07.30.02
Posted in forum archive at 5:48 pm by
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=businessnews&StoryID=1264188
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Vivendi Universal, the debt-laden media giant, is planning to announce a new round of job cuts, as an independent consultant recommended eliminating 40 percent of the workforce in the New York and Paris corporate offices, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday.
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=businessnews&StoryID=1260501
LONDON/FRANKFURT July 28 (Reuters) – Bertelsmann chief executive Thomas Middelhoff was forced to step down on Sunday after a fierce dispute over his strategy, joining the growing ranks of media chiefs axed by a more conservative old guard.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0207/30.riaa.php
The Recording Association of America Inc.’s (RIAA) Web site was knocked offline over the weekend in what appeared to be a denial-of-service attack, an RIAA representative said Tuesday.
The group’s site was inaccessible for portions of Friday, Saturday and Sunday after being inundated by scores of machines trying to make simultaneous connections to the Web site, the representative said.
The denial-of-service attack began a day after a new RIAA-backed bill was introduced, that aims to crack down on peer-to-peer (P-to-P) piracy.
The bill, introduced Thursday by U.S. Representative Howard L. Berman, a Democrat from California, proposes a safe harbor for copyright holders to employ technological means to protect their works. Under the proposed legislation, copyright holders would be able to employ technological tools such as file blocking, redirection, spoofs and decoys, among others, to curb piracy.
Although the proposed bill has stirred controversy among privacy proponents, the RIAA representative did not link the attack with its support of the legislation.
The RIAA’s site resumed normal operations Monday.
http://www.austin360.com/aas/life/ap/ap_story.html/Entertainment/AP.V0766.AP-Record-Contract.html
By JIM WASSERMAN
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)–Singers and entertainment attorneys criticized California’s $41 billion recording industry Tuesday, testifying that it routinely underreports royalties and cheats artists of millions of dollars.
The speakers were testifying before the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee and alleged financial irregularities by the five global corporations that dominate the music business.
Music attorney Don Engel estimated that record companies routinely “underpay 10 to 40 percent on every royalty” and dare artists to challenge it without killing their careers.
“I’ve heard of this hearing described as a fishing expedition,” said entertainment attorney Fred Wilhelms. “There are big fish out there.”
The record industry denied the characterizations and cast the allegations in a context of power negotiations between artists and their lawyers and the record labels.
“That’s what’s going on here. No more, no less,” said Steven Marks, senior vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America.
The industry also released an economic analysis that showed fewer than 5 percent of signed artists produce a hit record. Likewise, for every hit, the industry loses $6.3 million on albums that fail.
Among those testifying, singer Sam Moore, formerly of Sam and Dave, recalled learning in his 50s that his retirement fund would be $67 a month because his record label never reported income to his pension fund.
Singer Montel Jordan, who had the 1995 hit, “This is How We Do It,” said despite 2 million singles from that release and several albums since, he still owes money to his record label.
“I have sold many gold and platinum records. I’ve never had a moneymaking loss and yet … I still haven’t recouped,” Jordan said.
Several speakers, calling for reforms, suggested the recording industry develop a standard set of accounting rules.
A bill introduced in the Senate would close a record industry exemption from state labor law and limit contracts to seven years.
