As you can see from the picture – the method of playing is quite simple — But getting to the end? Ah, that’s another story …
Oh – If you are at work, you might want to turn the sound down on your computer …
To start getting caught-up enjoying a break –
If you have never read “The Onion” you have missed a delightful collection of completely made-up fanciful and commentary articles. In October 2, 2002 they printed an article that shows they had their crystal ball completely polished – or at least pointed in the right direction. Thanks to durnMoose blogs for printing this article!
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Here is the complete article:
LOS ANGELES—The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation’s radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.
“It’s criminal,” RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. “Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?”
According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists’ CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs.
“These radio stations are extremely popular,” Rosen said. “They flagrantly string our songs together in ‘uninterrupted music blocks’ of up to 70 minutes in length, broadcasting nearly one CD’s worth of product without a break, and they actually have the gall to allow businesses to advertise between songs. It’s bad enough that they’re giving away our music for free, but they’re actually making a profit off this scheme.”
RIAA attorney Russell Frackman said the lawsuit is intended to protect the artists.
“If this radio trend continues, it will severely damage a musician’s ability to earn a living off his music,” Frackman said. “[Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich stopped in the other day wondering why his last royalty check was so small, and I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a man who’s devoted his whole life to his music that someone is able to just give it away for free? That pirates are taking away his right to support himself with his craft?”
For the record companies and the RIAA, one of the most disturbing aspects of the radio-station broadcasts is that anyone with a receiver and an analog tape recorder can record the music and play it back at will.
“I’ve heard reports that children as young as 8 tape radio broadcasts for their own personal use,” Rosen said. “They listen to a channel that has a limited rotation of only the most popular songs—commonly called ‘Top 40’ stations—then hit the ‘record’ button when they hear the opening strains of the song they want. And how much are they paying for these songs? A big fat zip.”
Continued Rosen: “According to our research, there is one of these Top 40 stations in every major city in the country. This has to be stopped before the music industry’s entire economic infrastructure collapses.”
Especially distressing to the RIAA are radio stations’ “all-request hours,” when listeners call in to ask radio announcers, or “disc jockeys,” to play a certain song.
“What’s the point of putting out a new Ja Rule or Sum 41 album if people can just call up and hear any song off the album that they want?” Frackman asked. “In some instances, these stations actually have the nerve to let the caller ‘dedicate’ his act of thievery to a friend or lover. Could you imagine a bank letting somebody rob its vaults and then allowing the thief to thank his girlfriend Tricia and the whole gang down at Bumpy’s?”
Defenders of radio-based music distribution insist that the relatively poor sound quality of radio broadcasts negates the record companies’ charges.
“Radio doesn’t have the same sound quality as a CD,” said Paul “Cubby” Bryant, music director of New York radio station Z100, one of the nation’s largest distributors of free music and a defendant in the suit. “Real music lovers will still buy CDs. If anything, we’re exposing people to music they might not otherwise hear. These record companies should be thanking us, not suing us.”
Outraged by the RIAA suit, many radio listeners are threatening to boycott the record companies.
“All these companies care about is profits,” said Amy Legrand, 21, an avid Jacksonville, FL, radio user who surreptitiously records up to 10 songs a day off the radio. “Top 40 radio is taking the power out of the hands of the Ahmet Erteguns of the world and bringing it back to the people of Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting. It’s about time somebody finally stood up to those record-company fascists.”
And of course, we know that a couple of years later the RIAA began suing anyone they could possibly think of who might have a single song/CD in their possession that might be a copy. 
Aside from actually dealing with people who were making enormous quantities of music available, they have also gone after grandmother’s who had no idea how to operate a computer – and there is even a story floating around that they have sued at least three dead people.
Of course, they were a number of years behind ASCAP (another royalty organization) that was collecting money if a Girl Scout Camp sang “God Bless America” around the campfire, but that’s another post!
I was looking through “The Onion” archives and found this article dated November 30, 2005. At first glance, it seemed like just another Onion article that John Stewart might have used.
The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. “We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material,” a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read. “We will aggressively prosecute those individuals who attempt to pirate our property by generating ‘buzz’ about any proprietary music, movies, or software, or enjoy same in the company of anyone other than themselves.”
RIAA attorneys said they were also looking into the legality of word-of-mouth “favorites-sharing” sites, such as coffee shops, universities, and living rooms.
