Jason Griffey

…while surfing for porn.

Terrible reporting from Reuters via Yahoo News concerning a deal Penn State struck with Napster. The article screams “Penn State University on Thursday reached a deal to offer thousands of students free access to the Napster music service” but then goes on to say “Students can also buy permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each…”

So…it sounds like they’ve just agreed to pay Napster to let students stream music. STREAM MUSIC. Something that they can almost certainly do from any number of websites currently. Streaming music isn’t hard to find….hell, if all students want to do is stream, they’d be better off with iTunes streaming from each others computers. That’s free…

Sometimes, I really think there’s a significant disconnect between people who get digital music, and people who don’t. And people who don’t shouldn’t be agreeing to pay money to other people who don’t….people want to own the music. They want to use it with their portable music players. And they want to burn it to CD if they wish.

UPDATE:
Story on Wired News also about Penn State deal, where it is claimed that the service “includes unlimited streaming and tethered downloads, 40 radio stations and an online magazine and message boards.” Now what the hell is a “tethered download? I’m assuming (since again, we’re short on technical details) that it’s a download that’s DRM’d to your computer. I’m also assuming that it will have “can not burn to CD” DRM attached.

One further assumption: It will take about 3.5 minutes for someone to crack this DRM. Updates as they occur.

Evidently, there is a new underground sport brewing in the cities around the world….Le Parkour. Started by a guy named David Belle…more or less, it looks like the art of being as close to Spiderman as possible. There’s an official website, which has a video page. I recommend checking out the USA Parkour video for an example of the sorts of things that they do. Imagine….rock climbing, combined with martial arts, with a side of urban exploration. Very odd, but completely cool to watch. Ignore the French rap music in the background.

200 million dollars. I’ll say that again…slowly: Two hundred million dollars.

That’s how much NPR was given today by Joan Kroc, of the McDonald’s fortune. Everyone who loves NPR, go out today and buy a Big Mac in celebration.

…so I suppose it had to end sometime. I thought that MAYBE the curse of terrible comic movies had been lifted, but possibly not. The Punisher, a longtime fan favorite, appears to have been….how to say this politely….completely fucked up.

One: the movie is set in Florida. The Punisher (Frank Castle) is wearing a trenchcoat. In Florida. In the comic, he’s in New York. New. York. Trenchcoats = ok in NY. Not so ok in freaking Florida.

Two: why do we need Travolta as a bad guy? I mean…really. Let’s use Travolta where we need him…as the uber-cool dancing badass. Not as the king of some crime syndicate.

Three: one of the bad guys, seen briefly in the trailer, is none other than “Big Sexy” Kevin Nash, a professional wrestler best known for his participation in the classic wrestling group the New World Order (NWO). He’s the very large blonde guy throwing the Punisher around.

At least we have Spiderman 2 still in the works to look forward to. Sam Raimi isn’t likely to screw things up, at least.

Ok….I'm just gonna give up on Radio. WordPress is more better.

Reset your links: http://www.ibiblio.org/griffey/wp/

If I ever figure out how to forward, I'll set it up. Ibib is being a bit weird about it.

….something that we have not done here in the UNC blog space is to mob blog something (not mob as in mobile, but mob as in group). Is there any event upcoming that would benefit from the publicity (however minimal) of being mob blogged? Everyone shows up, with laptop, and blogs during the event to describe/discuss it….my first thought was the Latin American Film Festival, in some way…a talk, maybe even a FILM (that might be odd). But I’m up for suggestions….

I think I have mentioned this, but I don’t believe that I have fully discussed my adoration for this little application. How do i love thee, iTunes? Let me count the ways…

1. I love you for your Smart Playlists. iTunes allows you to use, basically, boolean logic when designing playlists for your music. Want all the songs in your collection with the words “rock” and “child” in them, but don’t want anything by Guns ‘n Roses? Smart playlist, to the rescue!

2. I love you for your “Top 25 Most Played” playlist. iTunes automagically keeps track of the songs you play the most, and arranges them in a playlist for you. So, at your disposal, you can immediately have those songs you just KEEP PLAYING. Conversly, you can tell it to only play songs you’ve NEVER played before. So good, soooooo gooooooooood…..

3. Most of all…I love you for your “shared music” capability. You can choose to share the music you have, and anyone on the same network can stream it from your machine…and of course, you can stream from theirs. Right now, I’m on the library’s network, and iTunes sees 5 other users, any of which I can stream music from. So useful…I can listen to a TON of music that I otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and sample bands that I would like to hear.

All this, and not even any mention of the iTunes Music Store, the only way to legal puchase music that isn’t completely moronic and full of DRM goodness (yes, I know that the files you get with iTunes have DRM attached…but you can immediately burn to CD, and poooof! No more DRM). All I can say is, after trying iTunes, Napster 2.0 can suck it.

The end result is that I want both and iPod and a 12 inch Powerbook. Neither of which I can actually get, but the longing is there. I’ll go out on a limb and say that thanks to iTunes the iPod will be the most popular christmas techie gift this year, hands down. Apple is gonna sell a ton of them.