I collect things. A lot of the time I don't know why. Tonight I am going through my old piles of crap. I just discovered a book with old movie ticket stubs in it. I originally saw "The Fifth Element" at Knox cinema on Saturday May 17th 1997 at 9:30PM, "Toy Story" at Chadstone on the 21st December 1995, "Hot Shots Part Deux" on Tuesday July 6th 1993.

Do I want these stubs? Not really. But I have trouble bringing myself to trash them.... there are memories attached.

Subject URL: Courtney Love's Open Letter to Recording Artists

Mirrored on Doc Searls' page, this open letter to all Recording Artists explains the current situation for Recording Artists and why it isn't a good situation. Especially when compared to Writers and Actors, both of whom have unions. The Records Artists of America have no union.... excellent read as usual from CL.

Subject URL: MP3.com Payback For Playback Changes

I can't believe I missed this until now...

"Effective April 1, 2001, at 12 a.m. PST, only Artists who are members of the Premium Artist Service will be eligible to receive payments from the Payback for Playback Promotion. If you want your April earnings, this is your last week to register! Learn more about this change."

It currently costs US$19.99 per month to join this service. Most MP3.com artists will not receive this much in payment. Of course there are a lot of other services attached to the Premium Artist Service but are they really worth it?

Subject URL: FTP gone

Helen has ceased blogging due to the death of her cat. I understand Helen. I still miss Mog. It gets easier.

Subject URL: Hardware Copyright Protection

Cnet.com provides a short history of copyright protection and explains the likelyhood of the IBM and Microsofts of the world building such protection into their software/hardware.

Another article on Microsoft's 'Secure PC' plans. (via Null Device).

Subject URL: Clone

I'm all for cloning if it means I can grow new body parts as I need them (that's "as I need them", and "parts", not a whole "spare party body" or anything twisted and ethically complicated like that).

I could never really figure out why it was all that hard to do (given we've managed to clone sheep, where's my spare heart damn it) but the following minidiscussion at Slashdot explains it pretty well, and explains why the recent animal clones have such bad health problems. It all comes down to cloning an adults already depleated cells and starting a new life with old cells. Old news really but interesting.