services such as iTunes proliferate, the percentage of people not willing to pay for the product drops to an acceptable small percentage. By acceptable, I mean that all the real players can still make a good living. If the RIAA (and other non-value-add entities) are forced out of business because they are obsolete, so much the better.

Started couples therapy/marriage counseling/headshrinking/fate worse than death yesterday. Therapist joked that it's almost as bad as going to the dentist, but it's worse. Lasted a little over an hour but seemed like at least three.

Anger Journal Entry

Have to start keeping a journal about anger things during the day; rating the day on a scale from 0 to 10. So far today, had a 1 incident; very slow truck pulled in front of us on the entrance ramp to 128 while Beth was driving me to my train. Very minor, but I was slightly pissed.

While looking to see who died recently, I discoverd one of Hogan's Heroes: Larry Hovis (Sgt. Carter) died from cancer of the esophagus at age 67. Also, the father of the H bomb, Edward Teller; they both died on September 9th. I also came across a cool blog (especially the title): The Blog of Death. Wish I'd come up with that one...

Let's boycott RIAA MUSIC CDS UNTIL 1/1/04!!! This covers Christmas and the holidays, so it should hit them hard. Spread the word. And remember, you can still buy music from all the independent labels and any other musicians who sell music themselves; just don't buy from the RIAA members.

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Heading out to the Red Sox vs. Devil Rays baseball game tonight. It's a birthday present from Beth (my wife). Looks like we'll just beat the rain from Isabel.

Okay; the anti-RIAA thing again. Next time I'll try to find a different topic, I promise.

Orson Scott Card has a good article about copyright and the entertainment industry: Art Watch at the Ornery American.

Off topic: occasionally, I see a blind person walking with the aide of a stick. I don't know the names of these sticks, but they look a bit like a cane only with some red stuff at the bottom. Other times, I see a blind person walking with the aide of a seeing-eye dog. And it occurred to me, that if I were blind, I'd much prefer a dog to a stick. I mean, is it even close? Are the people with sticks just waiting their turn to get a seeing eye dog? My wife pointed out to me that there is a waiting list, and it's most likely due to the fact that it is expensive and time-consuming to train a seeing eye dog. And I guess that makes sense. But the question is, do you think there are blind people out there who actually prefer a stick to a seeing eye dog?

I keep looking for more anti-RIAA stuff, and here's a bit:

Tim Oren (managing director of the Pacifica Fund), a hard-core capitalist, writes on his web page Due Diligence:

I boycott the RIAA and take frequent opportunity to trash them publicly.

Call me naive - [Chorus: You're a hopeless naif.] - but I've got this quaint idea that the idea of a business is to add value. And that the value is judged by the customer, not the seller. By its obstinate and culpably idiotic refusal to understand that technology has changed the way in which the value of music is delivered and understood by listeners, the RIAA and the labels it stands for have turned from value creators into value destroyers, in many different ways. They are well on the way to permanently damaging an industry that has been part of America's cultural heritage, as well as a decent part of our exports to the rest of the world...


Question: does anyone know the typical time frame from Hardcover to Paperback? That is, how long, on average, does it take for the paperback version of a Hardcover bestseller to come out?

Had an up and down weekend: spent late Saturday and early Sunday in bed with a cold.

Before that, I watched the Open Mike show on TechTV. It was well done. MOre and more stories are coming out about how evil the RIAA is. Great stuff.

Hanging over my head: I have to write my yearly wrap-up for my daughter, Allison. I do it every year on her birthday, but I'm usually late. She was born on 29 July, 2000, and I wrote the first one right after Sept. 11th 2001.

As an active file trader and avid RIAA hater, I've been following all the goings on lately. After reading through assorted newsgroups and websites, I've so far compiled the following few points:

• "Doug Anderson" wrote in message news:suE7b.25603$162.21506@twister.austin.rr.com...
  When is the last time you have heard more than one or two songs from an album played on the radio.That tells me the rest is probably crap. Right now they expect me to buy a $15 album after sampling one song?? We've all done that for way too long. As for me I'll continue downloading songs to sample an artist. If it is quality stuff, I'll purchase it. Imagine that, knowing what you are getting before you plop down $15. The RIAA must be mad about that too. They might have to demand quality music from their fabricated artists.



• Fred wrote in message <_qw7b.121550$kP.2831@fed1read03>...
  You forgot to mention that all expenses come out of the artist's share. If $50,000 is spent in expenses and promotion at $.25 per CD the CD would have to sell 200,000 copies before the artist sees a dime. The record company still makes their profit before the artist that created the work sees >anything. I saw Bo Diddley in concert years ago. After the show he refused to autograph a record that was on a certain label. He said "That company ripped me off. I didn't see a dime from that record." The young white boy with the record looked stunned, but I can relate to what Bo was saying. It would be like asking an artist to sign an illegally downloaded MP3 file if that were possible. The record industry is full of thieves. Just like Doctors make the worst patients, rip off a thief and watch him squeal.



• Cool ironic anti-RIAA page: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide-history.htm



• ChrisPaget writes "Wired have a fascinating article about a company called BigChampagne which sells regional P2P download statistics to most of the major record labels. When the labels know what people are downloading, they know what to put on the radio, and sales in the area increase. The record industry's lawsuits against file- sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance."



• Open letter to Cary Sherman and the RIAA by ill Evans, Boycott-RIAA, Larry Feldman, DMusic.com, Jon Newton, p2pnet.net -- find the article on a bunch of different sites



• "-=ô;ö=-" wrote in message news:lYh6b.8868$Dg7.4353@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
  Ok, try this option, you go to record store and walk up to a kiosk that has the entire store catalog on it and burn a custom CD to capacity for say $9.99(any CD under capacity a pro-rata minimum price) and it prints a custom label and insert complete with lyrics and graphics from 1 or several different artists..you pre pay for it prior to burn and now we have freedom of choice....For the retailer, no more minimum order of new force fed label releases, even less overhead than the current methods of release and happier customers..and an instant online search to all major and indie catalogs and anyone who wants to publish their tracks, all instantly available worldwide..If say you wished to obtain from via online sources, reduce the price say $1 versus the store and you have the rights to burn it.. The End of the RIAA...hmmmmm...



• From: Doug Beattie
  However, take a look at the RIAA's own statistics here:
  http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/pdf/2003midyear.pdf
  Note that the percent change from 2002-2003 of CD Singles has actually increased by over 150%! That signals to me that people are fed up with so much filler trash on albums that they're only buying the songs they want. So much for online P2Ps killing CD sales. Maybe the RIAA needs to look at the real problem - issuing too much worthless garbage. Not to mention an economy in recession. Final word: RIAA says P2P is killing their sales. I say "Bullshit".



• 
  Way to go Canada!!! This article is by Jay Currie, a Vancouver writer:
  http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/08262003m.php