Monthly Archives: October 2009

Bring back your vinyl LPs

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TEC 754 phono preamp and RIAA equilizer

TEC 754 phono preamp and RIAA equilizer

Reviving your LP collection may be simple or complex but it doesn’t have to be expensive

If you are thinking of dusting off your turntable and listening to those old vinyl records, you will be in good company.

Thanks to hip-hop and DJs, vinyl records are the in-thing. From 2007 to 2008, vinyl LP production increased from 1 million to 1.88 units in the US.

I only wanted to listen to some old LPs when I dug out my Dual 505 turntable this spring. The 20 year old model had not been used for over decade but it worked. I ordered a new stylus on the Internet for $75.

About the time I got used to getting up every 25 minutes to flip the disk, my 20 year old receiver developed a ground loop hum in the left channel. No one would fix it because the new ones are so cheap.

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YouTube Taking Down Public Domain Works?

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techdirt_logohorizontal

from the make-it-stop dept

From TechDirt

In the past couple of days I’ve received emails from two separate people who found that public domain material they put on YouTube was taken down to companies claiming ownership of the work. In both cases, the stories seem pretty ridiculous, and for all the complaining that copyright holders do about how awful it is that they need to “police” their own content on YouTube, it seems like those who are getting hurt are people who are putting up public domain material and getting shut down — often with little recourse.

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Media wrong in Pate-gate

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Paul MacNeill, editor Eastern Graphic

Paul MacNeill, editor Eastern Graphic

Media hypocrisy that is driving people away from traditional news sources into the lap of bloggers

Paul MacNeill, Publisher, Eastern Graphic  peicanada.com – The devil, they say, is in the details. The Legislative press gallery should have remembered that old adage before ousting controversial blogger Stephen Pate.

In their daily jobs gallery members are charged with getting the details right and ensuring proper process is followed. They didn’t do that with Pate. Instead they rushed to turf him without benefit of proper procedure. And in the process only made the press gallery look weak.

Last year Pate applied for accreditation to cover the legislature. He was accepted by the Speaker’s Office. After another blogger applied, Legislative Clerk Charles MacKay, a very good public servant, suggested the media organize a gallery to control who is and who is not approved. It is a good idea.

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Should you pay for a newspaper?

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My local paper has been free for three weeks, about what it’s worth

I’ve been taking a few knocks lately by the people in ivory towers who print newspapers, you know the one’s your parents read at breakfast and on the toilet.

Some of these have included comments that newspapers are objective, print the real original stories, are up to date, don’t advocate for causes and hence tell the truth, etc. Let’s look at the facts.

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Is Dylan misguided?

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Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts video

There’s something funny going on. I can just feel it in the air

Revision – the revised title was suggested by the moderator of Expecting Rain, in respect for the artist, and we agree.

First Dylan records a really bad Christmas album with royalties donated to feed the hungry. Then he comes back east for more concert dates. Last week saw the wholesale deletion of thousands of bootleg Dylan videos from YouTube – more than 2,000 a day including indefinite account suspensions.

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Bob Dylan fans drive YouTube back

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Bob Dylan fans fight back

The battle for control of YouTube rages on

After dropping badly all last week to YouTube account suspensions, Bob Dylan fans went on the offensive against the copyright bots today.

At 7 am, Dylan videos on YouTube had dropped to a new low of 97,400.

We have been alerting the loyal both here and on Expecting Rain.

Thousands of people read YouTube suspends thousands of accounts and secretly went into overdrive.

By tonight they had restored 4,600 Bob Dylan videos to YouTube. We have no idea how many other music videos were rescued. Bob is a barometer of fan loyalty.

Keep up the fight. Don’t let the bots win.

Tall people like Serena win the Green Car Challenge

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Serena Williams with a time of 55.84 photo: NBC

Dr. Phil is no gentleman in beating Serena

With more nerve than common sense I was rooting for Serena Williams when Dr. Phil came on Jay Leno last night.

Serena, the perfect Amazon woman on the cover of ESPN , is tall, athletically awesome, and good looking – well gorgeous. I am allowed to admit that.

Last week Serena put in the best time of 55.84 on the Jay Leno Green Car contest. Her win proved my point that tall, athletic people win more of everything than the rest of us. They look better, act with more assurance and win at life’s myriad contests. Tall salespeople can outsell their short competitors.

Back to the Jay Leno Show, on comes Dr. Phil. Immediately I am in trouble as she claps her hands in glee to see Mr. Right-Answers best Jay Leno over and over again. It was like dueling egos only Jay is shorter and Dr. Phil won the interview.

Out on the race track for the “Green Car Challenge”, Dr. Phil was whining about everything and Jay ribbed him without mercy. Jay asked “Did he need a seat belt extender?”

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Microsoft blames stalled updates on users

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windows7betastartscreenYou cannot upgrade from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7

The debate has been raging since last Friday when $29 student upgrades to Windows 7 started going into a never-ending reboot.

“For those that have purchased Windows 7 from Digital River and receive the error ‘We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded’ when going through the ‘Unloading the Box’ [step] Microsoft Answers

Considering the millions of successful upgrades, the people who are having trouble are not statistically significant but it it’s your computer then it is a nightmare.

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