Sunday, November 13, 2005

Madonna

Addicted to blogging, I’m trying to bring more entertainment back into my life. I bought Neil Young and Stevie Wonder. To make my travel back through time complete, it looks like I’ll have to buy Madonna:

For anyone who was out clubbing in the 1980’s, the music should set off name-that-tune nostalgia. There are glimmers of Donna Summer, S.O.S. Band, Tom Tom Club, Blondie, Depeche Mode and even a little Iggy Pop. In the song “Hung Up,” Madonna samples Abba’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” But she’s not attempting a simple 80’s revival; for all the vaguely familiar hooks, there are also sustained, wistful overlays of strings and acoustic guitar that enfold the music like a haze of indistinct memory.

What century is this anyway?

Site maintenance

I’ve been putting it off and putting it off but today I’m finally going to do it: upgrade to Movable Type 3.2. While I’m at it I hope to implement tags and come up with a new system of addressing spam. I’d also like to improve the comments system.

I’m suspicious that something’s wrong with the way comment registration is working now. This site doesn’t get a lot of comments, but it does get some. There have been none since late October.

Wish me luck! I’ll let you know when it’s complete.

UPDATE: Success. Movable Type 3.2 is installed. I broke the templates by updating them so have gone back to the backups and now have to figure out what I’m supposed to do about that. Progress…

Atrios: Don’t buy Sony CDs

Today:

I’ve been watching with amusement the tale of Sony, whose copy protection system on some CDs they sell installs nasty unremovable malware on your computer.

As nasty as that is, I think it’s trumped by aspects of their EULA. Apparently, according to Sony, if you declare bankruptcy you are legally required to delete all your music.

These agreements may well be legally kosher, but that’s just another sign of how out of step our laws are from our culture.

These companies don’t want us to know all that we’re signing away with that quick click because if we did know just precisely how little we’re “legally” getting we’d stand up and fight back!