Entries from June 2002 ↓

In 1989, Patek Philippe, the Swiss manufacturer of some of the world’s most desired watches, created the Calibre 89 in honor of the company’s 150th anniversary. This watch is the most sophisticated mechanical timepiece ever created, and remains a milestone in the history of horology.

In addition to the standard hour-minute-second functions, the Calibre 89 boasts 33 more functions in its double-faced case. There are four different gongs which replicate the sounds of London’s Big Ben. There are 24 hands which function as a split-time chronograph, a perpetual calendar, a leap-year indicator, an Easter calculator, weekday markings, lunar phase and night sky depictions, sidereal time, time of sunset and sunrise, a second time-zone indicator, position of the sun in the zodiac, and even a thermometer. The accuracy of the watch is assisted by a tourbillon, a tiny gyroscope-like device which turns about every minute to help correct for the effects of gravity on the mechanism.

The watch is comprised of 1728 parts and, because it is hand-tooled and -assembled, it took nearly nine years to manufacture and build the four production units. One is in platinum, and one each is made of white gold, yellow gold and rose gold. At a price of US$2.7 million, it is the most expensive watch ever made.

It is also a true folly. While it is a triumph of the science of watchmaking, at nearly 3 pounds, the Calibre 89 is possibly the most impractical pocketwatch ever created. Designed for the pocket, it is too big to be carried there, but the features of the face are too small for it to be used as a desk or wall clock. It works as a monument to engineering, as an example of what can be done, but it fails miserably as a timepiece because it is too complicated to use for the simple purpose of determining whether you’re going to be on time for work.

While I am truly amazed and impressed by the effort and craftsmanship and painstaking care that went into the manufacture of the Calibre 89, I am totally unimpressed by its utility. Looking at this image, I can’t tell for sure whether it is 10:10 or 8:10 (hollow circle hands in pairs) or 10:50 or 1:50 (one solid black circle hand and one hollow circle hand) or 10:41 or 1:41 (one solid black circle hand and the other hollow circle hand.)

Perhaps the true nature of this watch is expressed in the terminology used to explain it. A watch which simply tells the hour, minute, and seconds of the day is known as a “simple” watch. Every function beyond the basics is known as a “complication.” The Calibre 89 has 33 complications, more than any watch ever made.

The person buying this watch is probably not going to keep it in his or her pocket. He or she is buying it for its uniqueness, its beauty, its historical value, its place as an exemplar of Swiss watchmaking. Because of this, the buyer is not disappointed in its lack of utility. To ensure she is on time to pick up her child from childcare, she wears a digital watch which she picked up at BJs for $8.99 when the strap on her last cheapo watch broke and she realized it would be cheaper to buy a new watch than to buy a new wristband for the old one.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with software. I’m composing this little article in Microsoft Word XP, the 10th version of the software for the Windows platform. Without leaving this program, I can create mailing lists, multi-column newsletters, spreadsheets, HTML and XML documents, drawings, e-mail, letterhead, diagrams and fully-hyperlinked and annotated legal briefs and pleadings. Someone with more programming skills than me can modify the basic operations of the program, altering its interface and functionality, perhaps automating some of the procedures I currently use.

All this “functionality” is excess baggage to me when all I want to do is write a little text. Yet, year after year, I’m suckered in by press releases, magazine reviews, e-mailings and glossy brochures urging me to upgrade to the next “feature-packed” release of MS Word.

Perhaps watchmaking terminology could be applied to software. Perhaps, instead of describing the new “features” of a word-processing program, we would hear about the new “complications” in Word. How much would you pay to complicate your work?

Slowly, but surely, internet radio broadcasters are shutting down. As I mentioned last week, the Librarian of Congress was due to announce his decision on performance rates for internet radio on June 20.

Well, sure enough, the announcement came. Wired — delusionally deciding that this is a good thing — announced “Webcasters Fees Slashed in Half”. And it’s true: they were slashed in half, from US.14¢ per song per listener to US.07¢ per song per listener. Which means that the 1,000 listener per hour station which has been broadcasting for the past 3 years will only owe a quarter-million US dollars in royalties, rather than a half-million! Wowee!

Stations are disappearing quietly. SomaFM‘s home page reads “Killed by the RIAA. June 20th, 2002″. NetRockRadio is silent, their home page declaring June 20th, 2002 as “The Day the Music Died.” MoreMusicRadio says, “It’s Sad to Say Goodbye.” Tag’s TranceTrip says, “Off the Air.” Perkigoth says, “Killed by CARP, Harassed to death by SESAC!” The Downbeat says, “One day RIAA will be seen for what they truely are…” Flaresound says, “Shutdown because of RIAA on June 22nd, 2002.” There will be many more.

