Author: Kent

Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.

Hawk on the Cat

Thomas Hawk has a good post today about the Record Label Cartel’s never-ceasing effort to Stuff the Cat Back into The Bag.

I stood up and shouted Amen when I read this passage from his post:

What the media companies need to understand is that for years and years they gouged us over and over again. And now they are still trying to gouge us and at a certain point the anomosity that they have deservedly heaped upon themselves turns into outright hatred. So when the RIAA sues their customers, pouring even more gasoline on the fire, it’s amazing that they cry foul when people shun them altogether and pursue the free and illegal routes.

catoutofbagAs I’ve said over and over, there’s a way to defeat the Cartel without stealing anything. Some smart person needs to create a company that duplicates CDs and creates and duplicates the associated packaging the way Qoop produces photo books. The same company could distribute the music on CD either by itelf or via Amazon and other online stores. The same company, or even the artist himself or herself, could distribute the songs electronically via MusicMatch, Yahoo Music, etc. Take out the middle man, and all the right people benefit.

Let the cat run. Down with the Cartel. Death to Videodrome! Long live The new flesh. And all that.

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Blog Wars, Final Round (Unlikely)

I posted the other day about a couple of sites that seemed to be ripping off other sites. I also talked about some of the experiences I had when developing ACCBoards.Com and the other commercial web sites I created. Here’s the so-called final update on those stories and some of my thoughts about winning the blog wars.

fightIn the prior post I said that I was looking forward to the war of words between Jason Calacanis and the guy Jason says ripped off the look and feel of Weblogs, Inc. There were some words exchanged but not the shootout at the not-OK Corral that I was expecting. Today, Jason posted a “final update” on his blog. He has nothing good to say about the other guys, so I suspect this story isn’t over.

The other story I mentioned, involving JKOnTheRun and a site he was formerly associated with, seems to have been resolved satisfactorily. JK emailed me that the other site changed their slogan shortly after he posted the story. There was some heated discussion in the comments to JK’s original post, but as best I can tell, the only argumentative comments were from someone who seems to be going out of her way to take shots at JK. One thing I learned from developing message board sites is that there is always (and I mean always) someone who sees it the other way. That makes for a lot of carping, but it also creates the back and forth that message board sites and blogs need to thrive.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the “borrowing” of ideas and design from blogs is going to be a continuing problem as the blogosphere expands and matures. I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect we will be better off policing ourselves that letting the lawmakers and lawyers do it for us. Here’s why.

The blog situation will probably follow the same pattern as the message boards did 5-6 years ago. After I founded and developed ACCBoards.Com into the most popular ACC sports site on the net, lots of people tried to copy the idea. At least one group rippped off the entire look and feel. It pissed me off greatly at the time. But because I had the traffic and, at that time, a partnership with JP Sports (who televised most of the ACC football games) and Raycom Sports (who did the basketball games), those copycat sites didn’t appreciably impact our business. But imagine if I had been a little slower to line up the deals- imagine if I was still in the early growing stages of ACCBoards.Com when someone ripped off the concept and design. Then I might have been royally screwed.

And here’s the problem. There’s just not that much to be done about it. There is a very low barrier to entry for web sites, message boards and blogs. It is cheap (sometime as cheap as free) and relatively easy to create a web site or blog. It’s even easier when you begin with the idea of replicating a concept. If your name is relatively unique, you can often stop someone from using your name (assuming you have perfected the intellectual property rights to that name via prior use and/or appropriate trademark and other similar filings, which most people have not done). You can probably keep someone from completely recreating your site (though they can come pretty close if they are careful- think generic soda, etc). But after spending thousands (at least) in legal fees, all you’ve accomplished is to force them make minor revisions to their web site which remains, in all substantive ways, a copy of yours.

So what do you do?

1) Get there first. Once the need has been filled, it takes an evolutionary advance to get people to move. Flickr is one example of such an advance (at the expense of Shutterfly, etc.), but those are few and far between. It’s much easier just to be first.

2) Market and market well so (like JK and the phrase, OnTheRun) people associate a phrase with your site and you. I didn’t realize this at the time, but the fact that people associate me with ACCBoards.Com and, accordingly, with sports web sites was very helpful to me in protecting ACCBoards.Com and launching other sites.

3) Make the deals with other vertical sites that embed you as the leader in the area (my JP Sports and Raycom deals created a barrier to traffic growth that otherwise would not have existed).

It’s hard and expensive to win by lawyer. It’s cheaper and better to win by planning and execution.

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My Favorite Records:Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

This is the ninth part in my series of favorite records.

Yes, I know that I am still in the Bs and that my final list is going to have a lot more than 50 records on it, but what can I say. I keep finding excellent records on my music server.

