Saturday, 12 February 2011
Warning: Smurfs Can Be Bad For Your Bank Account
The Washington Post reports today on problems with an iPhone game for children called Smurfs' Village, which allows kids to "build a complete Smurfs village from scratch":
Over the winter break from school, 8-year-old Madison worked to dress up her simple mushroom home on the iPhone game Smurfs' Village. In doing so, she also amassed a $1,400 bill from Apple....But like a growing number of parents, Madison's mom, Stephanie Kay, was shocked to find very real charges from iTunes show up in her e-mail box days later.Loopholes? You've got to be kidding. What possible justification can a game developer (Capcom in this case) have for charging real money for virtual objects under any circumstances? If you can sucker adults into doing this, that's one thing. But these are games for kids. Of course they think the charges are just play money. So would most parents. What person in his right mind would even consider the possibility that a corporation would charge a hundred real dollars for a wagon of virtual Smurfberries?
....The practice is troubling parents and public interest groups, who say $99 for a wagon of Smurfberries or $19 for a bucket of snowflakes doesn't have any business in a children's game. Though a password is needed to make a purchase, critics say that the safeguards aren't strong enough and that there are loopholes.
Come to think of it, this actually sounds fairly predatory even for adult games, though I suppose I'm being hopelessly naive and elderly on that score. But kids? Somebody please tell me I'm not crazy to be genuinely shocked over this.
Kevin Drum @'Mother Jones'
Friday, 11 February 2011
J. Period, John Legend & The Roots: “Wake Up! Radio” (Mixtape)
In anticipation of an award-winning evening for John Legend & The Roots’ WAKE UP! album (nominated for 5 Grammys at Sunday’s 2011 Grammy Awards), J.Period & Truelements Music are pleased to present WAKE UP! RADIO – a star-studded mixtape collaboration with Columbia Records’ multi-platinum singing sensation, and the hardest working Late Night band on the planet!
Hosted by The Roots’ own Black Thought, WAKE UP! RADIO pays tribute to the legacy of soul music that paved the way for WAKE UP! and imagines a world where mainstream radio transmits music with a message. Employing an all-star cast of musical contemporaries (including John Legend & The Roots themselves), J.Period dissects, remixes and rebuilds the original recording sessions from the WAKE UP! album in an unprecedented manner, defying the conventional wisdom of what a “mixtape” can be—producing a full-fledged remix album in the process. The result is a treasure trove of powerful new music, produced and remixed exclusively by J.Period for WAKE UP! RADIO.
Scheduled for release today, February 10, 2011 , WAKE UP! RADIO will be offered as a FREE DOWNLOAD in celebration of WAKE UP!’s 5 Grammy nominations, and will also be available as a Limited Edition gift-bag giveaway at The Roots’ Grammy Jam on Saturday, February 12 in Los Angeles, CA—consistently one of the hottest tickets on a weekend overflowing with events. J.Period will also be on hand in Los Angeles to perform at The Grammy Jam, DJing to open up for The Roots’ headlining performance.
Adding to the historic nature of this mixtape release, J.Period will also release an exclusive Digital 12” on Tuesday, February 15, featuring a history-making collaboration between John Legend, Black Thought of The Roots, and hip hop luminary, Rakim. The track, entitled “In the Ghetto (Wake Up!)”, produced by J.Period, is an homage to the Eric B. & Rakim classic “In The Ghetto”—which hearkens back to a time when hip hop and social messages went hand in hand.
Additional featured guests on WAKE UP! RADIO include Common, Q-Tip, Late Night host Jimmy Fallon, Nigerian songstress Nneka, Somali sensation K’NAAN, Def Poet Mayda Del Valle and more, in addition to never-before-heard music from Black Thought and John Legend. Also look out for J.Period’s history-making “Our Generation” Remix, reuniting hip hop legends Pete Rock & CL Smooth, which was originally released online in November, and is also featured on WAKE UP! RADIO.
DOWNLOAD
via
Adam Freeland - Sounds of Kaleidoscope @ The Nest
Tracklist:
Tyco - Coastal Break
Glimmers - U rocked my world (Pete Herbert mix)
Funk-d'void - 37.1
Wagon Christ - Manalyze This!
Todd Terje - Balearic Incarnations
Justin Martin - Deep Throat
Ramadanman - Work them
Scuba - You got me
Gessafelstien - Body Of Eyes
Hannulelauri - Super Monkey
Djedjotronic - Uranus
PFN - The Flow (False Profet mix)
B Movie - Nowhere Girl (Adam Freeland mix)
Luke Abbot - Trans Forest Alignment
Glimmers - U rocked my world (Pete Herbert mix)
Funk-d'void - 37.1
Wagon Christ - Manalyze This!
