| Thursday, February 5, 2009 |
07:28 - Now let's have some high-pitched melodies
http://mitchieville.com/9832/how-the-economic-crisis-really-sounds/
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Someone used Microsoft Poopsmith to set the stock market's machinations to music.
I guess you gotta do something.
Via JMH.
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07:26 - New Yorkers are funny Part 2
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"I just found out from someone that the term 'mulatto' is apparently no longer in use."
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07:24 - Because I didn't have enough to do
http://www.gearthblog.com/
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Google Earth 5. (Just hit the link and keep scrolling for demos.) I've only looked at the Oceans stuff so far, but I'm looking forward to trying out the Mars stuff and Historical Imagery.
One of these days, that is.
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05:55 - Credit where it's believed to be due
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/business/media/02apple.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
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Illuminating article via JMH on the tense relationship between Apple and the music labels. From the sound of it, Jobs holds all the cards, and he knows it:
In interviews, several high-level music executives, who spoke on the condition that they not be named to avoid angering Apple, said they operated in fear of Apple’s removing a label’s products from the iTunes store over a disagreement, even though that has never happened. The labels do not have much leverage in negotiating with Apple.
“I think Steve has been smart, and he knows he has the upper hand,” said Dave Goldberg, the former general manager of Yahoo Music who is now an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. “They can’t afford to pull their music.”
One result of the dicey relationship is the increasing search by the music industry for a future in which Apple is not so dominant. Many executives say they believe the future of music buying is over the mobile phone, not from buying individual songs but by paying a monthly subscription fee to hear vast database of music.
And that's why, evidently: the labels are still stuck on the belief that the future of digital music is the subscription model. What will it take to convince them otherwise? If not the failure of Napster and Rhapsody and all their ilk, and if not the fact (noted in the article) that iTunes now occupies the industry-bellwether position that the Billboard charts once did, then what possibly could? And even if they were to hedge their bets in favor of music downloading over mobile devices, doesn't Apple's ascendant dominance in that market give them pause?
I love the conclusion:
“They believe they created MTV, and will say they revived Apple,” said Mr. Goldberg, speaking about the music industry in general.
Mr. Card of Forrester, however, has a different take. “If it weren’t for Apple, God knows how bad the music industry would be,” he said.
Sounds to me like they're pretty well screwed even with Apple to cling to.
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| Tuesday, February 3, 2009 |
19:23 - (EDITORS: MENTION FINDING THIS TEXT AND YOU GET A SIX-PACK ON ME)
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/02/03/3961886.htm
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It's important for editors to read the stories they're supposed to be editing.
Via Chris.
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11:27 - The way of the future... the way of the future... the way of the future...
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So I'm trying to install a software package that requires PEAR, which is some kind of extension and package manager for PHP. Well hey, I think to myself. About frickin' time someone tried to get that cross-compiling rat's nest under control.
So first I try using yum. Being on Red Hat and all.
# yum search pear
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 82, in main
base.getOptionsConfig(args)
File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 147, in getOptionsConfig
disabled_plugins=opts.disableplugins)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 152, in _getConfig
startupconf.pluginconfpath,disabled_plugins)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 285, in doPluginSetup
plugin_types, confpath, disabled_plugins)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/plugins.py", line 140, in __init__
self._importplugins(types)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/plugins.py", line 181, in _importplugins
self._loadplugin(modulefile, types)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/plugins.py", line 198, in _loadplugin
module = imp.load_module(modname, fp, pathname, description)
File "/usr/lib/yum-plugins/rhnplugin.py", line 25, in ?
import up2date_client.up2dateAuth as up2dateAuth
ImportError: No module named up2date_client.up2dateAuth
Wonderful. Okay, forget about yum, since it's off in we-have-Python-religion-and-have-no-patience-for-your-heathen-error-checking land.
Instead, let's look up PEAR itself:
Ah! That sounds promising, eh? I mean, boo on you guys for assuming I have PEAR already when I'm clearly here looking for instructions on how to install it; I don't imagine you guys have ever operated on a system that wasn't built from sources and has everything imaginable already installed, but whatever: there's a handy little web-based PHP installer I should be able to use. It's got its own dedicated domain and hard-coded URL for everyone to hit, even—so surely that's something I can rely on. "go-pear". http://pear.php.net/go-pear! Well then, let's go! Go PEAR!
Uh.
God dammit I am starting to hate the Open Source community. They cleverly designed a single point of failure, and then let it fail.
Don't suppose clicking on that "Quality Assurance" link right above it will help, eh?
Oh well: let's just go download it from here.
Oh goodie, you mean the best way to install PEAR is to run the pear command? Yeah, I'll do that, you morons.
Anyway, there's a download link. Let's just grab that. And unpack the tarball. And read the README file, which is useless. And read the INSTALL file, which starts out assuming I have nothing better to do than compile the whole PHP mess from scratch all over again:
Unix
====
make sure you have enabled default extensions, and if you want faster
downloads, enable the zlib extension. You must also enable the CLI
SAPI with the --enable-cli extension directive. After this, simply run:
make install-pear
and PEAR will be automatically configured for you.
go-pear
=======
For users who cannot perform the above steps, or who wish to obtain the
latest PEAR with a slightly higher risk of failure, use go-pear. go-pear
is obtained by downloading http://go-pear.org and saving it as go-pear.php.
After downloading, simply run "php go-pear.php" or open it in a web browser
(windows only) to download and install PEAR.
Ah! A dedicated domain! http://go-pear.org! Well then, let's just go use that! I'm sure it won't throw 404s at me.
Oh, nice. Nice.
Some pothead in Sweden is laughing at me right now, I'm sure of it.
Go PEAR yourself, Jorgi.
UPDATE: Lotta laffin' coming from up Scandinavia way.
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Brian Tiemann
