I’ve written about the SAC‘s proposal to legalize music file sharing several times in the past, giving it mixed reviews. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one of the first times an organization of artists has proposed it, and some record companies are entertaining the idea as well. I’ve […]
Blaise Alleyne
317 posts
In a hacking contest pitting Windows, OS X and GNU/Linux against each other, a MacBook Air was the first machine to go down after just two minutes into the second day. The headline is in several places, but I’m linking to Slashdot because comments like these amuse me at 5:30am: […]
((If you’re tagged in this note on Facebook, it’s because I value your opinion and am interested to hear what you have to say. Or because I’m pretending to value your opinion and would be interested in proving you wrong. 😉 Either way, you may want to read the first […]
Lateralus is – hands down – my favourite song. Last week, I found myself on its Wikipedia page and my mind exploded a little bit more. Counting between pauses, the syllables in Maynard James Keenan’s vocals during the verses form the first few Fibonacci numbers, ascending and descending… The Fibonacci […]
In a Saturday op-ed in the NY Times (via Techdirt), Billy Bragg argues that musicians deserve royalties for the use of their music on the web. Bebo, a social networking site which rivals Facebook and MySpace in popularity in the UK, was recently sold to AOL for $850 million. Bragg […]
The other day, I wrote a (ridiculously long) post announcing my commitment to free culture, and more specifically, to free music. I didn’t expect anyone to read the entire thing, but my friend, John, not only read it but also responded to it on Facebook. I’m not sure what his […]
My mom (who runs Ubuntu 7.10) was having trouble with old PowerPoint presentations in OpenOffice.org Impress. Her machine would grind to a halt in presentation mode and she was forced to export the presentations as PDFs in order to deliver them. I investigated the issues and found some help in […]
I have a ThinkPad T61 (646562U – with Intel GM965 integrated graphics) and I run Ubuntu 7.10 as my main operating system. When I wake from a suspend, my screen is too dark to use. I figured my laptop, which is relatively new, isn’t supported properly yet and just refrained […]
Over the past few months, I have been researching and reflecting on free culture and what it means for my music. Free culture is about freedom, not price. Today, the vast majority of music (and other art) is not free due to a combination of technology, law and economics. The […]