I remember the first time I saw Bruce Springsteen in 1975. I didn’t know that much about him prior to the concert, but afterwards, I knew I had discovered something special. Almost any of his records could make this list, but I’m goung to pick The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Bruce had a lot of great songs in the bag when he started making records, as evidenced by the fact that this one was released only eight months after his first one, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. (also an excellent record). One The Wild, the Innocent, Bruce did a wild, funky, keyboard driven fusion of folk, jazz and rock- and it worked. There are only 7 songs on this record, but most of them are 7+ minutes long, so there’s a lot of music to enjoy.

I’ve often argued with my music buddy the G-Man about the use of horns in a record. Sometimes they absolutely make a song (like most of the ones on this record and some Van Morrison numbers). Sometimes, they just sound like a throw in to hide mediocre songs- like on some of Bill Morrissey’s later records. G-Man seems to like all horns, but I definitely do not. But from the first note of the first song, The E Street Shuffle, you can tell that funky, funky horns add a whole lot to these songs.

Even the mellow songs, like Wild Billy’s Circus Story have some funky horns, and it really adds to the vibe of this record. Much like his first record, these songs sound like (and probably are) songs Bruce wrote about actual friends of his and stuff they did growing up.

An excellent record that belongs in every record collection.

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Great Author Discovered

There are only a few authors that I really, really like. Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, William Gay, Charles Frazier (who seems to be a one and done guy), maybe a few more.

Sadly (more for him than me, I guess), my favorite writer, Larry Brown, died recently. Since the guys I like write something like one book every 5 years, I need to find more good writers to fill my reading needs. Fortunately, I found a new one.

I just finished An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg, and it was utterly excellent. If his other novel, which I have ordered from Amazon, is as good as this one, he may become my favorite writer. His characters are deep and believable. His dialog is perfect. I really like this book and have high hopes for more good books from him.

I learned after reading this book that it has been made into a movie by Robert Redford, which would have concerned me had I known that before I read the book because of the “chick book” implications. I can’t speak for the movie, but the book is in the Kent Haruf, William Gay mold- only maybe a little better.

When I was reading the book, I did think about who should play the characters in a movie (although I didn’t know about the movie at the time). Morgan Freeman is the only choice for Mitch, and he plays him in the movie. Redford is a horrible choice for Einar- Einar is older and much tougher. Jennifer Lopez as Jean also strikes me as a “get fannies in the seats” choice. Elizabeth Shue would be better. The girl who plays Griff is new, but she better be good and cool, because the character she plays is both.

It’s a rare treat to find a good new author. I hope the movie does the book justice, but based on the cast, I bet it doesn’t (other than Morgan Freeman).

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TIVO Deathwatch: A Survey Says the Sky is Blue

File under the surveying the obvious category.

A survey has determined that TIVO is losing its buzz. Ya think?

blue
Yup

Maybe the fact that

1) DirecTV has abandoned it,

2) the HDTV boxes we paid a grand a pop for are either dying of a bad hard drive or about to be obsolete since they don’t do MPEG-4, and

3) nobody who dumped cable for satellite TV is willing to run back to the oppressive cable company just in the hopes of using a TIVO until the cable company pulls a DirecTV and dumps TIVO in favor of its own recorder

has something to do with it.

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That Duke Thing Again

So Scoble posts about some gathering at the Apple Store in Seattle where Buzz Bruggeman sees some other Duke guy wearing his Duke gear and they start talking about Duke this and Duke that (but not, I assure you, about Duke’s crappy football team). Scoble says it proves his theory that guys who go to the “good schools” get all the breaks.

I comment on Scoble’s page that the Duke thing has more to do with the hoops program than the academic program. There are a lot of great schools out there, but you don’t see many people running around in Columbia hats.

Shortly thereafter I get a good natured email from Buzz telling me, no doubt correctly, that he never sees anybody wearing a Wake Forest (my alma mater) hat. And that’s the problem. Marketing is, believe it or not Mr. Million Dollar a Year school president, important for schools just like everybody else, and there is no better marketing than a great sports program. And if you can’t have a great sports program (e.g., Stanford) then at least have one great sport (the sweet smell of Duke basketball more than masks the stench of its bottom of the conference football team). I guarantee you that Duke has received more meaningful press as a result of its hundred or so ACC and NCAA basketball championships that is has all of its Rhodes Scholars and other academic notables combined.

Every televised game (which means every game, since Duke owns the networks during hoops season the way Notre Dame does during football season) you get to hear about what a great school it is (and that’s true- it is a great school, but there are lots of those). You also get to see that stupid Coach K/Amex commercial about 500 times, but I digress. The thing is that young kids (even the future Duke students still living up in New Jersey) don’t care about average SAT scores or Rhodes Scholars. Even if they do care, that information isn’t on ESPN every time you turn on the TV, like the Duke basketball team is.

