My links for 02 May 2008 through 03 May 2008: one funny, one serious, and one combining both moods.
Continue reading “Links for 02 May 2008 through 03 May 2008”
Oh you poor, dear record companies…
You’ve got to hand it to “the music industry”. This week they released a propaganda film Australian Music In Tune which asks us to sympathise with musicians because they’re all poor struggling artists. Diddums.
The only reason musicians trying to “make it” are poor is that as soon as they do get that sought-after recording contract they still pay for everything from there on. Before they see a single cent from their music, they have to pay off the studio hire, recording engineer, video director, stylists, set designers, editor and dozens of other parasites — including music company executives with their nice lunches and their BMW leases.
An entire industry — “the music industry” and their retail outlets — sits between the musicians and their audience, sucking out something like 90% of the money in the process.
And they have the gall to rope musicians into their propaganda film under false pretences, telling people like Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall that it was a movie about life as an artist.
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
OK, so who are the guys in the photo? Jared Madden (left) and Adam Purcell (right) have created tune-out.com in response to the industry crying poor.
Oh noes, thoze fickle “Gen Y” ppl…
…were right about job-hopping. In the big chair:
Major companies no longer value long service by their workers… The poll of 32 national and international firms found that when defining a high-performing worker, 69 per cent rated “length of service” as least important or not even applicable…
“If you turn the clock back 10 or 15 years, length of service would have been seen as a significant attribute of high performance,” Mr Tipper [Jeremy Tipper, business development director of recruitment firm Alexander Mann Solutions] told AAP on Tuesday.
“The reason for that is they had a great deal of knowledge… about the organisation and a good understanding of what’s happening in the marketplace.
“Today, because information is so much more freely available because of technology, that ‘information is power’ probably doesn’t exist to the same extent.”
Mr Tipper said the new breed of workers was less “risk averse” — they were more prepared to change jobs and they were more aware of the value and portability of their skills.
Hat-tip to the Snarky Platypus. He even wrote the headline. He also has his own blog, but is too goddam lazy to post there. We must convince him to fix this.
Savoradin on Depression
I just stumbled across this quote about depression by Antonio Savoradin: “Depression, probably the most obvious condition leading to suicide, is a prison filled with repeat offenders, and the crime of melancholia has a startling recidivism rate. But it is not a prison in which rights are respected, nor is humane treatment the standard fare. Rather, the jailer is a fickle torturer who punishes his charges without mercy. The depressed person inhabits a cell with a tiny window and iron bars, is beaten, burned, electrocuted, and flayed by the guards, left shivering and in pain, while relatives and friends may visit, blind to both the unbearable wounds he suffers and to the bars which hold him. Bewildered, they cannot understand why he doesn’t rise and walk through the empty doorway; they do not understand his pain; and they may inflict guilt or further torture by sneering at his condition or offering pointless advice (‘What’s the matter with you? Just leave!’) which only exacerbates his suffering. Because they do not see the bars, the walls, the jailer, the prison grounds, they cannot take his pain seriously. It is an enigma to them. They can give him little, if any, comfort.” Hat-tip to Andrew Barnett.
The Geekery of Linux on an iPod
I’ve finally found a use for that iPod Photo 60GB that’s been languishing in my desk drawer. I’m going to use it as a field recorder for my podcasts.
The resale value of an iPod that’s bigger than a postage stamp but doesn’t play video is, presumably, three-fifths of bugger all. However it can record sound.
Apple deliberately crippled the iPod’s recording functions to mere 8-bit quality — OK for recording dictation and the like, but not good enough for snarfing surreptitious bootlegs of a Silverchair concert. But running Linux on the iPod unleashes its full 16-bit glory.
After a couple hours’ work I now understand the process of Linuxing a ’Pod. But to get it to work, my MacPod (that is, an iPod formatted for Mac file systems) has to be turned into a WinPod (one using Microsoft’s file systems). I won’t bother explaining why, but it’s yet another example of that old phenomenon…
In general, Macs can read Windows file systems, but Windows machines can’t read Mac file systems. Sigh. I’ll finish it on the weekend.
Links for 30 April 2008
Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.