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!K7 Records have announced the beginning of a campaign they call “NO Copy Protection”. They will begin labeling all of their releases with a logo stating that any disc so marked will not make any attempts to thwart the listener from exercising their fair use privileges.

For those who don’t know, !K7 is the label which releases Kruder & Dorfmeister, Tosca, Peace Orchestra, Ghost Cauldron, Five Deez, Ursula Rucker, and the DJ Kicks series.

The following is from the announcement:

“NO copy protection” is an indication that there is a reciprocal loyalty between the buyer and the label. The old song about mutual give and take has been given a new verse: Copy protection kills customer relationships. “NO copy protection” adds a new chorus. For only those to whom respect is given show respect themselves. Music is valuable. Those who love it, treat it accordingly: Trust is good. Nothing is better.

Posted at 12:32 pm.
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The Washington Post is running an article about how pharmaceutical companies are sitting on studies which show that the antidepressants they produce are less effective in treating depression in children than placebos.

I’ve always been a bit wary about giving children powerful psychotropic medicines when changes in environments or levels of physical activity might have more of an affect, but to find out that the companies which are providing these drugs are actually hiding information which shows that their pills may actually increase incidences of attempted suicide and self-mutilation, well, that’s just beyond the pale.

Here’s a great example:

For example, GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Paxil, has conducted three trials on depressed children. Company officials said all turned out negative — the children on the drug did not do better than those on placebos — but only one was published. Based on its data, the company warned British doctors that Paxil, sold there as Seroxat, “should not be prescribed as new therapy” to depressed children younger than 18. Its letter last June cited the risk of increased hostility, agitation, and suicidal thoughts and attempts.

No such warning was issued in the United States, though Paxil is identical to Seroxat. Here, the company’s official line on giving Paxil to children is “No recommendations can be made regarding the use of Paxil or Paxil CR in these patients.”

Posted at 9:30 am.
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Victor over at VirtualTurntable.biz has let the world know that XFM Radio has broadcast Strictly Kev’s Raiding the 20th Century, a 40 minute DJ collage of basically every piece of important music from the last half of the 20th Century (uh, hence the name, eh?). The entire piece is available online, but I decided to make use of the P2P networks so we aren’t downloading poor webmasters into bankruptcy.

So far I’ve posted the file to the eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent networks. Here are access details:

eDonkey Network link

Download .torrent file

And here’s how to access these networks:

eMule client:
Probably the best client for the eDonkey network.

BitTorrent Experimental client:
An extended BitTorrent client with great features. Install this, download the .torrent file with the link above and then simply double click to .torrent file to begin downloading. You will be asked where you want to save the file (it’s actually a small directory tree).

Posted at 10:27 am.
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has begun leveraging their intellectual property (Mars rovers and such) by licensing the images of the works. Lego has already jumped on the wagon with a model of the Spirit rover, containing 858 pieces.

It’s been years since I’ve purchased a Lego set, but I just might start.

[This is good]

Posted at 11:55 am.
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Just in case you’re not on the Hefty Records mailing list I’m here to tell you that Telefon Tel Aviv’s new album Map of What is Effortless will ship starting on January 22 and you can get your preorders in at the Hefty Store.

And if you don’t know what Telefon Tel Aviv is, it’s two guys out of New Orleans making some strikingly beautiful electronic music. Comparisons could possibly be made to Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin (think “Nannou”), or Chris Clark. Or to no one at all.

Oh, and try to make it to one of the listening parties, why don’t you.

Posted at 12:19 am.
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The Guardian is running a great article about the slagging popularity of ecstasy in England. I was extremely surprised to find out that the price of a pill of MDMA has dropped from about £25 to £2.50. I remember when my friends and I were into ecstasy a few years ago here in the States and it was running about $25 a pop, which was often prohibitively expensive.

