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Month: January 2013

Being young at heart, nostalgic, or stunted with your musical taste?

Published January 9, 2013 by Steve

bruce-springsteen-event-tile

In a couple of months I’m going to see Bruce Springsteen in concert in Sydney. Sure, he’s and older artist, and sure, many of the fans will be vastly older than me (though I don’t think I’ll be the youngest fan there by any measure), but this is not nostalgia, or youth or anything else like that speaking. It’s just me being a music fan, and grabbing an opportunity I might never have again to see a legendary musician perform (missed the 2003 concert, which was a shame as I’ll never see Clarence “Big Man” Clemons now).

I pondered this as I pondered the musical tastes of many. For a lot of music fans, “staying young” or being “young at heart” means listening to the same music they listened to as a teenager for the rest of their adult lives. How else can you explain concerts like this one — Pseudo Echo? 1927? I don’t recall if they were particularly good at the time even, let alone 25 years later! But I won’t criticise people for going along with that (or the musicians for continuing to do their thing), but personally, I just don’t get it.

Continue readingBeing young at heart, nostalgic, or stunted with your musical taste?
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How to put yourself out of business

Published January 8, 2013 by Steve
The newspaper industry... floating to oblivion?
The newspaper industry… floating to oblivion?  Image from Flickr user inju, used under Creative Commons license.

I picked up this story through Twitter last night:

Post a link, become a pirate

Posting a link to a news story from Ireland might prove to be an expensive business.

According to this site (hat tip Fark) a group of Irish newspapers have decided that the way to make cash from the web is to bill anyone who links to one of their stories.

The National Newspapers of Ireland group has adopted a new licensing scheme where it expects websites to pay to link to one of its members….

And it goes on from there. Unsurprisingly, there is so many things wrong with this idea it’s quite hysterical. And tragic, for an industry already in trouble. Basically, the idea is that these Irish newspapers have already clamped down successfully on anyone daring to excerpt any amount from their articles with the link (like Google News… bye bye fair use) and are now targeting the very act of linking to an article at all. Claiming this is somehow copyright infringement.

My goodness. Sounds self-defeating, positively inane, and completely geared towards making yourself irrelevant, right? Well, I decided to look into this further and hunted down the group’s website, and found this post from them on the topic (oh, a link, hope that doesn’t get me in trouble!).

Continue readingHow to put yourself out of business
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