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Slashback Media Music Privacy Science

Slashback: Lapses, Maps, Ludwig Van 225

Posted by timothy from the goodbye-el-paso dept.
Slashback tonight brings you a larger-than-usual assortment of updates, clarifications and followups to previous and ongoing Slashdot stories. Read on below for more details on the Canadian Harry Potter injunction, CardSystem's customer data mishap, the popularity of Beethoven vs. the Beatles, and what the recent MySpace acquisition might mean.

Beethoven rules the downloads charts! jd writes "At 1.4 million downloads, Beethoven has beaten the Beatles in online downloads, according to The Guardian. iTunes sales of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' comes in at a mere 20,000. The BBC, who put the symphonies on their download site, are delighted. The music industry, which thought classical music was all but dead, is in shock. About the only question remaining is how much did the Slashdot Effect contribute?"

And if the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus," this Beethoven guy must be really popular!

Now you can think of it as Rupert'sSpace. applextrent writes with a few thoughts on the recent acquisition of MySpace by Fox: "MySpace's privacy policy and company filings including all users' information lists, databases, text, files and documents are explicitly documented as an asset of MySpace. The agreement also states MySpace can sell the site and all user information to a third party that might not necessarily follow the same privacy policy as MySpace. To put it simply, MySpace owns everything a user provides them with. This is not entirely an uncommon thing for many free services such as AOL's Instant Messenger have similar privacy policies. Now all of this user information is in the hands of News Corp. and they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.

Not to say anything bad will come of this, in fact this could mean better protection for users privacy, or it may not. This is possible reason for concern especially considering MySpace's blog population for a MySpace run blog is technically owned by the same people who bring you Fox News."

This is much worse than losing the car keys, son. An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the large-scale credit card compromise of Card Systems, the NYTimes is reporting that Visa has decided to stop allowing transactions from the processor. Visa says 'CardSystems has not corrected, and cannot at this point correct, the failure to provide proper data security for those accounts.' Visa has informed member banks that they have until Oct. 31 to switch from using CardSystems to process card transactions. The decision sends a strong message to the industry about Visa's stance on cardholder security with respect to enforcing the PCI Data Security Standard. We'll see how MasterCard and American Express react. Also the long term viability of CardSystems itself is now in question."

Another visit to the Abandonware Orphanage. chill writes "Aladdin 4D, the venerable Amiga 3D design and rendering program, is yearning to be free. If the owners, Nova Designs, can raise $37,579.83 to pay off old debts they will release the trademarks, source code, tutorials, rights, and all as LGPL. So, if having this tool available to the FOSS pool of code is something that interests you, donate!"

This approach worked for Blender; it would be great to see it happen more.

Google keeps stealing my best ideas before I have them. Chmarr writes "Right on the heels of Google Moon, Google Maps now includes very detailed maps of our favorite animation source Japan. Here's hoping you can read Japanese."

But you only need to read Alien for this one: Oreo 51 writes "It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Barry Snyder used Google Maps to take shots of the infamous high-security Area 51 in the Nevada desert. I can't wait to see what /.ers think of all the craters and interesting sand geometry there."

Now taking donations of one nickel per cool use of Google Maps, to go toward the James Ellroy Crime Scene Map Project Fund.

Now with more nutritious Darkness! Simian Farmer writes "For the tens of thousands of Star Wars fans who visited The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster on a daily basis just before the release of Sith, the same author has begun penning his own blog-novel called Simon of Space.

The style of writing that lured so many to read Darth Side so avidly this past April/May is present in spades in his new fiction, updated almost daily. According to the author, it has, '...romance, action, humour and all the whiz-bang special effects you can get without actually making a movie.'"

Blue Frog Claims to be Legit justy writes "I noticed that Blue Security, the company behind the Blue Frog anti-spam initiative, have issued a statement on their blog as a result of "feedback we have received from the community". They say that "the total number of complaints posted by the community is exactly equal to the number of spam messages received", which seems more fair in my opinion. Perhaps this development is a result of the heated discussion here on Slashdot."