Some of the people in the article claim that the pills are also getting less potent (which makes sense at that price). One man who was quoted had consumed 4 pills that evening and said “It’s a nice feeling, but that’s about it. I could probably get this feeling by reading the News of the World in front of the fire.” That is not the ecstasy I knew. The feeling was overwhelming, powerful. One good pill would do this to you. This guy either has a tolerance the size the great isle itself or he swallowed four pills worth of talc.

The article also mentions that cocaine is becoming the drug of choice in Britain, its price also falling.

[via The Morning News]

Posted at 11:38 am.
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Alternet is running an article called “Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2003” going through some of the most egregious examples of the War on (Some) Drugs failing miserably.

Number four stands out the most to me:

Switzerland’s Addiction Research Institute calls tobacco the number one killer addiction, responsible for 71 percent, or 4.9 million of the world’s 7 million annual drug-related deaths. About 1.8 million deaths, or 26 percent, were attributed to the use of alcohol, while illicit drugs caused about 223,000, or 3 percent, of all worldwide drug-related deaths.

All illicit drugs combined caused only 3 percent of total drug-related deaths worldwide.

Posted at 4:56 pm.
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Warp Records have opened their online music store Bleep. I’m having to avoid it at the moment because I need to save money for a trip to Europe this summer, but oh my fucking god it’s awesome!

The layout was designed, of course, by the Designer’s Republic so it’s a little unwieldy at times (e.g.: the little list of all available artists is a pain to navigate), but it also has some really cool features. The song preview is very cool. It shows you a waveform of the entire song and you can click along it listening to any part 20 seconds at a time.

Songs are priced at $1.35 a piece with albums costing $10 and EPs around $4. (interesting side note: all the prices are in US dollars, not Euros). All tracks are in MP3 format with no digital rights management (copy protection) which is a huge plus. Tracks are encoded with LAME using the “–alt-preset standard” VBR setting. Translation: you will not be able to tell the difference between these MP3s and a CD.

If you are a fan of Warp and have not already been digging around in this archive you are doing your self a great disservice. The entire catalogue is here, including all the rare EPs and b-sides. This is a company that sees the future of music distribution and is not afraid to embrace it. If you’re a fan of the label make sure to support them by buying tracks.

Money talks, yo.

Posted at 10:09 am.
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The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about a recently published report from the Army War College which calls Bush’s war on terror unfocused and the invasion of Iraq a “strategic error”.

Those damn dirty liberals at the Army War College! Oh, sorry, wrong knee-jerk reaction.

The full text of the report is availabe online in Adobe Acrobat format.

Posted at 5:18 pm.
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Matt Haughey posted a small review of iSkin’s new eXo 2 skin. A rather unfavorable review. OK, a very unfavorable review. He basically says he feels ripped off and ends with the tried and true “buyer beware”. Not long ago I ordered the same model of the eXo 2 (Charcoal) and must say I am very pleased with it.

Matt says that from looking at the site he felt that the skin was made of hard plastic. One look at this picture pretty much blows that supposition out of the water. It looks like what Matt is suffering from is not a shoddy product, but buyers remorse from an impulse purchase. Also, I don’t know how hard plastic would protect the iPod from scratches anymore than silicone. It certainly wouldn’t protect it from a fall.

I am very pleased with the eXo 2. My iPod is protected from scratches. It’s flexible enough that I can just peel the bottom back and dock the iPod without having to remove the entire cover. It comes with an excellent screen protector, a separate piece of hard plastic which fits perfectly over the screen without sticking to it (my only complaint here is the iSkin logo in the top left corner, but I’ve become so used to it I don’t see it anymore). I also feel that it keeps with the visual design sensibilities of the iPod. It’s hard to protect and be visually elegant at the same time, but I feel that iSkin has found a good balance.

So, basically, it all comes down to the fact that Matt thought the eXo 2 would be hard plastic, and it turned out to be flexible silicone, just like the web site says. If you want serious protection with style, there are a lot of options. Vaja Cases make some gorgeous hand-made leather cases with shock-resistant padding. Matias makes iPod Armor. There are many options available. Just make sure you actually read about them before clicking Submit Order. Buyer beware.

Posted at 1:13 pm.
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