February 2009
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
« Jan   Mar »
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
232425262728  

Day 11 February, 2009

Entries 4 Total

Passionato

Feb 11, ’09 8:50 PM

And now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, for those of you who like to listen to clas­sical music. I’ve been mean­ing to blog this for a while:

Passionato.com — this is how digital music dis­tri­bu­tion on the net should work: decent length pre­views, DRM-free (mean­ing no restric­tions on which devices you play your music) and avail­able in lossless file format (mean­ing the files are com­pressed without sac­ri­fi­cing the integ­rity of the audio, as hap­pens with lossy formats like MP3).

They could improve their search func­tion, but the show-stopper is price: if I find an album I like what’s to stop me from pur­chas­ing the CD for cheaper? I’m not a huge buyer of music but I would be if digital dis­tri­bu­tion com­peted with CDs.

Check out more on their about page.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)

Free-market ideology is dead

Feb 11, ’09 9:31 AM

Free-market ideo­logy is dead, and none too soon:

The pat­tern is clear: gov­ern­ments that respond to a crisis cre­ated by free-market ideo­logy with an accel­er­a­tion of that same dis­cred­ited agenda will not sur­vive to tell the tale.

I just hope the same can be said for New Zealand.

Comments (0)

Must-read from George Monbiot

Feb 11, ’09 9:15 AM

hezel_blearsIf you read noth­ing else about polit­ics today read this:

George Mon­biot: Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears — except election?

For some con­text in the lead up to this piece check out No Right Turn’s links on the mat­ter.

Comments (0)

Arabic press on Israeli elections

Feb 11, ’09 12:05 AM

Arabic press on Israeli elec­tions:

Mazin Hammad in Qatar’s Al-Watan

Regard­less of who will win, the dif­fer­ences between the right, left and centre [of Israel’s polit­ics] are not clear for those who closely watch the elec­tion from out­side. They all pounce on Palestinian blood.

Rashid Hasan in Jordan’s Al-Dustur

The vic­tory of extrem­ists, with [Likud Party leader Ben­jamin] Net­an­yahu in the lead, would mean that the situ­ation — i.e. the set­tle­ment and the so-called peace pro­cess — will return to square one … The Israeli state was built on mas­sacres and gen­o­cides com­mit­ted by Zion­ist gangs … There­fore, it is not strange if extrem­ists win.

Comments (0)