Todd Terje - Balearic Incarnations
Justin Martin - Deep Throat
Ramadanman - Work them
Scuba - You got me
Gessafelstien - Body Of Eyes
Hannulelauri - Super Monkey
Djedjotronic - Uranus
PFN - The Flow (False Profet mix)
B Movie - Nowhere Girl (Adam Freeland mix)
Luke Abbot - Trans Forest Alignment
chris_carter_ Chris Carter
btw: I have begun remastering the original Throbbing Gristle albums for vinyl rerelease on Industrial Records Ltd.
SXSW 2011 on BitTorrent: 4.49 GB of Free Music
The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the largest and most popular in the United States. For the seventh year in a row, SXSW is sharing DRM-free, RIAA-safe songs of performing artists, totalling 4,49 GB so far. All the tracks can now be downloaded for free in one go, thanks to BitTorrent.
Since 2005, the SXSW music festival has published thousands of free tracks from participating artists. For some of the previous editions, the festival organizers offered torrents of the artist showcases themselves, but since 2008 this task has been handed over to the public.
All of the MP3s are still freely available for download on the festival’s site, so it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running. For the past three years Ben Stolt has taken the time and effort to put all the MP3s into one big torrent, and this week the first torrent containing 792 tracks has been released.
The 4.49 gigabyte torrent will likely be followed by another release later this month or early March.
Every year the SXSW torrents are a great success, with many thousands of music aficionados downloading the gigabytes of free music from both established acts and upcoming bands in virtually every music genre. In total, the torrents of the previous editions have been downloaded close to 150,000 times.
Although all tracks can also be streamed and downloaded directly from the festival website, a big torrent makes more sense since it’s easier than laboriously downloading every MP3 separately. In addition, using BitTorrent saves SXSW some money in bandwidth costs. The good news is that, for once, the RIAA isn’t watching over your shoulder when downloading music
This year’s SXSW music festival takes place from March 16-20 in Austin Texas. All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their iPod without having to invest thousands of dollars.
For those interested in even more free music to fill up their MP3-players, there’s always Jamendo with nearly 50,000 free-to-download albums, also supported by BitTorrent. That’s a few Terabytes of free music, good for 5 years of continuous play.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'
Since 2005, the SXSW music festival has published thousands of free tracks from participating artists. For some of the previous editions, the festival organizers offered torrents of the artist showcases themselves, but since 2008 this task has been handed over to the public.All of the MP3s are still freely available for download on the festival’s site, so it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running. For the past three years Ben Stolt has taken the time and effort to put all the MP3s into one big torrent, and this week the first torrent containing 792 tracks has been released.
The 4.49 gigabyte torrent will likely be followed by another release later this month or early March.
Every year the SXSW torrents are a great success, with many thousands of music aficionados downloading the gigabytes of free music from both established acts and upcoming bands in virtually every music genre. In total, the torrents of the previous editions have been downloaded close to 150,000 times.
Although all tracks can also be streamed and downloaded directly from the festival website, a big torrent makes more sense since it’s easier than laboriously downloading every MP3 separately. In addition, using BitTorrent saves SXSW some money in bandwidth costs. The good news is that, for once, the RIAA isn’t watching over your shoulder when downloading music
This year’s SXSW music festival takes place from March 16-20 in Austin Texas. All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their iPod without having to invest thousands of dollars.
For those interested in even more free music to fill up their MP3-players, there’s always Jamendo with nearly 50,000 free-to-download albums, also supported by BitTorrent. That’s a few Terabytes of free music, good for 5 years of continuous play.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'
Sonic Youth - Simon Werner A Disparu (Albumstream)
1 Thème De Jérémie
2 Alice Et Simon
3 Les Anges Au Piano
4 Chez Yves (Alice Et Clara)
5 Jean-Baptiste À La Fenêtre
6 Thème De Laetitia
7 Escapades
8 La Cabane Au Zodiac
9 Dans Les Bois / M. Rabier
10 Jean-Baptiste Et Laetitia
11 Thème De Simon
12 Au Café
13 Thème D’Alice
Release date: February 15th
ALBUMSTREAM
Guy Peellaert's 'Pravda, La Survireuse'
Belgian advertising illustrator Guy Peellaert was one of the first cartoonists to embrace Pop Art and incorporate Andy Warhol's appropriation of mass market iconography into his work. His first comic, Les aventures de Jodelle, (Jodelle's likeness based after yé-yé chanteuse Sylvie Vartan) appeared in 1966, swiftly followed by 'Pravda la Survireuse' (her visage modelled after Françoise Hardy) for the magazine 'Hara-Kiri' in 1967.
