Ruminations on music, guitars, food, travel, motorcycles, stories, current affairs, montana, family, friends, work, life and other stuff.

Jac Holzman, the man who discovered The Doors, founded Elektra Records, and nudged the big recording companies into adopting the compact disc, considers the Web and says: ‘I think the music industry has a bright future.’”

This article takes a quick look back at Holzman’s career and opinions on the music business. It’s an interesting read, and quite the contrast to other music industry professionals. Most interesting...

Recent Posts

Last month the federal government took unprecedented efforts to shut down selected hosts on intellectual property infringement and national security grounds. One such action took a blogging site offline, leaving 73,000 bloggers without access to years of accumulated data. If they haven’t backed up their work, they aren’t going to see it for a while: http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorities-shut-down-wordpress-host-with-73…

A video of what an honest campaign ad might look like.

This one is too good not to capture in toto.

Very interesting, concise article on one (probably very good) version of how to make it in the music business these days. Basically, it’s an open-source business plan that focuses on the key open-source variables:

…just watching soccer….

In a recent column in Forbes magazine, Bruce Bartlett puts together a pithy policy review of “starve the beast” theory first proposed in the mid-70’s by moderate Republicans, then goes on to review the empirical evidence of the failure of both it’s assumptions and its results.

I started with Red Hat, moved to Fedora Core (3,4,5,8); used CentOS, FreeBSD (both on my Mac and as a server install); Debian Feisty something, now have servers running Ubuntu Server 9.10 Karmic something. So far so good. I’ve installed both the 32-bit and 64-bit version and it’s working pretty well.

Cons:
-Getting started. Had some funky issues with the full install iso. Worked great with the minimal install CD/disk image.

Relevant quote: “Even my health insurance provider asked if I was going to sue. When I said, “I don’t think so,” the woman on the phone said, “Well, we might sue on your behalf.” ”

We don’t need tort reform, we need asshole reform, starting with insurance companies.

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2010/04/15/a-slippery-slope/

Interesting stuff found elsewhere

A reasonable approach to a common problem, handled with grace and humor.

Sometimes we find a story that illuminates more of life than we want to know.

Why do these stories always come in twos and threes?

Or former boyfriend?

Is it spring that’s causing this?

Helena Woman Whacks Boyfriend With Belt Buckle, He’s in St. Pete’s, She’s in the Pokey

Woman threatens another woman by tapping bar window with an open knife.

Helena woman loses her temper

Helena closes popular baseball field because of high arsenic levels in right field: a legacy of Montana’s metals industry?

A Montana legislator’s recent response to a filing to give corporations the same political expression privileges as individuals.