The Outsidr

Sorry to all for the looooooong hiatus but things have just been too busy for me lately to focus on getting good content up on TO. Hopefully that will change soon and in the meantime, I’ve tried to get some interesting reading through to all of my RSS subscribers via Ma.gnolia.com.

As I have a few minutes of downtime right now, I wanted to put a little post together inspired by Papa Arrington. It’s actually a very cool idea – put together a list of products you “can’t live without” at the start of each year and see how that list changes 365 days later. Note that I put can’t live without in quotes because obviously I would be perfectly able to go on without any of the items listed below, but materialism and object-dependency are topics for an entirely different post…

So without further ado, I give you my short list of tech-focused products that I use and enjoy on a regular basis:

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That is the quote from a Wal-Mart shopper earlier this morning who witnessed the brutal death of a Wal-Mart employee on Long Island. While trying to hold back a crowd of approximately 200 shoppers around 5:00 am EST, the 34-year-old overnight stock clerk was trampled to death after the swarm of people took the doors off the hinges and rushed into the store. Reports state that even after it became very obvious that the man was dead, most people continued to rush by and begin their frantic Black Friday shopping. Even as emergency crews attempted to revive the man, they continued to push through.

As much as I wish this was some sick joke, it is not. There are in fact people this disgusting here in our country, with such little regard for others. My sympathies go out to the victim’s family. I am not an avid supporter of capital punishment but my sincere hope is that as many as possible of those directly responsible are identified on security tapes, apprehended swiftly and put to death after a trial. I’m not talking about lethal injection here either – these filthy fucking pigs should be drawn and quartered. The kind of person so careless and reckless as to disregard another man’s life in an effort to save money while shopping, in my opinion, does not deserve to remain alive.

Read the report from the Daily News.

History has been made. America now has its first black President Elect and come January 20th, we will have our first black President. One can only imagine how the pioneers of the civil rights movement would feel on this day, when public writings like these two emerge:

Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States – Fred Wilson

Proud To Be an American – Mark Cuban

Had someone looked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the eyes during his toils and told him that on November 4, 2008, the American people would elect a black President at a staggering margin, his eyes would have welled instantly. To have known that his efforts and the efforts of other civil rights visionaries would bear fruit to this extent – I cannot even begin to fathom what he would have felt.

Had that person gone on to tell him that the very next day, rich white Americans would not only publicly welcome this black President, but also embrace the tax increases for the wealthy he would put in place… Dr. King would have fallen off of his chair.

November 4th, 2008 will go down in history as one of the most significant days this country has ever seen and Obama has achieved one of the greatest accomplishments of our history as a united nation. Congratulations are in order for him but more importantly, for America. In a time where the United States is literally on the verge of collapse in every sense of the word, Obama’s victory instills a new hope. He is brilliant, he is motivated, he is young, he is ambitious and perhaps most admirably for a politician, he is sincere. Barack Obama is the change this country so badly needed to survive. He will inherit America in a time of turmoil and his will be the most important Presidency of our collective lifetime. His performance as head of state remains to be seen but I firmly believe that under Obama’s leadership, we can finally begin to undo the unmitigated disaster that our political leaders and financial institutions have brought upon us over the past decade.

Dr. King had a dream and against all odds, his dream has been realized. What a country.

A follow up to Sunday’s post.

It looks like the big guys aren’t the only ones feeling the wrath of the RIAA these days, and it’s only bound to get worse. Muxtape, a service that allows users to upload music from their personal libraries to create an online mixtape, currently services less than 90,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. That won’t keep it under the RIAA’s radar it would appear, as the service went down yesterday with the note “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA” on its homepage. A post on the Muxtape blog provides the following message:

No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.

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The following is a copy of my post from earlier today on BGR. I hope every takes a moment to read it and think about the role of the American government in various facets of the entertainment industry.

As traffic to Pandora continues to climb at an impressive rate, far more steep than that of competitor Last.fm as seen in the chart above, the popular custom internet radio provider may be a breath away from closing its doors. Why, you might ask? The answer is not very far from being obvious these days.

Wherever there is an emerging revolution in the realm of music consumption, loved by many yet still on the brink of defeat; the RIAA is never far from the scene. Pandora’s current woes fit the mold precisely. Pandora usage is at all all-time high and usage increased by almost two million visits per month from June to July alone, yet elevated royalty rates are making it nearly impossible for the company to stay afloat. After last year’s decision that internet radio provider per-song royalty rates would double there has been an ongoing battle between providers and SoundExchange, an unincorporated division of the RIAA tasked with collecting royalties from digital providers such as satellite and internet radio.

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