I just wanted to pop off a quick comment about a new album and band I just discovered. Thanks to the sweet recommendation plugin for Banshee, I found my way to reading about Cavalera Conspiracy. This is basically the Cavaleras that started Sepultura. Since Igor finally left the rotting corpse of a band that was Sepultura (Dante XXI was terrible), he was free to rejoin his brother to make some fine Brazillian metal.

Their new album is slated to be released in late March, so if you are a fan, go buy it.

So there’s this thing that has become very popular in the Linux community lately called FUSE. It’s basically a filesystem in user space. The concept is actually pretty radical and the implementation seems to be pretty flexible. You basically mount a directory using one of the plugins (mount types) from a userspace program. There are fuse modules that do everything from a crypto-loop to a mysql database filesystem interface.

I have been ripping all of my music collection to FLAC format. My unwillingness to compromise quality has finally met it’s perfect match. The mp3fs module allows you to mount a directory of FLAC or Ogg files and read them as mp3s converted to the bitrate of your desire.

So when I want to make a new DVD to take to work (we’re not allowed mp3 players), I simply mount the directory with the mp3fs fuse module. The only problem I’ve seen is direct burning to nautilus-cd-burner seems to hang and complain (endlessly) about nothing in particular (just fails to create the CD during initialization). Until that is fixed, I have an intermediate step of copying the CDs to the network before burning them directly.

If you get a chance, make sure to give this module and the many others a whirl, the simplicity and power of fuse is not to be taken lightly.

A friend of mine and I started a discussion about MP3 support in Windows versus Linux. I haven’t used Windows since I was forced out of my last employment position, so I have been a bit hazy on the minute details of Windows, but the last I recall, there was no solid support for MP3 in Windows at the time.

Well, my friend claimed that Microsoft added support a while back, and he was right. Some time ago, Microsoft started shipping support for the codec after it paid $16 million to the Frauenhofer Institute in what they believed was a license to redistribute. Alcatel-Lucent (then Bell Labs) co-developed the technology with Frauenhofer, and now they are claiming that Microsoft owes them $1.5 billion in back-licensing. The case is bouncing around the patent court system and might possibly leave many companies looking for a free alternative to the MP3 format.

I also heard complaints that it was in fact Linux (CentOS) that lacked support for the said format; I thought it was the other way around. Well, I was partly right. While Microsoft battles out the patent lawsuit with Lucent, the support for MP3 varies in the different Linux distributions. You find that some distributions, such as Gentoo, Ubuntu, Slackware, and Debian, offer support out of the box either through the libmad library or the Fluendo binary GStreamer plugin. Other distributions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (only through non-public officially licensed means) and OpenSUSE offer no support at all.

Worst case scenario, if this sits in the courts long enough, some of the patents will start expiring soon. In the mean time, non-commercial usage of the codec does not require as per the Thompson website. If a Linux distribution chooses not to distribute a codec, it’s because they intend on making an annual profit of more than $100,000. It’s safe to say that most distributions do not have this problem, but Red Hat does so you’ll have to switch to a non-RHEL based distribution (Fedora included).

This is all very shady ground, so while it is still possible to support MP3 in some (if not most) Linux distributions, who knows what legal ground the format currently stands on (Microsoft certainly doesn’t know). Some would argue that MAD might lose it’s ability to distribute under the GPL license if tested in court!

In the end, switch to a non-commercial distribution or use the Fluendo GStreamer binary plugin.

So Trent Reznor decided to break with tradition and release a new Halo (presuming it’ll be a Halo) after only 2 years and 1 single since the last album. This time around, it’ll be called Year Zero to be released on April 17, 2007. It’s supposed to be a concept album and it is already generating more buzz than any Lost plot.

So for the first time ever, I think viral marketing actually worked on me. That’s right, I’ve sworn that marketing would never work on me but all of the buzz around the internet has made me desire this album even more than beforehand. This album sounds like either it has been planned for quite some time or Trent has employed an army of people to get the word out.

So here’s the deal. YearZero.com first revealed a couple clues, a sequence of numbers in the form of 24.xx.yy. Then people started finding related websites with similar clues. Eventually, YearZero.com released the video advertisement featuring The Presence, where people spotted “/0024″ in the white-noise film bands. That basically told everyone what the next album covert art would look like, since the filename is a dead give-away. Various other sites have cropped up following this post-apocalyptic theme. Here’s a nice description of the story so far:

The year is year zero. Most dates end with 0000 or something similar. When referring to the past, the years are in negatives. Example: Thirteen years prior to 0000 is listed as “-13 BA,” or “Born Again” (we think), as that would work with the negative sign before the year. It is now proven that year zero itself is actually year 2022, as indicated by the image located here (hint: look to the left of the first image, it’s slightly hard to see!). This makes the year 2007 actually become -15 BA.