Well that's not Orwellian or anything, Nooo .... An anonymous reader writes "The fallout from the recent Canadian Harry Potter court order continues [Harry Potter and the Right to Read] as a national newspaper was threatened with a lawsuit if they published a book review based on an 'unlawful reading.' The case, along with similar copyright abuses, has Canadians wondering what became of a kinder, gentler legal approach."

Well, keep looking then. According to this NY Times story, the recently described spotting of an ivory-billed woodpecker may be based on evidence too weak to rely on; this is the same bird that Cornell researches have been looking for with automated means to detect its distinctive voice.
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Slashback: Lapses, Maps, Ludwig Van More

Slashback: Lapses, Maps, Ludwig Van

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  • Beatles vs. Beethoven (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:01PM (#13130657)
    Um, don't you think it would have been nice to mention that the Beethoven downloads were free, while Sgt. Pepper's on iTunes obviously isn't? The comparison is worthless.

    • Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven (Score:4, Funny)

      by 01000011011101000111 ( 868998 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:20PM (#13130784)
      Dude, Beethoven is blatantly better than the beatles - i mean, have you *SEEN* him play in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure?
    • A random thought: I thought iTunes didn't sell Beatles music, due to the trademark issues surrounding the "Apple" name related to music? Has this now been resolved?

      • Re:Beatles vs. Beethoven (Score:4, Informative)

        by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:28PM (#13130843) Journal
        RTFA. The new single of Sgt. Pepper's the song (the opening song on the album) by McCartney with U2 is the comparandum. They're comparing a single point download (of the Beethoven symphonies from BBC) to a single point download (of Sgt Pepper's from iTunes). Of course, they're also comparing several hours at $0.00 to three minutes at $0.79, so I'm not sure how useful the comparison really is (as they admit themselves), except that it surprised them how many people would listen to classical music if it was free. They also point out that iTunes sales are actually better than brick and mortar sales for many classical albums.
        • They aren't necessarily being listened to. I understand that viewer statistics for PBS are generally inflated because people want to "seem smart" by saying they watch it when they really don't. Maybe Beethoven is benefiting from the same effect.
      • According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the dispute is ongoing.
    • I'm looking at iTunes right now and don't see any Beatles anywhere. There is no Sgt. Pepper's for sale there.

      They list two albums with "The Beatles" in them. There's "Canta Como - Sing Along: The Beatles" and "In the Beginning" that's about the Beatles backing up Tony Sheridan.

      So...what are they talking about?

      • It depends on what copyright jurisdiction your bank is in. For instance, an account associated to a credit card issued by Bank One Indiana NA will show only the set of recordings available in the United States, which may be different from the set of recordings available in the United Kingdom. These differences arise from exclusive territorial licenses to distributors that specialize in a given region; many of these licenses date from long before transform audio coding (mp3/aac technology) was even invented

      • They are probably referring to the Live 8 opening song, performed by Paul Mccartney and U2.
      • > There is no Sgt. Pepper's for sale there.

        That is correct, what they are selling is a burned-out legend and a bunch of whiny idiots that no true music fans like mangling a single song off of the Sgt. Pepper's LHCB band.

        These asswipes aren't comparing Beethoven to the Beatles, they are comparing beethoven to U2, which is why no one downloaded the thing. No one wants to hear that schmuck Bono do anything, least of all destroy a classic song.
    • The freeness ("freedom" sounds weird in the context) must've been a factor, but also probably the fact that the average Kazaa user wouldn't be someone that likes classical music, and another factor is you can't tell if files in illegal share-networks are 100% okay, do they even have the right filename. For a Britney song it's okay, because you can compare it to what you hear on MTV, but for a classical music it's a bit harder, unless you're really an avid listener. An average person who is only moderately a

    • It's not the price (Score:5, Funny)

      by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @09:21PM (#13131108) Journal
      Beethoven goes better with the old Ultra Violence. You have to listen to Helter Skelter for 24 hours to get the same effect.

    • I think the point should be made that Josh Groban appears to be one of the top album producers in the last couple years, and I never heard of him until he sang with Andrea Corr (of my favorite band, The Corrs.)