However – this week a serious bill began to make it’s way through the “hallowed halls” of Congress. Here are some of the key provisions:
—Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright.
Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department’s summary of the legislation says: “It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.”)
–Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who “recklessly causes or attempts to cause death” can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
–Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are “attempting” to infringe copyrights.
–Allow computers to be seized more readily.
Specifically, property such as a PC “intended to be used in any manner” to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture.
Any chuckling over The Onion article stopped. I was teaching in India when Indira Ghandi with a single stroke of a pen took all liberties away (including those afforded to those of us who were working there). Somehow, when I read/think about some of the things going on – or proposed, I hear faint sounds of the Sitar in the background.
Normally, the timewasters postings like these involve the computer. You can solve this one on paper, but I think a computer spreadsheet might make it a little bit easier. I am not responsible for nibbled pencils, too many cups of coffee or the fact that you might growl at people as they try to talk to you while solving this puzzle.
According to legend/myth – Albert Einstein wrote this as a small boy, and 98% of the world can not solve it.
Two things wrong with that sentence – 1) if I remember rightly he was too busy getting in trouble as school to be this creative and 2) 
I would imagine that 98% of the world would simply be uninterested in the puzzle. This puzzle has also been attributed to Lewis Carroll, and various other authors.
The version below is quoted from the first known publication in Life International magazine on December 17, 1962.
1. There are five houses.
2. The Englishman lives in the red house.
3. The Spaniard owns the dog.
4. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
6. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7. The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8. Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14. The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
15. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
Now, who drinks water? Who owns the zebra?
And before I get strung up on a yardarm – let me offer a couple of “clarifications”:
Each of the five houses is painted a different color.
Their inhabitants are of different national extractions,
own different pets,
drink different beverages
and smoke different brands of American cigarettes.
One other: In statement 6, right means your right.
One more: The houses ARE in a row.
As always, I have been known to be bribed talked into sharing the solution via email.
Here is another timewaster momentary diversion from the tasks at hand. It’s called very simply diversion, and not only is it fun to play, it’s very humorous as well. And speaking from personal experience, it does get more difficult at you play on — there’s a double meaning to the word distraction..
Time Magazine has made it official You (and I) are Time’s “person of the year.”
Quoting briefly from the article:
For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.
But a number of years ago T.S. Eliot wondered (poetically of course):
With all the technological advances and change, Is mankind happier or wiser than he was 100 years ago?
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
from “The Rock”
>The other day I got a phone call starting off “and you can’t say no.” Who can resist an invitation such as that? What I couldn’t say no to was a large artificial tree I was being loaned for the holidays. This news was met (later) with the realization that I was going to have to move some furniture in the living room of my smallish apartment to make room for it.
This, as usually happens to me, caused a chain effect that ALL the furniture was going to have to be moved…including everything where my computer is/has been. This was very worrisome to me as my computer is basically on life-support and has to be treated with a LOT of TLC. It, as it’s owner, is somewhat old ..LOL … it’s a compaq presario 5630. It’s got to hang on by it’s painted fingernails until I can replace it.
Last night I was moving furniture, cords and such. Yes, I was muttering, saying some things very loudly – including a couple of suggestions that are physical impossibilities. I eventually got things where they were going to rest, and discovered that the cable cord would not reach the computer. I now have a lovely art object I’m calling “ snake of love” going across part of the floor. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!)
Then, it was time to turn the computer back on. Nothing. Well, the monitor was trying to be helpful as it splashed across it’s screen “Monitor working ok, no input. Check connections.” I have to say my heart sank to beneath the soles of my shoes.
Saying very nice soft sweet nothings and nothing but sweet love to the computer, I began to check all the connections, cables and plugs. It’s now 3am, and I’m not going to bed until this is solved. Then (hand slap to forehead) I remembered that I had turned off the computer completely by the switch in the back. With a sigh of relief I turned it on and heard the lovely sound of my ancient friend starting up.
This morning I got up early to finish moving things around and complete the discovery of places that needed to be cleaned. And then I waited for the delivery of this delightful tree. About an hour ago I got a call with the information delivered in a breezy fashion that he had forgotten about delivering the tree and he’d try to do it sometime in the next week or so.
I think I’m going to start saying “Bah Humbug” to the season!!!!!
I thought the picture from http://www.oddtodd.com pretty well summed it up!!
maturenotdeadblog 