My Radio will be closed down... Fark

I fucking hate radio. I really hate it. Radio is an awful commerce infest pile of shite that plays the same commercial shite music over and over and over and over again. I used to love radio.

But there is still one station that I really like: Radio Paradise. And now, it will be probably closed down. And the owner will have to pay between $50,000 and $150.000 - retroactively!

Fark.

The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio, and they ignored all of the facts presented by webcasters (including RP) and gave the record industry exactly what they asked for: royalty rates so high that they will put RP and every other independent webcaster out of business.

I hate violence, as I have said before, but someone should break the legs of the CEOs of the major labels. And their kneecaps. And their noses. And their fingers. And cut off their testicles. And set fire to their SUVs and luxury sedans. And blow up their houses. And rape their children. And torture their dogs.

After that, the music business should be given back to the musicians and the people who love music.

Blue Screen of Death

This story really takes the Blue Screen of Death to a whole new level...

Most of us have stared in helpless despair at the dreaded blue screen; how much worse would you feel if that wasn't just your desktop gone but your combat display, and it really was the screen of death?

Surely we can't have our jolly tars let down by possibly untrustworthy, difficult to use kit such as Windows? Especially when you reflect that cost is not an issue. When you're buying destroyers at £1bn per hull, the price difference between 26 PCs and the same number of Sun workstations barely shows up.

A little Gem for Stef

I think Stef would like this:

C’est ne pas une Orwellian Nazi-Uniform.

Found this advert in the first German edition of Vanity Fair. I like the little party badge, even if it isn't golden.

ORWELL - Search no more for your Nazi-Orwell Styles ™

(see more on orwell.de, but they don't have any more "Uniforms")

Oil for us all

To stay at the topic of found gems: While at a friend to play a board game, I found this nice one, sponsored by BP. Teach your childeren how to control the world and quench your thirst for oil.

And no, we didn't play it, I didn't even look at anything other than the cover.

Just in case ...

... you were wondering if it is worthwhile to get a copy of Windows Vista:



Anthony Cumia's Vista Installation

The game stays the same

I once read the book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. What surprised me was the fact that a great deal of "scientists" in the past were self-serving, arrogant, cocky, self-important, conceited, overweening, priggish pricks. A property by the way they share with today's politicians, religious believers and the rest of the human race.

Sometime ago I thought that life today is different, that people today are somehow "better". Today I am more disillusioned and it does not surprise me anymore that politics interfered with science and that there were, are (and always will be) "scientists" who are willing supporters of this kind of endeavour.

I would like to call myself an misanthrope, as I hate those kinds of people, but there are people in world who are not pricks. So does hating just stupid pricks make me a misanthrope?

(via fefe, in German)

[Update] I found this nice nugget via wikipedia:

Bryson also exaggerates the portrayals of some scientists: Ernest Rutherford is said to be an overpowering force, Fred Hoyle a complete weirdo, Fritz Zwicky an utterly abrasive astronomer, and Newton a total paranoiac. Surely the descriptions of these and other scientists are distorted.

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Prepared by the staff of Jupiter Scientific

Which sounds to me like: "I'm just too lazy to look up any facts, but surely these descriptions are distorted. Impossible that scientists are anything other than scientists, same as it is impossible that a politician is anything other than a politician or an astronaut is anything other than an astronaut."

Sure, Bryson could be wrong. But his works looks pretty solid to me.

Oil, Gas, Drugs and Cars - The pillars of our economy

Narcotics are estimated to be worth between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year, an amount, according to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in remarks to a United Nations General Assembly session in June 2003, that is greater than the global oil and gas industry, and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.

The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 (via)

I think a close runner-up is the military.

Must Read

Money by Stef: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

"Excellence"

I once received an invitation to lecture at "The University of Excellence". I forget where this particular academy was located - Jordan, I think - but I recall very clearly that the suggested subject of my talk was as incomprehensible to me as it would, no doubt, have been to any audience. Invitation rejected. Only this week I received another request, this time to join "ethics practitioners" to "share evidence-based practices on dealing with current ethical practices" around the world. What on earth does this mean? Why do people write like this?

Independent Online Edition - Robert Fisk: This jargon disease is choking language