      And he sings classical (i.e., stuff that sounds like Italian opera to me, like "Canto ala Vida" which is what he sang with Andrea) and pop. So if he's big, I can certainly understand Beethoven.

      Not to mention I read an article some years ago that said classical artists were getting smarter these days
    • Over 150 years after he wrote it, Beethoven's 9th symphony defined the length of the Red Book audio CD. 72 minutes was not just a number Phillips pulled out of thin air. It's the length of the 9th.

      Beethoven's allways been bigger than the Beatles.

    • Except of course where Beatles is Beethoven -- in particular Because is based [snopes.com] on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (well, backwards anyway). And of course, we can't forget Roll Over Beethoven, although that was of course written by Chuck Berry :-)...

  • First Prime Factorization Post (Score:4, Funny)

    by 2*2*3*75011 ( 900132 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:05PM (#13130687)
    Is Area 51 a rectangle with sides 3 and 17?

  • cardsystems failure (Score:3, Informative)

    by SgtXaos ( 157101 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:07PM (#13130697) Journal
    I have to replace the card I have had for 15 years, thanks to this SNAFU, and update all services that automatically charge it, not to mention memorizing the new account number. I hope something good comes of this, like serious protection of user accounts in the future, but I doubt it.

  • apples and hand grenades (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BlueLines ( 24753 ) <(slashdot) (at) (divisionbyzero.com)> on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:07PM (#13130703) Homepage
    no u.s. itunes user could actually buy 'sgt peppers', but plenty of u.s. folks could download beethoven from the bbc. this is a pretty pointless comparison.

    -BlueLines

  • Social Networking Bubble? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <`slashmail' `at' `initialized.org'> on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:08PM (#13130708) Homepage
    Now you can think of it as Rupert'sSpace.

    It's somewhat ironic that a medium designed to share information has become one infested with what are essentially data and demographic mining sites like MySpace.

    The purchase price of $580 million reminded me instantly of the original dot-com bubble. Perhaps we're seeing a slight resurrection of that, however finite. Some of the data collected by MySpace would be an absolute gold mine to third party advertisers.

    • Now you can think of it as Rupert's Space.

      It's somewhat ironic that a medium designed to share information has become one infested with what are essentially data and demographic mining sites like MySpace.

      This should be a wake-up call, but probably won't be. I don't know what it will take to make people realize that a privacy policy that allows for arbitrary revision by the web site, and that allows for revision when the owning company is sold, is completely worthless.

      Would you loan money to a co

  • FAS did the Area51 pics along time ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by jon787 ( 512497 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:12PM (#13130733) Homepage Journal
    Better Area51 pics [fas.org]

  • American Express has already reacted (Score:4, Informative)

    by 200_success ( 623160 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:19PM (#13130781)

    Like Visa, American Express has also announced [ajc.com] that it will stop working with CardSystems.

  • The real slashdot effect on downloading... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrHanser ( 845654 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:22PM (#13130798) Homepage
    If you get bored, I wrote an analysis of the slashdot effect, seeing as how I was the person hosting those symphonies when all of a sudden I randomly got /.ed. "An analysis of the slashdot effect." [polyscience.org]

    The fury of a slashdotting is truly an impressive thing.

    • Ouch! Ok, so basically what it comes down to is all sites referred to by Slashdot need a server farm and at least a dedicated gigabit line for just that traffic.

  • Area 51 (Score:4, Informative)

    by captain_craptacular ( 580116 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:34PM (#13130877)
    Hate to bring a voice of reason to the area 51 "debate" but those "Black Crop Circles" are nothing more than a wastewater treatment facility. Standard civilian grade stuff there...