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07.15.02
Posted in forum archive at 10:16 pm by
I thought it might be interesting to post my upgrading plans in a public place so that the ‘experts’ could ridicule/cajole/provide feedback. The ultimate goal is to have maximum performance for a low-to-modest price. This is purely an academic exercise – lot’s of other essentials need to be taken care of before I get toy money. But who didn’t dream a bit when the Xmas toy catalogs came in the mail? So…
Currently obtained items which will be transferred to the new desktop system:
[list:029dbf088c]512 MB PC133 SDRAM – I bought this last year and I believe this is sufficient for my needs. While RAM is cheap right now and higher performance can be had, I’d rather use what I have[/list:u:029dbf088c]
[list:029dbf088c]CD-RW – pretty standard – don’t need the fastest here[/list:u:029dbf088c]
New Stuff, in the order of replacement:
[list:029dbf088c]Motherboard/CPU/Graphx Card – This will be a simotaneous purchase. I have been impressed with AMD’s price/performance in the past, but the most recent issue of computer power user (CPU) really, really liked the 2.53 Ghz Pentium 4’s. Do I need that much oomph? No, but if the difference between 1.8 and 2.5 is only one or two hundred dollars, it almost is a question of why not? Realistically though, I really liked the AMD Thunderbird CPU (around 1.4 Ghz, I think). The CPU and my desire to still use my SDRAM will most likely determine the Mobo. Because I’m building this, that means I’ll also need a Graphx Card. Read a review of the new Matrox card that allows for 3 monitor output – sssseeeeexxxxxy. With a couple of monitors around and the need for tons of real estate during heavy programming or composing sessions, this is a nice option.[/list:u:029dbf088c]
[list:029dbf088c]Hard Drives – Dual 40 Gig 7200rpm IDE drives. Need to play with this somewhat, but I’d like to RAID this so that I can get faster perfomance and have sufficient data redundancy. I beleive that means segmenting the drives into 3 26.something gig drives. The first is actually 13.something gigs divided evenly across the 2 seperate drives – data is broken into halves, with half the data sent to phsical drive A and the other half to physical drive B (each operation is faster, since each physical drive has to work half as much). The remaining space of each physical drive will be a copy of the distributed virtual drive. The two copies mean that if one harddrive fails, a complete copy is kept on the other drive. My only concern is that in my database readings the distributed drive piece might only provides performance increases with 4 or more drives. If that is the case, that whole idea goes out the window.[/list:u:029dbf088c]
[list:029dbf088c]DVD-RW – The way prices are coming down, who wouldn’t want to be able to back up 7-9 gigs of info?[/list:u:029dbf088c]
[list:029dbf088c]19 inch flat panel monitor – this is so far off, I’m not even going to speculate 
[/list:u:029dbf088c]
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07.11.02
Posted in forum archive at 1:28 pm by
From a western digital press release:
LAKE FOREST, Calif., Jun 25, 2002 – Continuing to lead the 7,200 RPM market with its WD Caviar® family, Western Digital Corp today introduced the industry’s largest capacity hard drive – its WD Caviar 200 GB 7,200 RPM product. This milestone marks the fourth consecutive first-to-market 7,200 RPM hard drive delivered by Western Digital – which was first to deliver 7,200 RPM hard drives in 80, 100 and 120 GB capacities.
WD Caviar 60 GB-per-platter 7,200 RPM hard drives will be offered in capacities ranging from 120 to 200 GB and will be available this July. To ensure quiet operation in noise-sensitive desktop/work station environments, Western Digital offers hard drives equipped with optional fluid dynamic bearing motors.
“Hard drive manufacturers are providing incredible levels of performance and capacity to the PC market, as well as to today’s emerging markets demanding massive local storage such as personal video recorders,” said Mark Geenen, president of TrendFocus, a research firm specializing in the data storage market “Western Digital successfully focuses on the highest capacity and highest performance EIDE hard drives, and delivers another first with 200 gigabytes.”
200 GB? I’ve been getting by with 16 GB for 3 years (it’s been tough, and I’ve had to occassionally back stuff up and uninstall unused programs, but I’ve gotten by). I think I’d be wallowing in space if I had 80 GB.
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07.08.02
Posted in forum archive at 11:29 am by
Read this little blurb on Gamespy this morning:
A venture called the Xbox Linux Project has announced that an “anonymous donor” has pledged $200,000 as prize money in the effort to get the Linux operating system running on an Xbox. Such a successful hack would enable users to turn an Xbox into an inexpensive terminal or workstation, opening it up for any number of tasks, such as a multimedia player or file server. The various tasks needed to get Linux running on the game console are being broken up, and awards for success doled out from the prize pool. The contest is scheduled to end on December 31, with “an awards committee” deciding who gets what portion of the prize money.
For more on the Xbox/Linux hack, the website is http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/index.php
Ironically, this same month Wired magazine makes mention of a plan to put linux on a PS2. Instead of being a totally home brewed effort, Sony actually shipped a Linux kit for the system in Japan last summer. The $199 kit includes a 40-gig internal hard drive (something the Xbox already has on board), an Ethernet adapter, a keyboard, and a mouse. There is a community based around these efforts http://www.playstation2-linux.com
While both of these are very interesting, I am somewhat confused – what good will running linux be on these systems if there aren’t applications to run on that OS? I believe linux hasn’t taken off, in part, due to the fact that there aren’t a lot of great apps out there that run on it. While these two cases are further proof that computers and consols are becoming the same machjne, I don’t know if Linux on a PS2 is really worth it. 
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