RIAA Tries to Shut Down Internet Radio

If you enjoy listening to Internet radio stations, take note, the RIAA is trying to put them out of business. This is a reprint from radioparadise.com:

Future Uncertain For Internet Radio

The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio, and they ignored all of the facts presented by webcasters (including RP) and gave the record industry exactly what they asked for: royalty rates so high that they will put RP and every other independent webcaster out of business. See Kurt Hanson's newsletter for 3/2/07 for the details on how the rates work and what they will mean to stations like RP. You can participate in the discussion about this issue in our Listener Forum. For some time, we've suffered with a system where we pay a large chunk (10%-12%) of our income to the Big 5 record companies - while FM stations and radio conglomerates like Clear Channel pay nothing. Now they want even more. In our case, an amount equal to 125% of our income. Our only hope is to create as much public awareness and outrage about this staggeringly unfair situation as possible. Neither the record industry nor Congress are ready to listen to us at this point. But members of the media may well be, and we need to get their attention. If you have a blog, write about it. Feel free to quote anything I've written in the Listener Forum. If you find a good blog post about the subject, Digg it or Slashdot it. If you work for a media outlet, look over the facts of the situation and see if you don't feel the same sense of outrage that we do. Write a letter to the editor of your favorite magazine or newspaper. Let everyone you can know what a loss it would be to you personally if your favorite Internet radio stations, including RP, were no longer available. The RIAA can, at any time, agree to strike a deal with independent webcasters to allow us to pay a more realistic royalty, one based on a percentage of our income. We're hoping that if all of you make enough noise they'll be more inclined to do so. We'd also like to hope that at least one member of Congress will take a look at this situation and become willing to propose ammendments to the deeply flawed 1990s pieces of legislation that are responsible for the unfair treatment of Internet radio. Thanks a lot for reading this, and for considering the idea of taking some action on it. We'll be posting new information and links here as they become available.

Less is More

Well I have officially lost 50 lbs. now, and am feeling much better. I don't get tired quite as easily, and my legs and knees don't bother me quite as much, but I still have a good ways to go...
I set my first goal at 50 lbs. and as an incentive to help motivate myself, declared that I was going to invest in an MP3 player when I hit my mark. Well thanks to the support and generosity of several family members I am now doing my best to fill up a 4g iPod Nano (green, since they don't make a purple one). I actually did do a little research and talked to a few friends who have non-iPod type players as well as my brothers who both have iPods, and decided to drink the Kool-Aid (just kidding, calm down) and buy an Apple product. I have actually been using iTunes for several months and like the way it works. I also enjoy audiobooks, or more accurately, I used to enjoy audiobooks when I worked at a place that rented them many moons ago, but MP3 players are the logical format for listening to the unabridged audiobooks readily available these days so I haven't messed with them much, but now I plan on getting my feet wet.
Back to my first topic though, I have set my next goal and am working on my next 25 pounds. More updates to come!

Widgets

I have recently been introduced by Carter's blog to a cool little desktop utility that allows one to do lots of little tasks from the desktop that usually require opening a web browser. The program is called Yahoo Widgets and the Widgets engine runs mini-apps on your desktop (or always on to of what you are doing if you wish) that save a lot of steps. The standard apps that come with the program are things like an analog clockface, a weather forecast for your area, and a search bar. The one widget that I have actually found myself utilizing the most is a desktop search bar for Thottbot, which is a service that collects information about World of Warcraft. If I'm playing the game, and I need to know where a certain NPC spawns I can tab out of the game and type in the weasel's name from desktop, saving a couple of steps. I have also loaded up a birthday reminder program that reminds me 7 days before all of those birthdays I can never remember. I also like the widget that blurts out random quotes from "The Family Guy"'s Stewie
Of course I realize there's a chance I am the last soul on the North American continent who wasn't familiar with Widgets, but I'm a sucker for pretty apps like this.
I quit taking the local Houston paper (really just a reprint of the NY Times with local sports scores) several months ago, and really the only thing I miss is the comics. Well there is a widget that lets me pick from 128 or so different comics and downloads them for my perusal. Very cool.

So, any fave Widgets out there, or do you perhaps use Google Toolbar instead?