  • Japanese Google maps more detailed (Score:3, Informative)

    by ashitaka ( 27544 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:35PM (#13130881) Homepage
    Compare the area around my parents in law's place [google.com] or where I used to live in Tokyo [google.com] with where I live now. [google.com]

    Showing where the buildings are is nice. Wow! They opened a Macdonalds in Sakura Shin-machi!!!
    • Yeah, I agree. The maps for Japan are downright beautiful. They actually FEEL japanese, with the particular style of iconography they use.
    • To be fair you need more detail with a map in Japan. In a map of the US or Europe the street names and a few street numbers are all you need to find a particular building or house. Japan, on the other hand, has their own particularly weird system where buildings are numbered by blocks (roughly speaking) based on when they were built, and the majority of streets don't have names. Given the general lack of street names and building numbers (well, the kind we're used to) any map in Japan is only really usefu
    • It's nice that they have maps here now. Just be aware that the maps use the local Tokyo coordinate system, not WGS84 (which GPS units, for example, use), and if you just enter WGS84 coordinates you will be off by quite a bit (on the order of a hundred meters).

  • Craters? (Score:4, Informative)

    by RiffRafff ( 234408 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:47PM (#13130936) Homepage
    You mean like these?

    http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.113061,-116.0544 20&spn=0.029803,0.040199&t=k&hl=en [google.com]

    Those are depressions from underground atomic/nuclear tests.

  • its fascinating to see how many 7-11's there are in japan... they're a "landmark" on google maps.

    i recall reading somewhere that there's more 7-11's in japan than in the US...
    • And what's more, many of them are not even marked.
      I noticed two combini at least -- one of which is a 7-11 -- not marked on tha map near where I live. However, they did show three others that are within five minutes walk.
    • I seem to remember an article stating that the Japanese 7-11 bought out the American parent company.

  • Does this program do anything that Blender 3D [blender.org] doesn't?

    If not, why fragment the development pool available for 3D rendering programs by providing another program that does the same thing? Wouldn't the time and money apparently being invested into Aladdin's freedom be better spent improving the already-available free program?

  • Unlawful Reading? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @08:53PM (#13130965) Homepage
    ... if they published a book review based on an 'unlawful reading.'

    What next? Drive-by readings? Reading while under the influence? Reading with intent to edumacate?

    I can't even imagine the extent of brain damage the lawyers must have to invent "unlawful reading".

  • I'd not even want to donate unless it was to be the BSD contender to Blender.

    I'm all for opening source code and all, but if I am putting money into something like this I would prefer it fills a niche that isn't already taken.

    As it is, it would just be another Blender that hasn't even been ported to other systems yet.

    Oh course, I am biased, LGPL or GPL it doesn't make much of a difference to me, that's the Free Software Foundation's area, one which I try to avoid simply because I disagree with the lice

  • Make the Beatles song free, and I'll download that too. The Beethoven recordings don't sound half bad. The full collection on cd costs quite a bit of cash. Thanks everyone who contributes money to the BBC for the free music. BTW, if the BBC wants to continue this trend, it would be nice to get recordings of Dvorak's symphonies.
  • Right on the heels of Google Moon, Google Maps now includes very detailed maps of our favorite animation source Japan.

    I noticed the Japan maps last week (or was it two weeks ago?). I was wondering how long until someone mentioned it on Slashdot.

    I'm just curious what the next country will be. I had a feeling Japan was next in line, but I'm not sure what would come next. Australia, maybe?

  • Good grief (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @09:24PM (#13131135) Homepage
    With this new Harry Potter novel release, no one is henceforth allowed to call Revenge of the Sith over-hyped or over-rated.

  • That it was a Beatles song, it was not a Beatles track. It's Paul McCartney and U2, doing a Beatles cover. Compare with the actual downloads of the Beatles catalog (if it's in iTMS, I don't know since I don't use it) and then we'll talk.

  • Area 51 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21, 2005 @09:37PM (#13131228)
    The 'crop cirles' are most likely some kind of sewage or water treatment plant.

    the "VeryOdd.JPG" looks to be maybe some kind of mine.

    Many of the craters, 'glowing spots' and 'crosshairs' appear to be aerial bombing practice/testing areas. The "Triangles" is just a variation on that theme - probably for very high altitude bomb drops.

    Given that "Area 51" is used to military aircraft development, no real mystery or surprise there. The larger and deeper craters may be nuclear in nature - 'Area 51' shares a border with the Yucca Flats nuclear testing area.

