Archive for April, 2008
Don’t all rush to HMV at once, now
From the press release pile:
Finnish operatic rock supergroup, Northern Kings, release their debut album, Reborn, in the UK on Monday 16th June, on Warner Music, and the single ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ will be released in the UK as a digital download and limited edition CD on 12th June.
Reborn, which has achieved gold status in Finland, features symphonic orchestral rock interpretations of eighties classics ranging from Brothers in Arms, Ashes to Ashes, Sledgehammer, Hello, I Just Died In Your Arms, We Don’t Need Another Hero, plus Radiohead’s 1993 song Creep.
Here’s the full track listing.
Don’t Stop Believin’
We Don’t Need Another Hero
Broken Wings
Rebel Yell
Ashes To Ashes
Fallen On Hard Times
I Just Died In Your Arms
Sledgehammer
Don’t Bring Me Down
In The Air Tonight
Creep
Hello
Brothers In Arms
Computer games, diddies and the breakdown of society
This morning’s episode of Radio Scotland’s Morning Extra was about videogame violence and GTA IV (yep, I was the one who called in at the end to call irresponsible parents “diddies”, heh). I know phone-ins don’t exactly attract rocket scientists - I mean, they let me on air - but even by the usual standards of jaw-dropping nonsense I was gobsmacked by one caller. He thinks violent videogames are bad. He, er, lets his eight-year-old play 18-certificate video games for hours on end. He doesn’t approve of this.
WTF?
*bangs head on desk*
All this scratching is making me itch
Many years ago, I was driving a Transit (badly) through St John’s Wood in London and misjudged the width of the van, knocking out the taillights of a parked car. I stopped and left a note so the owner could get in touch with a bill (he/she didn’t, which surprised me). A few years after that, I was driving my mum’s car through an exceptionally narrow street and scraped someone’s bumper. I stopped, left a note, and paid for the repairs to the other car - which I regretted, as judging by the bill the owner replaced the standard bumper on his Ford Fiesta with one made of gold, rubies and diamonds. Despite that, I’d do the same thing again. To me, it’s obvious: you smash something belonging to somebody else, you pay to make it good.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point in the last week or so somebody has scored deep lines along one side of my car while I’ve been parked in Tesco (I know it was Tesco - I’m a parent, I don’t go anywhere else). The car’s worth approximately 5p; the damage would cost several hundred quid to repair (it’s a wing, two doors and a rear panel). And it’s not the sort of damage you can do without noticing. So some bugger has scraped the shite out of my car, known full well what they’ve done, and just buggered off.
I think I’ve mentioned this before: one of my neighbours takes a note of the registrations of cars parked next to him in supermarkets. I used to think it was a stupid idea, but now I’m not so sure - because if I’d taken a note of the cars parked next to me, I could find them in future and set them on fire.
Life’s a gas
Apropos nothing…
Cost of filling a car with petrol in the US: $62 (£36).
Cost of filling a car with petrol in the UK: £71 ($142).
Comes with music. And stupidly large bills
Is Nokia’s Comes With Music deal one of the dumbest digital music deals ever struck? Could be!
The deal, which enables the phone firm to give users unlimited music downloads, could cost Nokia a fortune.
The Register has learned that Nokia must pay the wholesale per-unit rate for downloads over a certain ceiling - believed to be 35 songs per user.
Morrissey, racism and the NME
No, not that story. This one.
It seems that Morrissey has stepped in to save the Rock Against Racism event after the NME, which was sponsoring the gig, pulled out. So Moz is saving anti-racists from the NME. Blimey.
Elsewhere, Metallica appear to be considering “doing a Radiohead” and embracing downloaders rather than suing them.
It’s a funny old world.
The war on terror… and dogshit
When the Regulation of Investigatory Powers legislation was introduced, tinfoil hat wearers like me wrote a lot of words about how the rules would be abused. And lo! It turns out that councils are using the anti-terror legislation to find the owners of crapping dogs.
Earlier this month, it emerged that a family in Poole in Dorset had been covertly tracked for nearly three weeks to check if they lived in a school catchment area.
The investigation has also revealed that the law was used in at least seven cases to find out about people who let their dogs foul; a breach of planning law; an animal-welfare case; and an instance of littering
Wanking for coins
The BBC reports that webcam stripping jobs are being advertised in Jobcentres.
“Do you have an internet ready computer and a webcam? If yes, Barcode18.tv is looking for adults aged 18+ for immediate start either from home or from employer site in Mitcham, Surrey.
“Guaranteed minimum wages per 4 hour shift. Duties require the successful applicant to be nude/semi-nude.”
Under the heading “webcam operators” the company said it offered £10 an hour with 50% commission.
If you liked NYPD Blue or Hill Street Blues, you’ll like this
…because it’s great.
DRM “still shit” shocker
I wrote this in a PC Plus feature back in 2004:
It’s been a long day, and you deserve a treat. Maybe that reissue of the Jeff Buckley album, or the new U2 one. You make a detour on the way home to stop at the record shop, but it’s boarded up - it looks like it’s gone bust. Damn, you think. That’s a shame; still, there’s plenty of CDs at home. You grab a bite to eat and pull out a few CDs, but when you play them, something strange happens. OK Computer, Exile on Main Street, London Calling… all silent. It soon becomes apparent that every single CD you’ve bought from the local record shop has stopped working. You’ve still got some CDs from other shops, but they don’t work on your stereo and you can’t be bothered getting the HMV-compatible hi-fi from the attic, or the Tower-compatible one from the study.
MSN Music subscribers have just received this message:
As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.
Yet more proof that DRM stands for “bastardy bastardy bastards”.