Dinosaurs

Recently the music industry has been getting uppity about free CD's givenaway with newspapers, particulalry following Prince giving away his entire New Album in a deal with a national newspaper. Indeed for this particular album teh only way to get it it through the paper or by attending one of his live concerts, where its free with each ticket.This complaining is yet another sign that the large record companies have absolutely no idea on how to run a buisiness model based on anything aside from the sale of physical singles and albums, and indeed no particular desire to develop a new buisiness model, prefering to shut down, lobby and stop any new way for as long as possible. Thing is, it won't work. The mass lawsuits of those who illegally downloaded music has not stemmed the tide of peer to peer sharing, nor has it moved people on to more legitimate download sites. The best DRM is usually only 2 hrs away from being hacked and rendered inert and many consumers refuse to buy music legitemately online until they can be guaranteed complete freedom to use the tracks as they see fit (be it mix CDs or transfer to any music player they own) plus a free backup should a catastrophic failiure occur. At the moment the record companies are caught seriously wanting. Combine thsi with the alterations in how the carts are measured, now including all downloads. with Internet and DAB radio catering for more refined and specific music tastes its becoming much harder to invent a pop act (bovine and obedient) and find a similarly bovine and obedient crowd to buy them en-masse. Hell we've not had a new boyband since westlife, and the bigger events ahev been the reforming of old acts from the 90s, winning nostalgia and novelty value in the same way black lace doesn't for the 80s.In short the record companies are loosing control of their indusrty, their content and with artist now able to generate their own hype through social networking, they may have to accept loss of control of any new acts.I heard an interesting idea, that in the future an album may be used more as a shopfront to try and persuade people to buy tickets for a tour, in short Artists (and companies) may in essence give away and album in order to generate fans to buy tickets for a tour. WHile I don't see this happening any time soon I do think that if artists can make most of their money from touring and the all important royalties gained form radio play (WHich is constantly moving away from playlists and more to public demand) then there may be more artists willing to give away the Album for free.

Censored

Its not recent news but it’s been on my mind for a while. Recently the BBFC banned a game, Manhunt 2. While this doesn't initially bother me (Wasn't a big fan of the 1st manhunt) it does make me think that we really should start considering what role we want the BBFC to have. There was an idea in a Christopher Brookmyre novel (Country of the Blind) of an EU bill to standardise ratings across Europe, basically meaning if a film received its rating in France, all the BBFC could do was give it a rating, not ask for cuts or ban. While fictitious this is the role I would prefer the BBFC to have, to award ratings not ban, as adults we should be allowed to decide what stimuli we are exposed to in our private lives. Obviously certain things would still be illegal, Torture, Snuff, child pornography and things of that ilk, in short anything that would be illegal to do in your own home which isn't simulated (so no real murder or torture, but lets not go banning 24)Obviously in backing this heavier enforcement must come for the actual age ratings, including a possible 21 rating, to prevent those deemed by the new advisory BBFC as too young for some content from seeing it, particularly when it comes to computer games. There are far too many parents who still believe that games are for kids, and that there is no real way a game should have an 18 rating. After all, it’s only a game. Both parents and retailers should be penalised for allowing kids to play/watch things outside of their advised rating.The actual issue of parents allowing kids 18 rated games I feel may heavily reduce with my generation having children. Many of us grew up through the 1980s and we are the first generation where games grew up with us. There were very few 18 rated games out before I was 18 (Some of the old CDi, 3DO etc titles used titillating FMV) and as a result I am now aware of the level of realism and interactivity in today’s titles, something a parent currently in their mid to late 30s may not.Overall as adults we should be able to judge what we can cope with, and I think as a nation we are grown up enough not to have need of a board of "Experts" deciding what we can and can't watch.

Back on the Air

I'm back, well on air at any rate, never really was away sadly.It occurred to me that I haven't said much about what I actually do for a living. This is deliberate, as I have read too many horror stories about people being sacked for mouthing off in their blogs. So keeping it vague I am a civil engineer (in training) and I was out these last few weeks digging holes.

When I say digging holes I of course don't mean myself personally. I had people to do that, I just had to look in them and describe what I saw (Mud) and take a photo (Of Mud). All peppered by discussions on how deep the holes should actually be. While this was compounded by the specification having 3 different figures it also wasn't helped by older supervisors arguing in inches while I'm arguing in millimetres, and this leads me in a roundabout way to my point.

In short, why the hells do we still use imperial measurements. I've never heard a convincing argument beyond "Its what we're used to" well newsflash old timer, in school since at least the early 80s imperial hasn't been taught, there is an entire generation, now in their late 20s/early 30s who have been taught metric and have to learn imperial when old fools who refuse to move on won't change.

An argument someone once tried to make was that all the imperial measurements were based on real things, that why people liked them, a foot was the length of a foot for example, well, who'd foot, my Size 11 or my mum's size 4? An inch is a thumb width, again whose thumb, my pudgy digit or my beloved's elegant slender thumb? And some are worse, chains, for example, are 22yards, as this was the standard length of surveyors chains, an antique piece of surveying equipment used before someone came up with the revolutionary idea of cloth tape with numbers at regular intervals.

SO, imperial uses vague measurements based on such things as the length of someone’s foot (We still don't know who this foot belongs to) the temperature of the inside of a cow and the length of an obsolete piece of equipment. These also make for some interesting calculation if they need to be added to anything like a spreadsheet for calculation and tabulation. 1760 yards to the mile. Nice easy figure there, so much less confusing than 1000 millimetres to a metre, or indeed 1000 millilitres to a litre, gods forbid we work everything in base 10 for easy calculation.

And it’s not just this standard calculation based in easy to work with 10s that helps the metric system. Oh no, While some measurements are based on odd things (the metre is based on the distance travelled by light in an absolute vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second) ok not something I can measure in my living room but its not something that changes person to person. The original basis however were to use basic relationships between volumes of water, weights of water and the size of meridians. So for example a metric tonne of water is equal to 1000 litres or 1 cubic metre of water. 1 kilogram is the same weight as 1 litre of water.So why hasn't the world adapted to this wonder system. America claims it too confusing. Proving that no one there has actually considered it seeing as its more intuitive and logical than the old imperial system (and what the hell is a quart anyway)

The UK is arguably worse, in that we have a bunch of sentimental oldsters combined with some rabid petty little Englanders who insist that our entire culture and way of life would be destroyed if you couldn't buy oranges by the pound and that the metric system is "Soulless" well, That’s fair, we should indeed stick with a complex and confusing system because it has "Soul" as for the first point, our culture is far more about personal behaviour, attitudes etc than whether we use pounds or Kilograms, or pay in Euros, Pounds or Trigantic Ningis.

Lets ditch the misplaced sentimentality and adopt the metric system, them most it will cost is changing road signs.