    I am guessing that "the/StrangeLookingArea.JPG" may be storage for munitions, maybe NBC munitions.

    The "CirclesAndAntenneas.JPG" could be various antenna layouts for a listening station - maybe ELS and/or ELF (they often have huge circular arrays and very tall towers).

    Some formations in the desert may be simply to help pilots orient themselves (no - not alien pilots from another world) as the desert can look very nondescript from altitude.

    Having flown a lot over areas I later visited on ground level or much lower altitude, including at high altitude over desert areas, I can say that what often looks interesting and weird from altitude is usually quite explainable and ordinary closer up.
    • One of the "craters" was slightly in from the edge of a ring-road. That kind of location is not unusual for a storage facility, and it is hard to tell from the photos whether those are indents or rises. My guess would be that one is nothing more than a simple storage shed of some kind, simply from the location.

      There was nothing in the photographs I would regard as overly suspicious - I've seen more mysteries at ex-RAF bases in Britain that are now open farmland.

      There were reports, at one point, of form

    • the "hexagram" looks like a hawk missile battery or the remnants of one.
  • How come no-one has ever tried this for stuff like old games or something?

  • Sirius Black Dies! (Score:4, Funny)

    by blibbler ( 15793 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:40AM (#13132380)
    The week the last book came out, an Australian comedy newspaper ran the headline "Sirius Black Dies!" With a sub-headline "Newspaper ruins book for thousands of children"
  • The craters pictured (Google Maps link is http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.108040,-116.0454 94&spn=0.146118,0.240704&t=k&hl=en [google.com] ) are NOT in Area 51. It's the Nevada Test Site, where we did aboveground and underground nuclear testing for decades. There is a museum for the site in Las Vegas, where I live. It's website is here: http://www.ntshf.org/ [ntshf.org] .

    By the way, the large crater at the north end of the site is from the biggest underground test ever done by the US, code-named Sedan.

    Also, if you want to see an atomic cannon (only fired once, at the Nevada Site), there's one outside Junction City, Kansas. The Google Maps URL is http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Junction+City,+Kansa s&ll=39.037964,-96.763169&spn=0.004566,0.007522&t= k&hl=en [google.com] . It's the small black blot in the center of the image. More on it can be found at Roadside America: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/KSJUNatomic .html [roadsideamerica.com] .

  • Help out PDA and Phone Slashdot readers! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @04:41AM (#13133269)
    I appreciate that this isn't related to the Slashback articles, but I would appreciate it if people didn't mod this into oblivion.

    I maintain and run AvantSlash [freshmeat.net], which is a script that allows people who are using PDA's and mobile phones to view a specially cleaned up version of Slashdot designed for the limited bandwidth and screen size that they have.

    Unfortunately, however, the account with this code in was recently deleted (through no fault of my own) and I don't have a copy of the latest code.

    If anyone has version 3.1 of AvantSlash (ideally the full archive, but the script and config file would be a start), I would really appreciate it if they could drop me an email to silver (at) ewtoo (dot) org.

    Unfortunately I won't be able to run the site any more due to bandwidth restrictions (although I will still maintain the code) but if anyone has the ability to host it, then please get in contact with me.

    Thanks!

  • Area 51 query to Google Maps (Score:3, Informative)

    by soboroff ( 91667 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @09:36AM (#13134535)
    Hey, if you just query "Area 51" on Google Maps, you get right there, plus a link to the Best Western!
  • Submitted here [guardian.co.uk]:

    Re: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1532 890,00.html [guardian.co.uk]

    This article is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing that has ever been published on the Internet, ever. Did anyone there notice that the Beethoven MP3s were FREE but the iTunes songs cost US$0.99each, you have to have iTunes (a multi-MB download itself) to get them, you have to have a credit card and sign up with Apple to get them, the iTMS service is only available in a handful of countries, *and* they have playback rest
  • No 'contemporary' Beatles albums are available from the U.S. ITMS (that is, albums made by the Beatles when they were the Beatles). Perhaps they are available from the U.K. ITMS only? That may explain the comparison with the Beeb.

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