Why the RIAA Fails at Life, The Universe, and (especially) the Internet

As Chris just reported, the Nine Inch Nails album released independently via download has garnered $750,000 so far. A similarly released Radiohead album made about $10 million recently. The recording industry is unsure what to do, but thus far has mostly seemed to ignore these successes and continued to focus on music piracy, which they blame for loss of profit. To combat piracy, they’ve taken measures such as encrypting CDs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, which in Sony’s case included a rootkit, which presented serious computer security issues to users. However, as of last year, all major record labels had dropped DRM due to its cost and ineffectiveness at preventing piracy. Why the record labels are on their way down, after the jump. Click to continue reading…

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Guns on Campus

Given the unfortunate propensity in this country for psychos to walk into public places and start killing people, most recently at Northern Illinois University, the debate over whether or not guns should be allowed on college campuses has become a major issue. Only a couple of universities, including the University of Utah, where I attend, allow concealed carry permit holders to carry their guns on campus. Anti-gun groups claim that allowing concealed carry on campus would result in even more shootings; pro-gun groups say that the only way that students will be able to defend themselves from a psychotic gunman is to be on equal ground with the shooter. My thoughts after the jump. Click to continue reading…

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HD-DVD is Toast!

Engadget, the popular gadget website, just put HD-DVD on their “deathwatch.”

HD-DVD looked promising with it’s slightly lower price range, but with Sony’s continual push of Blu-ray technology, HD-DVD looks pretty beat. It might be due to lack of studio support for HD-DVD, with Blu-ray now holding about 70% of newly released titles. Warner gave Blu-ray an little extra bump when they went Blu-ray only. Maybe, it was the two largest movie rental companies, Netflix and Blockbuster, following suit and also going Blu-ray only. It also could have been the higher quality of Blu-ray movies, with a single disk being able to hold two to four times more infomation than an HD-DVD disk. Perhaps, it was even the Playstation 3 that helped Blu-ray. Just kidding.

HD DVD

[Source: Engadget]

[Image credit: Travis Church]

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Guitar Rising: Guitar Hero with Real Guitars

The one thing that sucks about the newest series of hit games where you play “musical instruments” is that you spend hours learning how to play on a plastic toy that you are never going to use after you beat the game. Enter Guitar Rising, GameTank’s newest production.

Guitar Rising will allow players to use any real electric guitar and actively learn how to play real cords. There will be an adapter where players hook up their guitars to their PC or Mac and start playing songs. The game progresses in difficulty to help those that have never played a guitar before. It took me about two years to become even remotely good at playing the guitar, while just the other day I went from being a complete idiot at Guitar Hero to passing every song on medium relatively well. This game seems like one of the better ideas to come out of the video game industry. No release date has been set.

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Time stops at Grand Central Station for five minutes

Last Thursday, the New York comedy group Improv Everywhere played a prank on all those walking through Grand Central Station. The 207 participants completely froze for a full five minutes. Take a look at the video below to see how people react.

[youtube jwMj3PJDxuo nolink]

[Improv Everywhere]

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