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Showing posts from July, 2008

APPLE TV UPDATE

Oh happy day! The 2.2 update did it--I can listen to internet radio on the Apple TV without having to stream it from my computer. I'm blasting with the big speakers any music that the vast sea of the Internet can provide. You do have to create a playlist of radio stations on iTunes, since there still isn't searching available for radio like with podcasts and YouTube. Get on it, Apple! And while you're at it, could I have an iPod Touch with 80 GB of storage for less than $300? Especially now that LastFM is available on it . That'd be great, thanks.

STILL HATING ON MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS

Jason had an insightful post on newspapers in the Internet Age on his blog wherein he suggested we donate to keep the watchdogs of the press going. In an aside, he mentioned subscriptions for music: To be honest, it's the same thing with music downloads. I've been screaming for monthly subscriptions for years now, and they're still not here. (At least not on the scale of an iTunes or Amazon.) Of course, I had to respond. Jason: I'm sorry to hear you've been screaming for years--you must be very hoarse. I believe the service you're looking for is called Rhapsody . I don't know what counts as "the same scale", but they have ads on TV. I don't know why anyone would pay $12.99/month to rent music, though. I want to own my music, I don't want some company to be able to take my access away or jack up the price at a whim. Rhapsody's main market must be people who don't own much music, have a lot of electronic devices but no interest in l

BIG VALLEY, THE ANTI-WESTERN

I'm not a big Western fan, they tend to be too conservative for a big liberal like me. The strong, silent good guy is the best shot, so he kills the bad guy, saves civilization and marries the schoolmarm ( My Darling Clementine, Gunsmoke ). I tend to prefer the "adult" Westerns of the 50s like Man of the West, The Unforgiven, 3:10 To Yuma, Johnny Guitar and Warlock that acknowledge that there was sex, racial tension and moral ambiguity on the lonesome prairie. Another interesting variation was Western family drama, like Broken Lance, Duel in the Sun , or Giant , where a powerful paterfamilias was respected throughout the county but had trouble with his own family ( Bonanza is a watered-down version). The Big Valley is the closest TV came to the adult Western. Of course it was constrained by censorship compared to the movies, but it was daring at the time to have a main character be an illegitimate son of late paterfamilias who is accepted by the family as one of th