HolyMoly

Here's a website that, with Biblical quotes and Almanac facts, proves that being a rock star is evil (snicker) and results in premature death. Unfortunately, this site omits the names of the thousands of rock performers who are "still alive" and "still sinning." The site proves the old axiom, "There are statistics and then there are damn lies." http://www.av1611.org/rockdead.html

The following was sent to me by Vonage.com in reference to the vulnerability mentioned earlier: Phew ... one less thing to worry about.

Hong Kong music fans are world leaders when it comes to downloading illegal files - pulling more than a billion Hong Kong dollars ($167 million) worth of songs off the internet, a survey showed. In the past two and a half years, Hong Kong web surfers have downloaded at least 130 million songs onto their PCs, along with millions of dollars worth of software programmes, showed the poll by TNS, a global market research company. "Downloading illegally is not a niche activity anymore, it's a mainstream activity," said TNS director Steven Yap on Thursday. "We believe this is the highest in the world." The survey of 500 computer users in the former British colony found almost half, 48 per cent, had downloaded at least one song. Within the high-profile 15-24 age group, however, that figure balloons to 81 per cent, a fifth of whom had downloaded more than 250 songs. A Hong Kong government-commissioned survey released at the same time ironically revealed growing awareness of what it meant to infringe intellectual property rights and even concluded that more than 90 per cent of respondents felt the problem deserved action. "We are seeing a situation where young people are growing up expecting to be able to get there digital products for free off the internet - they now see music procurement as something that is done for free," said Mr Yap. Mr Yap said the TNS survey results were comparable with similar figures seen in the US and Europe. Hong Kong's high rate of illegal downloading - usually through file-sharing programmes such as Kazaa or Limewire - is due mostly to the high penetration of fast-speed broadband internet connection networks, the survey authors believe. Hong Kong, along with South Korea, has the world's highest penetration of broadband service provision - around 70 per cent of all internet users. "Broadband has only been widely available for about two and half years," said Mr Yap. "Before that downloading large files was slow and tedious - so all this activity has happened in the past two and a half years." Another factor in the mushrooming of illegal downloading was a pervasive culture of piracy in a city close to China's southern industrial heartland, long regarded as the world's intellectual property rights infringement blackspot. "Hong Kong for some time has been accustomed to acquiring its commercial digital products for free," Mr Yap said. "The internet has replaced fly-by-night high-street stores as the most popular place to obtain pirated music and software." This posed greater difficulties to manufacturers and authorities as they try to crack down on the illicit trade, he concluded. "The imperative of the providers of digital products is that much more urgent," Mr Yap said. http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0...Enbv%5E,00.html edit - I just changed the header info - CP

Korea's high-speed Internet market may have reached the saturation mark. The nation's combined broadband subscribers fell by more than 10,000 in December, marking the second slide in the last three months. The Minister of Information and Communication (MIC) on Thursday said the number of broadband subscribers reached 11.18 million last month, off 12,324 from November. In October, the broadband penetration rate of the world's most wired nation fell for the first time as 167,492 customers suspended their subscription, although the figure inched up slightly in November. The MIC said new 773,013 customers were added last year but the growth rate has clearly slowed. ``With more than 70 percent of households hooked to the always-on Internet network, there remains little leeway for Korean broadband operators to expand their customers base,'' said Kang Lok-hee, a telecom analyst of Daishin Securities. He expected the local high-speed Internet market to be stagnant for the time being. KT, the nation's largest fixed-line telecom operator, newly recruited 12,669 users last month and 666,663 in total for 2003, closing the year with 5.59 million and strengthening its dominant status in the local market. Regional cable broadcasters, which jumped onto the broadband competition in a full-fledged manner from 2002, added 20,030 users last month, and 251,968 for the year to give them a total of 619,103. Hanaro Telecom suffered the biggest setback in 2003 as 146,788 subscribers cancelled service. For the past three months to December, its subscription fell. The American International Group and Newbridge Capital took over the company late last year. Thrunet and Onse Telecom, both of whom are under court receivership, also saw a steep fall in subscription. Thrunet gave up 8,256 customers last year and Onse Telecom relinquished 29,047 subscribers. http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/200401...18060511900.htm edit - I just changed the header info - CP

Their homepage said that two former U.S. Presidents bought lunar land from them. But, I think it's pretty much a "novelty" thing ... kind of like the National Star Registry (allowing you to name a previously numbered star after you or someone else). I believe there's a U.N. resolution stating that no country can claim ownership of extraterrestrial territory (except maybe Israel, hehe).

