CD prices to take a plunge?

Reuters - Shoppers may think they have seen enough bargains this holiday season, but CDs at $9.99 may soon be a standard offer at music stores as retailers slash prices in bid to battle the scourge of online music piracy.

Thank you. Now I may have a reason to actually go get an album instead of scouring for it using a file-swapping program. I usually buy the good albums I have acquired in mp3 format anyway, but now... uh... maybe more people will.

If a CD sells for $13, a record company takes in about $8, of which it deducts artist, publishing royalties and manufacturing, promotional and marketing costs.

The artist generally makes between 50 cents and 75 cents per CD, while the record company clears between $3 and $4 per CD. The artist has to pay back advances paid by the record firm, further cutting the artists' royalty, which often dwindles to nothing, according to music industry insiders.

Hey, I got a neat idea! Instead of giving all the money for a CD to "the man," wouldn't it be something if people downloaded the album from Gnutella or what-have-you, and then gave the band or singer a $10 donation for their fine work? Hmmm... I like that. I think I may do that. Finding out where to mail the donations shouldn't be too hard, given the information overload that is the World Wide Web, and Google to hunt it down.

Recollections
Ah, yes. March. Lots of good things happened in March. It's kinda hard to believe that some of these more domestic events are now nine months old.

3/2 - The Jesus Christ Superstore: For all of your Biblical action figure needs.
3/4 - Boston slang is a wicked pissa.
3/18 - Back from Spring Break in Panama City. And there's still snow in Troy.
3/23 - Mir falls from space into the South Pacific.
3/25 - Jon's misfortune.
3/26 - Who Would Buy That? A weblog dedicated to weird online auctions.
3/27 - Jerome wants to graduate. (part 1 of 2)
3/30 - RPI, on the other hand, doesn't. (part 2 of 2)

3.5 Years Later
And Jerome is still famous!

A year in review
Hey, what the hell? It's happening at every other site out there, it can happen here as well. And since there has been 608 (+/- 2 max) mini-articles since the very first amateur publication was typed up on this weblog, it might be nice to see some of the good and the bad that has been recorded since then.

This will be a month-by-month list, where each month will be posted the day after the previous month's list. And it shall start today.

Normally, I'd start things off with January, but there was only one test post written in January. Looks like one could add a little more substance to this post by describing February as well:

2/7 - Someone steals a washing machine from an RPI freshman dorm.
2/7 - Against the Grain goes public.
2/12 - Napster gets smacked in court.
2/17 - Jerome gets some justice from Dell. New motherboard!
2/19 - The "All Your Base" annoyance begins.
2/19 - Jon and Keith are hot. Or were hot before their pics were taken down.
2/20 - Gay or Eurotrash?
2/24 - Fun at AOL's expense.
2/27 - Are chicken heads white meat or dark meat?
2/28 - Drive-by yetching, perhaps?

Also note that the dates marked are the dates such items were written about. The actual dates that things happened (like Napster getting hit with the court ruling) may have happened a day or two before. So, don't study for your 2001 history test using this site as a guide. :)

Learn how to wash your keyboard in the dishwasher
It ain't rocket science, but I don't think many people have thought of cleaning it that way. All you have to do is follow these easy steps.

This also works best if you mix all of the keys together and you don't know where every key on your keyboard belongs.

20 Factors That Will Change PCs in 2002
This article is from CNN's site. It's actually pretty interesting and talks about lots of cool technologies and crap that will appearing shortly. One of the technologies around the corner is the capability to make 400 GB harddrives. Perfect for Jerome's goat porn! ;)

Lifelong Best Friends Discover They're Brothers
That's the title of this article.

I have a little trouble believing that this is true. Not that the fact that two friends turned out to be brothers, which is quite a feat, but one of those two friends also dated someone who he would later find out was one of his sisters. That's crazy! I'd like to know what the odds are of having that happen to you (adopted, best friend is unknown brother, college sweetheart is unknown sister) compared to winning the Powerball. It sounds like this story was taken from Rikki Lake or something, except the white trash and/or "big booty hoes" were replaced with bald Connecticut men. And there were no crazy love triangles involving sheep and girls going to boot camp.