RIAA says its not their responsibility to “subsidize the webcasting businesses of multi-billion dollar companies like Yahoo, AOL, RealNetworks and Viacom.” (Strangely enough, AOL & Viacom are major members of the RIAA, with AOL/Time Warner providing nearly 20% of their yearly budget, according to the folks at MonkeyRadio — another silent station, whose founder happens to be the developer of WinAmp, now owned by AOL.) Strange, how they consider that allowing internet radio stations to expose their music to potential buyers is a subsidy, when this is exactly the same thing they provide to terrestrial and satellite radio. In fact, they illegally pay the broadcasters to play their records over the public airwaves which we license to the broadcasters for much less than their true value. (Check out the pitifully small FCC license fees paid by even the largest radio stations: WCBS-AM in New York, reaching 14.5 million potential listeners paid just US$4,550 for its broadcast license last year!)

With a bit of “too-little-too-late”, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo for US$5B, told RAIN that the deal his company was negotiating with the RIAA was was “designed so that there would be less competition, and so that small webcasters who needed to live off of a ‘percentage-of-revenue’ to survive, couldn’t.” This was the deal which the Copyright panel used as the basis for its determination, since it was the only deal out there! And then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, Yahoo announced today that it was going to close some of its streaming audio sites. Although they claim that the CARP ruling had nothing to do with it, RAIN reports that the negotiated deal with the RIAA expired at the end of 2001.

So what’s the future? Well, Canada is proposing legislation similar in effect to the CARP royalty structure: C$0.25 per month per listener, payable to SOCAN, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA. RantRadio is spearheading the fight to keep alive diversity in internet radio in our northern neighbor. I’m not sure what’s happening in Europe right now — the situation there may be a little different, since radio stations are mainly state-owned and therefore not as fearful of internet upstarts as their brothers in the US.

The most important thing you can do is write your Congress-people. There’s a form letter which you can have faxed to you Senators & Representatives, as well as other actions you can take, listed at SaveInternetRadio.org.

rogue: n. 1. a person who is unscrupulous…
especially someone who is nonetheless likable

My cousin Brian, a second-cousin on my father’s side, died yesterday of heart-failure at 39 years old. We were close at one time, in that strange way cousins have of being close, even though they might see each other only once a year. My sister was in love with him, I think.

He was a great guy, trim and wiry, with reddish hair, freckles, and a smart-aleck grin; there was always a cigarette in his hand, and one eye squinting to keep out the smoke. He was a Wild One, a Rebel. He always greeted me with one hand in a handshake and one hand clapping my back.

He was married once, to a beautiful girl from Colombia; I never really got a clear story of how he met her. She was an Indian, from a small village, and he brought her up here, married her, had a child by her, and was divorced by her. She’d bought into the American thing quickly and wanted it all: the house, the yard, the money, the steady stability which wasn’t in Brian’s nature.

His mother, unwilling to be divorced from her grandson, gave the ex-wife everything she wanted after the split-up — new teeth, a boob-job, a home, a car — under constant threat of the adored child disappearing with his mother back into the jungles of South America. Or, that was the fear anyway; we all knew that this new American had spent too much time in the big city to ever settle for the farm again.

Brian lived on the margins before the marriage and after the divorce, with a feral gift for survival, and the ability to charm you out of your possessions as you thanked him for it. He squatted in houses and buildings, abandoned, but not yet torn down. He fixed cars which he found or bought, then sold them, somehow coming up with titles and papers which must’ve been false, but passed for legit. I don’t think he owned anything but his clothes.

There were drugs, too. And though, between he and me there was never anything more than a joint or two at family occasions, an offer of coke once or twice — when I heard he’d died, that was the first thing Jenn and I thought of. I knew, without any evidence, that there were more drugs there than just for personal comsumption. My sister and my father both said, “I can only guess what caused the heart attack…” I doubt we’ll ever know.

Still, his mother said, “He was cleaning up his act. He’d just gotten a new job. He was looking for an apartment.” You hear that so often.

He finished high school, then went for a while to a car mechanic school. He worked with his hands, like his grandfather who worked as a sanitation man for New York City all his life. They both gambled and cursed and bent the rules and loved their families and made their own way and never asked anyone for anything. Only, his grandfather — my great-uncle — died in his sleep, late in his 80s.

Brian was street-smart and worldly-wise, a maverick in a family of college degrees and professional certificates. A poor romantic figure, a starving artist of existence.

So long, Brian.