It really pisses me off when a politician hypes a "big announcement" ... then, when it comes time to make it, puts it into such a far-off future that nobody will remember it. Heck, even the first step of this so-called countdown (a manned outpost on the moon) is 16 years away by Bush's reckoning. By that time, the Chinese will probably already have a manned outpost on Mars. Oh, well. Best thing to do now is to start buying up lunar property so, later on, you can charge the government "rent" when they land (snicker). And, believe it or not, there's an interplanetary real-estate agent now selling deeds to such property: (http://www.planetaryinvestments.com

This is going to set back blondes for years to come, hehehe.

MTV said the wreck occurred in the middle of the night on a road that was under construction. He'll be in the hospital for 3 weeks but is expected to make a full recovery. Hmm, wonder how many spliffs he'd been doing.

Yup. Like I said, not all that professional. But, some of those interviews (bad or not) might be the only ones you can find - like the one of the "late" Robert Palmer. FWIW, I used to do author interviews myself. It seems obvious that she used some kind of "suction cup" type connection to record the telephone interviews. I've never used one. For years, Radio Shack has sold a connector box that you just plug your phone into ... with an output jack that goes into a tape recorder. Until about 6 years ago, that's what I did ... but then started using TotalRecorder on my computer (which sounds a helluva lot better than cassette tape recordings).

If that bill became law, every hip-hop station would go off the air ... since only a handful of rap fans would be willing to listen to sanitized versions of their favorite songs, hehe.

I came upon an interesting page. I'll give a link to it after this paragraph. Louise Palanker has interviewed a lot of personalities ... musical and otherwise ... and has made her interviews available for downloading or streaming. They don't sound 100% "professional" ... but may still be worthwhile listening to. However, for some strange reason, while she allows for the downloading of interviews in MP3 format, she only allows people to stream in Flash format ... even broadband users. I get the distinct impression she doesn't know what an M3U file is (grin). In any case, I created M3U files for all of them if you want to stream them (128k) and give direct links to the MP3 files if you want to download them for posterity. If you have a modem connection and want to stream them (in, ugh, Flash), you'll have to visit her website's interview page here: http://www.louisepalanker.com/interviews/ OK ... since the M3U files won't work unless they're on my free hosting page, I've place all the streaming and download links there: http://holymoly.freewebsitehosting.com/interviews/ Have fun.

"How Soon Is Now" (The Smiths)

Know someone who can do keyboards and vocals (and likes the music of Iron Butterfly)? They're hunting for a permanent new member: http://www.ironbutterfly.com/audition.php

You know, hehe, it's interesting that one of the "7 words you can't say on television," according to George Carlin, was omitted from that list -- tits. However, "tits" is probably the most inoffensive word on that list. FWIW, if I remember correctly, there was one word Carlin mentioned that was not on the list that would never be used because it just sounds too gross -- turd. However, I actually heard someone use that word on KXL radio during a talk show. The screener apparently let it go through ... and the host, Lars Larson, said "Well, I guess we can say that word." Hehehe. I doubt that bill will make it past committee. If it did, it would be a bugger to enforce. I wonder what the fine would be for saying one of those words ... $100? $500? $1,000? Maybe that bill would do better in Brazil ... where an American pilot was fined $13,000 for flipping the bird (here's that story).