Also, why did Fox News feel the need to print that paragraph where Klahr reminisces on his childhood days? It seems inappropriate given the subject matter. Oh yeah, Fox News has no standards. :p

Hey.
Hope you had (or have, if you're down with the Kwanzaa) a great holiday season. Mine wasn't really noteworthy. People from my mother's side of the family (and others) came over to the house like they do every Christmas Eve. Food was eaten, the limited supply of alcohol was consumed, presents were opened, and we got Julie drunk. Julie is one of the people my mother takes care that lives in my house; she has quadriplegia palsy (or something just as exotically-titled). She likes to get drunk every now and then. Just IV two cups of wine directly into her stomach and her face will get red and she'll laugh her ass off for a few hours. Hehe. But this Christmas, shrimp tails covered in bourbon sauce was not fed to the dog, which is unfortunate. It usually makes for an interesting hour or so. Ah well. T'was pretty much the same shit, different Christmas.

I didn't really score any outstanding presents this year. Most of them were various types of shirts and coats, which is a good thing. Most of my shirts are starting to fall apart, anyway. I also got some cash, which is always a good thing to get me. And a friend of mine gave me a green West Main Street sign that must have fallen to the ground at a nearby intersection. It's pretty sweet. I can add it to the other signs I have acquired courtesy of my great college freshman days of yore. I kinda wish I had a "Vote for Zwack" sign like Frank, though. Oh well. The "Street Paving, No Parking" sign I have will suffice.

Happy Boxing Day
To all you Canucks, Aussies, and Brits.

G'day, mate!

Movie Reviews
Well, I usually don't see many movies in the theater these days (because of the ludicrous price) but in the past few weeks I’ve seen three. Wow. And since I'm in work on Christmas Eve (with hardly anyone else) I decided to tell you all about them during a short break. Well, maybe not ALL about them...

The first movie I saw was Ocean’s Eleven. This was a remake of the Rat Pack version and stared George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Brad Pitt. I wouldn’t say this movie was stupid but it wasn’t very good. The premise is that George Clooney’s character, an X-Con, is pissed at this casino owner for going out with his X-wife and so decides to rip off three of his casinos with a bunch of other guys. You’re supposed to be cheering for the “bad” guys, but they don’t make the casino owner to be villainous enough. So I felt horrible for the guy. He gets his casinos ripped off and losses the girl and for what? For being a good old fashion capitalist, that’s what. Damn commies wrote this movie! The second problem with this movie is that NOTHING goes wrong for the bad guys. I mean, usually you expect some plot changing problem or at least a little slip or something. Damn. The third thing that sucked about this movie was that you knew what was going to happen 30 minutes into the movie so that the only “surprise” or “plot twist” wasn’t a surprise at all. I give this movie a C-.

The second movie I saw was Vanilla Sky. Let me first say this: Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz are HOT. OK, now that I’ve said that, let me tell you a little about the movie. Simply put, it rocked! This movie was one of those that still had you thinking about it 2 days after. Unlike Ocean’s Eleven, this movie had a twist at the end that I never saw coming. I mean I had NO clue whatsoever. The whole movie was one big mind screw. I don’t normally like Tom Cruise but he was good in this movie as were the rest of the cast. I highly recommend this movie and I give it an A.

The last movie I saw was The Lord of the Rings. I’m a big fan of the entire series and have read them all about four times. So I was expecting to either love this movie or hate it. I was wrong, I though it was “pretty good”. It was not so good because I think several key elements in the book were missing from the movie (the entire trek through the Old Woods which constituted about 25% of the book), out of order, not accurate, or rushed. But, I can’t be to sore about that seeing that the movie was already three hours long and the book is really just too long to adequately squeeze into one movie. The other thing I didn’t like so much was that they ripped all of the action parts out of the book and put them back to back in the movie so that it was no stop action. Normally I really like this but I think a lot of J.R.R Tolkens finer writing qualities were missed. What I really like was the scenery and visuals. I think they got it pretty damn close to what I envisioned when I read the books. Special effects were awesome as was the casting. Overall, I give this movie a B+.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.