- Parepin, found on the first discovered site, is a drug used in the water system and drinking supply of the general public. Its first use was said to combat all disease, though there has been no proof of it. The Administration added it to the drinking supply to both combat disease and reduce the risk of any kind of biological attack on the people; however, many citizens are reluctant to believe this. Discontinued use of the drug reveals clarity of thought, which the government claims is paranoia. Things are not as they seem.

- Opal is a new drug distributed commonly in liquid form. This is supposedly “the new crack,” as it is cheaper to distribute and more widely available. According to many underground news sources, this drug’s main distribution source is America itself. Opal is said to be a religious experience for many people. Also, many will remember a song called “Head Like a Hole (Opal),” eh?

Consolidated Mail Systems has a professional description of the drug. This implies that its name is “opal” because the color is distinct and black.
This sound clip details various things about the drug. People are arguing whether it’s Trent or not speaking at the beginning. Later in the file is a Colombian woman, which Triple_A has lovingly translated for us:

Colombian woman wrote:
when i was a girl things weren’t easy, but now it rains and rains. we haven’t even dried the coca leaves and then they left. they say its because of global warming. 2 years ago the river took my brothers house, it took my brother his wife, my nephew, and the baby girl. we found her covered with mud and when she dried out she resembled ashes. last year was difficult but the men who by the coca leaves told us to grow what we could. and we did it and they they took it. we waited and we waited and then finally they told us that they could not pay us. because nobody wants to by coca leaves. *baby crying in the background* (talking to it) shhhhhh… there there pretty girl. this year the rains returned and we could not grow anything. now the people say that nobody will buy the coca leaves, its not worth anything to anyone. in Bogotá they only want OPAL. they buy OPAL in the United States and they bring it to Bogotá… OPAL

- The Presence. You guys remember that old song “The Wretched” and how the singer says that “God himself will reach his arm through,” right? Welcome to reality. The Presence seems to be this gigantic arm pushing through the sky onto the ground. On various websites dealing with the new concept, it is stated that sightings of the Presence can be attributed to many different things, whether it be the new drugs Opal or Parepin, a quasi-religious experience, and many others.

Then there are about a dozen or so websites that have this look and feel and all seem to reference some over-looming government abuse of power, rebels, and some link between The Presence and the Parepin drug. It’s crazy like this and if you actually check out all of the sites, read all of the released material, and read between the lines by viewing the source files, you’ll find that this is probably one of the most interesting internet marketing campaigns ever.

So far, people have been busting out the spectrograph all over the place with the songs and the white noise in the teaser video (as can be found by the posts in the ETS forum). There was a clear effort to assemble all of these clues in the spaces outside of casual observation. My hat is off to Trent for his marvelous artistic work and I want to thank him for me wasting several hours looking and finding such clues in these spaces. Hell, I even called the phone numbers that have been found and try to solve the cryptograms that were found with the 24.xx.yy reference numbers. After playing with the numbers enough though, I’m starting to think that they are actually pre-YearZero dates that would be akin to using the negative BA dates. For example, 24.3.3 would be March 3, 2024. This is only a possibility, but until Trent gives us more details, it’s all speculation. The story has be speculating like crazy and I hope that he never really reveals everything so that there’s always going to be something to ponder.

You can follow the latest details by checking out this forum posting or the associated wiki. I will be pre-ordering this album the second it goes on sale.

That’s right, this week’s Grinds My Gears is about Apple’s recent abuse of the patent system. In case you didn’t wanted to take the time to read the entire article, Apple has decided to start handing out cease and desist letters to any company using the word “POD” in their products. Their reasoning is that consumers may confuse these products with the iPod product line.

Apparently, Apple has decided the word ‘pod’, in which they stuck the letter ‘i’ in front of, cannot be used by anyone else. From my understanding, patent laws prevent a company from owning common language words. What Apple is attempting to do is own a TON of words in the English language. In fact, under their assinine reasoning, the band POD might confuse me with the portable music player.

Screw you Apple, those third party products make up half of the iPod’s success. Since there are so many accessories to the iPod, they boost the continued sales of the device. If the PODSkins boost sales of the iPod by 10%, shut up and enjoy the unauthorized bonus. How could anyone mistake any one of the 500-something accessories and non-related items? For shame Apple, many years you have been casting a sour look at Microsoft for their heavy-handed tactics and here you are trying to defend ownership of an English word.