It wasn't a fingerprint, but a finger that got an American Airlines pilot arrested in Brazil. The finger the pilot used wasn't the finger Brazilian authorities had in mind when they were fingerprinting him. Police say Dale Hersh lifted his middle finger while being photographed and fingerprinted under new rules put in place for visitors from the United States. Hersh was undergoing a new security process at Sao Paulo's airport Wednesday. Police accused him of showing contempt to authorities and he was taken to a courthouse for possible formal charges. Hersh has agreed to pay a fine of about $13,000 to avoid charges. He's been released on his own recognizance. Hersh's 10-member crew was detained at the airport after the incident and wasn't allowed to enter Brazil. Brazil imposed requirements that Americans be fingerprinted and photographed at entry points as a counter-punch to similar rules in the United States for citizens of Brazil and other countries whose citizens need visas to enter. American Airlines said it has apologized to the the Brazilian government and the police and that it was all a misunderstanding. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/2766726/detail.html edit - I just changed the header info - CP

I've downloaded Firebird and may try it out. But, I'd kinda like to wait for the version 1 to come out. To my knowledge, only a "preview" version is out now. On your system, how well does it work with plugins, cookies and such?

Michael K. Powell, FCC chairman, gave a speech yesterday to the National Press Club. I watched part of it on CSPAN and got the distinct impression, watching his "attitude," that attempt to regulate VOIP will meet with a frosty reception. But, the speech talks about a lot more than VOIP ... including his own vision of a wireless broadband world (BPL ... which scares the beejeezuz out of a lot of people). Here's the text of the speech.

FWIW, I wrote to Vonage asking them about this problem to see if they're concerned with it disrupting service.

I never used it either. But, in light of the Napster decision, it took a lot of balls to champion a centralized system to the Supreme Court. My hat's off to him for that. Still, someone this those kind of cojones might not be out of the picture for long. It'll be interesting to see what he's doing in, say, 5 years.

A couple of years??? Methinks he's outrageously optimistic.

I think the real bugaboo for Microsoft is, as the ZD-Net article stated: When a software developer abandons Win98, he abandons 25% of his market. That's a significant chunk of money ... and is why most of the software I still see in stores is Win98 compatible. It's not Microsoft that drives the OS market, it's the consumer. And developers are like any other business person and tailor what they develop to the maximum possible marketplace. There are even some developers out there who make software that is still Win95-friendly. My son still uses Win95 on his computer and it does everything he wants it to do. I've offered to upgrade him to Win98 or ME (I have both upgrade disks) but he tells me to go fish, hehe. And, one of my hosting clients still uses Win3.11 running on a Pentium 90 with an 850 meg hard drive and 24 megs RAM. I could upgrade her to Win98SE since 24 megs is the "minimum" requirement. But, I've advised her to upgrade to a new(er) system with at least 128 megs of RAM and at least a 20-gig hard drive. She's still thinking about it ... but, like my son, finds that her computer does everything she wants it to do. It's hard to fight individual practicality (grin) ... and not everyone is enthralled with the newest thing on the block.

Quite interesting. While browsing, I tend to use Netscape most of the time and would not be vulnerable. But, one sentence in that article troubles me: The flaw in the H.323 protocol has also put users of VoIP products from Cisco and Hewlett Packard at risk. As a user of Vonage.com VoIP telephone service ... and assuming that Vonage uses either Cisco or HP hardware in their scenario ... that could put my telephone service (and the services to other Vonage users) at risk of disruption or compromise. I hope this situation is resolved quickly.

If I'd not read the article, I'd not have noticed him either. I suspect he didn't want to make a big deal out of it ... but, as a long-time Monty Python fan, just wanted to be part of it. Here's a bigger photo taken by someone in the audience while the tribute was performed: CLICK HERE

By golly, you're right. I take back all I said. I don't know why, but thought Spector was involved with them early on. He was "friendly" with them back in his early years (and theirs). But nothing came of it until they hired him to do post-production work on Let It Be. So (ahem ahem), I now consider George Martin to be the fifth Beatle, not Phil Spector. Hehe, perhaps I'm going senile.

No kidding! In a December 8th DVD release of a tribute to George Harrison, some ex Monty Pythoners sing the Lumberjack Song. And, Tom Hanks got to be one of the singing Mounties, hehe. Here's the article on it. There's a photo on the left side of the page ... and Hanks is in the bottom row, far-right ... next to Eric Idle.