Panel Allows Solicitation of Soft Money at Fund-Raisers

In one decision, the commission approved a rule that bans federal officeholders from specifically asking for soft money contributions for state parties, but not suggestions that such a donation be made.

So it’s all in how you say it… Kind of like a “Don’t ask & we won’t tell.” This kind of policy is working so well for the Armed Forces. So, in other words, the rules passed as part of the Campaign Finance Reform Act — which don’t officially take effect until after this November’s mid-term elections anyway — will now, effectively, become ineffectual, buried under another tall pile of money.

Muddy Scum Queen

This is an interesting article about the DJs who are (not) playing music on the Clear Channel stations I mentioned in my previous entry. Turns out those guys and gals talking about the things and people in the community they serve may not be anywhere near that community.

And you know the local KISS-FM station — it’s just one of 47 KISS-FM stations owned by Clear Channel.

Welcome to radio as Velveeta – pasteurized and processed.

Webcasting Rate Information Due From Copyright Office/Library of Congress at 5pm Thursday.

This is the Copyright Office’s response to its rejection of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel’s (CARP’s) recommendation that internet radio stations should pay a royalty of .14¢ (14/100ths of a cent) per listener, per hour of broadcasting, retroactive to 1998. As Save Internet Radio calculates:

a mid-sized independent webcaster (imagine two or three people working out of a home office or a campus apartment) that has had, say, an average audience of 1,000 listeners for the past three years, the bill for retroactive royalties — which will come due 45 days after the royalty rate is approved — would be $525,600!

And it’s all based on this ridiculous theory that internet radio should pay to use music, but broadcast radio doesn’t need to. The theory is that broadcast radio serves to promote the music while internet radio competes with record sales. I think Hillary Rosen of the RIAA must’ve been smoking crack when she came up with that one.

When I listen to the radio lately, all I hear is the approved 8 songs for this week from Clear Channel Communications or Infinity Broadcasting. If the record companies were only releasing 8 songs between them then — sure, broadcast would be promoting those 8 songs. But internet radio promotes the thousands of smaller bands, indie bands, unsigned bands, regional bands which the no-taste tastemakers haven’t got a clue about.

Besides that, are the broadcast radio stations actually promoting anything but themselves and their local and national advertisers? Although there doesn’t seem to be any definitive study of advertising minutes per hour on radio, the sources I’ve found seem to estimate that music stations are playing 16-22 minutes of advertising, news, weather, etc. per hour of broadcast. So, given that limited music-hole, how can it be claimed that they are a promotional medium?

Basically, today’s announcement will determine the future of internet radio. Either they’ll be taxed out of business, or we’ll get to hear lots of bitching and moaning from Hillary Rosen and the corporate gluttons at the RIAA, claiming how this will really hurt the artists. Like they’d know an artist if they heard one…

Faux Queue

If only I played an instrument… or could sing… or had any sense of rhythm…

I get back from the gym and head for the showers here at the office. There’s a shower room in each of the first floor men’s and women’s bathrooms, as well as another separate shower & locker room for each sex.

So, I’m standing in the shower and thinking, “My bosses are out there, my co-workers are out there, building staff, visitors, customers. And I’m in here, wearing nothing but a smile.”

Weird feeling. What if the door opens? What if there’s a fire? It reminds me of that recurring dream I used to have where I’d walk into school, ready for class, not realizing that I was stark naked. (Sometimes the dream would be disturbing because everyone noticed; sometimes it would be more disturbing when no one noticed.)

There are plenty of jobs where nakedness is normal — anything medical comes to mind. Also, the entertainment industry.

But here at the cube farm…

I’ve got a Schneider’s skink (also known as a Berber skink). He’s always been pretty shy, but lately, I’ve hardly seen him at all. Even more worrisome, though, is that he isn’t eating.

He’s always been picky; skinks are supposed to be insectivores, going ga-ga over gut-loaded crickets. (Gut-loaded means that the crickets have spent some time gorging themselves at the all-you-can-eat grain buffet.) Caliban, however, has never been interested in crickets. We tried live ones, but they just hopped around him while he ignored them. I tried killing the crickets for him — I felt like I was a hypocrite to my strict vegetarianism — but… he couldn’t have cared less. We tried some freeze-dried crickets (pre-gutloaded), but he didnt touch them. We finally discovered that he likes wet dog food, but he’s been pretty much ignoring that, too, lately. I find the dessicated dog food chunks in the same place I left them when I go to feed him again.

Not sure what to do, although, when I do see him, he looks healthy, his color is bright, and he still goes to attack my finger when I try to pet him.