Peellaert recently art directed this animation, based on 'Pravda'.
The animation was made by Gallien Guibert from www.thegenre.com.
After contributing a number of photo collage-based style strips to 'Hara-Kiri', Peellaert adopted a photo-realistic airbrush style and made a successful return to advertising and illustration; most notably on David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs' LP cover and 'Rock Dreams', his collaboration with rock journalist Nick Cohn.
Guy Peellaert (1934 - 2008)
Via
Peellaert recently art directed this animation, based on 'Pravda'.
The animation was made by Gallien Guibert from www.thegenre.com.
After contributing a number of photo collage-based style strips to 'Hara-Kiri', Peellaert adopted a photo-realistic airbrush style and made a successful return to advertising and illustration; most notably on David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs' LP cover and 'Rock Dreams', his collaboration with rock journalist Nick Cohn.
Guy Peellaert (1934 - 2008)
Via
Egypt's Mubarak refuses to quit
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office and transfer all power only after September's presidential election.
His comments in a national TV address confounded earlier reports that he was preparing to stand down immediately.Mr Mubarak said he would delegate some powers to Vice-President Omar Suleiman, but would ignore "diktats from abroad".
Thousands of anti-government protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square reacted angrily to his announcement.
"I express a commitment to carry on and protect the constitution and the people and transfer power to whomever is elected next September in free and transparent elections," Mr Mubarak said.
Directly addressing protesters "in Tahrir Square and beyond" in what he said was "a speech from the heart", Mr Mubarak, 82, said: "I am not embarrassed to listen to the youth of my country and to respond to them."
He apologised to the families of protesters killed in clashes with the security forces in recent weeks, and said those responsible for their deaths would be punished.
He added that the country's emergency law would only be lifted when conditions were right.
Egypt's military had earlier said it was standing ready to "protect the nation".
Negotiations between the government and opposition groups have made little progress, with protesters disillusioned at plans for reform put forward by Mr Mubarak's government.
The US government had in recent days stepped up its call for the protesters' concerns to be addressed.
@'BBC'
jeremyscahill jeremy scahill
Whoever gave Leon Panetta that "intelligence" on Mubarak stepping down tonight, awesome job! #Egypt
exiledsurfer exiledsurfer
Negotiating a deal to fuck berlusconi's granddaughter with the italian supreme court. #ReasonsMubarakIsLate
Susheela Raman - Mix Box Live 2/8/11
Susheela Raman hails from the movement of immigrant and second-generation musicians from the Indian subcontinent based in Britain, who perform a fusion of traditional and classical forms from their homeland with contemporary beats and dancehall tracks from Western Europe. Raman was born to immigrant parents in London in 1973, and her family soon moved closer to the subcontinent, taking a home in Australia, where she soon started learning and performing South Indian classical song. With a bevy of recitals under her belt, she began working with more blues-based music (soul, rock, R&B) for a while, alternating between that and new studies in Hindustani song with Shruti Sadolikar. Returning to England within a few years, she began work on the idea of fusing Indian classical forms with more contemporary Western ones. Aided by Sam Mills, who had done similar projects with one of the contemporary Baul singers, Raman worked with a huge number of foreign artists on the Salt Rain project, released in 2001. She was nominated as the first world music artist for the British Mercury Prize, and satisfied with the results of Salt Rain, Raman used the same basic guidelines to create Love Trap, released in mid-2003. (Adam Greenberg - allmusic)
00:55:31
directlink
HA!
Henry_Kissinger Dr Henry Kissinger
We have an exciting announcement coming of a new partner at Kissinger Associates. VERY experienced in Arab world w/ great business links.
PJ Harvey to perform 'Let England Shake' via live webcast
The singer will play material from her back catalogue as well as new songs from 8pm (GMT), with the show streaming at pjharvey.net.
@'NME'
"Outfoxed" Director Discusses How Fox News' Lies Alter Americans' Perceptions of Reality
On last night's The Ed Show on MSNBC, filmmaker Robert Greenwald (the founder of Brave New Films and the director of Outfoxed) joined host Ed Schultz in a discussion of how Fox News' disinformation and falsehoods damage U.S. political discourse and alter Americans' perceptions of reality.
Watch the segment here:
Lauren Kelley @'Alternet'
Watch the segment here:
Lauren Kelley @'Alternet'
GregMitch Greg Mitchell
Al Jazeeera claims Mubarak wanted to make broadcast handing over power to Suleiman--and military blocked it.
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