The Great Leap Forward

My first recommended Daily Kos diary.

I caught a story on the wires about a Bush administration official who's been dallying with a call girl ring.

My recommended Daily Kos diary (which means that a fair number of Kossacks found it worthy of bringing it to everyone's attention).

The story: Bush official linked to call girl probe

Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to know the circumstances of his departure.

It was Tobias' own decision to resign, according to one of the people, who said the issue came up only in the past day or so. The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.

Tobias submitted his resignation a day after he was interviewed by ABC News for an upcoming program about an alleged prostitution service run by the so-called D.C. Madam.

ABC reported on its Web site late Friday that Tobias confirmed that he had called the Pamela Martin and Associates escort service to have women come to his condo and give him massages. More recently, Tobias told the network, he has been using a service with Central American women.

Tobias, 65, who is married, told ABC News there had been "no sex" during the women's visits to his condo. His name was on a list of clients given to ABC by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who owns the escort service and has been charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital.

U.S. officials would not confirm the information. A message left on Tobias' voice mail seeking comment was not returned.

No AOTP this week.

But I will be posting last week's episode this Sunday. One last night with Kyle tomorrow, then he's back to his mom in Minnesota...

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my ex-wife.

From the comments section:

You are a fucking idiot.

See this post for backstory.

Kyle watched American Idol with us tonight. Didn't go well at first, but he eventually adjusted.

iPod repair is a hot business.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

From his basement in Granite Falls, Minn., 21-year-old Blake Paulson uses a paper clip and other pry tools to operate on scores of iPods sent to him from around the country. Some have worn-out hard drives. Others have broken screens. And then there was that iPod that fell into the toilet.

"I used gloves for that one," Paulson says.

His online business, ifixipodsfast.com, is part of a booming new industry: third-party iPod repair. Apple commands 72 percent of the market share for portable MP3 players and has sold more than 100 million iPods since 2001. The product's popularity and Apple's limited warranty policy, plus iPods' susceptibility to abuse, have created a business opportunity for Paulson and other iPod doctors.

At least a half-dozen iPod support businesses have popped up on the Web, including iResQ.com, ipodrepairsquad.com and ipodmods.com. These businesses attract customers from near and far who are willing to mail in their iPods to have them repaired instead of replaced (new models, except Shuffle and Nano, start at about $250). Paulson charges $5 for diagnostic testing (waived if he does the repairs) and $20 for installation plus the cost of parts.

"It's been a pretty lucrative business," says Paulson, a self-described tinkerer who receives an average of 10 iPods a day and brought in $20,000 in his four months of business. "I've gotten one from every state, including Alaska and Hawaii." In February, after one of his video tutorials appeared on a popular tech website, his site drew 50,000 unique visitors, he said.

 

This is Kyle Week.

Kyle's in for a visit for a few days, so I'll be preoccupied with the care and feeding of a 9-year-old autistic boy who loves Sprout (not the Prefab kind) and Bell & Evans chicken nuggets. (Actually, his mother doesn't allow me to refer to him as "autistic" and if she sees this post, I'm sure to get another screaming phone call. It's why I don't write about Kyle all that much.)

Not like you'd notice my absence anyway - I've been light on the blogging lately.

The Motels - All four one - Tracks 11-15.

The final 5 tracks - 4 of these are from the discarded Apocalypso sessions.

11. The Motels - So L.A. (Apocalypso version)

12. The Motels - Schneekin (Apocalypso version)

13. The Motels - Mission of mercy (Apocalypso version)

14. The Motels - Who could resist that face (Apocalypso version)

15.The Motels - Only the lonely (Live in Santa Barbara, 1983)

Here are some Motels videos courtesy of YouTube:

The Motels - "Only the lonely":

The Motels - "Shame":

The Motels - "Suddenly last summer":

The Motels - "Take the L":

The likely end of Internet radio.

This just in...

Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists.

A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations, small startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, had objected to the new royalties set March 2, saying they would force a drastic cutback in services that are now enjoyed by some 50 million people.

In the latest ruling, the Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions for rehearing and also declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the new royalties will have to be collected.

However, they did grant leniency on one point, allowing the webcasters to calculate fees by average listening hours, as they had been, as opposed to the new system of charging a royalty each time every song is heard by an online listener. That exemption counts for last year and this year. After that, the new per-song, per-listener fee structure goes into effect.

