Preston L. Bannister { random memes }

Of late I find myself in rather a strange place.

What I work on pretty much follows whatever my present employer currently needs. I’ve done pretty much everything – from device drivers to fancy web applications – and by this time have touched pretty much every major genre in programming. My starting interest in software came from the rise of personal computers (beginning with the Intel 8008 and contemporaries), and a very strong belief in graphical user interfaces (take SmallTalk as an early example).

Right. The current generations of programmers cannot imagine a time before small computers. The fact that there was once a time when graphical user interfaces were revolutionary is similarly inconcievable.

This long base of experience has an advantage. I can remember the original rationale for what now has become programming dogma. In some cases, what is now convention no longer makes sense.

After spending a few years pushing the envelope on web applications, of late I found myself sucked back into the realm of desktop (mostly) GUI applications written in Java. Not entirely a bad thing as I was curious what progress had been made in this area.

The Java library folk had an advantage in that when they started the Windows and Apple Mac programming domains for the construction of GUI applications were fairly well understood. At the same time they had the disadvantage of relative inexperience – the folk working on the Java libraries were young, and had not fully learned the lessons well-known to experienced Windows and Mac developers. That lack made them prone to a particular collection of mistakes.

In balance, you have to add in the fact that writing a cross-platform GUI (Windows, Mac, X-Windows) is difficult. To find an implementation path that does not over-serve any particular platform is … a lot more than tricky.

At the same time there are old ideas about what counts as good design – in contrast to common practice – that remain outside most-common practice.

How should I evaluate this?

Over the last several months I’ve taken a badly written Java desktop GUI application, and re-written a huge fraction to remove problems. Along the way I found missing bits in the Swing classes – or that I think are missing – and am coding notions that are 10 or 20 years old. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe not.

ongoing · On Selling Music
Finally, I remain astonished that the subscription model hasn’t caught on; it seems like awfully low-hanging fruit. There are any number of artists I’d subscribe to for ten or twenty bucks a year in exchange for an irregular flow of new material; live cuts, studio work, collaborations, whatsoever, along with discounts and front-of-the-line access to their regular output. Which is ten or twenty bucks a year more than they’re getting out of me now. The technology wouldn’t be hard to set up, either.

I agree – a subscription model makes a lot of sense to me, for the artists I like that are still producing work. The money for the artist might be a smaller than regular sales, but also might serve as an indication of future sales, and provide encouragement for the artist. May not make a difference to mass-market music, but for the smaller folk … ?

Q: DEVO + Disney = ? – - – - A: DEV2.0

In retrospect, I guess Devo’s lyrics were squeaky-clean compared to … almost everything else current. But still … Disney and Devo?? Performed by kids?!

The really weird bit is that this actually makes sense.

Walked over the local food court for lunch a bit after noon on one day last week. Weather was hot, humid and oppressive – the quote about “mad dogs and Englishmen” came to mind (not that the dog minded the weather in the least).

Entering the outdoor eating area, walked past a singer (between songs). Listened while waiting for and eating my lunch. Did not expect much – the occasional music sponsored by the food court ranges from mediocre to moderately painful.

This time was a little different. The singer was Brooke Ramel and the songs I heard were a number of my favorites. The singer tended to use a high/forced/breathy/little-girl sort of voice, which – at least in this place – sounded muddy, indistinct and uninspiring. Maybe this was partly due to the outside acoustics. Maybe this sort of singing sounds better indoors or in a studio.

Between songs the singer’s natural voice had more of a range and was much more interesting. On a couple occasions the singer would slip out of the high/false voice, and the lower tones would carry clearly and reverberate very nicely in the open area. About this point I was feeling rather frustrated, as it sounded as though her singing voice if she just relaxed a bit might well be very good indeed (as in raising the hair on the back of your neck good) – instead of the muddy mess I was hearing.

Will be really interested in other times Brooke will appear.

Somehow I doubt “as little as $10/month” rental music is going to fly. Pay to rent your music? Right. For that price you could buy at least 6 over-priced CDs per year, every year. Frankly I have a hard time finding that much good new music every year. From outfits like Magnatune you could buy perhaps 12 CDs per year, every year. At $15/month you could instead buy at least 9 over-priced or 18 direct CDs per year, every year.

No doubt the music “industry” loves the idea. A guaranteed income stream even for old music! Heck, who needs to come up with new music?? Who needs new artists?

No doubt Microsoft likes the scheme. If successful this gives them a competitive wedge against Apple’s iPod and iTunes. Likely they get a slice of the “rental” money.

Maybe their hope is that young people with small collections and little money with get hooked on the “rental” model. This assumes that they can kill the bootleg copying of music … used primarily by young people with small collections and little money. Right. I certainly would would not bet on this little swindle.

On the other hand I do believe notions like Magnatune have a real future. Buying music directly with more money to the artist and less money from the consumer is a better deal for both artists and consumers. Not such a good deal for the middlemen – the record companies.

Better yet I can see a sort of subscription model where the you could pre-order music from your favorite artists. The consumer gets more of the favorite sorts of music at a good price. The artist gets a good notion from consumers of the interest in their continuing efforts.

But “rental” music? No thanks!

More new music off Magnatune. Cannot explain why I like this, but I do…

The Wretch: painful ambient industrial noise.

Used the RIAA Radar site to find a new Pat Benatar album from a non-RIAA member (I hope). Bought the Iron & Wine album after seeing the video on iTunes and checking out the label.

Try and find a common thread through the above choices .

Heard a bit of music on iTunes that I would to buy – but wanted to check that I would not be buying from an RIAA member. Turns out the not all the labels listed on the RIAA site are members, so how do I know who to avoid??

BTW – the video on iTunes associated with the above music is very, very good. If a music video can be “Art” then this one qualifies. (Got the link off another weblog – lost track of which).

Turns out there is a search site for identifying RIAA tainted music, and in at least one case I am a bit bummed, but can we trust the results not to give false-positives?

At least Iron & Wine (the source of the music above) is apparently clean.

One more reason to buy music, but not music CDs from a major label.

Labels to dampen CD burning? | CNET News.com

You can’t do what they are attempting to do – control copying – without degrading the information (music) on the disk. I don’t like to idea of buying a music CD with deliberately bad data.

Idiots.