General

I just built SNOBOL4 for Mac OS X. The C version compiled with absolutely no trouble, and it seems to work OK, although I’m not too familiar with the language.

Many years ago we had SNOBOL4 on our University computer. I used lots of the utilities for it although I never really learned the language.

Mac news without the religious slant. Certain other Mac sites seem to take every opportunity to write about their religious views, which I feel has no place in the Mac press. [MacMegasite]

I’m scared – Don Ho singing Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey”? Jackie Chan & Ani Difranco singing Nat King Cole’s “Unforgetable”? This is almost as scary as the “Golden Voices” LP featuring Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner among other non-singers destroying songs like “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.

The 5-acre homestead with its mangroves and greenery could have become the latest set of high-end townhouses wedged inside Broward Countyâs urban core, but a two-year preservation push has ensured that will never happen.

County commissioners ensured the land along the South Fork of the Middle River in Wilton Manors will be saved from development when they signed off Tuesday on their portion of the $3.9 million purchase. An option to preserve the land was set to expire at the end of the week, with developers waiting in the wings with substantially higher offers.

It was a rare chance in the countyâs $400 million conservation bond issue to save a bit of environmentally sensitive land in the most urbanized part of the region, but it also came at a premium price ÷ double what state appraisals had valued the land at.

The owners, former Circuit Judge George Richardson and his wife, said they were pleased with the chance to preserve their land.

Red and white mangroves, pond apple, strangler fig, seagrape and leather fern populate the property, giving it the feel of native Florida thatâs been lost to development.

ãItâs nice to think that it will all be preserved,ä Richardson said after the countyâs decision. ãItâs a thrill to think that the public will be able to enjoy it now. Itâs what I had hoped for.ä

I just converted another cassette to a CD & MP3s. This time it was a lot easier now that I figured out how everything works in Roxio’s CD Spin Doctor.

The cassette was Youssou N’dour’s “Vol 12; Jamm (La Paix)”, one of his African imports. I prefer the version of “Sabar” on this tape to the version on his American CD. It also has a few other songs that aren’t available on any CDs.

My copy of Learning Cocoa just arrived.

A musician defends file-sharing, debunks the RIAA. Depending on your perspective, Janis Ian is either a struggling new science fiction writer or an established and well-respected recording artist with 17 albums to her credit. She’s written a powerful debunking of the RIAA’s claims about the effects of file-sharing on music-sales. Highly recommended reading from a music industry person who is far more articulate than, say, Courtney Love.

Free exposure is practically a thing of the past for entertainers. Getting your record played at radio costs more money than most of us dream of ever earning. Free downloading gives a chance to every do-it-yourselfer out there. Every act that can’t get signed to a major, for whatever reason, can reach literally millions of new listeners, enticing them to buy the CD and come to the concerts. Where else can a new act, or one that doesn’t have a label deal, get that kind of exposure?
We’ll turn into Microsoft if we’re not careful, insisting that any household wanting a copy for the car, or the kids, or the portable CD player, has to go out and “license” multiple copies.
As artists, we have the ear of the masses. We have the trust of the masses. By speaking out in our concerts and in the press, we can do a great deal to damp this hysteria, and put the blame for the sad state of our industry right back where it belongs – in the laps of record companies, radio programmers, and our own apparent inability to organize ourselves in order to better our own lives – and those of our fans. If we don’t take the reins, no one will.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Velma!) [bOing bOing]

This is the best article I’ve read on the subject. The big record companies are slowly becoming extinct, but they’re afraid to admit it and look for other ways to make money. What we’re now seeing is the death throes of dinosaurs.

I just heard from Barbara, who I used to work with at Teaching Network. She just got word that a few more people were laid off. It’s now down to only the 3 owners.

This is pretty sad. It was a great company to work for when I started there in June of last year. We were developing an online tutoring system and I got a lot of good Windows experience there (I was developing ActiveX controls in ATL, which I learned on the job). It was a fast-growing startup company, and all of their funding came from one person. We had enough money to continue for 2 years with no income, although we were planning to go online last November.

Unfortunately, he died suddenly in an accident, which cut off all of our funding. On the Friday before 9-11, more than half of us were called into the conference room at 3PM and given the news that it was our last day. Only the project leaders remained after that day, and they were hoping to be able to re-hire everyone in a few months if they got new funds. Of course when 9-11 happened a few days later, it ruined their plans (the owners also run a stock market information service, which was hit pretty hard). Over the next few months, the remaining people were gradually let go, and it’s now down to the last 3.

Barbara & I are two of the lucky ones – we found jobs right away. A few of the others are still out of work.

Using Roxio’s Toast & CD Spin Doctor, I converted this tape to Mp3s and burned a CD from it. The sound quality was pretty decent after I filtered out the tape noise & adjusted the output level.

Watching the Salon train wreck. The Kuro5hin site takes a look at Salon living on borrowed time today:

According to Salon Media Group’s annual report and a just released auditor’s report, there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern. Salon has been charging for premium content, but it wasn’t enough to offset a loss of $11.3 million or make a dent in the accumulated debt of $76.6 million.

This is a sad story on many levels, but one that really bothers me is that the eventual collapse of Salon will be see by many as proof that it is not possible to run a successful Internet media company, and more specifically that charging for premium content doesn’t work. After all, Salon has talented writers and engaging content, and it didn’t make it.

[snip]

If Salon collapses it should teach some more lessons, especially about charging for premium content. Mainly, people will pay for valued content. Some Internet sites do make money by serving a narrow niche and covering the snot out of it. But people don’t seem ready to pay a blanket fee for accessing general interest stories. Hell, I don’t pay for Salon access…I don’t have the time to read it thoroughly and make my subscription worthwhile. Now, if they charged a small fee for reading a particular article, I would do that… [Mac Net Journal]

EXACTLY! It’s time to start looking at micropayments. I wouldn’t subscribe to a particulr site such as Salon, but I’d certainly be willing to pay for reading a particular article. How about somehow tying it into PayPal? When you click on a premium article, it will give you the option to pay for that article from your paypal account.