Many webcasters say the sharply higher royalty fees will put them out of business. Talk of the ruling dominated a one-day meeting of Internet radio broadcasters being held in Las Vegas alongside the annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, a group representing local radio and TV stations.

Here's the part I don't get:

The royalties in question only cover digital transmissions of music, and don't apply to terrestrial radio stations, as traditional radio play is seen as a benefit for record labels by promoting sales of recorded music.

If you're playing the same 250-500 songs over and over, how does that benefit sales of new music? Internet radio is covering all of the bases that commercial radio fails to cover. What a ridiculous statement.

The Motels - All four one - Tracks 6-10.

06. The Motels - So L.A.

07. The Motels - Tragic surf

08. The Motels - Apocalypso

09. The Motels - He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)

10. The Motels - Forever mine

Next time - the bonus tracks.

Fighting the corporate culture industry.

In case you love Internet radio, you should probably be aware of what's going on concerning royalties. The Copyright Royalty Board has decided to charge Internet radio stations a much higher royalty rate compared to satellite and terrestrial radio.

There's some more information at SaveNetRadio.org.

Rusty Hodge got into Internet broadcasting seven years ago after becoming frustrated with the FM radio stations in San Francisco, where he worked as a Web engineer.

His brainchild, SomaFM, started off as a jumble of computers in his garage, streaming music to fans who would send in contributions to support his efforts.

Today, Hodge and others like him are caught in the middle of a battle over how much artists and record labels should be compensated for music streamed over the Internet.

A recent ruling by a panel of copyright judges, they say, could put them out of business and squelch a key form of innovation just as radio and music companies race to adapt to the rapid changes in the ways people listen to music.

"We had the whole the business model worked out, and hoped that I'd be able to support myself on this," Hodge said. "But then the royalty ruling totally broke our business model."

That ruling on March 2 came from a panel of copyright judges after webcasters and SoundExchange, a group that collects royalties on behalf of artists and record labels, couldn't reach an agreement on a new royalty structure after a previous set of agreements expired at the end of 2005.

Several of those previous agreements provided accommodating rates for small webcasters and public radio stations. Smaller webcasters, for example, could pay a flat fee of about 12 percent of their revenue in royalties instead of a per-listener, per-hour fee paid by others.

Hodge said that he took in roughly $200,000 last year from listener contributions and was getting close to covering his costs and making the business self-supporting. After several years of expansion, he quit other jobs to focus on SomaFM last fall.

Hodge said he paid about $22,000 in royalties to SoundExchange in 2006. Under the new system that requires payments for each song streamed to each listener and does away with the old percentage-based formula for small companies, he would have been on the hook for about $600,000 in royalties last year.

 

Dumbasses. Doesn't the corporate culture industry realize that an out-of-business Internet station pays $0 in royalties?

The Motels - All four one - Tracks 1-5.

So we'll go with what's probably the most commercial CD featured so far on H2FCDs - the 1982 album from The Motels, All four one. This was a difficult LP for The Motels. Here's the Wikipedia version:

The band hired record producer Val Garay for their next album. The album, Apocalypso was scheduled to be released in November 1981, but after hearing the final product Capitol Records rejected it. Frustrated, the band attempted to go back and re-record the entire album. In the process, Davis and McGovern's relationship had gone sour, and by December 1981 McGovern was no longer in the band. The rest of the members forged on and finished recorded the new album. Using studio musicians to fill in for the vacant guitar spot, the band was able to finish the album by March 1982. Having auditioned several guitarists to take McGovern's place, Guy Perry finally was given the job. The album, now titled All Four One, was released in March of 1982.

Before any singles were released, the song "Mission of Mercy" had made enough airplay to land the #33 on the Billboard Rock Album Cuts chart. Their first single from the album, "Only the Lonely," found its way into the Top 10 in the U.S. by June. Other hits included "Take the L" and "Forever Mine." Their first successful U.S. album coincided with the emergence of MTV, which led to music videos for both "Only the Lonely" and "Take the L." Davis won a "Best Performance in a Music Video" award in 1982 for her performance in the "Only the Lonely" video. In October 1982 the band added a sixth member, keyboardist/guitarist Scott Thurston.

This particular version (with 5 previously unreleased tracks) is going for $34 on Amazon.

01. The Motels - Mission of mercy

02. The Motels - Take the L

03. The Motels - Only the lonely

04. The Motels - Art fails

05. The Motels - Change my mind

Now known as Martha Davis and the Motels. They supposedly have an album (Beautiful life) in the can.