What’s next, are you going to claim ownership to the letter ‘i’? Am I not allowed to use it in a sentance now? Shall we stop using the term podcasting? That whole technology was birthed in the Era of the Pod. Perhaps the product should have been centered around a popular vowel and a commonly used word relating to peas.

While I am at it, perhaps Google should just shut the hell up as well. For years, they’ve been wanting to become synonymous with “search.” Congratulations, the term “googling it” or “googled it” (google as a verb) has made it to main stream media. It is official, when most people think of search, they think of Google. So what the hell is the problem? They go to all of that trouble to create a brand, promote the hell out of it, strive to be the best, and then when the word becomes common place, they complain that it loses its meaning. That is a very self-defeating marketing strategy.

I’ll never understand how a company can go to such great lengths to control your thought and speech so much so that you think of and speak of ther brand, yet don’t let it disassociate it with the actual product. Screw you both. In fact, here’s a nice search that will surely piss off a few companies.

Summers have always been big for bands, even before the mega concerts like Lollapalooza; acts would pack their bags for the summer and hit the road. Every year I see more articles with the headline reading “Slow Sales for Big Summer Tours” and I have to ask myself what has brought us to this? In plain English the problem is straight economics.

Ticket prices have grown steadily over the years for big-named acts. First the reason were scalpers artificially driving up the prices, then ticket brokers, not to mention the facility fees, convenience charge, and of course tax. The new hot topic is the price it takes for these bands to fuel their busses to get from venue to venue, and how much it is affecting their profitability behind the tour. Of course these acts don’t want to take a hit in the profit margin to tour, so who gets to pick up the tab? That’s right the consumers.

Not only are ticket prices getting incredibly high to see a show, but often times there are problems getting good seats simply due to availability. Artists have tried to offer good seats to the people who join their fan club (lining their pockets with more $), and acts have even started putting prime tickets up auction style. When is enough enough, and when does “alienation” of their core fan base start to happen? Not all Radiohead fan’s can drop $500 + dollars for good seats to see them perform live this summer, but many of these people would really like to sit close enough to not need binoculars to see Thom Yorke and company.

Even those cheap seats are approaching ludicrous prices, like $50 for third tier seating in an arena. Pearl Jam had it right years ago when they attempted to take on Ticketmaster and their pricing machine. Unfortunately the corporation won, but something has got to change. They need to examine their supply and demand curves a bit, re-adjust their costs and reduce the ticket prices. Oh, and what is up with charging $30 for a tour t-shirt?

There is something special about being at a concert (I really enjoy them), but when is it just going to cost too much, and the $18 DVD of a stop on their tour going to be more enjoyable?

It has been over a solid year of touring for Nine Inch Nails, and if you think that the pace would slow down or tire the band you would be mistaken. I was fortunate to catch them for their Washington D.C. performance at the Nissan Pavilion via Bristow Virginia. Of the three times I have seen them perform, this may have been the best performance yet.

The band put the theatrics away for this last leg of their With Teeth Tour, removed the video, added some new lighting schemes and turned up the intensity. The set spanned the entire catalogue, with some songs which seem to have become “staples” for live performances. Since the departure of Jerome Dillon, the touring members remain the same;

• Alessandro Cortini – Keyboards/Guitar
• Josh Freese – Drums
• Aaron North – Guitar
• Jeordie White – Bass guitar / guitar

The show opened with Trent appearing on stage behind a metal grading which was actually a lighting prop, with the members joining him shortly there after. The band wasted no time whipping the crowd into a frenzy, and this seemed to feed Aaron as it provoked him to dive off stage while still playing guitar. This wild antic was followed up with him knocking over his amp and swinging his guitar around like a maniac.

The first bump of the show was reached as Trent “choked” on either the fog machine, or something else which amused him because he kind of chuckled after it happened. There were several other parts which stand out in my mind; the lighting effect during the song “Closer” displayed red lights slowly collecting and filling up the metal grading lighting prop until it had reached capacity. Second was Aaron knocking over the keyboards set, and seeing Alessandro dive down to play on his hands and knees to make sure that element wasn’t missing from the song.

The last part has to be Aaron smashing his Fender guitar at the end of “Head Like a Hole” and then sticking it into the lighting prop. He was determined to go Keith Moon on it and didn’t let up until he was satisfied that the neck and body of the guitar had come apart enough.

Here is an incomplete list of the songs they performed:

• Wish
• The Frail
• Only
• Burn
• Terrible Lie
• March of the Pigs
• Closer
• Hurt
• The Hand That Feeds
• Only
• Dead Souls
• Into the Void
• Sin
• Somewhat Damaged
• Head Like a Hole

*There was also a brand new track which was performed, but I don’t remember the name of it.