All of these schools (Wake Forest definitely included) who pretend to be showing academic integrity by ignoring their crappy sports programs (my other alma mater, Vanderbilt, being another great example of this) are not only thrusting a canard at us to rationalize athletic mediocrity, they are also missing out on the kind of marketing and publicity that money can’t buy (but championships can).

So my hat’s off (like all the other hatless Wake Forest fans) to Duke for stumbling into this brilliant marketing strategy by hiring Coach K back when he was a nobody. But sorry Buzz, I still hate the Blue Devils.

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10 Reasons Why I Rolled My Own

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In the summer of 2004, I decided it was time to retire my old Dell and get a new computer. After looking around and considering a Dell, a Gateway and a few smaller shop products, I decided to build my own. I’m still using it, and it works like a charm.

Here are 6 reasons I rolled my own and why I’m glad I did:

1) I’m the neighborhood computer geek, yet I’d never built a computer from scratch. I sort of felt like a pretender. No more, and it was actually even easier than I thought it would be.

2) I am an Intel guy and all of the small shops tried to brow beat me into using an AMD chip. OK, maybe it’s hipper. Maybe even faster. But I wanted an Intel chip and now I have one.

3) I wanted many hard drives in a RAID array. Now Dell and probably others are offering RAID as an option, but they weren’t back then. Plus, by building one, I was forced to learn how RAID works, which helps a lot when a problem arises that needs to be fixed.

4) I wanted to create my own BIOS splash screen, with the name of my computer (KN-1- not very snazzy) and a picture of my kids on it. I make all of our friends watch my computer boot up when they’re over. One day, someone is going to be really impressed.

5) Upgradability. I can now change out any part of my system with newer parts and keep this computer cutting edge for a long time. I’ve changed the video card and the fans in my never ending search for quietness. When I need to I can switch out the motherboard, chip, etc. It is very hard to do that with a Dell or other commercial box.

6) Size and bays. Because I use my computer for making music and films as well as all the other stuff you use a computer for, I needed a tower- not a mini-tower. I have 6 hard drives (including 2 for music composing that are accessible from the front so I can take them out and carry them around), a card reader, 2 DVD burners, a crappy zip drive (never again) and a floppy drive (that I have used only during installation of the RAID drivers and the BIOS graphics), a Creative Audigy panel, some USB ports and a fan controller. There is no way I could get all of this into a Dell box.

In the past I have used computers from Micron, Dell, Compaq, HP, Fujitsu, IBM and a couple of no-names. Having built one and used it for over a year, I can honestly say I’ll never buy another pre-built desktop computer for my home office. Nothing beats a KN-1.

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37 Years Ago

I was thinking this morning what my Dad would think if somehow he came back for a visit today.

Many things would be the same. People still drive cars, eat the same sort of food, watch a little TV (many more channels), play golf, hunt, fish, go camping and farm. Airplanes are still more or less the same. We made it to the moon, and then quit thinking about space. Some people still smoke cigarettes, but not in restaurants. Politicians still lie about each other and care more about discrediting the other side than doing anything meaningful. Tony Bennett is still alive. Johnny Cash is dead.

Many, many things would be new or different. Telephones have buttons, not a dial. Computers are everywhere and typewriters are rarely seen. Banking is done at machines on the sidewalk or over the phone. All of the good TV shows have been replaced with softcore porn. Mom died (after 30 years as a widow). My sister got a couple of graduate degrees. She got married and then divorced. I grew up and moved to Texas, where I neither farm nor sell cars, but do camp and fish. Nobody listens to Vic Damone. Vietnam is over, but we have new wars on TV, fought with technology and embedded reporters. Things cost a whole lot more than they used to.

As Townes Van Zandt once said, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana.

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Pot, Meet Kettle

potkettleYou know, just about everyone is free to join the hue and cry against the DRM software that Sony BMG was installing on computers until the bloggers and feds shamed them into stopping, but when the CEO of the greatest example of bloatware and computer hijacking in the history of software starts adding his two cents I start feeling like defending Sony.

In this article in USA Today, Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks says (talking about iTunes):

“Consumers should say, ‘Apple, we won’t buy your music until you make your DRM interoperable.'”

Never, ever have I experienced anything (including DRM and the BSOD) as irritating as all of the crap that RealNetworks software installs on your computer. I am still getting these little pop-up messages from RealNetworks on my downtown office computer, and I have no idea how to get rid of them. In fact, I’d rather not hear something than have my computer overrun with RealNetworks software and messages and whatnot just because I try to install Real Player.

And don’t even get me started about how RealNetworks ruined Rhapsody by buying it. Or how you have to call a number to cancel your subscription.

I’m not a big fan of RealNetworks, in case you can’t tell.

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