Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I have a cell phone. Actually, I’ve had several cell phones. It’s a love-hate relationship.

First of all, it’s something I only marginally need. I got along fine without one for probably 45 years. I still go out and forget to carry it with me, even though it’s not even the size of a pack of cigarettes. I go forever without getting a call on mine and when I do it’s 50-50% that it’s a wrong number. Continue Reading…

Recently, the Copyright Royalty Board set new rates for internet radio to pay to play music. Acting in a way that greatly benefits the Recording Industry, who must be rubbing their hands together in glee right now counting their profits, they set them so high it will make streaming radio on the internet prohibitively expensive for even the largest entities. Even large new media outlets like NPR, AOL Radio and Live 365 are threatened by this.

Here’s what one blog, Linux Journal had to say:

In a move that recalls the Vogons’ decision to destroy Earth to clear the way for a highway bypass through space (a thankfully fictional premise of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board have decided to destroy the Internet radio industry so the Recording Industry won’t be inconvenienced by something it doesn’t know, like or understand.

Read more about this and how you can take action against it:

Save Our Internet Radio
Save The Streams

At this point the only possibility is to persuade our government to change this action. Contact your Senator and Representatives and tell them you don’t want internet radio to be priced out of existence.

How this affects podcasts isn’t clear, but you can bet they will either try to apply this to it, or come up with something just as bad soon.

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. I’m not on a schedule or anything, but some activity might be nice.

So for the three people who read this (I have no idea of the number – BTW, but I know my sister reads it … ) here’s what has been going on. Continue Reading…

From CES, the mega-trade show in LasVegas where the electronics industry shows off it’s new stuff. Kind of like the Detroit Auto show, but for gadgets….

It’s the latest in high-end audio equipment, a CD player with …wait for dramatic effect… vacuum tubes!

Wow! It’s tremendously expensive – it must be good!

Yes, there are still plenty of people who wax nostalgic over the “warmth” of the sound produced by tube amplifiers. Probably the same people who like vinyl records over CDs, so why a CD player with tubes? Who knows.

Actually, it’s just a version of the Primaluna Prologue 1 tube amplifier with a CD deck integrated into it… Darn, I thought they’d figured out how to run a CD with tubes…

Probably because noone else makes it and some people will pay huge amounts of cash to get one. The amp alone goes for $1200. Price of the one with the CD player wasn’t known.